The donor event was held in the Academy's west hall, the newest and largest of the formal reception spaces, built in the architectural style of the Sovereignty's current century rather than the fortress pragmatism of the older sections. High ceilings, wide windows, the kind of room designed to make people feel the institution they were supporting was stable and worth the investment.
About forty people, faculty and donors and the occasional senior student invited to represent the Academy's talent. Mira moved through it with the ease of someone who had attended functions like this since childhood, greeting people by name, asking the right questions, giving nothing away. I stayed close enough to be introduced when required and far enough not to crowd her.
I had spent the two weeks building a picture of Edric Solent from what Mira had given me across various dinners, in pieces and without realizing she was assembling anything. Fifty-three years old. Mid-ranking representative for the Meridian Guilds' northern operations, a title that communicated less than it implied. The Guilds' ranking structure was deliberately opaque. What the pieces suggested was a man who had been passed over for senior positions twice in the last decade and had responded by building lateral influence rather than vertical, connecting himself to people across the Guilds' various operational branches rather than climbing within his own.
A man who tracked unusual students and wrote letters about them. That much I knew. What I did not know was why, or what he intended to do with what he found.
Those were the questions the evening was for.
****
He was shorter than I had expected, compact and well-dressed, with Mira's quality of composure but worn differently, more deliberate about it. He moved through the room giving each person precisely the amount of attention they warranted and not a fraction more.
Mira brought me to him at the midpoint of the evening, during a lull between conversations, and introduced us briefly before finding somewhere else to be.
"Cael Dawnridge," he said, taking my hand. "I've been looking forward to this."
"Mira speaks well of you," I said, which was true and gave him nothing.
"She tells me you've had an interesting term."
"I've been working hard."
"The results suggest more than hard work." He accepted a drink from a passing server without looking at it. "Forged attunement in a single term at [G+] grade. The faculty here are talking about it."
"I found an approach that worked for me."
"Form expression," he said.
I looked at him.
"Mira mentioned it," he said.
Mira had not mentioned it. Mira did not know enough about what I was doing in the practice rooms to mention it, and what she did know she would not have passed to her father without telling me first. Which meant Edric Solent had sources at the Academy that were not his daughter.
I had suspected this. Having it confirmed in the first three minutes of conversation was useful.
"It's my natural expression type," I said. "The Academy's assessment framework doesn't measure it directly, which is why the grade hasn't moved much. The attunement is a different story."
"Fascinating." He looked at me with what appeared to be genuine interest. "The Guilds have a long-standing interest in practitioners with unusual development profiles. Particularly ones who emerge from outside the established families." A pause. "Your background is provincial. Minor landed family. Not the typical profile for what you're producing."
"People surprise you," I said.
"They do." He took a small sip of his drink. "I'd like to stay in touch, if you're open to it. Nothing formal. The Guilds occasionally offer development opportunities to students who show particular promise. Mentorship, resources, introductions to practitioners in the field."
"That's generous," I said.
"It's practical," he said. "The Guilds invest in people who are worth investing in. It tends to work out well for everyone involved."
He said it pleasantly. The offer itself was simple enough. The thing underneath it was less simple, the assumption that investment and obligation moved in the same direction, that one produced the other as naturally as cause produced effect. I had written characters who operated this way. It was more interesting from the inside than it had been from the outside.
"I'll think about it," I said.
He nodded. "Of course. No rush." He glanced across the room where a senior faculty member was trying to catch his eye. "It was a genuine pleasure, Cael. I hope we'll have more time before I leave."
He moved away.
****
Mira appeared beside me a moment later. We stood together and watched her father work the room.
"Well," she said finally.
"He's good," I said.
"Yes." A pause. "What did he offer you."
"Development opportunities. Mentorship. Introductions."
"And."
"I told him I'd think about it."
She was quiet for a moment. "He doesn't usually have to ask twice."
"I know," I said.
She looked at me sideways. "He knew about your expression type. I didn't tell him."
"I know that too."
She looked at her father across the room and then back at her drink and said nothing else. I did not push it. Somewhere across the room Edric Solent was talking to a senior faculty member with the same warmth he had given me, extracting something from that conversation too, patient and unhurried about it.
The evening ended without incident. Mira walked back to the dormitory block in silence, the kind that had something unresolved in it. At the door to the corridor she stopped.
"He's going to come back," she said. "With something more specific than development opportunities."
"I know."
She looked at me for a moment. "When he does, I want you to tell me before you decide anything."
"Alright," I said.
She went inside.
I stood in the corridor for a while after the door closed. The Academy was quiet around me, the west hall's noise already fading. Edric Solent had sources here he had not named. He had made an offer he expected to be accepted eventually. He had sat across from me for fifteen minutes and found me interesting enough to pursue.
That was more than I had wanted him to find.