They assembled at the base of the hill at the eighth hour.
Nobody had arranged this. It happened the way their group always happened — by individual motion converging on the same point because five people who had survived the same year understood, without discussing it, where they were supposed to be. Lyra was already there when Vane came down the Villa 4 steps. Isaac arrived from Villa 3 thirty seconds later. Ashe came off the upper path still rolling her cuffs, her jacket not yet fully buttoned. Valerica and Isole appeared together from the lower walkway, having stepped onto the same path from adjacent buildings at the same moment, which neither of them acknowledged.
The hill was full of second-year students moving upward in their dark uniforms, quieter than first-years. A year of Zenith had done something to their faces. Not hardness exactly. Calibration.
The habit ran before he decided to let it.
He kept his eyes forward and let the Usurper idle.
