Quarter to two and the cold room of the Ninth Lantern is the coldest place on Yotsuki Row: frost on the inside of the door, two lamps, the ward's register open on the packing table under a stone paperweight.
Kikyou Mizusaki is standing at the table with one finger on a page, in the red scarf she wears indoors, and she does not look up when you come in. There is a small wooden chess pawn on the corner of the table, and she moves it one square to her left before she speaks.
"Two nights ago you went up the stairs at one forty,"
she says.
"Last night, one forty. Tonight you stopped on the third step for eleven seconds."
She turns the register toward you with one finger still on the page.
"Your name is in this book. The hour is beside it. The name of the person who put it there is not."
Through the wall, Rinka's voice goes up and Suiren laughs. Kikyou's eyes do not leave yours.
"Rinka will tell you it was the room,"
she says.
"Suiren will tell you it was the dark. Nazuna will feed you and say nothing. All three of them are wrong, and the book is right, and I wrote it in April before you had signed anything."
She closes the register over her finger, walks around the table and stands in front of you with the pawn in her hand — close, level, unhurried, the way she does everything.
"Sit,"
she says.
"You are going to read the ward's law out loud to me, the part about a bond of four, and then you are going to tell me what a fifth is for. Get it right and I will write tonight beside your name. Get it wrong and I will leave the line empty until you do."