Page 103 of Legacy Ascended

"None of them."

"Then—"

"None of them is wrong, Jessica. I'm not going to stand here and pretend you've lost an argument. You haven't. I agree with all four and I'd agree with them in front of the Council if anybody asked me."

"Then let me go."

"No."

There's a stretch of quiet where the building does its noises.

"You told two hundred of us that a name earns nothing here," I say. "First assembly. Your family name may have opened the gate, it will not earn you a single Merit Mark. I nearly stood up and cheered. It was the first time in my life anyone in authority said the thing I'd always thought was true."

"I remember saying it."

"Did you mean it?"

"That sentence was a promise that your name would never be a credit here. It was never a promise it couldn't be a cost."

"That's a distinction."

"It's the correct distinction, and you'd make it yourself if it were happening to somebody else."

Which is the worst thing he could have said.

"Can I take it?" I ask. "The finding. To the Council. To Wren."

"Yes. Formally, through the panel, and I'll sign the transmittal myself and I won't advise against it." He stops in front of me. "And I'll tell you what will happen, because you'll find out anyway. Wren will refer it to the security review. The security review will ask Voss whether he stands by his finding. He'll say yes, because he does, because it's true. And by the time it comes back to this desk, the block will be over."

"So it's a no that takes long enough to look like a process."

"It's a no," Falken says. "The process is real and it will change nothing. You can have it if you want it. I'd rather you spent the time on something else, and that's advice, not an instruction, and you can ignore it."

"I want the refusal in writing," I say. "Not the panel's minute. A document with a reason in it. That I wasn't withdrawn for conduct, or capability, or attendance, or my marks. That the academy removed a student from field training because a third party demonstrated the ability to reach her, and that no finding was made against her."

Falken goes back around the desk, opens the second drawer, and takes out a single page.

He'd already written it.

I stand there and look at it on the blotter and don't pick it up, because if I pick it up I've accepted it, and because I am suddenly so angry that my ears have gone hot.

"When did you write that?"

"Last night."

"Why?"

"Because I've had you in this office before," Falken says, "and on every occasion you've asked for something to be put in writing, and I've come to regard it as one of the more reliable features of my working life." He turns it toward me. "Read it before you decide whether you're insulted. If it's wrong, I'll change it."

I read it.

It's four sentences and there's nothing in it I'd take out.

I pick it up.

So here's what I have, at the end of it.

I have Leadership and Governance on the second floor of the history building. I have Diplomacy and Community. I have an escort, a legal office, a communications briefing, and a line on a schedule that says TBC — Chancellor's office.