Page 117 of Legacy Ascended

"That's what I'd like to know."

Nothing in the copies we have answers that. So Jon is going through every reference to the document while I make a list of what we need the archive to produce: the original intake record, anything attached to it, and anything showing what happened to the document after it left Fourth House hands.

"This man," Jon says, "should have been stopped."

"Which man?"

"Whoever numbered these. He was a menace. I've now read the same reference three times and got a different number each time."

"Read them all out. I'll write down the three and we'll average them."

"That is not how history works."

"It's how my list works."

He makes a sound that isn't quite a laugh and keeps reading, and I go back to the column I've been pretending to check for a while now.

It's warm in here with the door shut, and at some point he pushes his sleeves up without thinking about it. After that, concentrating gets considerably harder.

I read the same line three times and could not tell you a single word of it.

"You're not writing anything," Jon says.

"I'm absorbing."

"You're absorbing the second entry. You've been absorbing it since I sat down."

"It's a demanding entry."

He looks up. There's a flicker at the side of his mouth.

"If you'd like me to put my sleeves back down," he says, "you have only to ask."

"Don't you dare."

"That's what I thought."

He goes back to work. So do I. It lasts about two minutes.

Then he loses his place. I watch it happen — his finger goes back up the column, then up again, then he stops and sets his pen down on the table exactly parallel to the edge of the page.

"Jon."

"Give me a moment."

"How long a moment?"

"That," he says, "is an extremely unkind question."

He shifts in the chair, then does it again.

"I need to stand."

He stands.

Oh.

He turns toward the shelf about two seconds too late.