Morning in Noonspire tastes like polished bronze and hot paper. Sun rolled down the Mirror Corridors in quiet sheets, carrying the city's own handwriting. The Library of Bells breathed like a warm hive—stacks of vellum, glass cases full of clappers and crowns, reading wells glazed in watery light so tone could travel gently.
A clerk with ink on their sleeves handed us the day's slate.
ROYAL STUDIES — HEIR-STUDENTS
Module I: Quiet Law (practice) — recall & restraint drills
Module II: Bell Jurisprudence — case reading in bronze
Practicum A: Petitioners' Hall — line management by tone (no force)
Practicum B: Archive Safety — contain a Paper Gale without burst
Constraints: Indoors (edge-casts only). Route tone via bronze/glass/water. No wide Novas.
Bonus: No fractures; Oathbond ≥ 75%; students/staff uninjured.
Aurelia slid the slate into her satchel, kept the inch at my back that makes worlds behave. "We study," she said, which is also how she says we don't burn anything.
"Study," I agreed, hand on Lysithea's cool spine.
┌──────────── PRE-LESSON STATUS ───────────┐
│ Eirion — HP: 13,160 / 13,180 MP: 620 / 21,100 │
│ Aegis Hymn: 28% Oathbond: Linked (90%) │
│ Buffs: Court Key, Quiet Law │
│ Aurelia — HP: 12,440 / 12,460 │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────┘
I — Quiet Law (Practice)
The Mirror Tutor chamber wore glass like a book: panes set at angles, each reflecting us from a different clause. We stood in a small ring of bronze floor, the bell-net humming a listening note.
"Mirror Tutor," I breathed, sketching a slender Inquest Halo inside the ring and pinning it to a facing pane with Bond Mirror. Our last shared Mend anchored the reflection so the room taught our cadence back.
New Technique (Built): Mirror Tutor — Inquest Halo + Bond Mirror anchored to study panes; reveals anchor clauses in text/stance while suppressing bias drift; first Redact against a lesson fails.
Footwork, breath, and page turned together. Aurelia practiced Bellguard against wooden batons—not to win, to shape lanes; each parry fed Aegis a sip. I ran Tricant in the margins—Mend into her elbow where torque lives, Thread along a scuffed board, Smite shaving stubborn force off a baton without bruising a novice's pride.
We passed the drill when the glass wrote our anchors back to us: Ask; don't assume. Aid is alms. No striking in a house of speech.
II — Bell Jurisprudence
The Hall of Castings kept its voice low. Cases held bells retired from hard histories. The Bell Chancellor pointed to a scarred handbell whose lip wore old heat.
"Read the case," they said.
I touched two fingers to bronze, breathed Peal through the Court Key, and listened to the overtones. Pain, sure; boast, yes; and under it a house that wanted to be heard first. "It was rung as a weapon," I said, "on a day the room needed law."
Aurelia rotated the bell a degree. "Two degrees quieter and the lane would have held," she said. "No spray. No fractures."
"Write the correction," the Chancellor said.
We did. Concord Peal set the clause into bronze: No loud Novas where speech can stand. The bell sounded better—less like a hammer, more like a rule.
Practicum A — Petitioners' Hall
The long hall arched in watery light. A dozen petition apparitions queued badly—elbows, cross-talk, impatient heels. A young scribe hovered near tears.
"House before heroics," Aurelia said, stepping into a hinge where lines become knots.
I traced two hair-thin Sunlines down the center tiles and spanned them with a gentle Suture Bridge—a walking corridor for breath. Then I touched the bronze rail with Lysithea's flat and hummed a low Concord Peal into the metal.
New Technique (Built): Civic Rhythm — Concord Peal + Wayleave + Noon Handshake keyed to floor/rail; paces a queue to a shared cadence; converts shove to step; lowers panic spread; first line-cut forgets itself.
Feet found the beat. Murmurs remembered their indoor voice. Reprise birds hopped from overheal and pecked at knotted shoulders until posture admitted it had room for patience. Aurelia's sheathed Mandate put an invisible finger on indecent intent; it bent into please with remarkable speed.
We finished with no raised voices, no broken glass, and one scribe whose hands remembered how to hold a pen like a pen.
Practicum B — Archive Safety
The Stacks are weather made of paper. Somewhere between "Forfeits: A Caution" and "On Wards and Weddings" a shelf sighed wrong and the air filled with pages: an Archive Wisp had teased a Paper Gale awake. Loose leaves circled like gulls hungry for nouns.
SYSTEM: Paper Gale (Nonlethal Hazard)
Traits: Cut of a Thousand Paper Edges (minor bleed), Shiver (glass), Citation Loop (panic recursion)
Constraint: No bursts; use Thread, glass tone, bronze guidance.
"Edge-casts," Aurelia said, sliding to the windward hinge, shield the angle a room respects.
I stitched Lumen Thread between endcaps—thin, crosswise. Annotation tagged chapters in the air with caret marks so the Gale could see its order again. Then I tapped a Peal into the reading well's glass so tone would run under the gust rather than through it.
"Clause Loom."
New Technique (Built): Clause Loom — Thread lattice + Annotation + Peal (glass); weaves loose leaves back to sequence, suppresses Citation Loop, cancels first Shiver on nearby panes; sets a house clause across shelves: Reading before rumor.
Pages settled like birds deciding to be pages. The wind sighed and turned into air. I left a ribbon of Reservoir Mercy along the aisle so papercuts forgave themselves on the way out.
We coiled line in quiet and wiped ink off a nervous apprentice's fingers with a square of cloth like absolution.
┌──────────── POST-STUDIES ───────────┐
│ Modules: Quiet Law — PASS │
│ Jurisprudence — PASS │
│ Practicum A (Queue) — PASS │
│ Practicum B (Archive) — PASS │
│ Collateral: 0 fractures; 0 injuries │
│ HP — Eirion: 13,170 / 13,180 │
│ HP — Aurelia: 12,450 / 12,460 │
│ MP: 410 / 21,100 │
│ Aegis Hymn: 26% residual │
│ Oathbond Harmony (peak): 95% │
│ New: Mirror Tutor, Civic Rhythm, Clause Loom │
└──────────────────────────────────────┘
The System placed its tidy coin.
┌───────────────────────────────────┐
│ ROYAL STUDIES — DAY ONE │
├───────────────────────────────────┤
│ Objectives: study & practicums — ✔ │
│ Bonus: No fractures — PASS │
│ Oathbond ≥ 75% — PASS │
├───────────────────────────────────┤
│ Rewards: │
│ ▸ EXP +27,000 │
│ ▸ Court Scrip +140 │
│ ▸ Access: Mirror Tutor Rooms │
│ ▸ Skills: Civic Rhythm, Clause Loom │
│ ▸ Mastery: Annotation +1 │
└───────────────────────────────────┘
Small corners the Court doesn't grade
At the turn of the Mirror Corridor, where waterlight patterns the cedar, a figure pretended to study an inscription about Weights of Noon. Our mother's reflection arrived before she did.
No crown. No scepter. Just leaf-stitch and a hand hiding two pastilles like contraband stars.
"You returned a gale to a book," she said, praise scraped free of sugar. Her eyes flicked to the thin cut on my thumb I hadn't felt yet. She took my hand as if it were still small, pressed a thumb to the nick, and a private Mend went through skin like a remembered summer. "Paper has teeth. Take gloves next time."
Aurelia's strap had slackened a hole during the line drills. The Empress's fingers tightened it silently, then left her hand there a heartbeat longer than law requires. "You hold lanes better when you're wearing your armor, not arguing with it."
"Yes, Mother," Aurelia said, voice that rare alloy of iron and softness.
The Empress looked between us as if counting, found the number unchanged, and let the corridor have her back again. "Tomorrow: Ceremonial Candor," she said aloud (so the walls could pretend that was the sum). Then, quieter only we heard, "Write to me."
She went. The waterlight resumed pretending it was only light.
I set a very small Sunline bow on the lintel of the Mirror Tutor room and wrote, in letters barely bright enough to keep, Reading before rumor. Ask; don't assume. Aid is alms.
Aurelia drifted that exact inch into my back—habit, harbor. "Still guarding my six?" I asked, because light words keep law supple and because pastilles taste better if you share them.
"In a school that trusts us with books sharper than swords?" she said, dry as good bread. "Especially."
We split the lemon-thyme and walked the corridor as the city practiced being quiet enough that bells could keep being law without ever having to become weapons.