Page 158 of Legacy Elite

They vote at twenty past eleven and it takes four minutes.

That's the part nobody warns you about. Three weeks of framework and objection and the redaction authority remains unresolved, and then Wren says "We'll take it," and hands go up, and a woman at the end of the table counts them, and it's done in less time than it takes to boil a kettle.

"The motion carries," Wren says. "Miss Miller."

I stand up too fast and my chair makes a noise.

“Controlled access is granted to the surviving Fourth House collection. Material concerning the House and the events of the war will be made available to you. Anything involving protected third-party records will require separate review.”

“How long?”

“Long enough that you're going to hate me.”

“I already do.”

Wren ignores that. “You will work in the archive under supervision. Nothing leaves the room. No photographs, no copies, and no one accompanies you who hasn't been separately cleared by the Council.”

“So I'm doing this alone.”

“You asked for access, Miss Miller. The Council gave it to you. I would suggest not testing how far that generosity extends.”

"Fine."

"And the collection stays where it is. It isn't coming to Luftis. You go to it."

"When?"

Wren looks at the woman from the legal office, who checks something.

"Thursday," she says. "Nine o'clock."

Thursday.

Thursday.

I sit back down, because standing has stopped being an option.

Caspian finds me in the corridor afterwards with his coat over his arm.

"Congratulations."

"Thank you. Genuinely."

"Don't thank me. I've been arguing for two centuries of caution since April and I'll go on arguing for it — you may find me extremely irritating by summer." He shrugs. "That one was simply easy. Some questions are."

Then he wishes me luck and goes.

Thursday. Nine o'clock.

I get all the way across the courtyard before it actually lands, and then I have to stop in the middle of it like an idiot with my bag on my shoulder.

Because for eight months everybody has been telling me about my family.

Faris told me. The histories told me. Hess told me, in photographs of documents written by people whose job was to record the winning side of an argument. Twelve people in a room told me what my blood means and what it might entitle me to and what it makes other people nervous about.

And on Thursday morning at nine o'clock I get to sit in a room and read what they wrote.

The girl who was six years old. Whatever's left of her family. The years before the war, maybe even the war itself.