Malcris had put the chair where I could see the door.
I noticed that before I noticed the instruments.
The room belonged to the faculty assessment wing. Morning light fell across a long table, three reference stones and a shallow copper dish. Maelis stood beside the table with my medical sheet in her hand. A clerk sat farther back, leaving enough space around his writing board for a second copy.
No locked chamber. No hidden apparatus waiting behind a curtain.
I would have preferred something more obviously wrong.
"Sit where the arm is comfortable," Malcris said.
He wore the same patient expression he brought to class when someone offered an answer clever enough to be almost correct.
I took the chair.
"You received my questions?"
"Yes. Sister Maelis ends the session on medical grounds. You end a trace if the agreed warning appears. I decide whether the measurement is useful enough to repeat, subject to both conditions."
He turned the instruction sheet toward me.
