Page 52 of Raven’s Fight

"This is not a punishment for the ruler. It is a protection for everyone else. A ruler who can end a life without ceremony, without record, without acknowledgment, is a ruler whose power has no edges. The rite makes an edge. It says: this was done, in this circumstance, for this reason, on this day, and the one who ordered it was this person and no other."

He goes to the board and writes four words. Grounds. Witness. Record. Cost. Then he turns back.

"The grounds must be written down before the order is given, not after. This is the element most often violated — the justification composed afterward and fitted to the decision instead of shaping it. If your grounds cannot survive being written down before you act, your grounds are not sufficient." A pause. "That holds whether or not the decision turns out to be right. A right decision made on poor grounds is still a failure of rule."

Someone in the second row shifts. I don't look. I'm watching Finlay, the way I always watch him in this room, because how he teaches tells me as much as what.

"Witness. The execution must be formally witnessed, and not by your own people — not by anyone whose loyalty to you came before any duty to the truth. The witness exists to produce an account that doesn't depend on your version of events. You arrange to be held to account."

"Record. The acknowledgment, written in your own words, within thirty-six hours. Nobody writes it for you. No formal phrasing unless you choose it yourself. The words are yours because the decision was yours."

He looks at the fourth word.

"Cost." He says it plainly. "The rite requires the ruler to name what was lost. Not as remorse. Not as second-guessing. As witness. You were the one who saw clearly enough to decide. The rite asks you to see just as clearly what the deciding ended."

The room is quiet.

Eleven other students in Royal Protocol. Most of them writing steadily. Two aren't — they're looking at the table with the expression of people taking something in through the body rather than the mind.

I know that expression.

I go into the Purge in two weeks. The Purge permits students to kill students. The ones I'll be moving against are enrolled here. Enrollment at Dragonis runs through the Marzana rolls. Which means, precisely and technically, that they are mine.

I've known that. I filed it the way I file things that are true and consequential and don't need spending on until the spending is required. But sitting in this room, in this Tuesday light, with Finlay laying out the formal shape of what it is to end something that was yours to protect — the filing doesn't hold it as well as it usually does.

Finlay is looking at me.

Not constantly. Not in any way the rest of the room would read as aimed. But every fourth or fifth sentence, in the natural sweep of a teacher's eyes around a room, his find me and hold one beat longer than they hold on anyone else. He knows what I'm thinking. He knew before I sat down.

I hold his gaze when it comes to me. I keep writing.

✦ ✦ ✦

The class ends. The others go out with the energy of people who have been still for two hours and are now moving, conversations starting before they reach the door, held concentration letting go all at once.

I stay in my seat.

Finlay doesn't pack up. He goes to his desk, lifts his water glass, and waits with the patience of a man who has been expecting exactly this and arranged his afternoon around it.

"Is there a formal rite," I say, "for killing someone who was your student?"

He sets the glass down. "Yes."

"Tell me."

He crosses the room and takes the chair nearest mine — not behind his desk, not at the front. Beside me, which is the position of a conversation rather than a lesson. "It differs from a standard execution rite in three ways," he says. "First, the relationship is recorded outright. Not only who was executed and on whose authority, but what they were to you before. The record says: this person was known to the ruler in this capacity."

"So it can't be erased."

"So it can't be erased," he agrees. "Second, the ruler writes the acknowledgment herself. No scribes. No advisors. The words are hers. That requirement exists to keep the act from being passed through other hands on its way into the record — to make certain the one who ordered the death is also the one who names it and describes it."

I think about the four fire drake students. What I know of them, which is deliberately not much, because knowing more would make this harder. Their places in the year, the courses they're taking, the year and more they've spent inside this institution. Not much. But enough to know their faces. Enough that when I write the record it will not be an abstraction.

"And the third?"

"The third is the acknowledgment of cost." He looks at me steadily. "The rite requires the ruler to state, plainly and for the record, what was lost. Not as regret. You aren't obliged to regret a necessary decision. As witness. You were the one who saw clearly enough to act, so you are the one who must also see clearly what the acting cost. Both together."

The room is very quiet.