The western stair had no carriage.
The western stair made the absence harder to dismiss.
A courtyard could lie with spectacle. A stair lied through use. Scratches on the railing, old mud in the groove, ivy cut by passing shoulders, rain trapped where soles had worn stone thin. Too many ordinary lives had crossed this place for the carriage's impossible marks to feel abstract.
The wheels had insulted a working path.
That mattered more than a noble entrance would have.
That was the first problem.
It had wheel marks.
That was the second.
The stair cut between the old bell tower and the west archive wing, a narrow outdoor passage of black stone worn smooth by generations of students taking shortcuts they were not supposed to know. Rainwater collected in the center groove. Ivy climbed the left wall. Three broken gargoyles watched from above with the exhausted contempt of architecture that had seen too many children become soldiers.
The carriage had not been there.
