Bolt

First Appearance and Context

The bolt is observed in everyday mathic life as a long, rectangular cloth worn by Avout. It is used for hooding and modesty while moving through workrooms and cloisters, and comes up in conversation where an elder enumerates “the bolt, the chord, and the sphere” during a library exchange. It is also seen in use as avout hurry to named hours such as Provener.

Roles/Actions and Affiliations

• Part of the avout habit: the bolt is a standard garment used for coverage, warmth, and decorum inside the math.
• Managed with a waist Chord: wearers gather and adjust the bolt above the cord, tightening or loosening as needed.
• Everyday flexibility: it can be hooded for discretion, let down to the feet for modesty, or wrapped differently for work versus movement.
• Discretionary cover: in exposed settings, a wearer may wrap the bolt to cloak most of the body—sometimes leaving only a working hand and forearm uncovered—or throw it over the head like a small tent for privacy.
• Improvised carry: when needed, part of the bolt can be tied off to make a sack or sling for transporting books or supplies.
• Field improvisations: described in an extramuros mountain descent, a bolt wrapped around a sphere and secured with a chord can be used to wedge a sphere between ice walls to aid climbing; a bolt can also be made sheer and wrapped around a partially deflated sphere to form a sliding cocoon for an injured person, then reinflated to create a supportive air bed for transport.
• Identification cue extramuros: in one crowded-city incident, assailants brandished a seized bolt, chord, and sphere as “evidence” that their target was avout, provoking the surrounding crowd. The triad can therefore mark an avout’s identity to outsiders.
• Survey and construction wear: crews in bolts conduct open‑air surveying and pound in boundary stakes along crater slopes and terraces during a large rebuilding effort.

Relationships

• Kit triad: commonly cited alongside the Sphere and the chord as the minimal personal kit carried by avout.

Descriptions/Characteristics

• Construction and handling: described as a long strip of cloth with a selvage edge and shifting pleats that may need straightening. Edges can fray with use.
• Common arrangements: a basic “modesty knot” passes the cloth around the waist and between the thighs before securing; another arrangement rolls the remainder into a cylinder and ties the ends for slinging across the back.
• Named folding: avout describe pleating the bolt into a configuration called the “Eight-fold Envelope,” used to bundle and protect a compacted sphere or to package the triad for concealment.
• Material: within the maths, bolts are produced in small quantities from Newmatter.
• Adjustable fiber behavior: accounts describe that the same fiber used for chords and bolts can be instructed to coil into a tight helix (shorter, bulkier, and warmer) or relax into a straight filament (longer, sheer, and relatively inelastic). Seasonally, avout coil bolts for warmth and straighten them for lightness.
• Surface tuning: when told not to stretch and set sheer, a bolt’s surface can slide smoothly over snow, aiding in makeshift patient transport.
• Demonstrated behavior: during Apert, a tested bolt woven of newmatter fibers stretched to admit bullets, leaving gaps that could later be massaged away, but razor-edged arrows cut fibers and left irreparable holes.
• Practical note: when scrambling over hedges or low walls, a wearer may have to yank bolt and chord free from hedge-plants after snagging.
• Vulnerability: narrators caution that an attacker who jerks the bolt up and over the wearer’s head can hamper defense until it is pulled back into place.
• Signs of use: bolts commonly pick up chalk dust during chalk-hall work.
• Formal styles: ceremonial variants exist (for example, a Tredegarh‑style bolt) with pleated overwraps; arranging them may require assistance before major rites.

Current Status/Location

Active in daily use by avout within the mathic world. Limited production from newmatter continues under the Discipline for bolts (as well as chords and spheres), while examples are carried and worn by individual avout day to day. During a recent Voco and discreet departures from a concent, Evoked avout were instructed not to wear bolts and chords under the open sky and to travel under cover or in ordinary clothing when outside, reflecting heightened surveillance and identification concerns. In a northern port city incident, one avout’s bolt, chord, and sphere were seized during an attack and not recovered; seasoned avout note that replacements can be issued when items are lost. In later accounts of the rebuilding, bolts are again visible in the open during work around the impact lake and on the island: groups in bolts mark boundaries and attend public rites. They are also donned in formal styles for cornerstone‑laying and marriages.