Two in the Morning

At two in the morning, only a folded blanket was left in Noah's bed. He was on his knees on the floor of the hearth chamber, counting chimneys. Mara didn't scream. Before Noah's hand could reach the weak heat filament, she wedged her own gloved hand between it and asked, "Tell me why you came back first."

Half an hour before that, Noah had put a sixth mark on the window.

One chimney at the infirmary. One at the kitchen. Two at the shared sleeping quarters. The Bern house and the Sana house. Six in all. The weathervane pointed northeast, but the last stream of smoke lay long toward the west. The log board read "northeast wind, outer district stable."

Noah counted the windowpanes with his finger. One, two, three, four, five, six.

He looked again, and only the smoke near the Sana house was wrong.

The night watchman had come by the window a little earlier. When Noah mentioned the direction of the smoke, the man said they'd hung shutters and it had made a small eddy. The temperature board was above the baseline and the wagon had returned. Nothing wrong on record.

"Then why is the smoke going the wrong way?"

"Wind turns on its own, young master."

The watchman had been kind. So Noah didn't ask further. Even a kind adult stopped seeing the blank space once every box on the record was filled in.

Noah folded the blanket lengthwise on the bed. He hadn't meant to make it look like a person lying there. He'd just moved the covers aside so the draft wouldn't come in when he opened the door, and it ended up looking that way. Even knowing he'd made a lie, he didn't smooth it back out.

The key to the doorknob was still in the lock, on the inside. That was the promise Cassian had kept. Noah opened the door without locking it behind him.

A few grains of coal dust from the daytime carrying still lay on the hallway floor. He didn't follow the black specks, he walked the path he'd memorized since he was small. Seventeen stairs, three windows on the right, one closed door. There was no key on the table outside the hearth chamber. The door was already open.

Inside, the hearthstone was cold. The cut tethers had been cleared away, and the golden heat filament trembled very faintly in its floor groove. Noah brought his hand close to the line. He'd thought that even without touching it, he'd be able to tell which way the outer connection was pulling.

He felt nothing.

That was more frightening than anything. Before, even when his back ached like it was burning, he'd known which house had the strong wind. Now his hand was warm, and he knew nothing of what was happening outside. He couldn't tell whether the village was quiet because it was fine, or because he'd become useless and simply couldn't hear it anymore.

Noah lowered his fingertip toward the line.

That was when a gloved hand came between them.

"Don't."

Mara was two years older than Noah, and her voice was usually about three times louder. But this time she whispered. In her other hand was a small weathervane. It looked like she'd pulled it off the laundry room's vent window.

"Tell me why you came back first."

"One of them outside is wrong."

"What is?"

"A chimney."

"Which house?"

"Could be Miss Sana's house, or the empty one next to it. From here they overlap."

Mara didn't call an adult right away. But she didn't let go of Noah's hand either.

"Then just look from the window."

"I did. The weathervane says northeast, but the smoke's going west."

"Maybe the weathervane's wrong."

"That's why I want to check."

"With your hand?"

Noah didn't answer.

Mara pulled her glove back and tied it at her waist. Now there was nothing between Noah's hand and the filament. Instead she held out the little weathervane.

"Take your hand away. Let's see if this is wrong first."

"If I feel it, it's faster."

"Wrong angle for that. And your hand isn't a measuring tool."

Mara laid the weathervane's axis alongside the golden groove on the floor. One of the blades was bent. A mark from bumping into a wet cloth hung out to dry earlier that day. Noah almost felt relieved, then stopped himself. A bent blade was no reason for the smoke to go the opposite way too.

"The chimney's still wrong, though."

"I know. That's why we check both."

"If you call an adult, they'll lock the door again."

"If I don't, you'll just touch it again."

"If I don't touch it, I might never know."

Mara suddenly used his full name.

"Noah Reeven. So you want me to hide it too, just so you can hide that you're wrong?"

Noah didn't understand why Mara sounded angry, not like someone who'd caught his failure, but like someone whose credit had been stolen.

"You can say you found it."

"That's not the point. I'm not your friend who keeps your secrets, I'm the one who fixes my own weathervane."

Mara drew lines on the floor with her finger. Short lines for the six chimneys, a slanted line for the northeast wind, and at the end, a line bent twice.

"If this doesn't match, we call an adult. You don't go to the hearth."

"What if the adult doesn't believe it?"

"That's why we test it first."

Mara went for the call rope on the wall. Noah tapped the floor twice with his finger.

Tock, tock.

Mara stopped at once.

"Why?"

"I want to say it first."

"Hurry."

"Hurry isn't a condition."

Mara shut her mouth and waited. Only after Noah had stepped back from the filament did he take hold of the call rope.

When the bell rang, Cassian was the first to arrive. He hadn't even managed to put on his coat or gloves. The blood drained from his face the moment he saw the distance between Noah and the filament.

"Back to bed."

"Listen first," Mara said.

"Mara Bell, get outside."

"No."

Cassian tried to close the door of the hearth chamber. Serena, following behind, wedged the public log board into the gap.

"If you seal it now, you're just burying the reason he came in here again."

"His hand was inches away."

"So we separate him first, check for injury, and hear why. In that order."

The physician's assistant checked Noah's fingertips. No burns, and his body temperature hadn't dropped. Serena stated the result, then asked.

"Did you touch the filament?"

"Not yet."

"Were you going to?"

"Yes."

Cassian's hand gripped the doorknob. Noah looked at Serena, not at that hand.

"One chimney outside doesn't match the record. The watchman said the wind was just turning. I thought if I came here, I could tell which line it was."

"Did you know that checking it that way could cost you feeling in your hand, and your memory along with it?"

"I know."

"You knew the risk and decided alone anyway."

Noah nodded. Serena didn't say he'd done well, and she didn't call him ungrateful either.

Mara held up the weathervane.

"This one's bent too. So both could be wrong. The watchman who only looked at the chimney and ignored it, and Noah who saw this and came to the hearth."

Cassian said, "I'm waking the outer district inspection team."

"And if the same thing happens again?" Noah asked.

Serena looked at the lines on the floor.

"We make a remote marker system. Chimney count, weathervane direction, temperature board. If two or more of them disagree, we call an adult confirmer. No single person's judgment decides it alone."

"Put in a second-time rule too."

"Second time?"

Noah tapped the floor with his finger.

"One thing wrong, look again. Two things wrong, stop and call someone. That's what my two taps mean too."

Mara cut in.

"I fix the weathervane. But my name goes on the board the same size as everyone else's."

"I'll draw the chimney order."

"We draw it together. If you decide you're right by yourself again, I'm taking the tools back."

Noah didn't like that condition, but he nodded. The idea that he had a friend now mattered less than the idea that being wrong could cost him his tools. That, he could trust.

The outer district inspection team reported that the smoke wasn't from the Sana house's chimney at all, but leaking from a blocked flue in the empty house next door. It wasn't something that would hurt anyone right away, but the wind path marker had been wrong. Noah's suspicion and Noah's method had each been half right and half wrong.

Before sunrise, Serena had a blank board brought in. On one side, six chimney shapes. In the middle, a weathervane. At the end, a temperature board. She had shapes drawn beneath the numbers so night carriers who couldn't read could still use it.

"Who changes it?" Noah asked.

"The chimney markers, the outer district inspection team. The weathervane..."

"Me," Mara said.

"The person who fixes it and the person who confirms it have to be different people," Serena said.

Mara narrowed her eyes.

"I built it."

"So the right to fix it belongs to you. But someone else has to be the one who confirms it's working."

"Who?"

When Cassian started to write the watchman's name, Mara blocked the pen tip with her finger.

"That man ignored the smoke earlier."

The watchman's face went red. He didn't argue, and struck his own name from the first confirmer slot.

"Doran's apprentice in the daytime. Whoever watches the kitchen flue at night," Mara said. "And since the weathervane's up high, get someone to hold the ladder too."

Noah looked to see which box his own name should go in. He wasn't a confirmer, and he wasn't a caller either.

"What about me?"

"The one who set the chimney order and the second-mismatch rule," Serena said. "And the one who's allowed to say it's wrong."

"If I'm wrong, do I get pulled off?"

"If you're wrong once, we fix it together. If you try to confirm it with your own body, your watch stops for the day and an adult takes over."

The sentence felt like a punishment to Noah. It was also, at the same time, a sentence that took away his excuse to go back to the hearth.

Mara tested the board. She bent just one blade of the weathervane. The outer district team raised the white card to signal a recheck, and no one ran. Then Mara bent two blades and covered one chimney with a black card. Orsen woke two members of the outer inspection team immediately and logged the departure time.

"That's late," Mara said.

"How late?" Cassian asked.

Mara flipped the hourglass. Only after half the sand had run down did the two men have their gloves and lanterns ready.

"Write that time on the board too. Next test, keep the lanterns by the door."

Cassian didn't scold the child for running the operation. Instead he wrote down who was in charge of the lanterns and who refilled the oil. Noah watched to the end, watched the board keep moving even without him in it. The first test had been slow, and that made it more useful than a false success.

Serena wrote down the two adult confirmers and their shift times on the board. The first call would go to Mara, but instead of running outside herself, she'd hand the board to the watchman. The second check would fall to Doran's apprentice during the day. Beside Noah's name, they added: observation and marking, no contact with the filament.

Cassian looked at that line for a long time. He didn't shut the door, but he didn't take his hand off the knob either.

Mara folded two blades of the weathervane inward. Even from a distance, the double bend was visible.

"This means stop."

Noah rested his finger not on the filament, but on the folded blades. This time, they were neither cold nor hot.