Astra
“I’m going down that stair,” I said.
Caspian set his cup on the table. “Marrow said he would lock you in your room if you left the permitted corridors again.”
“I remember.”
“You’ve already been caught once.”
Hale stood near Kieran’s false window, listening without looking at either of us. We had been returned to our rooms after the infirmary visit. Kieran remained behind glass, and his copied record was somewhere below us.
“The infirmary asked for his history,” I said. “Marrow sent it to records.”
“Review requires comparison,” Caspian repeated the words.
“Comparison with what?”
He had no answer.
Hale turned from the wall. “I saw the shift change the night they took Kieran, and again before today’s visit. After the evening infirmary round, the outgoing readers carry their cases upstairs for handover. The next shift doesn’t come down until it ends.”
Caspian stared at him. “You’re helping her.”
“I’m preventing her from getting caught. She’ll go no matter what you or I say.”
Hale crossed to the table and flattened the meal wrapper between his hands. On its blank side, he drew the infirmary corridor and the turn toward the records stair.
“There’s an attendant here,” he said, marking the junction. “Caspian can keep her occupied. I’ll wait at the bottom of the stair. If anyone comes from the archive level, you come back immediately.”
“And if the door is locked?”
“Then you come back.”
“And if I find something?”
Caspian leaned over the rough map. “You remember it. You do not carry anything out unless leaving it would be worse.”
“You sound like you’ve done this before.”
“My father kept records he didn’t want his sons to read.”
We waited until the evening infirmary round.
Caspian approached the corridor attendant with Kieran’s copy order in hand and asked for a receipt bearing the panel’s seal.
He kept his voice courteous and his questions exact.
By the time the attendant opened her ledger to prove the first receipt was sufficient, she had stopped watching the corridor behind him.
Hale and I passed the junction without hurrying.
We reached the stair marked RECORDS and descended into colder air. At the bottom, the passage divided. One branch continued toward voices and the scrape of chairs. The other ended at a plain door.
A shallow service alcove had been cut beside the stair. Hale stepped into its shadow, where he could see both passages without standing in either.
“If I call your name, leave whatever you’re holding.”
I nodded.
I opened the door.
There was no lock.
The corridor restrictions had apparently been considered enough.
The records room was smaller than I expected. Shelves rose to the ceiling on both sides of a narrow central aisle. Folders filled them from end to end, some new and square, others bowed with age. The room smelled of old paper, cold stone, and the mineral damp that reached everything in the Tower.
A receiving table stood beside the door, crowded with recent submissions waiting to be filed. I worked through the stack until I found Kieran’s copied pages beneath several sealed folders.
Caspian’s signature ran across the bottom of the final sheet, with Hale’s directly beneath it. A new cover page had been added in a hand I did not recognize.
Marsh, Kieran. Active decline. Independent comparison pending.
Beneath that, beside associated classification, someone had written:
Untethered.
A second line named the comparison file.
Corwin, Sadie.
Kieran was not Untethered. I was.
I returned the pages to their place in the stack and moved to the shelves.
The first rows were arranged by active review number. Older cases were filed by surname. I found the C section and scanned the faded tabs.
CORWIN.
Sadie Corwin. Cosima had spoken the name once at the Hall, then refused to say more.
I reached for the folder.
A door opened somewhere in the passage.
I froze with my fingers on the tab.
Footsteps approached. Hale did not call my name. Either he could not without giving us both away, or the sound had come from between him and the stair.
I slid the folder back into place and moved behind the last shelving row.
The records-room door opened.
A hand-lamp passed across the shelves. Its light reached the receiving table, paused over Kieran’s copied pages, then moved into the aisle.
I pressed myself against the cold stone wall. The shelving left little room between its back edge and my body. Paper brushed my sleeve when I breathed.
The light came nearer.
Then Caspian’s voice carried from the stairwell.
“If the panel requires a second form, I am happy to complete it. I am asking which form.”
The lamp stopped.
A man muttered something under his breath and left the room. The door swung shut behind him.
I waited until his steps moved toward Caspian’s voice. Then I slipped out from behind the shelves.
Hale stood beside the archive door, jaw set.
“Go,” he said.
We took the stairs quickly. Caspian was still at the junction holding several sheets while the attendant argued with the man from records about which one he needed. He saw us pass behind them and did not look away from the page in his hand.
Hale and I returned to Kieran’s room first. Caspian joined us a few minutes later and shut the door.
“Well?” he asked.
“Kieran’s copy is there. They classified it under Untethered association.”
Caspian’s voice cooled. “Kieran isn’t Untethered.”
“No. They’re using him to study me.”
I told them about the older section and the folder marked CORWIN.
Caspian folded Hale’s map, held one corner to the lamp flame, and dropped it into the empty bowl when the fire caught.
“You didn’t open the file,” he said.
“I didn’t have time.”
“Which means you intend to go back.”
I looked at him. “Yes.”