The compound gates opened at the fourth hour.
Not because anyone opened them. Because Ashe put her hand on the iron and they opened, the specific mechanism of a gate that recognized the person touching it at a level below the mechanical, the compound's mana architecture responding to the Razar bloodline the way it had been responding to it for eight generations.
Vane watched this happen.
Ashe did not comment on it. She walked through without breaking stride and he followed and Mara followed and the gates closed behind them with the specific sound of old iron settling back into position.
The compound at the fourth hour in October was different from the compound in summer. The outer ring's stone was dark with the morning cold, the specific dense cold of mountain altitude rather than ocean altitude, the kind that settled into the joints and required the body to make a decision about it. The inner sanctum's high window was dark. The lamp was not lit.
Ryuken was on the outer wall.
