Chapter 27
Sera Voss
The hearing was at the ninth bell on a Wednesday and Cyan attended it
with the specific calm of someone who had already decided how to behave
regardless of the outcome.
The crumbled document had been found. He wasn't sure how â€" whether the
restricted wing had a monitoring enchantment he'd missed or whether Vael
had reported it, though he didn't think it was Vael. It didn't matter.
What mattered was that a junior administrator had knocked on his
dormitory door two days after his visit, informed him that evidence of
unauthorized restricted archive access had been discovered, and told him
to report to the disciplinary committee the following morning.
Fen had looked at him when the administrator left.
'Is this going to be a problem?' she'd asked.
'Probably,' he'd said.
The disciplinary committee was three faculty members and a student
representative, convened in a small formal room off the administrative
corridor. Cyan sat in the single chair facing the table and looked at
the three faculty members and the student representative and kept his
hands in his lap.
The evidence was presented. Dust displacement in the restricted wing
consistent with a visitor. The destroyed document. The mana-lock seal
showing signs of mana depletion rather than standard key-unlock â€" which
was the detail that had apparently confirmed it wasn't a faculty member,
since faculty used standard authorization keys.
They asked him if he'd been in the restricted wing.
He said yes.
They asked how he'd opened the lock.
He said he'd pressed his hand against the seal and it had opened.
The faculty members looked at each other. That wasn't how Bronze-rank
mages opened mana-locks, and it wasn't how non-ranked individuals opened
anything. He could see them trying to file it into a category and not
finding one.
They asked about the destroyed document.
He said he'd touched it and it had crumbled. He was sorry about that.
The head of the committee was about to speak â€" and from the expression,
the speech was going to be the one that ended with expulsion â€" when the
door opened.
The room was very quiet for a second.
The girl who walked in was tall, Gold-rank insignia on her badge, with
the kind of composed self-possession that came from having been the most
capable person in most rooms since approximately age twelve. She didn't
look at the committee with deference. She looked at them with the polite
attentiveness of someone who had arrived at a situation they intended to
resolve.
'Sera Voss,' the head of the committee said, with the slight shift in
tone that Gold-rank names produced in people who worked within a
rank-stratified system. 'This is a closed hearing.'
'I know,' she said. 'I have relevant information.' She sat in the chair
along the wall as if she'd been invited. 'Cyan was helping me with a
research matter. I had asked him to verify the location of a
pre-Consolidation text in the restricted wing â€" I have authorization for
restricted access and I should have accompanied him. That was my
oversight.'
The committee looked at her. Then at Cyan. Then at her.
'You have access authorization,' the head said.
'I do. I should have cleared a companion access. I didn't.' She met the
head's eyes evenly. 'The document damage is unrelated to the access
question â€" pre-Consolidation texts in that section have known
preservation issues. It's in the archival maintenance logs.'
It was possible this was true. Cyan didn't know. The committee
apparently didn't know either, and the uncertainty was enough.
After twenty minutes of procedural deliberation, the hearing concluded
with a formal warning rather than expulsion. Provisional students were
reminded that restricted access required faculty accompaniment.
Outside in the corridor, Cyan looked at Sera Voss.
She looked back at him.
'You lied,' he said.
'I provided a plausible alternative account,' she said. 'That's
different.'
'Why?'
She studied him for a moment. 'Come find me when you want to know the
answer to that. Room 7, Upper Dormitory. I'm available most evenings.'
She walked away.
He stood in the corridor and thought about a Gold-rank student who'd
walked into a disciplinary hearing for a provisional null-result she'd
never met before and lied to a faculty committee without hesitating.
He added her to the list.