Chapter 23
Rafe
The Trial stores had three locks, two guards, and one ventilation shaft.
The shaft was the obvious choice.
I discovered it during my second year at Crown Wing, after an instructor confiscated a bottle of western lightning liquor and stored it with the prohibited training supplies. Recovering the bottle earned me two weeks of disciplinary flight duty.
Discovering that disciplinary flight duty included unsupervised access to the academy roofs made the punishment worthwhile.
The same shaft remained above the western storeroom.
I crossed the roof after midnight, keeping below the ridge where the tower guards could see me from their posts. Storm clouds covered most of the moon. I had not created them, though I appreciated their cooperation.
The ventilation grate had been replaced.
That was insulting.
I crouched beside it and examined the new seal. The headmaster’s mark covered the central latch, exactly as ordered during the emergency review. Breaking it would trigger every alarm in the lower academy.
The seal protected the latch.
It did not protect the screws holding the grate to the roof.
I removed them.
The grate lifted without disturbing the mark.
Leander would have called that a violation of the order’s clear intent.
Sebastian might have appreciated the distinction.
Talia would ask why I hadn’t told anyone where I was going.
Torren would ask whether I intended to get myself killed.
The honest answer to the final question was usually no.
Tonight, the answer mattered less. Someone had designed a test to drain four heirs through Talia’s body, then stood in the Hall and called her dangerous for surviving it. If proof remained inside the academy’s sealed stores, I was not waiting for procedure to misplace it.
I lowered myself into the shaft.
The passage was narrower than I remembered. Either the academy had reduced its size or my shoulders had increased since I was nineteen. I shifted enough to turn my fingernails into talons and used them to control my descent.
Silver light moved beneath the skin of my forearms.
I stopped it before it could illuminate the shaft.
The western storeroom waited below. Shelves filled the long room, holding rune plates, control stones, replacement metal channels, and sealed containers of materials used to repair active Trials.
No guards stood inside.
The academy trusted its locks.
I dropped from the ventilation opening and landed between two storage aisles.
A thin current of air carried sound beneath the outer door. One guard shifted his weight. The other yawned.
Neither entered.
I moved toward the channel inventory.
Sebastian had shown us the fragment from the failed demonstration. Black metal. Inward directional seal. No inventory code.
The stores contained hundreds of black channel sections.
Every legitimate piece had been marked.
I checked the first crate. Outward channels for the Sky arena, all bearing silver inventory numbers. The second held inward collectors used in the Fire Trial. The third contained mixed repair pieces separated by length and direction.
None matched.
The demonstration had been assembled quickly, after Leander’s family filed its petition. The runemasters would have requested supplies under a temporary project number rather than an established Trial code.
I found the issue ledger near the back wall.
The cabinet containing it was locked.
I placed two fingers near the keyhole and sent a thread of air inside. Metal pins lifted one at a time.
The lock opened.
I took out the newest volume.
Hall of Prism—Fifth Element Demonstration.
The entry covered two pages.
Four control pillars. One inner containment ring. One outer absorption ring. Five positional wards. Eight return-channel sections, each thirty inches long.
The final column showed the directional mark.
Outward.
I read it again.
The academy issued eight outward channels.
The pieces installed around Talia had pointed inward.
Someone had switched them after they left the stores.
That narrowed the sabotage to the journey between inventory release and installation. The trap had not begun as a mistaken order or an incorrectly marked crate. Someone had possessed the correct pieces, set them aside, and supplied eight replacements made to produce the opposite result.
I examined the signature authorizing the release.
A runemaster’s name occupied the first line. The Keeper of Trials’ seal appeared beneath it. Malcolm had authorized the materials, but there was nothing unusual about that. His office approved every alteration to Trial-related magic.
The delivery signature had been smeared beyond recognition.
That was unusual.
Runemasters signed with enchanted ink. It could fade over centuries, but it did not smear within days unless someone deliberately disturbed it before it set.
I took a blank sheet from the cabinet and made a rubbing of the issue entry.
The ink refused to transfer.
Of course it did.
I could remove the ledger, but carrying an entire inventory book through a ventilation shaft would be difficult. Its disappearance would also reveal the break-in before we determined what the record meant.
A storage note had been tucked between the pages.
Unused sections returned after installation. Crate W-14.
I returned the ledger and relocked the cabinet.
Crate W-14 sat beneath a stack of damaged control pillars.
I moved them carefully, using wind to reduce their weight without allowing the metal to strike the floor. The lowest crate had been nailed shut.
No official return seal covered it.
I lifted the lid.
Eight black channel sections lay inside.
Each bore an outward directional mark.
I held one beneath the nearest lamp.
A clean inventory code appeared along its edge. It matched the number listed in the ledger.
The correct pieces had been delivered.
They had also been returned unused after someone installed unmarked inward channels around Talia.
That was no repair error.
I wrapped one outward channel in cloth and placed it inside my coat. Then I took the storage note from the ledger and replaced it with a blank slip cut to the same size.
The missing note would eventually be noticed.
By then, I intended to know who signed for the crate.
A sound came from the outer door.
The lock turned.
I closed the crate and sent wind beneath the control pillars, guiding them back into place.
The door opened before I reached the ventilation shaft.
One of the guards entered carrying a lamp.
I stepped behind the nearest shelf.
He walked farther into the room.
The air changed with him, pushing into the aisle and returning around the obstacles. Every shelf, crate, and piece of equipment altered the current.
So did I.
The guard stopped.
“Who’s there?”
If he found me, the headmaster could suspend me from the inquiry. Worse, the note and channel would return to the same evidence system I no longer trusted, while Talia’s attackers learned exactly which trail we had found.
I lowered my breathing.
He raised the lamp.
Light moved between the shelves.
I shifted one hand, forming talons again, and pressed them into the stone wall. If he entered my aisle, I could climb before he saw me clearly. That would still leave the open ventilation shaft and several difficult questions.
The second guard spoke from the corridor.
“Anything?”
“Thought I heard something.”
“You heard yourself snoring.”
“I wasn’t asleep.”
“Then I was.”
The first guard lowered the lamp.
He crossed to the issue cabinet and tested its lock.
It held.
Then he left.
The outer door closed.
I remained still until both sets of footsteps returned to their posts.
After that, I climbed.
The Fifth Wing admitted me without waking the others.
Or so I thought until clear light appeared beneath the common-room door.
Talia sat at the round table.
She had changed into a soft gray robe. Her hair fell loose over her shoulders, and a narrow line of color moved continuously through the scale at her wrist.
She looked at my boots.
Then at the dust covering my coat.
“Where were you?”
“Walking.”
“On the roof?”
“Part of the walk involved a roof.”
The wall runes turned orange.
I closed the door quietly.
“You went to the Trial stores,” she said.
“How did you reach that conclusion?”
“The headmaster sealed them. You questioned three runemasters about the delivery records after the review. Then you disappeared at midnight.”
“That could describe many innocent activities.”
“You also have a piece of black metal under your coat.”
I looked down.
The wrapped channel had shifted, exposing one end.
“Very observant.”
“I was a relic keeper.”
“You still are.”
The answer escaped before I considered it. A torc and a place in the Trials had not erased the woman who could identify a hidden mechanism from dust on my coat. I did not want her to think becoming an heir required surrendering that part of herself.
The orange light softened.
The distinction mattered to her. I filed that away somewhere I wouldn’t admit existed.
“I found the correct return channels,” I said.
Talia stood.
The others woke when she called their names.
Torren entered first, already pulling on a shirt. Sebastian appeared through Shadow a moment later. Leander arrived last, his hair disordered enough to prove he had actually slept.
I placed the outward channel and storage note on the common-room table.
Sebastian reached for the metal.
“Don’t touch it,” Talia said.
He stopped.
I smiled. “He’s learning.”
She retrieved a pair of protective gloves from the study and handed them to him. Then she put on a second pair and examined the storage note.
Leander read over her shoulder.
“What does this prove?” Torren asked.
“The issue ledger lists eight outward return channels,” I said. “This is one of them. All eight were returned after installation.”
Sebastian activated a thread of Shadow over the directional mark. A small arrow appeared, pointing away from the center connection.
“The installed channels pointed inward,” he said.
“Without inventory codes,” Talia added.
Leander looked toward me. “You broke into a sealed evidence store.”
“Yes.”
“The headmaster explicitly prohibited entry.”
“He prohibited entry through the doors.”
“That is not a meaningful legal distinction.”
“It was meaningful to the ventilation grate.”
The wall runes turned gold.
Leander did not look at them.
“Did you disturb anything else?” he asked.
“I removed the return note from the ledger.”
“You stole evidence.”
“I relocated it.”
“To the Fifth Wing.”
“A secure location.”
“This is not a secure location. Five people live here, and one of them is you.”
I leaned against the table.
“I feel unfairly characterized.”
“You should,” Torren said. “The description was generous.”
Talia flattened the note beneath her hands.
“The delivery signature was smeared?”
“Yes.”
“Enchanted ink doesn’t smear.”
“Not accidentally.”
Sebastian turned the channel beneath the lamp. “Someone received eight correctly marked outward sections, returned them unused, and installed unmarked inward pieces.”
Torren’s expression hardened. “To direct our power at Talia.”
“Yes.”
“Who had access?”
“Runemasters, delivery staff, Trial officials, anyone inside the Hall during setup.”
“Malcolm,” Talia said.
No one answered immediately.
Leander looked at her. “His seal authorized the release. That doesn’t establish that he handled the delivery.”
“It establishes that he knew which pieces were ordered.”
“So did the North Council,” he said.
The words cost him.
Talia’s face closed.
Leander continued before she could respond. “My family petitioned for the demonstration. Someone within the delegation may have had access during setup. We cannot narrow this to Malcolm because we already distrust him.”
“Which is why I didn’t take the evidence to him,” I said.
Leander looked at me.
“That is the first reasonable thing you’ve said tonight.”
“I’ve said several. You were distracted by the burglary.”
“We need to give this to the headmaster,” Torren said.
“We need copies first,” Talia replied.
Sebastian nodded. “A full rune impression of the channel, a transcription of the note, and Rafe’s account of the ledger.”
“My account?” I asked. “You want me to write?”
“We need a record in your words.”
“That sounds cruel.”
“It will be brief.”
Leander took a seat. “Once the evidence is documented, we request a private meeting with the headmaster. Malcolm cannot be present.”
Torren looked around the table. “Agreed?”
Sebastian nodded.
Leander did the same.
Talia looked at me last.
“You could have told us before you went.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because one of you would have stopped me.”
“All of us would have stopped you.”
“Exactly.”
The wall runes turned orange.
I waited for the lecture.
Instead, Talia touched the wrapped metal.
“You brought it to us.”
“Where else would I take it?”
“Malcolm.”
“I trust you more.”
The truth was larger than the evidence on the table. I trusted Talia to read the pattern, Torren to act when it became dangerous, Sebastian to preserve what could be proved, and even Leander to name his family among the suspects when silence would have protected him.
The statement silenced the room.
I had not intended it to sound important.
Talia made it important by looking at me the way she did.
Clear light moved through the wall runes. It passed over each of us without changing color.
The five chairs, five cups, and five torcs formed a circle around the evidence.
For the first time, no one argued about whether Talia belonged inside it.