The driver shut the carriage door on the tail of my coat.
Neither of us noticed until I tried to move.
He opened it again without looking at me, waited while I gathered the cloth onto the seat, then bent to check the step. I had rehearsed leaving this house several times in my head. None of the versions had begun with someone asking me to lift my foot.
The departure court was only just light. My case had been strapped to the rear of the carriage, and the shoulder satchel stood between my boots. At breakfast the travel clerk had put the bread and cheese beside the filled water flask and watched me pack them. Everything on the declaration was now somewhere I could account for. I had checked the inner pocket of my coat so often that I could distinguish the document wallet from the road purse without putting a hand inside.
The driver went around the carriage, testing a fastening. I had time to look back at the entrance.
The Duke was coming down the steps.
I pushed the satchel aside. The driver saw him and opened the door, leaving me to decide whether getting out again would look worse than remaining seated. By the time I had made the decision, the Duke was waiting.
The step seemed farther down than it had been on the way in. I used the door frame with my left hand and joined him on the gravel.
He looked past me into the carriage.
"No sword?"
"None on the travel declaration."
"That wasn't what I asked."
I had two shirts, spare trousers, stockings, gloves, and enough linen to keep the scar from rubbing open. I wasn't going to recite them.
"I will use the academy's equipment."
The Duke adjusted one cuff. The driver stood a few paces away with the folded departure copy in his hand. Nobody suggested we were due to leave.
"There will be boys there who've been told since birth that they are your equals."
I waited.
"Don't spend your first week confirming it."
"I understand."
He looked at me. I could hear a loose strap tapping against the carriage.
"The demonstration was adequate. The academy will require more. I expect you to make your position clear from the beginning."
The small test in the gallery came back to me with inconvenient detail: the target, the pressure through my chest, how carefully I had stood afterward. In front of him now I kept both feet flat on the gravel.
"They'll know which house sent me."
"By your conduct. Not the crest on a carriage." He stepped closer, close enough that I could see a thread caught beneath the edge of his cuff. "I won't have reports of you yielding ground to lesser houses."
The answer he wanted was easy to say. I had heard Cedric say things like it just before fights I had already planned to avoid.
"I will represent the house," I said. "You'll receive the examination reports."
"I will receive them from the academy."
"Yes."
He continued watching me. My right hand wanted to close. I laid it against the seam of my coat instead, where the formal glove would have less to pull against.
For a moment I thought he was going to send me back inside.
Then he looked at the driver.
"Keep the booked route."
"Yes, Your Grace."
The Duke turned toward the steps. I waited until he had gone through the door before looking at the driver, who was still holding the paper.
"The departure copy, my lord. The clerk needs your acknowledgment."
The same packet I had examined two days earlier was waiting on the clerk's board. Only the release line had been blank. He entered the departure time, checked it against the carriage docket and gave me the pen.
I signed with my wrist held away from the board. The clerk pressed sand to the wet name, tipped it off, and separated the copies. One went to the driver. Mine went into the wallet with the gate permit and the shuttle booking.
This time I gathered my coat before I sat.
The wheels moved almost at once. The driver had evidently finished everything he could while the Duke was speaking. We passed the practice building, then a service cart waiting where the drive narrowed. A man beside it took off his cap, held it against his leg and put it back on as soon as we were past.
At the gates I looked toward the house. From this angle I couldn't pick out my bedroom window. I had expected to recognize it.
The wall hid the lower floor, then the whole building, and I turned around on the seat.
---
I lasted less than an hour in the formal glove.
Getting it off in a moving carriage took most of my attention. I worked each finger loose while my elbow slid on the seat, stopped when the wheels hit a rut, and began again. The linen had stayed in place. I put the formal pair into the satchel and took out the softer ones.
My notebook was underneath them, the original transfer slip still inside its front cover. Beside it lay the formal citation between its stiff protective sheets. I checked that both were still there, then closed the satchel before I could begin reading my plans again.
Beyond the glass, the estate road had become a wider road with traffic coming the other way. I watched a cart piled with empty baskets pass us so slowly that I had time to count the repairs in one wheel.
For several miles I kept expecting the carriage to stop and someone to tell me I had forgotten an obligation.
It stopped beside a low building where two men were waiting with a lifting jack.
The driver opened my door. "You can get down here."
"Is something wrong?"
"Underside check. It's on the docket."
He held out a hand toward the step, but I had already started lowering myself by the frame. I finished that way. He went to the men without waiting for an explanation.
One of them lay on a board under the carriage while the other worked the jack. The driver crouched to speak to him. A narrow blue line showed briefly beneath the axle when they tested the leyline fittings. I stayed where I could see the road.
The building sold hot food through a window. I could smell onions, and for a moment the bread in my satchel seemed a poor choice. Then I remembered the purse in my coat and the blank spaces waiting on the expense sheet. I ate what I had brought, standing with my back against a wall still cold from the night.
When the driver came for me, he saw me pressing the heel of my hand against my chest.
"The road gets rougher after the bridge," he said.
"For how long?"
"Until the turn."
That didn't help.
He looked into the carriage. "Try the other seat. The back corner's over the wheel."
I moved the satchel across. Facing backward made the road unroll in a way my stomach disliked, but the first few jolts were less sharp. I kept the curtain half drawn and concentrated on the strip of seat beside my knee.
By afternoon I had stopped trying to sit as though anyone were looking through the glass.
At the next halt I drank from the flask with my left hand while the driver checked the straps around my case. A family went past in a wagon, the children asleep against a roll of bedding. One small bare foot stuck out, bouncing with the road. I watched it until the wagon turned.
The driver took out his docket. "The posting house tonight. We leave again before four."
"I thought it was one day to the capital."
"It is. Your desk opens at seven tomorrow." He folded the docket along its worn crease. "We can't do the last part any faster in the dark."
I had understood all of that at the travel office. Somewhere between there and this seat, I had begun imagining a bed that wasn't moving before supper.
The road went on through dusk. The last of the cheese tasted of the paper it had been wrapped in. I left a piece of bread for later and fell asleep with the flask wedged between the satchel and my leg.
When the driver woke me, there were lamps outside and a man holding a door open against the wind.
I carried the satchel in. The driver brought the case only as far as the covered yard and checked its straps again before leaving it secured to the carriage. I asked him to put it where I could see it from the window. He pointed to the window above the stable entrance.
"That one's yours."
The room had a narrow bed and a basin. Downstairs I paid for the modest room and meal from the road purse, waited for a receipt, then came back up holding it clear of the wet cuff of my coat. I put it behind the allowance receipt in the wallet.
Before lying down, I checked the time on the clock above the landing. There would be only a few hours. I loosened my boots, put the satchel beside the bed where my left hand could reach it, and tried to find a position in which the journey did not keep moving underneath me.
The knock came while I was still dreaming of the wheel.