The aftermath of a class-five gate was administrative in the way that catastrophes, once survived, became administrative.
Imperial battalion commanders arrived and needed briefings. Headmaster Fang arrived and needed to provide those briefings while simultaneously managing the Academy's response to having had three unclassified summons deployed on imperial soil without prior authorization. Inspector Luo arrived, reviewed the situation, and wrote three documents in the time it took everyone else to have one conversation.
Wei Liang recalled Khalid, Achilles, and Guan Yu to the soul-space and stood in the field answering questions for two hours.
The questions were not hostile. They were the questions of people trying to understand what had happened, which was a different category of inquiry. The battalion commander — a broad woman in her fifties named General He Ruoying, whose own summon was a tier-8 Iron Phoenix that had not been needed today — had the look of someone recalibrating a significant number of assumptions.
"Three simultaneous summons," she said, at the end of the second hour. Not a question. A statement being set on a shelf for later examination."
"Yes," Wei Liang said."
"And the third — the one in the white diagram." She paused. "I have been summoning for thirty-one years. I have never seen a white diagram.""
"Neither had I," Wei Liang said. "Until today.""
General He Ruoying looked at him with the specific attention of a person who has identified something that is going to matter to her work for a long time.
"Come to the capital," she said. "When the Academy's term ends. Come to the capital and let us talk about what you are.""
It was, Wei Liang understood, an invitation that was not quite an invitation. He filed it accordingly.
"I will consider it," he said, which was the correct response."
✦ ✦ ✦
Shen Wuque found him that evening in the outer court, sitting against the familiar wall with his back to the stone and his eyes on the sky, which had gone the deep blue of late autumn dark.
He sat down beside Wei Liang without preamble, which was how Shen Wuque did most things now — the elaborate detachment of his early weeks at the Academy had worn away to something more direct.
"I need to tell you something," he said."
"Tell me.""
"General He Ruoying. She is not purely a military commander. She has a secondary role in the imperial intelligence structure — not Third Division, a parallel organization that predates the Division by fifty years. More selective. More direct access to the throne." He looked at the sky. "Her invitation to the capital is also an assessment. She wants to know what you are before whoever else has noticed what you are today decides what to do about it.""
"You think I should go.""
"I think you are going to be summoned regardless. Going on your own terms is better than going on theirs." A pause. "Also, I would like to come with you. I have some familiarity with the capital's architecture, in both the physical and political sense.""
Wei Liang looked at him sidelong.
"You have been planning for this since the field today," he said."
"I have been planning for a version of this since the moment I submitted that report," Shen Wuque said, with the precision of a man making an honest disclosure. "I told you I could not do what needed doing from inside the Division. What needs doing is larger than I initially understood. The capital is where it happens.""
Wei Liang sat with this for a moment.
"What do you want from this?" he asked. Not with suspicion — with genuine interest. He had learned, over the past weeks, that Shen Wuque's answers to direct questions were reliable precisely because he did not soften them."
Shen Wuque was quiet for a long moment.
"I want to be useful to something that is not going to use me," he said, finally. "I have spent three years being useful to people who were building something I did not understand and would not have agreed to if I had. I understand what you are building. I agree with it." He looked at his hands. "That is sufficient for me.""
Wei Liang nodded once.
"Then you come to the capital," he said."