Page 130 of Legacy Elite

"All that work hiding a little girl," I say. "Generations of people being extremely careful. And then I turn up and blow it all up in about four seconds."

"Miss Miller—"

"No, genuinely. I'd like to apologize to the person who saved a little girl."

Faris makes a sound that in a lesser woman would have been a laugh.

"Who was that woman that got her out?"

Hess doesn't answer.

"Six years old. Everyone in her house is dead and somebody puts her in a cart." I look round the table. "Who?"

"We don't know."

"The woman on the registration—"

"Is in that registry three times, and then she isn't. No burial under that name or any other." There's real frustration in it. "She may be the person who saved that child. She may be the fourth person who was handed a child at a crossroads and told to keep walking. There's no way to tell."

"I don’t understand." I put my finger on the tithe roll. "If the Fourth House were that bad — if this was the family everyone was so relieved to be rid of that somebody went out with a chisel and took the crest off their fence posts — then who bothered to keep one of their children alive?"

Faris takes her glasses off, which is how I know she's actually going to engage.

"You're asking a good question," she says. "But it could be any of a number of reasons, a servant who loved that child and had a large family of her own to draw on. A neighbor with an obligation nobody wrote down." She folds up the glasses on the table. "Or a great many people who thought that House deserved every single thing it got, and still could not bring themselves to be part of killing a six-year-old."

They start packing up at six.

Falken has something at seven. Hess has a train to catch. Faris takes her folder and her glasses.

Jon doesn't leave.

He's got the chronology open in front of him, wolf dates against parish dates, and he's been comparing the two for the last ten minutes.

"Jon."

"Mm."

"How long are we going to keep doing this?"

He goes still.

He doesn't look up straight away, and when he does, everything about him is tense.

"Doing what?"

"Don't."

"Jessica—"

"Don't do that." I close the photographs. "Don't ask me doing what like there's an actual question in it."

Jon puts the pen down.

"It's late," he says. "We can finish the chronology tomorrow, and I think it would be better if—"

"Oh my God. You're doing it now."

"I'm not doing anything."