The duty clerk at the lower administrative desk flipped through three conflicting deployment slates before dropping them back onto the oak counter with a weary slap. Ink was smudged across the corner of the top one. The second still had the red Annex hold stamp half-faded. The third was Valen's joint-patrol log, edges damp from last night's rain.
"Your Annex restriction was officially lifted for the Western Ridge patrol," the clerk said, rubbing the bridge of his nose, "but Senior Proctor Vance hasn't signed off on your return to active status. Valen's report says you functioned, but there's no assignment code attached to your squad. System says you're in both places."
"We can go back to the room," Drake said flatly.
"No," the clerk muttered, dipping his pen in fresh ink. He didn't want to write that. "If I log five cadets as idle at seven in the morning, I get flagged for unallocated labor and have to explain it to the upper office. Take the lower aqueduct detail. Channel Four behind the old alchemy wing has a leak. It's been on the list since last month."
It was a throwaway job — a damp, neglected stone trench built decades ago to carry runoff from the alchemy wash-basins, long since bypassed by newer pipes. No upper-tier squad ever touched it because it didn't count for merit points.
A narrow service passage ran behind the wing, cold even by morning standards. The air smelled of iron, wet stone, and stagnant water. Green-black moss slicked the lower blocks. A third-year cadet named Haddon met them at the mouth of the channel where the main grate had rusted half-shut. He held an official brass-rimmed evaluation slate tightly in both hands, his boots clean and his tunic brushed, trying to keep them that way.
"Standard maintenance protocol," Haddon announced, tapping his pen against the metal border, reciting from memory. "Five-point structural assessment, Mana saturation survey, failure vector isolation, stabilization, and final methodology log. We follow the handbook sequence step by step. First we establish baseline resonance."
Squad 7 didn't argue. They walked down into the cold, moss-slick ditch, their wet boots sinking into two inches of standing mud and old leaf rot. The water that was supposed to run straight down the center gutter was seeping sideways through a crack in the left wall, pooling behind a half-buried timber.
Haddon raised his stylus over the left wall. "First step: channel five ergs into the primary masonry to test resonance and map saturation—"
"The left wall is carrying the load," James said quietly.
Haddon paused, his stylus hovering an inch from the stone. "We haven't run the resonance sweep yet, cadet."
"It's bowed," James replied, pointing to a hairline fracture along the lower slate blocks where the mortar had gone pale and crumbled. "The mortar failed weeks ago, see the line? If you channel heat into the stone now, the trapped water behind it expands and splits the brace. Whole side goes."
Drake had already stepped toward the iron support that was supposed to take the weight off the wall, his shoulder set.
"Drake, wait," Haddon commanded automatically, eyes still on his handbook diagram.
Drake stopped. His boots remained planted in the mud, his weight shifted forward onto the balls of his feet, hands hovering near the iron but not touching. He looked at Haddon, then back at James.
"You want me standing here all morning?" Drake asked.
"For the next thirty seconds," Haddon said, double-checking the diagram, then the fracture James had pointed out. "Until we confirm vector."
Drake looked at James. "Thirty seconds."
"Probably enough," James agreed.
Behind them, Xander tilted his head, listening to the trickle behind the timber, not looking at the slate at all. "Root system," he murmured. "Big one behind. It's pushing the drain two inches off-axis, that's why it's backing up."
Haddon looked down at the wall, then at the fracture, then at the timber. The physical reality matched James's claim and Xander's — the bow, the pale mortar, the water finding the low side. He lowered his stylus a fraction.
"All right. Move the brace."
Kara stepped forward in the mud and touched the rusted iron pin that locked the support arm. The surface moisture vanished instantly under her fingers with a faint hiss, leaving the metal bone-dry and cold. No flare, no light. Drake slid it three inches back into its notch without the usual grinding screech, the iron seating clean.
Luna was already kneeling in the mud on the other side, pressing both palms against the foundation where the bank was soft. She didn't chant. She just pressed, and a network of wild fern roots, thin and white in the dark soil, threaded through the mud, binding the loose bank before it could slide. The earth tightened.
Ten seconds later, the water found the real line. The sideways seep cut off. The main gutter caught, the trickle turned into a clean, steady run down the center, and the leak stopped. The trench went quiet except for that run.
Haddon stood in the suddenly dry trench, staring at his blank evaluation slate. The Methodology box was empty. The handbook wanted resonance tiers and saturation percentages.
"Methodology," Haddon muttered, looking at Luna's muddy hands, then at Kara's dry fingers, then at Drake holding the brace. "What do I put for the soil binding?"
Luna shrugged, wiping a smudge of clay off her wrist with her thumb. "Roots."
"Roots aren't a methodology," Haddon said, exasperated, but without heat now. He looked at the dry channel. It was working.
"They worked," Luna noted softly.
Haddon sighed, looking down at his slate before tapping the stylus against the parchment. He wrote in quick, neat script: Environmental stabilization — nonstandard. Drain realigned, load transferred, flow restored.
"That's not going to make the instructor happy," Haddon muttered, snapping the slate shut, mud now on his own boots for first time.
Drake wiped his hands on his trousers, leaving a grey streak. "It'll make the aqueduct happy."
Haddon looked at the dry, silent channel, water running where it should for first time in a month, then back at the five of them standing in mud to their ankles.
"...Yeah," he said. "It will."
He turned and led them back up out of Channel Four, leaving clean water running behind them.