The Association doors breathed him out and the city folded around Rem like a familiar coat. Morning had turned to a mild afternoon that made the stone breathe slower. He shifted the canvas sack higher on his back, felt the straps settle into grooves his shoulders had carved over years, and cut through side streets on instinct rather than map. He took the long way because the air felt clean and because decisions sound different when you let your feet argue with them.
A boy with a wooden sword lunged at a lamppost and declared the lamppost defeated. Two vendors competed to see who could shout "oranges" as if it were a miracle. A stray dog trotted with a piece of bread it had clearly negotiated for rather than stolen. Rem passed the corner where the brazier man sold chestnuts in winter, empty now except for a single iron pan turned upside down like a hat asleep.
He adjusted the sack so the bottles did not kiss too loudly, then bumped the door of Livesey's shop with his hip. The bell over the lintel chimed the way bells do when they have heard too many different kinds of footsteps and still know the right ones. A young man with a fresh bandage on his forearm squeezed past, mumbling gratitude for the doctor who had saved his friend's idiot hand from a saw.
Livesey looked up from washing his own hands and grinned like a man who had already won a private bet. "When is the exam," he called, laughter already in his voice.
Rem lobbed the sack. "You old man, how did you know from the start."
Livesey caught it with a smooth, economical motion that did not jostle a single vial, then plunked it onto the counter as if gravity were an old friend. "I am not senile, you punk. I can read you like an open book. You cannot hide anything from me."
"That is scary," Rem said, smiling. "Thanks for the money. It is a lot. I will make sure to pay you back."
"Do not talk money with me," Livesey said, drying his hands on a towel that had retired from being respectable. "If you want to repay this humble doctor, then pass."
"It is tomorrow. I picked the first slot."
"Good." Livesey tapped the counter as if arranging items in the air. "The writing test is not hard. Basic knowledge, rules, identification. The real deal is after. Physical exam. Mana and aura assessment. Lastly, a duel with an instructor. They want to make sure you are not a walking meal for monsters."
"I am confident," Rem said. "I have a strong body. I am used to fighting. I have good instincts."
"I know," Livesey said dryly. "Better than anyone. In the past I have been in a lot of trouble because of you, and I am the one who patched you every time."
Rem's gaze dipped for a breath. "Sorry for all of that. I have been more trouble than—"
Livesey slapped his back with a thump that helped his thoughts line up. "Shut up, you little rascal. What is that attitude. You have been like a son since I took you under my wing. It is my job to help you and to beat the bad habits out of you. Lift that loser head. Tomorrow is important. You do not have time to be a crybaby. Go wear your self-proclaimed strong body."
Rem straightened, a smile tugging despite himself. Livesey was not gentle and never pretended to be. He was reliable like a wall that had held up too many roofs to brag about any one of them.
"You are right, old man. I have work to do. I will go train right now."
"Wait, Mister I-Want-to-Be-a-Hunter," Livesey said, pointing at the sack. "Help me store the fresh goods you just brought back."
Rem paused with one foot over the threshold. "Right. I forgot about that."
They fell into the shop's practiced rhythm. Rem unpacked oils, read labels out loud, and tucked vials into their places. He tied bundles of roots with red string and hung them from hooks to dry. He ground a handful of dried leaves to a fine powder while Livesey dictated dosage and notes for a patient whose cough had decided to be stubborn. Outside, voices bled in and out as if the street breathed through the door.
A bell on a child's shoe tinkled. A woman came in with a toddler who refused the concept of quiet.
"Doctor, the fever again," she said, lifting the child to the counter. "He runs hot when he sleeps."
Livesey's face softened two degrees, which on him looked like the sun deciding to glance at a window. He checked the child's eyes, tongue, and breath, then mixed a syrup while lecturing the toddler about the importance of disagreeing with fevers. Rem fetched a cool cloth from the back and watched the boy bat at his fingers with the solemnity of small kings.
When they had gone, a miner in a shirt stiff with dust shouldered through. He wanted something for a pulled back, and he wanted it to work before he wrestled a barrel that evening. He also wanted to argue on principle.
"You can have pain now or you can have spine later," Livesey said, without looking up from his mortar. "Choose."
"Pain later," the miner tried.
"Not on the menu," Livesey said, and handed him a jar. "Stretch. Heat. Do not lift tonight. If you lift, I will send Rem to lift you off the ground by your ear."
The miner squinted at Rem. "He could."
"He would," Livesey said. "And he would not even breathe hard."
The miner left with a grumble that felt like a promise to try. Rem pretended not to hear the smile in Livesey's exhale. They moved on to stocking the new tinctures from Madame Luo. Livesey opened one, sniffed, nodded. "She cut this with honesty. Good."
Rem slid the ledger across, inked the date, and wrote neat lines because neat lines are cheaper to read later. The light outside shifted from white to a comfortable straw color. Shadows grew legs. A breeze knuckled the door and came in for a look.
"Back yard," Livesey said between patients. "Five minutes. Move."
In the narrow yard behind the shop, crates were stacked to the side and a length of old rope made a lazy serpent against the wall. Livesey drew a chalk line across the packed dirt and another at right angles, making a cross.
"Feet there," he said. "You fight like someone who trusts his body. Good. Tomorrow you will also need to look like someone who listens to an examiner with a clipboard. They love clipboards."
Rem set his heels on the line. The heat in his chest had faded to a coal. It did not feel dangerous. It felt like a reminder.
"Posture," Livesey said. "Head floating. Shoulders low. Weight slightly forward. If they test your sprint, do not launch from stubbornness. Launch from tendon."
Rem rolled his ankles, found the edges of balance, then the middle. He bounced twice on his toes and felt the yard answer with a different kind of spring than the dungeon floor. He ran three quick sets between crates and wall, focusing on start and stop rather than speed, pulling his center under him each time.
"Breath," Livesey said. "Box it. Four in. Four hold. Four out. Four hold. Not to get fancy. To get blood where you will need it when nerves try to sell you elsewhere."
Rem boxed his breath and felt his head clear by a degree. Livesey watched with a doctor's eye and a teacher's impatience.
"Joints," Livesey said. "You have two bad habits. Over-rotation on the left elbow when you are excited. Locking the right knee when you plant to pivot. Correct one and the other will correct itself by imitation. Do not feed examiners free notes."
Rem laughed. "I was going to improvise."
"You improvise on stage when you know the song," Livesey said. "Now. Push-ups. Slow. Back straight enough to measure on."
Rem lowered and raised, counting without sound. On ten, the headache that had been hiding behind his eyes peeked out and then retreated when he exhaled through it. He finished twenty and stood, loose and warm.
"Enough," Livesey said. "If you overdo it today, tomorrow will collect with interest. Inside."
They went back through the narrow corridor that smelled like tea and alcohol and wood. The bell greeted them again because bells like being included. The next patient was already waiting, a warehouse clerk who presented a very tragic splinter with the solemnity of a hero's wound. Livesey extracted it with delicate contempt and advice about gloves that went unheard the way advice often does when it asks people to change.
Rem labeled the last of the vials and climbed the ladder to rearrange the high shelf where the little jars liked to talk behind each other's backs. From the top, he could see the whole shop bent to its work. Livesey's hands moved with the certainty of someone who had risen before too many dawns, and Rem felt a pulse of gratitude so sharp it surprised him.
He had not always had a roof that breathed this way. He had not always had a person who slapped sense into him and then fed him bread.
The door opened again. A maid in a neat gray dress entered, accompanied by a guard whose coat did not pretend to soften the outline of old work. The maid approached with the calm of someone trained to make calm contagious.
"Good evening," she said. "I am here to pick up a medicine order placed under Duke Verran."
On the ladder, Rem paused with a row of bottles in his hands. The name tugged a thread in his head. He set the bottles, glanced down.
"Verran," he said, not loud, not quiet.
The maid turned, smiled with professional grace. "Yes. Is there an issue."
Livesey chuckled, loud enough that the herbs considered taking offense. "No issue. I had forgotten. Do not worry, your order is ready. But you see this punk here was the porter who went into the dungeon with the young miss the other day."
The guard stepped forward in one measured pace and looked Rem over from boots to hair, neither dismissive nor impressed, just precise. "White hair. Strong, muscular build. You must be Rem."
Rem climbed down, set his feet, and offered his hand. "Yes. That is me."
The guard shook, grip firm and clean, the kind used by men who plan to keep their word. He inclined his head.
"Nice to meet you. I'm the head guard and chief of security of the Verran household. My name is Cecil. If you need me for something, feel free to call on me. I'm indebted to you since you didn't let down the young miss, even when the situation was dangerous."
"It was the right thing," Rem said. "Even if I am just a porter, I cannot leave someone alone in a place like that."
Cecil's eyebrows rose, a small acknowledgment. "A porter. Not a hunter. Interesting. So much courage. It makes my old blood boil in a good way."
The maid accepted a parcel wrapped in waxed paper and twine. Livesey added a folded note under the string with instructions written in a handwriting that bullied illnesses into compliance.
"Rem is not your average boy, sir," Livesey said, because lies waste time. "He applied for the hunter exam today. The exam is tomorrow."
"Impressive," Cecil said. The word carried weight without strain. "I will look forward to hearing you passed. You have all my cheers." He slid a small brass token from his pocket and set it on the counter. A crest was stamped into it, a stylized tower under a star. "If you need the household for something, show this at the gate."
Rem touched the token. It was heavier than it looked. "Thank you."
Cecil glanced toward the door. "I would stay and talk longer, but we must return. The medicines are expected."
The maid's mouth tried not to smile and failed politely. They left. The bell sighed. The street put a late-afternoon hand on the window.
Rem rolled the brass token in his palm and passed it to Livesey. The doctor weighed it, snorted. "Do not spend it on anything stupid," he said, and put it in a small wooden dish by the register where important small things lived.
They finished the last hour as the light slid toward amber. A courier arrived with a note he refused to admit he had read, though the way his eyes lingered suggested it had been tempting. Livesey wrote three prescriptions and refused a fourth when a man tried to self-diagnose a demon in his knee. "It is not a demon," Livesey said. "It is you sitting badly for twenty years."
When the door finally closed on the last patron, the quiet that arrived was not empty. It was the kind that rooms exhale when they have done their job well. Rem wiped the counter, then wiped it again because clean surfaces made the next day tilt in his favor. Livesey counted coins with the half-distracted hum of someone doing arithmetic in two languages.
"Eat and sleep," Livesey said, turning down the lamps so they stopped pretending to be small suns. "Tomorrow you hit something that can hit back."
Rem leaned against the counter, considering the way his body felt. The coal in his chest was a memory now, not a warning. His ribs behaved when he asked for deep breaths. His forearm twinged to remind him that bones tell stories for weeks after they break.
"What if they ask about mana," he said.
"They will," Livesey said. He set the day's ledger aside and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "You tell the truth and you do not get philosophical. If they ask how much you can handle, tell them what you have handled. If they ask about control, show them breathing and balance. People who do not know bodies love to be convinced by breath and balance."
Rem nodded and tucked the advice into the part of his head where useful phrases stack like tools.
"Also," Livesey added, "do not try to punch an instructor hard enough to make him forget his name."
"I will try to avoid that," Rem said.
Livesey flicked a glance at him that counted as affection. "Try very hard."
They ate at the back table. Bread, a wedge of cheese, an apple cut into unambitious slices. Livesey told a story about a caravan guard who had tried to treat a fever with pepper, and Rem countered with a story about a porter who had tried to carry three packs and ended up carrying none. It was the kind of talk that keeps wolves from the door, even when the wolves are only in your head.
After, Livesey pulled a tin from the shelf and tapped it. "Smelling salts. If you get lightheaded during the medical check, use this. Do not be heroic about fainting. Fainting is not a personality."
"Noted," Rem said, slipping the tin into his pocket with the Association token. "Do you have anything that guarantees luck."
"Yes," Livesey said. "Work. Also, eat breakfast."
They tidied. Rem put chairs onto tables with a rhythm as old as chairs. Livesey checked the latch on the back door and told it to behave. In the front room, the jars and bundles looked like a small army at rest.
Rem stood in the doorway to the stairs and took one more look at the shop. He always did, as if memorizing the way the room looked in case he needed to put it back together from memory.
Rem climbed the stairs two at a time, then slowed when the left knee remembered its previous life as a problem. In his room, he opened the window to let in a slice of evening that smelled like stone cooling down. The city had tucked itself in without admitting it. A woman sang to herself on the next street, not loudly, not for anyone except herself. A cart complained about a rut and then forgave it.
He set things out the way a man sets out a plan. Shoes by the door, laces checked. Shirt that would not catch on anything. The Association token in his pocket again, touched and counted. The brass from Cecil in the little dish on the table. He took it out, looked at the crest, and put it back. He sat on the bed and stretched until his muscles stopped pretending to be made of rope.
He lay down. The ceiling stain shaped like a rabbit considered becoming a ship and chose, instead, to be a bird. Excitement hummed in him like wire pulled taut. Nerves tried to climb onto his chest and he told them to wait their turn. He thought of the square tomorrow, of the clipboard, of the distance between first step and first strike. He thought of Evelyn, hands cold on his back, voice steady in chaos. He had not thanked her. That would have to change.
"Tomorrow," he said to the quiet.
The quiet did not answer, which is a kind way of promising nothing.
Sleep arrived the honest way, on foot, and did not argue when it found him.