Lin Xuan lifted one finger off the table.

"Father. I would like to propose something."

The room turned.

"If you elevate Master Jin to the senior tier, the outer disciples will need a new training master. The work is not trivial — hundreds active outer disciples, a curriculum to enforce, daily morning sessions, weekly fundamental tests, the Nine Dragons breathing catechism. Whoever steps into Master Jin’s old position will have time for nothing else for at least six months."

Lin Zhen nodded once. "Go on."

"I would like to take the outer disciples myself. I will run the morning sessions. I will administer the catechism. I will hold the weekly tests. Let Master Jin focus on the inner court, where you four need him more. Let the rest of you focus on the council, on the elder elevations, on Frostmoon Ridge, on the things only senior elders can address. I free everyone above me from the work below me."

Elder Min, predictably, was the first to test it.

"A young master training outer disciples directly is unusual, Xuan’er." 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

"It is. But the moment is. The applicants who arrive in the next four weeks will be looking for a reason to feel they chose correctly. If the Crown of Yuncheng greets them at the practice yard with a wooden sword and walks them through their first form personally, the answer to did I choose the right sect arranges itself in their heads without my having to say a word."

Elder Ren muttered, more to himself than to the room. "The boy is right."

Council Secretary Liu lifted his brush a second time.

"Patriarch. From an administrative standpoint, this proposal resolves three problems at once. The outer disciples gain a master without a break in continuity. The inner court receives Master Jin without us having to hire externally. And the Young Master’s visibility in operations builds the public profile we will need before the visit of Young Mistress Su of Frostmoon Ridge."

Lin Zhen turned to Master Jin.

The outer-disciple master had been quiet for most of the meeting, his hands folded inside his sleeves. He was a man who had spent twenty years running the same morning sessions in the same practice yard and had never asked for more, and there was nothing in his posture that suggested he was offended by being asked to move.

"I will serve where the patriarch directs me. If the inner court is where I am most useful, that is where I will go."

Lin Zhen brought his attention to Lin Xuan. The look on his father’s face was one Lin Xuan recognised — the same look the man had carried at the foot of the duel platform in Yuncheng, the one that did not let pride onto the front of the face but did not bury it either.

"Approved. Starting tomorrow morning, Xuan’er. You have the outer disciples."

Lin Xuan inclined his head.

"Two more matters before I leave the table, father. The first — Young Mistress Su of Frostmoon Ridge will arrive at our gate in approximately six weeks. Five, if she rides at her usual pace. The sect must be presentable by then. The training yard. The visitor wing. I would like Elder Min to address the visitor wing — she has more inter-sect protocol than the rest of us combined."

"I will handle it," Elder Min agreed without hesitation.

"Thank you. The second matter—" He paused half a heartbeat. "How is Lin Kai?"

The aroma of the room shifted. The brushes paused above their inkstones. Liu lowered his pen. Master Jin cleared his throat at something invisible. Elder Tao turned his face down to his ledger.

Lin Zhen drew half a breath before answering.

"He has not left his chamber since we came up the mountain. The head maid carries meals to his door three times a day. The trays come back full. I have knocked twice. He has not opened the door either time. I have not pressed harder because I do not yet know what I would say to him if the door opened. He killed his mother to save us, and I have no map for that conversation."

The line lay flat on the lacquered table.

The patriarch reached for the brush and rested it across the inkstone before he went on.

"If you want to try, Xuan’er, you have my permission. You will probably do better than I will. He has not been the brother to you he should have been, but you were the one who stood beside him on the wet stone. He will remember that even if he does not yet know how to say it."

Lin Xuan inclined his head. He did not promise anything. The patriarch did not ask him to.

The council closed in the small administrative way councils closed when no one had any more business worth keeping the table for — ledgers shut, brushes rinsed, secretaries gathering loose pages, elders rising one at a time. Master Jin bowed to the patriarch as he passed the head of the table. Elder Min nodded briefly to Lin Xuan on her way out — the closest gesture of welcome she was going to permit herself in the same week as a funeral.

Lin Zhen caught Lin Xuan’s sleeve as he was rising from the chair. The grip was brief.

"Come to my chamber tonight, Xuan’er. After dinner. There are things I want to say to you that should not be said in this room."

Lin Xuan nodded.

He stepped out into the corridor.

The air in the South Hall had been dense — old lacquer, ink, the breath of too many people in one room. The air in the corridor came fresher, cool with the smell of wet pine and the late morning. He took one full breath of it.

[ That went well, Xuan. ]

’It went. Whether well — the next four weeks will decide.’

He turned the corner past the bell tower and took the lower path down toward the outer-disciple practice yards. He wanted to see, with his own attention, what he had just committed himself to inheriting.

When Lin Xuan crossed the threshold of the outer practice yard for the first time as their master, hundreds disciples in grey training robes were waiting at the rails.

None of them had been told yet who their new master was going to be.

Hundreds heads turned at the sound of his boots on the stone.

The morning had decided to begin twice today.