High Examiner Crane did not hurry.
He walked the length of the chapel slowly, greeting people as he went. He asked Warrick Dunn about his hat, which had been his father's, and seemed pleased to hear it. He complimented the round window. He crouched down in front of little Pip Tull, who was four and hiding behind her mother's skirts, and showed her a silver coin, and made it disappear, and made it come back out of her ear. Pip laughed. Her mother did not.
By the time he reached the altar, half the village had relaxed. Adrian watched their shoulders come down. It was like watching a flock of sheep decide the dog was friendly.
Adrian did not relax. He could not have said why. The High Examiner had done nothing wrong. He had a soft voice, and warm eyes, and he had not once looked at the six children since that first long moment on the steps.
That was the part that bothered Adrian. A man who came a very long way for something ought to look at it.
Crane stopped beside the silver basin and rested two fingers on its rim, lightly, the way a man touches a sleeping horse. His assistant - a young Brother with ink-stained cuffs and a leather case full of papers - hurried up beside him and opened a book.
"The Rite of Sounding," Crane said, and his voice, though soft, filled the chapel easily, "is the oldest mercy of the Temple. Four hundred years ago, before the Canon, children awakened their gifts alone and in darkness. Some awakened fire in their beds and burned their houses down. Some awakened the Abyss in themselves, and did not know it, and it ate them from the inside until nothing was left but hunger." He let that settle. "Now no child awakens alone. The Luminant sees each of them. The Canon names each of them. And the Temple protects each of them. Even," he added gently, "from themselves."
He smiled at the line of children.
"There is nothing to fear. Place both hands in the water. Hold still. The light will do the rest." He glanced at the assistant. "Brother Odo. The first name, please."
"Oren Tull," said Brother Odo.
Oren went white and then red. His twin, Oswin, gave him a shove, and he stumbled forward to the pedestal. He had to stand on the small wooden step to reach. Adrian saw his hands shake as he lowered them into the water.
For a moment nothing happened.
Then light bloomed.
It rose from the bottom of the basin like sunrise seen from underwater - soft gold at first, then brighter, until Oren's thin arms glowed to the elbow and the shadows of the chapel pillars leaned away from it. The water rippled outward in slow golden rings. On its surface, lines of shining script drew themselves, as if written by an invisible pen.
Oren gasped. His eyes went unfocused, fixed on something in the air in front of him that no one else could see.
"He sees his Interface," Brother Fennick whispered to the families, beaming, as he whispered every year.
Crane leaned over the water and read. "[Keen Nose]. Common." He smiled at the boy. "A fine Trait for a cook, a tracker, or a tanner. Congratulations, Oren Tull. The Luminant sees you."
"The Luminant sees him," the chapel answered, and Oren's mother burst into tears of pure relief, and the whole room breathed.
Oswin went next and got [Keen Nose] as well, which made the Tull family laugh and Oswin look betrayed. Bettany Marsh, still hiccuping, awakened [Gentle Hands] - Uncommon, useful to midwives and healers - and her grandmother sat down on the floor and had to be helped up.
"Hollis Brandt."
Hollis let go of Adrian's sleeve, which Adrian had forgotten he was holding, and marched up to the basin like a boy walking into a fight. He plunged his hands in so hard water slopped over the rim. Brother Odo winced.
Gold light. Rings. Script.
"[Sturdy Back]," Crane read, and his mouth twitched. "Common. Your family's, I understand?"
"Four generations," Hollis said proudly, and then, remembering where he was, "Your Holiness. Sir. Examiner."
"'Examiner' will do." Crane seemed genuinely amused. "Carry heavy things well, Hollis Brandt."
Hollis came back grinning so widely it looked painful, and on his way past Adrian he whispered, "You owe me a copper."
"I never took the bet."
"You thought about it."
"Mira Coll."
Mira walked up the way she did everything: quickly, precisely, as if she had practiced it. She laid her hands flat on the water's surface before letting them sink. Gold light rose. It was brighter than it had been for the others - bright enough that Adrian squinted - and when it touched her fingers, tiny sparks of red ran across the golden rings like embers blown from a fire.
People murmured. Crane leaned closer, and for the first time Adrian saw something like real attention in his face.
"[Kindled Palm]," the High Examiner said. "Uncommon. And strong." He looked at Mira with interest. "Your hands will learn to carry heat, child. Smiths would give a great deal for that Trait. So would the Temple. Brother Odo, note her for a wardship interview."
Mira's mother made a sound halfway between pride and fear. Mira herself stared at the air in front of her with an expression Adrian had never seen on her face before. Wonder. It made her look younger.
Then Brother Odo turned the page, and read, "Adrian Vale," and all the warmth went out of the room.
Not for anyone else. For anyone else, it was just the last name on the list. The families were already shifting, already whispering about lunch, already congratulating the Colls.
But Adrian felt it go. He felt it leave his fingers first, and then his chest, as though he had stepped out of a warm house into a winter night.
He walked forward. His legs worked. That surprised him a little.
The step in front of the pedestal was wet where Hollis had splashed. The silver basin, this close, was enormous. The carved rings of script on the stone pedestal were so fine he could not read a single letter, and when he tried, his eyes slid off them like water off wax.
"Adrian Vale," High Examiner Crane said softly.
Adrian looked up.
It was the first time Crane had looked directly at him. The man's eyes were grey, pale and clear, and there was nothing cruel in them at all. There was something much worse. There was hope.
"Both hands," said Crane. "Hold still."
Adrian put his hands in the water.
It was cold. Colder than river water in spring. So cold that for a moment he felt nothing at all, and then it hurt, a deep aching hurt that went into the bones of his fingers and climbed his wrists.
Nothing happened.
He waited for the gold. He stared into the water, into the bright circle of the window reflected on its surface, and waited for the sunrise to come up from the bottom.
The water turned black.
It did not darken. It turned, all at once, the way a page turns - one moment silver and full of light, the next moment black as a well at midnight. The reflection of the window vanished. The black was not a color. It was an absence. Looking into it felt like leaning over the edge of a cliff.
Someone in the chapel screamed.
The sound broke the room. Benches scraped. Bettany Marsh's grandmother cried out a prayer. Adrian heard boots on stone - the Grey Watch squires moving from the door - and Rowan's voice, sharp and cracked, shouting "Hold! Hold your places!" to men who were not his to command.
And he heard his mother say his name. Only once. Not loud.
Adrian could not take his hands out of the water. He tried. He told his arms to lift, and they did not lift. The black was not holding him. It was simply that his body had forgotten it was his.
Ripples moved through the dark water. Not outward, like the golden rings, but inward. Toward his hands. Toward him.
Across the basin, High Examiner Crane had not moved at all.
He was not afraid. He was not calling for the squires. He was bending over the water, very close, so close his blue stole nearly touched it, and his lips were moving silently - not in prayer, Adrian thought, but the way Brother Fennick's lips moved when he was counting.
The black ripples reached Adrian's wrists.
And the water cleared.
Just like that. As suddenly as it had turned. The black was gone, and the silver was back, and the reflection of the round window sat on the surface as calm and bright as if nothing had happened. There was no gold. There were no rings. There was no script.
There was only clear water, and Adrian's pale, aching hands at the bottom of it.
The chapel was so silent that Adrian could hear the mill wheel turning at the other end of the village.
Then a sound came from the basin. A small sound. A thin, high, crystalline sound, like the first crack of ice on a pond when you step on it.
A line appeared in the silver.
It started at the rim, directly between Adrian's hands, and ran down the inside of the basin, through the water, a hair-thin bright scar in the metal. It forked. It forked again. It crawled over the bottom of the basin like frost across a window, spreading and splitting, and where it passed, the carved script on the stone pedestal flickered - Adrian saw it, he was sure he saw it - as though each tiny letter had flinched.
With a final, clean snap, the Sounding Mirror of Harrowfield split into three pieces.
Water gushed over the altar, over the step, over Adrian's shoes. His hands came free. He stumbled backward and would have fallen if a hand had not caught his elbow - a thin, strong hand in a white sleeve.
And the world went grey.
Not the chapel. The chapel was still there, loud now, full of screaming and shouting and the scrape of steel. But in front of Adrian's eyes, hanging in the air, where he had seen Oren and Hollis and Mira look at their golden windows, something appeared.
It was not gold.
It was a plain rectangle of dull grey, the color of ash, the color of a winter sky before snow. Its edges flickered like a candle in a draft. Words wrote themselves across it in flat, colorless letters, one line at a time, without hurry.
[...]
[...]
[Connection established.]
Adrian stared.
[Designation: - ]
[Trait: ████████]
The letters of the Trait were not letters. They were black bars, solid, as if someone had taken a pot of ink and struck them out with a heavy hand. Adrian looked at them and felt a pressure behind his eyes, a strange, stretching ache, as though there were a word he had known once and forgotten.
Then a new line wrote itself, faster than the others.
[Observer present.]
And another.
[Do not speak of this.]
[Do not look at me.]
[Look at him.]
Adrian lifted his eyes from the grey window.
High Examiner Severin Crane was holding his elbow. The man's face was a hand's width away. His grey eyes were fixed on Adrian's - not on the broken basin, not on the spilled water, not on the chaos in the chapel - and they were moving. Tiny movements. Left to right, left to right.
Reading, Adrian realized. He's trying to read something in my eyes.
"Tell me," Crane said, very quietly, beneath the noise of the chapel. "What do you see, Adrian Vale?"
[Nothing,] said the grey window.
Adrian swallowed. His mouth was dry as dust.
"Nothing," he said.
Crane studied him. It lasted maybe three heartbeats. It felt like a winter.
"Nothing at all?" Crane said. "No light? No letters?"
[Nothing.]
"No, Examiner." Adrian's voice came out small and hoarse, which was good, because it sounded exactly like a frightened farm boy. He did not have to pretend. "It was cold. And then it was black. And then... nothing." His lip shook. That wasn't pretend either. "Did I do something wrong? Did I break it?"
Something moved behind the High Examiner's eyes. A door closing. A calculation completed.
Then Crane smiled - the kind smile, the one that had made little Pip Tull laugh - and let go of Adrian's elbow, and stood up to his full height, and turned to face the chapel.
"Enough," he said.
He did not shout it. He did not need to. The word went through the room like a cold wind, and the room went still. The Grey Watch squires, halfway to the altar with swords half drawn, stopped where they stood. Adrian saw Rowan among them, white to the lips, his short sword out, positioned - Adrian noticed, and would remember - between the other squires and his little brother.
"Sheathe your blades," said Crane mildly. "There is no Abyss here."
A murmur. Disbelief.
"The water went black," someone called. It was Oswin Tull's father. "We all saw it! Just like the Fenwick girl!"
"The water went black," Crane agreed, "and then it cleared. You saw that too." He spread his hands. "Friends. This mirror was blessed in Solmere in the reign of King Aldric the Second. It is more than two hundred years old. Silver fatigues. Consecration fades. When an old mirror fails, it often shows darkness before it breaks. I have seen it happen in other villages." He glanced at Brother Fennick with gentle reproach. "It should have been replaced long ago."
Brother Fennick bowed his head. His ears had gone red.
"But the boy," said Oswin Tull's father. "What is he, then?"
Crane looked down at Adrian. For an instant - so short that no one else could possibly have seen it - the kindness left his face entirely, and underneath there was nothing but hunger, patient and bright.
Then it was gone.
"Clear water," said the High Examiner to the village of Harrowfield, "means clear water. No corruption. No Trait. The boy is Null." He placed his hand on Adrian's head, lightly, like a blessing. "Brother Odo. Record it."
The pen scratched. Adrian heard it in the silence.
"Adrian Vale," Brother Odo read out, his voice trembling a little. "Son of Tomas. Harrowfield, Westmarch. Sounding result: Null."
And that was all.
❖ ❖ ❖
The families began to leave. Slowly at first, then quickly, the way people leave a house where someone has been sick. They took their children with them - their children with golden Traits and bright futures - and they did not look at Adrian as they passed, or they looked at him too hard.
Adrian heard the word going out the door ahead of him, into the square, into the village. Null. Null. The Vale boy. Null. And under it, from someone who thought they were whispering: "Clear water, maybe. But I saw it go black."
Hollis Brandt stood at the end of the line of children, where Adrian had left him. His grin was gone. He opened his mouth like he wanted to say something, and his father took his arm and walked him out.
Mira did not leave. Mira stood with her new, glowing Trait and stared at Adrian with her brilliant, clever eyes, and Adrian understood that she had been close enough to see his face when the grey window opened, and that she did not know what she had seen, and that she was going to spend a very long time thinking about it.
His father was pushing through the crowd toward him like a man wading upriver.
His mother had not moved.
Mara Vale stood alone by the chapel wall, exactly where she had been standing when it started, with her hands still clasped in front of her. Her face was the color of candle wax. She was not looking at Adrian. She was looking at the three pieces of the broken silver basin on the altar floor, at the spilled water spreading slowly across the stones.
She was looking at it like she had seen it before.
In front of Adrian's eyes, where no one else could see, the grey window flickered once more.
[Well done.]
Then, after a pause:
[They will be watching now.]
And it closed.