That morning was supposed to be important. Not because of his expectations, but because of what the other boys had told him. There would be a test, and on the next morning, he would get a new fitting for his Leash, a definitive one as he turned into an adult. The shape and material of it would tell him all he needed to know. There would be no speech given to him, no decision on his part. He would be told in the plain language of iron what his fate would be: Chainkeeper, bookkeeper, reject.

A churning in his stomach made him realize he wasn't sure what he feared most: being turned into a Chainkeeper or being rejected. The lesser evil he had settled on was being a bookkeeper. He wasn't quite sure what it entailed, but he found no excitement in being an instrument of violence. Some of the other boys thought otherwise. While Brand hated the Chainkeepers for their abuse, others resented them likewise but vowed to be strong to be just as bad and hope for some retribution. A bookkeeper didn't hit anyone. That didn't mean their hands were less bloody. They gave orders that ended in violence. The words they said or wrote had consequences he couldn't comprehend yet. But he wasn't sure what they used to write down was just ink.

The call came after breaking fast. A Chainkeeper walked up to him and grabbed him by the shoulder. He pushed him away toward the hall.

"Go to the mentors' room," he said.

Brand had no choice but to obey and quickly. Other Chainkeepers were in sight farther down the kitchen hall, and so were the other boys. A few of them intuited what was going on. Only two had already been fitted with new Leashes, that Brand knew of. They didn't tell anyone what training they would be subjected to. They would disappear any day now. Maybe he would catch a glance of one of them one day, as a hand holding the chain that hit him or the voice that would call him out for work. Brand remembered how the older boys had just vanished, sent away to be trained for one or another role. Or rejected and cast back down from the Fortress. No one knew for sure which fate had befallen the others. Even if they appeared again, time and training would have shaped them into different persons. Nothing would remain of the boys. That made Brand sad. He would rather still know even the worst of the other boys still existed than have the certainty all their qualities had been stripped away.

He climbed the steep stairs to the upper level. He had been there only once, enough to know the way and to know there were still many more levels he would never get to see, depending on what was decided for him. There had to be secret stairs that allowed people to come and go so the children never saw them. He recalled the strange echoes he felt through the stone walls in the night. Like people moving, stirring just a palm's breadth away, but unreachable. Were all the vanished boys on the other side of those walls, in other rooms and kitchens and halls, being trained silently, cut off from the rest of the world just as he was? As he walked up the stairs, each step brought him an increased certainty his life wouldn't continue. It would be transformed into a different one, with no way to tell he was the same person at all.

He reached the top of the stairs and walked the lonely hall toward the mentors' room. He remembered being there before, to be chastised for fighting another boy. He hadn't even started the fight. And the chastising wasn't what he expected. He had been told that the way they conducted themselves in the future would determine which of them would hold the Leash and which one would be on the receiving end of the lashing. The mentor hadn't explained what they had to do to avoid being the victim. He had left that particular puzzle for the boys to chew over.

He stood outside the room and knocked. Then, after a long breath, he realized he had knocked too softly and that he wouldn't be heard. He knocked again, then knocked in quick succession and regretted it. He could be punished for his impatience, or for attempting to hurry one of his betters. His stomach turned and bile rose to his throat. This wasn't a good day to earn a gratuitous lashing. He waited expectantly. Ten breaths, then another twenty. Nothing. He was trembling. He knocked again, harder. The door opened slowly and he staggered back. He half expected the booming voice of a mentor to explode out of it. Instead, there was only more silence, spreading out into the hall and filling it.

A great fear grasped him. If he went in uninvited, he would be punished for sure. If he was being expected and stood there waiting aimlessly, he would be punished. He settled on a choice half as bad as each: he opened the door halfway through and slunk inside, standing just through the threshold. He called out.

"I was told to come."

Nothing.

He pushed the door open the rest of the way. There was no one inside as far as he could tell. He exhaled and sagged a little. He took the time to examine the room. His first time there he had been so afraid and focused on the mentor that he hadn't paid attention to his surroundings. He could see now that the walls were covered with inscribed goatskins. Words, etchings, and drawings filled every available thumb space. Lining the walls lay workbenches filled with pens and other implements for counting. And hanging from the ceiling was a lone iron lantern, suspended from webbing-like chains. It wasn't lit, but it didn't seem to be much good for lighting anyway. The room's illumination came from small holes built into the rock that channeled the light from outside through twisting passages, just like the rest of the rooms Brand knew.

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He walked up to one of the goatskins on the wall, but it was just the sketching of a fully-grown canid, with arrows and words all over it. Something else caught his eye, a book laying open on one of the workbenches. It was a list of numbers and a description related to each. Just two or three words, very few warranted more than that. Most just said "chain" or "book", though others had fuller descriptions, with descriptions of places in the Hub. He realized they were Leash numbers. He looked over his shoulder quickly before turning the pages in a frantic search for his own. He found it in the last pages. His number was followed in the same line by two others, then nothing else. If the book held his future, it wasn't decided just yet. But what were those two other numbers? He memorized the first of them and went back through the pages, scanning the small script frantically. He could just hear faint echoes of footsteps on the stairs. Come on. Where is it?

He almost overlooked it when he found it since it was scratched through. It also had a lone number next to it, unscratched, and then a longer description than most. It said:

not fit. unstable, not useful. lower-rungs only. willful.

and then, in a different script and colored ink,

Thief. Murderer. Escapee. Do not pursue.

The footsteps on the stairs grew louder and Brand dared read no longer. He didn't remember the page it was showing originally, and neither did he want to point to his search, so he turned the pages randomly and ran back toward the door. The footsteps were close now, so he couldn't go outside without being seen. His only choice was to stand inside, right next to the open door.

"What do you want?" asked the keeper as soon as he saw him on the threshold, without stopping to look at him.

"They told me to come," said Brand. His voice came out thin through his trembling throat.

The keeper walked up to the lantern and used a long iron stick to push something inside it that made it light up.

"No. What do you want?"

"I'm here for the test, I think."

The man turned toward him.

"Are you dumb, boy? What. Do. You. Want?"

"Nothing."

"That's better, but also false. Every one of you rabble wants something, even miserably. What's yours? To get your revenge on a stronger boy? To have more to eat? To be on the outside? Speak up. There's no wrong answer."

Brand was clever enough to distrust the man but not smart enough to realize how he was being duped. He took a safe answer, but also one that sprang to his tongue after what he had just read.

"To learn."

"What for? What can be gained from... squiggles in a page?" he said as he gestured with contempt to a pile of goatskin scrolls.

"Something must be gained. If you dedicate time to it, and to teach us. It seems to me it has to be the most useful thing in the world."

"Hmm. Very few of your peers think like that. They don't understand why we teach them things they may never use. They don't think they need to learn to count beyond ten. They think a chain is a weapon of strength. Tell me, do you know why we use the chain? Why our Chainkeepers don't wear knives, hammers, or anything else as a weapon?"

It seemed to Brand a question he might have heard in a class, but oddly he couldn't remember ever hearing about it. He rummaged through his brain but could only come up with one answer, and a half-thought one at that.

"Because they don't need anything else?"

"Partly true. But the chain is the perfect weapon. It tears if you run it taut along the skin. It crushes when you pull from both ends. It smashes when you hit with it. It can strangle. But most of all, it can control. The vision of a chain is much more effective than that of a knife. A knife is a weapon of release. Once you kill someone, they're no longer yours. A chain is a weapon of control. Just the sight of it reminds everyone they can't ever escape from it. A knife wound heals in time leaving only a thin scar. The marks of chains burn wide and deep into the skin, forever chafing. But there's no release in throwing yourself to crash against a Chainkeeper. They may break you, or hurt you, but in the end, you go back to the chain and the Leash. That's the beauty of it. It may appear it has a beginning and an end. But the perfect, secret form of the chain is the circle."

Brand pondered those words. They seemed more important than any other lesson so far, though he knew not how it would be useful to him.

"Go away, now."

Brand froze in place, his fidgeting hands quieting.

"What about the test?"

"There is no test."

"Why? Why don't I get one?"

The man sighed as if talking to someone so deep beneath his understanding that he would be forced to walk down a long stairway to explain things to him.

"Because no one gets tested. That's what they don't understand. They all come away thinking they've been asked questions to determine their fate. The other mentors play with that and ask them any kind of things to spite them and make them think their fate is their own fault. They're wrong, for in enjoying the looks on their faces when they don't get what they expect they are betraying our creeds. You see, there is no test because anything you do has no bearing on your fate. Not even what you excel at or are bad at will determine your fate. That game could be cheated at. No. No. Your fate is not your own to make. It's all written down, and nothing you've learned here will change it."

Brand wanted to ask why bother with teaching someone the numbers if he was going to be a Chainkeeper, or torturing a boy with violence if he was just going to be a bookkeeper. But he knew the answer deep down. It made no difference. They were all the same. Just rabble to be used. If they were taught different things, some would think themselves better. No one was any better than anyone else. They were all caught within the chain's circle.