2. Chapter 2 #2
"It shouldn't be." Falken turns the pen over once. "The Fourth House has been extinct for more than two centuries. Every political and legal structure in our world was built around that fact. If that fact is no longer true, there will be issues."
"What kind of issues?"
"Issues I won't speculate about until we know exactly who you are."
"You already know what I am."
"What you are and who you descend from are not necessarily the same question."
I hate that this makes sense.
"And none of you know the answers."
"None of us know the answers. Anyone who tells you otherwise this week is guessing."
Jon says, "The short version is that nothing changes today.
Nothing changes this week. What changes is that a great many people are about to become extremely interested in a question nobody has had to think about in over two hundred years, and you'll be standing in the middle of it while they work it out. "
"That's the short version?"
"You asked for practical."
"I did." I drink some of the tea. "I regret it."
"The Council will be informed today," Falken says.
The room reorients around that sentence.
Because until this second, this has been professors. Professors staring at me on a mountain, professors in a room, professors making notes about my shoulder. Annoying. Survivable.
The Council isn't the academy. The Council is what the academy answers to.
"Do they have to know?"
"Miss Miller, members of faculty and an unknown number of students saw you.
" Falken's voice doesn't harden, exactly.
It just stops leaving any room. "The word direwolf was said aloud in a clearing full of nineteen-year-olds.
It is in every dormitory on this campus by now.
Within the week it will be outside it." He sets the pen down.
"And even if not one person had seen it — I would still be required to report it.
There is no version of this I keep quiet, and there is no version where trying would help you. "
"So a room full of people I've never met are about to have a conversation about what I am."
"Yes."
"And I don't get to be in it."
"Not yet."
I put the cup down harder than I mean to.
Because this is the part that's getting to me, and it isn't the bear and it isn't the size and it isn't even the word.
It's that since I shifted, every single person has been discussing me like I'm a historical event.
Nobody is asking me what I want, and I would really like a hot drink that isn't tea.
"The specimen presents a jurisdictional—" Faris begins.
"Jessica," Jon says.
Not sharply. He doesn't even look up from his notes.
Faris stops.
"Jessica," she says, "presents a jurisdictional problem."
Falken moves us on, because that's his job.
"There's also the matter of next year's housing."
"My housing?"
"Under normal circumstances, you'd return after summer and move into second-year housing with the rest of your cohort." He pauses. "That won't be happening."
"Why not?"
His look says I cannot possibly be serious.
"Right."
"We'll make other arrangements before you return."
"What kind of arrangements?"
"We haven't figured that out yet, but it will be more secure."
"Define secure. Because in my experience 'secure' means a room with one door and someone outside it, and I would like to state now, on the record, that I am not doing that."
"Nobody is discussing confinement."
"Where are my friends?"
Falken pauses. "Your—"
"The other five. Torres, Sophia, Freya, Declan, Renzo." I count them off on the table. "Where do they go?"
"We'll discuss arrangements."
"That's not an answer."
"It isn't," Falken agrees. "It's what I have this morning."
"Jessica." Jon turns toward me. "Nobody is trying to isolate you."
"That," I say, "is what people say immediately before isolating someone."
Voss laughs. Actually laughs, once, and Falken gives him a look that suggests they will be discussing it later.
Then they start on procedure.
Notify the Council. Faris will pull together everything the academy holds on direwolves and start the archival work.
Falken will manage whatever gets said publicly.
Voss will handle what he calls campus posture, which I assume means stopping people from being stupid.
Someone will begin on my family records.
And someone will find me a different bed for next year.
"Miss Miller." Faris, from the end of the table, not looking up from her notes. "One thing, so you aren't waiting for it. The records work I've described takes months. Parish registers, civil archives, three countries at minimum, most of it held by people who do not answer letters quickly."
"How many months?"
"The summer. Probably past it."
"So nothing happens."
"A great deal happens. None of it where you can see it." She turns a page.
"We'll also ask you not to discuss the details of the research with anyone until it's concluded," Falken says. "And that you stay at your old address over the summer rather than travel. The Council will want to be able to reach you."
"So don't tell anyone and don't go anywhere."
"Yes," Falken says.
"I'm serious about the other five."
Falken looks at me.
"I know."
"No. I don't think you do." I put both hands on the table. "You can investigate my family. You can call the Council. You can figure out what a direwolf means and why I'm one and whatever else apparently needs a committee now. But I'm not starting over."
Nobody says anything.
"Those five are my people," I say. "Wherever you're putting me, you figure out how they fit too."
Falken studies me for a moment.
"I can't promise you that."
"That’s going to be a problem."