22. Chapter 22
Chapter twenty-two
J essica
Hallam is going to sink it, and he's going to do it politely, and he isn't even going to enjoy it.
"My position hasn't changed," he says. "The third-party review comes first. All of it, completed, before any access begins. I understand that's unwelcome. I'd rather be unwelcome than have this Council hand somebody a collection it hasn't read."
"How long is that?" Wren asks.
"Difficult to estimate. Four months. Possibly six."
Six months.
I sit there with my hands flat on the table and do not say anything.
Six months is Thursday becoming June. Six months is a Council with a different mood in it. Six months is however long it takes for whoever cut a bridge to think of something else.
And he's not wrong. That's what makes it unbearable. He's making the responsible argument and about a third of this table is nodding.
"May I ask a practical question," Caspian Ardent says.
Wren nods.
"Councillor Hallam — how much of that collection does the review actually affect?"
Hallam pauses.
He's a lawyer. He knows precisely where that question is going, and he answers it honestly anyway.
"A minority," he says. "Perhaps a fifth."
"So the proposal is that Miss Miller waits half a year to read four-fifths of a collection that concerns nobody living.
" Caspian turns his hand over. "I've supported every safeguard in this framework.
I'll go on supporting them. I can't defend making her wait six months for the part of it nobody has any interest in but her. "
"There's an argument about coherence — you don't read a collection in pieces—"
"There is, and it's a good one, and it's an argument for scholars.
" Caspian sits back. "This Council has spent the better part of a year establishing that this woman is descended from that family.
Whatever we eventually decide about restoration — and I'd remind everyone I've argued for going slowly on that since April — those are two different questions.
Her status is a matter for us. Her history is hers. "
Nobody has an answer for that.
"For the record," Faris says, "I agree with Councillor Ardent, which I'd like noted as a rare event."
Somebody laughs.
They vote at twenty past eleven and it takes four minutes.
That's the part nobody warns you about. Three weeks of framework and objection and the redaction authority remains unresolved, and then Wren says "We'll take it," and hands go up, and a woman at the end of the table counts them, and it's done in less time than it takes to boil a kettle.
"The motion carries," Wren says. "Miss Miller."
I stand up too fast and my chair makes a noise.
“Controlled access is granted to the surviving Fourth House collection. Material concerning the House and the events of the war will be made available to you. Anything involving protected third-party records will require separate review.”
“How long?”
“Long enough that you're going to hate me.”
“I already do.”
Wren ignores that. “You will work in the archive under supervision. Nothing leaves the room. No photographs, no copies, and no one accompanies you who hasn't been separately cleared by the Council.”
“So I'm doing this alone.”
“You asked for access, Miss Miller. The Council gave it to you. I would suggest not testing how far that generosity extends.”
"Fine."
"And the collection stays where it is. It isn't coming to Luftis. You go to it."
"When?"
Wren looks at the woman from the legal office, who checks something.
"Thursday," she says. "Nine o'clock."
Thursday.
Thursday.
I sit back down, because standing has stopped being an option.
Caspian finds me in the corridor afterwards with his coat over his arm.
"Congratulations."
"Thank you. Genuinely."
"Don't thank me. I've been arguing for two centuries of caution since April and I'll go on arguing for it — you may find me extremely irritating by summer." He shrugs. "That one was simply easy. Some questions are."
Then he wishes me luck and goes.
Thursday. Nine o'clock.
I get all the way across the courtyard before it actually lands, and then I have to stop in the middle of it like an idiot with my bag on my shoulder.
Because for eight months everybody has been telling me about my family.
Faris told me. The histories told me. Hess told me, in photographs of documents written by people whose job was to record the winning side of an argument. Twelve people in a room told me what my blood means and what it might entitle me to and what it makes other people nervous about.
And on Thursday morning at nine o'clock I get to sit in a room and read what they wrote.
The girl who was six years old. Whatever's left of her family. The years before the war, maybe even the war itself.
I've got to tell Freya and Sophia, they are going to lose their minds.