Page 107 of Legacy Elite

"There is no procedure," Wren says at one point, "because there was never a circumstance."

Then property.

That's the one that changes the temperature.

Somebody uses the phrase the estate. Somebody else says the Luftis charter. Somebody else says something about instruments of transfer being examined and I watch Falken's jaw go tight, because that's his academy, and the deeds under it are apparently now a question rather than a fact.

"Nobody is proposing," Falken says, "that a student is about to take possession of an academy."

"I'm not proposing anything," a woman from the legal office says. "I'm telling you the review will have to look at the chain, and I'd rather say that here than have it discovered in a newspaper."

And then somebody halfway down the table says:

"Given the historical circumstances, I'd suggest Miss Miller's access to certain academy holdings be restricted until the review—"

"No," Caspian says.

It's the first thing he's said in twenty minutes and it lands like a book on a desk.

"Councillor Ardent—"

"Miss Miller's ancestry is under consideration," he says. "Miss Miller is not. She's a second-year student. She goes to class. If we begin restricting her access to buildings on the basis of a legal review she didn't request and hasn't benefited from, we are not being cautious, we are punishing a young woman for the content of a records office." He turns his hand over. "And we'll look ridiculous doing it."

"There is a historical dimension—"

"There's a historical dimension to all four Houses and I would strongly advise against opening that competition," Caspian says.

Somebody laughs. The rest do not.

"There is also," a man near Wren says carefully, "the question of the Betrayal. If the Fourth House is to be restored in any form, this Council will have to address the fact that it was destroyed for—"

"For something that happened before every person at this table was born," Caspian says. "Miss Miller wasn't consulted. Whatever her ancestors did or didn't do, she has spent her entire life in another country believing she was human. If we're going to hold her to account for a war, we should at least have the decency to do it after lunch."

"Councillor—"

"I'm not arguing for restoration," Caspian says, and now he does turn slightly toward me, and there's nothing performative in it at all. "I want that on the record too, Miss Miller, because you should know exactly where I am. I think this Council should move extremely slowly. I think two centuries of settled arrangements deserve more than a fortnight's thought, and I think anyone who tells you they know how this ends is selling you something." He sits back. "I simply don't think slowly means unkindly."

Faris shuts her folder.

"May I."

"Please."

"The politics is currently running about forty years ahead of the evidence," Faris says. "We have established descent. We have not reconstructed two centuries of law, and half the assertions made in this room in the last hour have been historical claims delivered with the confidence of settled fact." She looks around the table without hurrying. "I have spent three months in an archive. I can tell you what a clerk wrote in a ledger. I cannot tell you what the Council of that period intended, because that is not written down anywhere, and I would be obliged if people would stop telling me that it is."

And I hate this. I genuinely hate this.

Because Celeste Faris is now the most sensible person in the room, and I would like that entered into the historical record and then sealed for two hundred years.

"If Miss Miller intends to pursue—"

"I haven't said I intend to pursue anything."

Everyone looks at me.

It's the first thing I've said since I sat down.

"Sorry," I say. "Go on. You were about to decide what I intend to do."