Ten Minutes to Midnight - The Black Water-Otter Cloaks

The middle of the night in t

The middle of the night in the

Domain does not arrive with a gentle fade; it falls like an iron shutter.By midnight, the fires around

Solitude had dwindled to heaps of dull orange embers, spitting occasional sparks into a rising, damp wind that rolled down off the heights of

Tent #42, the air was thick with the heavy, unwashed sleep of teenage boys.

Finch was snoring—a wet, rattling sound that usually meant he’d snuck something cured into his bed—and

Ross lay stiff as a plank beside him, hands folded over his chest like a martyr already laid out on a stone altar.Felix wasn’t asleep.

He lay on his back, staring up at the dark oilcloth ceiling, tracking the rhythmic thump-click of his own pulse.Then came the sound.

Not a trumpet, not a drum.

Just the dry, abrasive drag of heavy leather boots across frozen gravel outside the canvas flap.Rip.The wooden tent peg tore straight out of the hard earth.

The flap was yanked wide, letting in a draft so sharp it felt like a bucket of well water dumped over

Felix’s face.”Out,” a voice rasped.It wasn’t loud, but it had that peculiar, gravel-pitted edge that cut straight through a boy’s dreams.

Torin stood in the opening, a lone silhouette illuminated from behind by a solitary brass lantern hanging off his belt.

His empty eye socket was tucked deep in shadow; his good eye burned with the cold, pale gleam of polished steel.”You have six breaths,” Torin said softly. “Leave the beds.

Leave the trunks.

If you’re still in this tent on the seventh,

I burn it with you inside.”Panic hit the room like a kicked hornet’s nest.

Gideon scrambled backward, getting his leg tangled in his wool blanket and crashing onto the dirt with a muffled grunt.

Kaelen was on his feet instantly, his yellowed hair sticking straight up, reaching blindly for a boot strap that wasn’t there.Felix didn’t scramble.

He rolled to his left, grabbed his boots—which he’d had the foresight to tuck beneath his head as a pillow—and swept out into the mud half-laced.Outside, thirty-six boys who had drawn or been assigned to

Vanguard were stumbling into the dark.

Discipline encampments—the white canvas villages of the

Apothecaries, the orderly rows of the

Chanceries—were silent, dead to the world, their lanterns glowing like fat, sleepy fireflies in the valley mist.

Vanguard fresh-bloods were being herded like cattle onto the narrow dirt trail leading up toward the dark, jagged jaw of the northern ridge.Waiting by the trailhead was a wooden handcart, covered by a heavy tarpaulin.

Beside it stood two senior instructors, their hands tucked deep into the sleeves of their gray winter coats, breathing white plumes into the black air.”Line up,” Torin growled, walking down the shivering rank.

He didn’t raise his voice, but every time his boots struck the mud, someone winced. “No talk.

No stamping your feet.

Vanguard now.

You do not get to complain about the weather, because the weather doesn’t give a damn about your skin.”He pulled back the tarpaulin.Inside lay a stack of garments so dark they seemed to absorb what little light the lantern offered.

They were heavy, oiled, and gave off a rich, pungent smell—a mixture of fat, pine resin, and the metallic tang of deep water.”Black

Water-Otter cloaks,” Torin said, reaching in and dragging one out by its thick, double-stitched collar.

He threw it at

Kaelen’s chest.

The boy caught it with a huff, nearly knocked off his feet by the weight. “Fifty gold pieces each.

Treasury paid for these out of the tax levied on the southern timber harvest.

If you drop one in the mud, you will spend your first month at the

Citadel scrubbing grease traps with your fingernails.”Felix stepped up when his name was barked.

He took his cloak.

It was deceptively dense—the fur on the inner lining was impossibly soft, fine as down, while the outer hide was thick, supple, and slicked with a water-repellent wax that felt almost cool to the touch.

It was the hide of the deep-river otters from the

Swamps, creatures that hunted beneath frozen rivers without ever letting cold reach their skin.Fifty gold pieces.

Felix’s father, a shrewd man who spent weeks haggling over two copper bits for grain sacks, would have wept to see three thousand gold pieces worth of pelts dumped in the mud like grain bags.”Put them on,” Torin ordered. “Hoods up.

Button the collar hooks.”Felix draped the heavy pelt over his shoulders.

Instantly, the biting wind from the northern gap died against his chest.

A strange, dense warmth began to pool around his neck—not the cheap, scratchy heat of sheep’s wool, but a heavy, insulating stillness.”Sir,” a voice spoke up from the middle of the line.

Vance’s cousin,

Caleb, his face pale, his fine linen shirt already soaked around the cuffs from the morning dew. “The other

Disciplines… they aren’t forming up.

Are they meeting us at the upper pass?”Torin stopped walking.

He turned slowly, his good eye locking onto

Caleb like a crossbow bolt lining up a target.”The

Apothecaries are currently tucked under goose-feather quilts,

Vance,” Torin said, his voice dropping into a register that made the small bones in

Felix’s ears vibrate. “The

Chanceries are drinking warm spiced wine and studying law texts by candlelight.

They are learning how to rule the

Empire.”He leaned in until his scarred, weathered nose was an inch from

Caleb’s trembling chin.”You are learning how to keep those soft bastards from having their throats cut while they do it.

The trail to

Teeth is fourteen miles of wet slate, black ice, and rising fog.

We leave now.

Anyone who falls behind stays behind.

Move.”Torin turned without looking back and struck out up the incline, his long, uneven stride eating up the dark trail with terrifying ease.The boys surged after him, a long, black line of otterskin-clad shadows creeping up into the teeth of the mountain, leaving the warm, sleeping fires of

Solitude behind in the dark.Felix pulled his hood low.

The scent of pine resin and old river water filled his nose.

Gideon was already wheezing, his heavy boots clattering against the loose slate, but

Felix kept his eyes fixed on the heel of

Torin’s left boot—moving steadily, one heavy step at a time, into the rising frost.