Page 170 of Zenith Tower

She pulled the ink toward Delphine.

The farmhouse had been quiet without ever becoming idle. Caspian and Cosima had mapped the courier routes. Hale had walked the tree line until he knew every place the fence sagged. Kieran had copied his measurements with his good hand while I wrote the names Delphine remembered from the Tower.

We had prepared for the Council to deny what happened.

We had not expected it to announce the part it feared most.

I took the decree from Caspian.

The words remained the same on a second reading.Capacity to alter Marks outside her established bonds.

They had printed it beneath Council signatures. They had sealed it, copied it, and sent it toward every Hall township in the country.

Astra Verita could alter Marks.

I thought of Delphine sitting in the west antechamber while the lines at her wrist faded and every reader pretended not to see. Kieran writing down each new failure of his hand after the healers stopped offering answers. The boy behindglass in the Tower, his palm pressed to a barrier I had left unopened. Sadie Corwin reduced to a pending file. My mother scratchingSurvivebeneath a table because no record outside that room would admit what had been done to her.

There were families who had watched a Mark fail and been told failure was fate. There were students warned that a wrong reading would follow them for life. By morning, those families would know the Council believed a Mark could be changed.

“Every warden will know why they’re hunting me,” I said. “So will every parent whose child has a fading Mark.”

Cosima looked toward the shuttered window. “The proclamations go on the public boards beside the Hall notices.”

Delphine’s gaze dropped to her own name on the hearing pages. “Beside the names of students they claim withdrew.”

The rider looked among us. Fatigue had hollowed the skin beneath his eyes, but he was listening now.

“How far ahead of the criers can you stay?” I asked.

“On this horse? Not far.”

“We have two rested horses behind the barn,” the farmer said. “Take the bay. She knows the south road.”

Cosima spread a map over the table, covering the remains of supper. “The decree follows the main road. Juno’s couriers use the flour routes and parish tracks. If we send short copies, three riders can reach the nearest boards before dawn.”

“What goes first?” Hale asked.

He had taken the chair nearest the shuttered window. His copper Mark showed below his rolled sleeve, and his knife lay unsheathed beside his hand.

Delphine drew a blank sheet from the stack.

“My name. The date they took me through the west door. The date I entered the Tower. The fact that I asked Astra to repair the damage and that the repair did not change what I remembered.”

Kieran eased his sling higher against his shoulder. “My measurements before the bond. The review questions. Their attempt to take the folio.”

“The administrator’s objections,” Caspian said. “Walkin’s containment order. The registry certification on Aldric’s annex.”

Rev looked at me. “And you.”

I sat down before the final clean sheet.

Ink gathered at the tip of the pen. My hand was steady until it touched the paper.

Before Linden came to take me to Zenith Hall, I had been told I carried no Mark at all. At the Hall I became a misreading. In the Tower I became a case. Walkin’s decree made me a threat.

I began with the one they could not change.

My name is Astra Verita.