I Copy the Authorities of the Four Calamities-Chapter 251: The Compound at Night

The compound’s evening rhythms established themselves by the end of the first week and did not change after that.

Ryuken’s lamp was always the last to go out. It burned in the inner sanctum’s upper window until well past midnight, the specific quality of light that came through frosted stone suggesting he was working rather than reading, though what working looked like for a Transcendent at this hour was not something Vane had asked.

Kaito’s lamp went out around the tenth hour. He was regular about this the way he was regular about everything, the compound running on a schedule that had been his since before Ashe was born and which the arrival of three Academy students had not materially disrupted.

Ashe’s lamp went out early. She slept at nine and woke at two in the morning and ran forms in the outer ring in the dark, which Vane had discovered by accident on the fifth night when he could not sleep and had come to the window and seen the outer ring lit by a single lamp with her moving through Asura’s Dance alone. He had not gone down. She had not needed him to.

Lancelot’s room showed no lamp. This was because Lancelot did not appear to use his room between dinner and sometime around the third or fourth hour, which Vane had worked out by observation over two weeks. He went to the eastern wall after dinner and stayed there for approximately two hours and then somewhere in the middle of the night returned to his quarters, the specific timing of which Vane had never been awake late enough to confirm.

On the fourteenth night, Vane could not sleep.

The hip had been approved that afternoon. Water Spine was working from ankle through hip now, three joints transmitting rather than absorbing, and the Quicksilver Thrust with three clean joints felt different enough from the baseline that he had run it six times in a row after approval before Ryuken told him to stop. The physical feedback from the change was not something he could turn off easily. His body kept wanting to run the thrust again, the way you pressed a bruise to feel the difference between before and after.

He got up. He went to the eastern wall.

Lancelot was there.

He had not expected this to be surprising given that it was the eastern wall and it was night and this was where Lancelot was every night. It was not surprising. He came up anyway because the alternative was lying in his room pressing the metaphorical bruise.

He sat on the wall a meter from Lancelot and looked at the mountains.

The mountains at this hour were not visible so much as implied, dark shapes against a sky that was dark in a different way. The stars were very clear at this altitude. The compound below was quiet, one lamp burning in the sanctum, everything else dark.

Lancelot did not acknowledge his arrival. He was looking at the sky the way he always looked at it, with the flat attention of someone checking something rather than experiencing something.

Vane sat. The stone was cold. The mountain air at this hour had a quality that was not quite biting but would be if you stayed long enough.

For a long time neither of them said anything.

This was different from the upper deck on the leviathan, where the silence had been Vane’s discomfort and Lancelot’s indifference. Three weeks in the compound had produced something that was not comfort exactly but was the absence of the discomfort, which was its own kind of thing. He could sit on this wall in silence and the silence was not a problem to be solved.

After a while Lancelot said: "The fourth form."

Vane did not respond immediately. He let the words sit.

"Ryuken knows what it is," Lancelot said.

"Yes."

"He told me it cannot be taught." Lancelot’s voice had the same quality it always had, flat and without inflection. He was not telling Vane this. He was saying it into the air the way someone said things that were still being worked on. "He said everything before it can be taught. The fourth is what happens when everything before it is complete and something is added that has no instruction."

Vane thought about this.

"What does that mean," he said.

"I don’t know yet."

The stars were very still. The compound was very quiet. From somewhere far below in the mountain range, something moved through the dark, the faint sound of large animal footfalls too distant to identify.

"He told me there are two more forms before the fourth," Vane said. "Forms that can be taught. He said come find him in second year."

Lancelot was quiet for a moment. "How many forms are there total."

"I don’t know. He hasn’t said."

Silence.

"The Argent Horizon is a system," Lancelot said. Not a question. He was categorizing it. "Senna’s ceiling was three forms. You have been running three forms as the complete system because she didn’t know it wasn’t complete."

"Yes."

"The system she gave you is a partial system."

"Yes."

Lancelot looked at the sky. The specific quality of his attention had shifted slightly from checking to something that was harder to name. "My system is also partial," he said. "Everything I built is partial. The undivided body requires something I haven’t found yet."

Vane looked at him.

It was the most Lancelot had said about his own development at any point in the three weeks. It was not self-pity and it was not a request. It had the quality of the two rivers conversation, of something being said into the air because saying it was part of working through it and the person next to him was convenient, not because he wanted a response.

But it was real. That was the thing about Lancelot that Vane had been filing slowly across three weeks of proximity: the flat expression and the flat voice were not the absence of interior life. They were the most managed interior life Vane had ever observed. What came out when something actually broke through the management was more honest than most people managed on purpose.

"Ryuken said come back when you’ve decided," Vane said.

"Yes."

"Have you."

"No."

They sat with that for a while.

Below them the compound was dark except for the sanctum lamp. Above them the stars did not move visibly, only technically, the slow rotation of something very large that looked still from this distance.

Lancelot said: "You are going to find the fourth form."

Vane: "Eventually."

"It will not look like Ryuken’s."

"No."

"Or mine."

Vane looked at him. "You’re looking for the fourth form."

"I am looking for what the undivided body requires to complete," Lancelot said. "Whether that is a form or something else I don’t know yet." He looked at the sky. "It is the same search."

Vane thought about this. Two different systems reaching toward the same kind of thing from different directions. The Argent Horizon building toward something that lived past the third form. The undivided body building toward something that lived past the possible ceiling of what Lancelot currently was.

He did not say any of this. It did not need to be said.

They sat on the eastern wall until the sanctum lamp went out, which put Ryuken’s bedtime at the first hour. The mountains were still dark shapes. The stars were still there. The compound was completely quiet now, everything sleeping.

Lancelot stood. He went back inside without comment.

Vane sat on the wall for a while longer. He thought about partial systems and what complete looked like and the two more forms waiting in second year and the fourth beyond them.

He went back inside. He lay on the low bed with the mountain cold coming through the window, and the hip joint transmitting instead of absorbing, and the Quicksilver Thrust running in his body’s memory with three clean joints, and eventually he slept.