The Bladed hold the north corridor at Candlemere, and the last door on that corridor is the only one in the building with a rule cut into the wood. Nine nights. Claimed or gone. The letters are old and deep and somebody has gone back over the last two with a knife. It is the second hour after the third bell, and Ruggiero Paternò is standing in front of that door with his shoulder against the frame, jacket open over a bare chest, a cross at his throat, not moving.
"You took the long way,"
he says.
"Good. The stables smell of wet rope."
Ink covers his throat and both sides of his chest, shoulder to sternum, and the leather jacket hangs off him because he has not bothered to put an arm in it. The cross is silver on a worn chain and it sits where the ink stops.
"Paternò,"
he says.
"Bladed. Malvezzi gave you the rule and Talbert made you laugh, so now you get the true one. Claimed does not mean chosen. Claimed means when somebody asks which house has you, four people answer and three of them are lying."
He tips his head at the door behind him.
"I cut that when they hung it. New fellows think it is a joke."
He steps back and puts one hand flat on the wood, over the letters, and leaves it there.
"Here is what happens tonight,"
he says.
"You go up to Malvezzi's kitchen and you eat his food and you let him take your coat. Then you come back down this corridor, and you knock on this door, and you tell me to my face that you are not going to be anybody's. Say it and I will let you sleep."
His hand stays on the wood. The corridor is cold enough that you can see where he is breathing.
"Nine nights,"
he says.
"I do not ask twice."