15: Trial of Aptitude — Day One

The royal city of Beicang sat inside three concentric rings of pale-gold wall.

The outer wall was for the merchants and the soldiers. The middle wall was for the noble clans and the great sects' embassies. The inner wall was for the palace and the central plaza. The central plaza was, in ordinary years, empty — a flat field of polished bluestone large enough for a thousand horsemen to wheel in formation, used twice a year for ceremonies and otherwise left to the wind.

Twelve days after the courier had arrived in the eighth district, the plaza was *full*.

It was full of noble youth. Eight hundred of them, by the heralds' count — the sons and a handful of daughters of every clan and sub-clan and cadet branch that the kingdom of Beicang had been keeping careful track of for a generation. Some had traveled from the far west of the kingdom for nine days. Some had traveled from the eastern coast for eleven. The plaza had been laid, the night before, with a fine lattice of silk pavilions in nine colors — one for each Spirit Root attribute — and at the foot of the central dais, on its black-iron tripod, sat the *Royal Spirit Root Pillar*.

Beside the Pillar, on its own polished slab, was the *Royal Body Resonance Stone*.

The Stone was about the size of a man's chest. It was the color of milk that had been left in deep water, and it pulsed, very faintly, with a slow internal rhythm. Beicang had only one such Stone. Beicang had paid, two centuries ago, the price of three western mines for it. It had been kept since then in the palace's deepest vault, brought out only on Trial days. It measured *Body Refinement* to the tenth of a stage.

It would not be deceived by a robe.

Su Yan stood, in the formal robe of a Su clan branch son, in the second waiting line — Body Refinement assessment first, then Spirit Root assessment after the noon bell. Eight hundred young men shuffled politely in the eight long lines. Most of them were quiet. A few — the better-dressed ones, the ones from the great clans — were laughing too loudly. The ones from the cadet branches were looking at their feet.

His half-brother, Su Bei, was three places ahead of him in the same line. Their entire branch had been entered. The patriarch had decided this was the only way to handle the matter that did not embarrass the clan.

Su Yan did not look at Su Bei. He looked, calmly, at the dais.

The Senior Examiner who would conduct the body assessment for his line was Wei Mingfan.

Wei Mingfan stood at his polished slab, in the gray-and-silver formal robes of a Senior Examiner, with two junior assistants on either side. He did not, when his eyes passed over the second line, fix on Su Yan. He did not, in any visible way, acknowledge that the boy in the line was a boy whose body he had personally certified twelve days ago at *Stage 3*.

Su Yan, for his part, kept his attention forward and his thread quiet.

He had spent the twelve days since the courier carefully.

In outside time, twelve days. In inside time, perhaps four months of careful sub-meridian foundation work on the platform of the Mirror. He had opened the next nine gates, bringing his total to forty-five of forty-eight. He had run the body, with the diagram, through the deeper foundation his mother and the ember had decided he was now ready for. He had not, in those twelve days, allowed the body to *display* what it had become.

He had also spent six of those twelve days quietly visiting, by his small private courier-line, three of the names on his mother's hidden list.

The first had been a cooper in the lower city who had nodded once when Su Yan had introduced himself by his mother's chosen phrase, had asked no questions, and had made him a small wooden tag of identification that would let him approach the second name. The second name had been a midwife in the second district. The midwife had wept once, briefly, on hearing Lin Wanyue's name, and had given him the third name, and had promised him that her own house was open at any hour. The third name was a swordsmith near the river — a swordsmith Su Yan had not yet visited but had filed for the day he needed to.

Three of the twenty-three. He had been working with patience.

And he had been thinking, with the part of himself that had been Sebastian and which had spent the better part of three weeks now adjusting calibration after calibration, about the *Trial*.

The Trial was a problem.

It was a problem because the *Royal Body Resonance Stone* would, when he laid his hand on it, accurately report a Body Refinement *Stage 6 — possibly 7 — possibly higher*, depending on how far the foundation diagram's hidden depth would translate to the Stone's measurement. The Stone did not measure foundation depth. The Stone measured *body resonance frequency* — a more reliable proxy for stage than any other instrument in the kingdom. His body, which had been refined four months past where it had been when Wei Mingfan had certified him at Stage 3, would resonate at a frequency the Stone would translate, with the brutal honesty of a Royal-grade instrument, into a whole-stage number.

He had considered, at length, *not displaying* the result.

He had decided he could not. The Stone was instrumented. The Stone reported its readings to the dais. The dais announced them publicly. There was no way to hold the Stone's reading down without tampering with the Stone, which was a Royal artifact, and which would result in a level of attention several orders of magnitude worse than the attention of a public Stage 6 reading.

He had decided, therefore, to *display the truth*.

He had, however, decided to display *exactly* the truth, in the most uninteresting way it could be displayed.

He would step up to the Stone. He would lay his palm on it. He would let it report whatever it reported. He would not — by any deliberate effort — *push* the reading higher than the body honestly produced. He would, however, also not push the reading lower. He would, in short, accept the Stone's measurement as it was, and would prepare a public face for whatever number the Stone announced.

If the number was Stage 6, the household would receive a small embarrassment.

If the number was Stage 9, the household would receive a large embarrassment.

He had decided he could survive either embarrassment.

What he could not survive — what he was concerned about, and was watching for — was a number that *exceeded Stage 9*, because Body Refinement at Beicang's classifications stopped at Stage 9. A reading higher than Stage 9 would force the dais to announce *Qi Condensation* or above, which was a category his mother's careful calibration had not, when she had built the gates, anticipated him reaching in twelve days. *That* was a number the Trial would not be able to file as ordinary.

He had spent the morning, before the line had formed, recalculating. By his best estimate the body, as of yesterday's last platform session, would resonate at *Stage 9 — late*. Not above. Just at, by a thin margin.

He could survive Stage 9 — late.

Su Bei, three places ahead, reached the dais.

Wei Mingfan inclined his head courteously. Su Bei laid his palm on the Stone with the studied confidence of a young man who had been told all his life he was a clan prodigy. The Stone pulsed. The slab beside it lit, in the small inscribed numerals of Bureau readout, with a clean *Body Refinement Stage 4 — mid*.

A clean, respectable, unsurprising result.

The plaza did not gasp. It did not, in fact, react. Stage 4 mid for an eighteen-year-old branch heir was — in Beicang noble youth — exactly the average. Su Bei's face, briefly, flickered. He had expected better. He had, by his own careful internal storytelling, been preparing for *Stage 5*. *Stage 4 mid* meant his half-brother, in his current Stage 3, was only one stage behind him, instead of two. The math was small. The math was not, however, lost on Su Bei.

Su Bei stepped down. He went to the Spirit Root waiting area without looking back.

The next two boys went. Stage 3 — late. Stage 4 — early.

Su Yan stepped forward.

He laid his palm on the Stone.

The Stone, for the count of one breath, did not register.

This was — Su Yan understood, with the part of himself that had been Sebastian — the result of the Stone's *resonance algorithm*. A normal Beicang body resonated at a single frequency, in a known range. The Stone matched the body's frequency to its own internal lookup table and reported a stage. Su Yan's body did not, anymore, resonate at a single frequency. It resonated at a *primary frequency* and a *sub-meridian harmonic*. The harmonic was outside the Stone's lookup table. The Stone needed a count to decide which of the two frequencies was the *primary*.

For the first count, the slab beside it stayed dim.

A small ripple of interest moved through the line behind him. Wei Mingfan — to whom this was not new information — kept his face perfectly neutral.

The slab flickered.

The slab lit.

It read, in the small inscribed Bureau numerals: *Body Refinement Stage 9 — late.*

The plaza did not gasp at first. The slab's numerals were small. Most of the eight hundred noble youth could not read them at the distance.

Wei Mingfan, who could, lifted his chin a fraction.

He turned. He walked, without haste, three paces to where the *primary herald* stood. The primary herald was a man whose only job, on Trial day, was to take the inscribed reading from the Senior Examiner and shout it to the plaza in the announcing-cadence the kingdom had been using for two hundred years.

Wei Mingfan murmured the reading into the herald's ear.

The herald's eyes widened.

The herald composed himself.

Then, in the high carrying voice the kingdom had calibrated for the announcing-cadence, the herald sang:

*"Su Yan! Branch family Su, eighth district, Cloud Sky City! Body Refinement — Stage Nine — late!"*

The plaza heard.

The plaza, at the eighteenth of a thousand readings, heard the herald sing *Stage Nine — late*.

The plaza fell silent.

It did not gasp. The plaza had been arrayed for the day's eight hundred readings and had been preparing, all morning, to accept the dull average that Trial days produced. *Stage Nine — late* was not within the range the plaza had been arraying its expectations for. *Stage Nine — late* was, in fact, *the highest body-refinement reading anyone had heard a herald sing for three Trial days in a row, going back twenty years*.

It was higher than the Crown Prince's reading at the last Trial. It was higher than the heir of the Cang royal house's reading at the Trial before that. It was higher than the most prodigious body cultivator any of the great clans had been able to produce in a generation.

It was being announced for *the branch family son* of the Su clan, *aged sixteen*.

For a count of three breaths, the plaza did not move.

Then the plaza began, very slowly, to *turn*.

Eight hundred heads turned, slowly, in the direction of the dais. Two thousand spectators in the plaza's stands turned. The Royal Bureau examiners turned. The royal observers — and there were, Su Yan saw with a calm distance that surprised him, *many* of them this morning — turned. On the eastern stand, where the royal house had its reserved seating, a young woman in winter-blue robes set down her tea cup, very precisely, and looked across the plaza to the Stone.

Princess Cang Xueyi did not stand. She did not exclaim. She did not look surprised. Her face was the face of a princess at a ceremony, polite, controlled, attentive.

But her eyes, on Su Yan, were the eyes of a young woman who had — twelve days ago, in a regional director's office, on a sealed silk requisition — *picked up a pen on his account*, and had thought she was helping him quietly settle into the modest path she had decided was the path he had chosen.

She was, this morning, *recalibrating*.

Su Yan stood at the Stone. His palm was still on it. He had not moved.

He had not moved because he had not yet decided how to move.

He had, in the seconds between the Stone's reading and the herald's sung announcement, ran the calibration he should have ran a week ago. The Stone had measured the body honestly. The body had honestly registered at *Stage Nine — late*. The plaza was about to spend the rest of the day trying to understand how a sixteen-year-old branch family son of a clan whose heir had certified at Stage Four — mid had reached *Stage Nine — late* — and the plaza, when it understood that he had not, in fact, *lied* about it, would simply revise its expectation of him.

The expectation would, by the end of the afternoon, have been revised by a category.

He had been, this morning, a low-threshold Wood Spirit Root cultivator preparing to walk the modest path.

He would be, by the end of this morning, *the most prodigious body cultivator the kingdom had heard of in twenty years*.

There would, by sundown, be three more sealed letters in his uncle Su Cang's study.

He inhaled, slowly.

He removed his palm from the Stone.

He turned to Wei Mingfan and bowed, the bow of a young clansman to a Senior Examiner who had certified him.

"Honored Examiner," he said, in a voice that was deliberately *audible* to the first three rows of the plaza. "I appear to have grown."

Wei Mingfan, whose face had not moved from the moment the slab had lit, permitted himself the smallest of nods.

"You appear to, Young Master Su."

A young clansman from the third line laughed, helplessly, a shocked surprised laugh. The plaza, which had been holding its breath, *broke* a fraction. A wave of murmurs rolled across it.

Wei Mingfan, raising his voice the calibrated volume that announcements required, addressed the herald. "Confirmed. *Body Refinement, Stage Nine — late.* The young master will proceed to the Spirit Root assessment in his appointed line at noon. This concludes the body assessment for Su Yan, branch family Su."

The herald announced it again. The plaza heard it again. The plaza did not, this time, fall silent. The plaza buzzed.

Su Yan stepped down from the dais, walked the short walk to the Spirit Root waiting line, and took his place behind a young clansman of the Lu family who was staring at him with an expression that was no longer the expression of a young clansman waiting in line for a routine certification. The Lu young man stepped *aside* as Su Yan approached, as if uncertain whether the new line position required a wider berth.

Su Yan inclined his head courteously to the Lu young man.

The Lu young man, after a pause, returned the bow.

Su Yan stood quietly in the line.

In his chest, the ember pulsed once — not in alarm, not in approval, but with the steady considered rhythm of a thing that had set a watch and was *keeping it tightly*. The voice did not speak. Su Yan understood why. Today the voice would not need to. The plaza was about to do, on its own — at the noon bell, when the Spirit Root Pillar lit — what no voice could have prepared him for.

Across the plaza, Princess Cang Xueyi picked her tea cup back up.

She did not, this time, drink from it.

She held it, in both hands, and watched her former fiancé wait politely in the second-noon line, and recalculated — calmly, completely — the entirety of what she had thought, twelve days ago in the quiet of her own carriage, she had been quietly helping into the world.