Chapter 14 #2
“We have told our offspring that a thing comes out of the dark for them. It does not. It comes to them and it stands over them, and it has been doing so for as long as we have been recording it, and every grandmother on this continent who has ever frightened a child with that story was describing a guardian species and did not know it.”
“I would like the harm of that error entered into the record as well.”
Because this is why I came. This is why I have spent sixteen years in a department this Academy invented to be rid of me.
“Three beings, in my career, walked into preserves at night carrying weapons because they believed something was coming for their offspring. None of them came out. I attended two of those inquiries. One landowner in the southern district destroyed a fire beast on his own land. A protected animal. An endangered animal. He was entirely certain of what he had seen, and he wept at the hearing, and the fire beast is still dead.”
“There are households in this region where offspring are not permitted outdoors during an alignment. A youngling comes into her first flame — which is the proudest diurnal of her small life — and some being tells her it makes her prey. A story that is not true still kills,” I say.
“I have spent sixteen years attempting to retire this one. This is why I took the vow of Celibacy, to help retire this harmful legend. But I was attempting to retire the wrong half of it.”
“Which brings me to the urgency.”
I put the exchange listing on the chamber display.
Nine million credits. Open for eleven years. A mounted specimen, intact.
“As of the fourth hour this morning, that listing is fulfillable.”
The room changes temperature.
“There is a Gravian male in Molten Lava custody who spent two years assembling legitimate credentials and a sponsored research visa in order to be standing in that preserve during alignment. He placed a capture rig over a period of weeks. He abducted a Hyrrokin offspring to use as a lure and he shot a guardian animal at three meters to do it. He told me himself, while he was being restrained, that he is not the only one. That he is only the first.”
“I am asking this council for three things. The sighting entered today, with all forty witness statements attached and my full instrument record. An emergency protected-species listing, sought through Sir Bane Ashmoor’s office, today, before the close of business.
And a public statement from the Royal Academy today, describing what this animal is and what it is not — because the version of this story that reaches the public without one gets an offspring hurt inside a month. ”
I step back from the rail.
“That is my report.”
Bane Ashmoor stands up before anyone else moves.
He has never made a speech in his life; he is the least theatrical being I have ever known and it is possibly the reason I like him.
“I have known this scholar since we were both nineteen years old,” he reminds our peers. “I have reviewed his work for twenty years, frequently unfavorably, and I have never once known him to publish a finding he could not defend, or to withhold one that embarrassed him.”
He looks around the chamber. “If Coalstone says this Skyggjar came out of a canopy, then it came out of a canopy. My office will take the emergency listing this morning.”
He sits down.
And then another Fellow stands.
I do not expect this.
She is from comparative biology and we have disagreed in print four separate times, twice sharply, but she stands up and says that the acoustic reference protocol described in this report is the most rigorous field methodology she has seen presented in this chamber in a decade.
And then a male from the southern faculty stands and compliments the weight of my varied evidence.
And then somebody else.
I stand in a chamber I have been dismissed in for twenty years, covered in dried mud, and beings keep standing up to promote my work, none are in disagreement.
Finally, they agree it is time to vote on my motions. And all three carry.
The session breaks. Tablets are gathered. Beings begin moving toward the doors.
“One further matter,” I say.
The chamber stops and they turn back and sit back down.
“I request formal release from the Vow of the Empty Hearth, with cause. The vow is a protective custom for a scholar investigating the Hidden One. The investigation is concluded. The finding is entered. It was sworn to protect the integrity of a paper which no longer requires protecting.”
I keep my voice entirely level.
“It is moot.”
The Presiding Fellow looks at the record, and then at me. “You have ten months of your term remaining,” she says. “You could simply serve it out and wait for it to lapse.”
“I could.”
“Then why request release this morning, Dr. Coalstone?”
I have presented in this chamber eleven different times over the years. I have never once disclosed a personal fact about myself to any being in this room, because I did not have any that would interest them and because a commoner does not offer the nobility any ammunition.
Two hundred beings are waiting.
“Because I have recently met a human female I want as my bound,” I admit.
The silence is enormous.
And then somebody laughs — not unkindly, a startled sort of laugh — and then somebody else does, and the Presiding Fellow puts a claw over her mouth and fails entirely to conceal what her face is doing. “Granted,” she says. “Entered and witnessed. Release effective immediately.”
Bane catches me at the doors.
He is grinning like a fool and he puts one claw on my shoulder. “I have been telling you that you were wrong about one thing, Smoky, and you have never once believed me about any of it—”
“Bane.”
“I am delighted to be proved right. And I am looking forward to working with you on how to best preserve this creature’s anonymity while also learning a bit about it at the same time.
” He is genuinely, enormously delighted.
“And also, you have found a mate? And she is human? Are you going to tell me anything about this mystery female?”
I chuckle and walk with my friend down the hallway, telling him the story of how I met Margaret Reyes.
And I also ask for help in planning my Bound Declaration Ceremony.