"Well, since we're stuck out here a while," the knee man said, stretching his arms over his head with a small grunt, "might as well make yourself useful in some other way. What's going on in the city these days. Anything worth knowing?"
The substitute guard blinked, clearly having expected the conversation to be over by now, and took a moment to decide how much of an answer the question actually deserved. "Nothing much."
"Nothing much isn't an answer, it's a dodge." The driver leaned against the wall, arms crossed, in the manner of a man settling in for the long haul now that his employers had disappeared behind the doors for the foreseeable future. "Come on. You stand out here all night, you must hear things. People talk in front of guards like we're furniture."
"Heard about the Liu boy," the substitute offered, cautious, testing the waters. "Wolfgang. Poisoned, they're saying."
"We know about Wolfgang." The broad man waved that off. "Old news by now. What else."
The substitute hesitated, glancing toward the door again, the same instinct from earlier — the hope that someone, anyone, might need him badly enough to end this conversation for him. Nobody came. "Academy trials open next month," he said eventually, offering it the way you'd offer a coin to a beggar you wanted to move along quickly. "That's the big talk in the lower districts, anyway. Everyone under eighteen with two working legs seems to think this is their year."
"Every year is somebody's year, right up until the trials actually start beating the confidence out of them." The younger guard said it with the easy cynicism of someone who'd clearly watched a few rounds of trials come and go. "Anything more specific? Which houses are putting forward candidates this cycle?"
"Couldn't say." The substitute's shoulders came up slightly, the posture of a man who'd already decided this was the edge of what he was willing to offer. "Not my business, knowing things like that."
"Not your business," the knee man repeated, amused. "Funny. Most men in this line of work love telling you exactly whose business everything is, whether you ask or not."
"I like keeping my job," the substitute said flatly. "Talking too much is how a man loses one of those a lot faster than talking too little."
That got a short laugh out of the driver, who exchanged a glance with the broad man, some private amusement passing between them that the substitute clearly wasn't in on. "He's not wrong, you know," the driver said. "Careful sort."
"Too careful, maybe." The knee man tilted his head, studying the substitute now with the same frank assessment he'd given him earlier, though something more pointed had crept into it. "Is this normal, for men doing this job? All this — " he gestured vaguely at the substitute's whole demeanor, the clipped answers, the eyes that kept drifting to the exits — "tight-lipped nonsense. Feels like half the men guarding doors in this city have had their tongues surgically removed."
"It's recommended," the substitute said, dry, the first real flicker of personality he'd shown all evening. "Whoever trains you for this line of work tends to mention it early. Say the wrong thing to the wrong guest once, and it's the last mistake you make in this job. Sometimes the last mistake you make anywhere."
"See, now that's useful information." The knee man pointed at him, grinning properly now, some of his earlier suspicion melting into genuine amusement. "Knew you had it in you."
"I said one true thing in an hour and you're already celebrating." The substitute allowed himself something close to a smile, small, reluctant, the expression of a man surprising himself slightly by enjoying a conversation he'd spent the last twenty minutes trying to end.
"An hour's a long time to stand around saying nothing," the broad man said. "Might as well enjoy the company while you've got it."
The substitute considered that, glanced once more at the door — out of habit now more than hope — and, finding no rescue forthcoming, settled his weight back against the gate's stone pillar with the air of a man accepting his fate. "Fine," he said. "But if any of this comes back on me, I never said a word."
"Course not," the driver said, already grinning. "None of us ever say a word out here. Didn't you know? It's recommended."