Page 169 of Zenith Court

“The provisions run to four pages. You asked for the declaration.”

Caspian stood beside me with his bare wrists visible. “You read the order that sent us to the Tower.”

“I did.”

“Does it strike you as strange to read this one in the same voice?”

“I read what was put before me then,” Linden said. “This was put before me now.” He gathered the pages and tapped their edges against the table. “Where does the second copy belong?”

Cosima looked toward me. I looked at the canvas over the basin.

“Put Astra Verita on one,” I said. “Put the Court’s old name on the other. Anyone searching either should find what ended here.”

Linden wrote both headings and left to make the copies himself.

The three lines at my wrist had remained warm through the reading. I rested my hand on my knee and did not reach through them for warning.

When Linden cleared the table, the woman we had known as the administrator came forward. Her gray dress had been mended at one cuff. She carried no folder.

Cosima dipped her pen. “Name for the charter?”

“Ravenna.”

Cosima waited.

“I have answered to administrator and gray woman long enough,” she said. “Ravenna is the name my mother gave me. Use it.”

Cosima wrote it across the first blank line. “Title?”

Ravenna watched the ink soak into the page. Her fingers flexed once at her sides. Cosima sanded the line, blew it clean, and turned the charter so Ravenna could see her name before anything else was added beneath it. The old watch ledger lay beside her with all five names still entered.

“Not First Chair.” Ravenna glanced at the raised seat behind the table. “Lower it or find me another.”

Two carpenters unbolted the platform before midday. Each iron pin came free with a crack that carried to the upper gallery. They stacked the boards against the wall for reuse, and Ravenna sat level with the witnesses while sawdust still showed pale against the dark floor.

The charter required a founding principle. Cosima read the empty line aloud.

Ravenna looked around the tiers. “The witnesses determine what they saw.”

“Anything else?” Cosima asked.

“Everything else is procedure.”

Cosima wrote the sentence. Ravenna underlined it once.

The circle heard Tormund first.

She entered without cords, escort, or ceremonial coat. Her hair had been cut blunt beneath her jaw. She took the plain chair opposite Ravenna and placed both hands on its arms.

Ravenna asked, “Why did you build the lock?”

“Because it was offered to me,” Tormund said. “Taking it was easier than what refusal cost the last woman who tried.”

“Are you sorry?”

Tormund looked at me before she answered. “I don’t know yet.”

Tormund’s hands tightened on the chair arms, but she added nothing.