Rejected by His Heir, Chosen by His Crown

The boy's name was Tam, and by the frost there were four of them.

I want to be careful about how much I make of that, because I made too much of it in my own chest for a while and had to talk myself back down. Four young people, on four rings, learning the gate off the books in their own hours from a founder the assembly had voted down — that is not an army, it is not even a plan anymore, the plan lost, the plan is a piece of paper in Kellan's drawer. It was four kids and me and a stack of drowned-works maps, in a store-room on the third ring, two evenings a week, learning where the seals were and which way the gates cranked and how you make a fast sure call in your own water without waiting for anyone's leave. That was all. Against the office it was nothing, and I knew it was nothing, and I went anyway, because it was the only thing left I knew how to build.