Page 48 of His Human Believer

He looks around the chamber. “If Coalstone says this Skyggjar came out of a canopy, then it came out of a canopy. My office will take the emergency listing this morning.”

He sits down.

And then another Fellow stands.

I do not expect this.

She is from comparative biology and we have disagreed in print four separate times, twice sharply, but she stands up and says that the acoustic reference protocol described in this report is the most rigorous field methodology she has seen presented in this chamber in a decade.

And then a male from the southern faculty stands and compliments the weight of my varied evidence.

And then somebody else.

I stand in a chamber I have been dismissed in for twenty years, covered in dried mud, and beings keep standing up to promote my work, none are in disagreement.

Finally, they agree it is time to vote on my motions. And all three carry.

The session breaks. Tablets are gathered. Beings begin moving toward the doors.

“One further matter,” I say.

The chamber stops and they turn back and sit back down.

“I request formal release from the Vow of the Empty Hearth, with cause. The vow is a protective custom for a scholar investigating the Hidden One. The investigation is concluded. The finding is entered. It was sworn to protect the integrity of a paper which no longer requires protecting.”

I keep my voice entirely level.

“It is moot.”

The Presiding Fellow looks at the record, and then at me. “You have ten months of your term remaining,” she says. “You could simply serve it out and wait for it to lapse.”

“I could.”

“Then why request release this morning, Dr. Coalstone?”

I have presented in this chamber eleven different times over the years. I have never once disclosed a personal fact about myself to any being in this room, because I did not have any that would interest them and because a commoner does not offer the nobility any ammunition.

Two hundred beings are waiting.

“Because I have recently met a human female I want as my bound,” I admit.

The silence is enormous.

And then somebody laughs — not unkindly, a startled sort of laugh — and then somebody else does, and the Presiding Fellow puts a claw over her mouth and fails entirely to conceal what her face is doing. “Granted,” she says. “Entered and witnessed. Release effective immediately.”

Bane catches me at the doors.

He is grinning like a fool and he puts one claw on my shoulder. “I have been telling you that you were wrong about one thing, Smoky, and you have never once believed me about any of it⁠—”

“Bane.”

“I am delighted to be proved right. And I am looking forward to working with you on how to best preserve this creature’s anonymity while also learning a bit about it at the same time.” He is genuinely, enormously delighted. “And also, you have found a mate? And she is human? Are you going to tell me anything about this mystery female?”

I chuckle and walk with my friend down the hallway, telling him the story of how I met Margaret Reyes.

And I also ask for help in planning my Bound Declaration Ceremony.

Chapter Fifteen