Chapter 62: Violet?
Results posting was in the evening.
The board went up at the second bell and the corridor was not built for the number of people who needed to stand in it simultaneously. We arrived early enough to get close.
I heard my name before I reached the board.
Twice, in close succession. House Amagi. Then once more, attached to something lower that I did not catch the beginning of.
I found my name in the first column.
A-Class. All Elements Affinity confirmed. Advanced Practical Assessment recommended.
"That’s him." A student to my left, not lowering his voice. "The Amagi heir."
"The wasted heir."
A pause.
"Apparently not anymore."
I stepped back from the board.
Make it count, Sebastian had said.
I stood in a corridor full of people doing exactly what I had just done and decided the instruction had been received.
To my right, three students were looking at a name in the second column. One said quietly, "If Valentine is A-Class the curve for the practical is going to be steep." The other two said nothing.
I turned to find Tessira.
Someone collided with me from the left.
Books. The physical impact was minimal but they hit the floor and spread across the stone. I went down on one knee, got upright, and turned.
She was already crouching. Dark hair, straight across the back. Not looking up yet.
She stood and looked at me.
Her expression did not apologize.
"Watch where you stop," she said.
She took the books I was already holding without asking and turned to go.
From further down the corridor, cutting through the crowd noise:
"Violet, we are getting late."
I went still.
The girl was already moving toward the voice, books under her arm, one open to a page dense with margin notes.
She did not look back.
"Are you all right."
Tessira. Watching my face, not the crowd.
"Fine," I said.
She looked at the corridor where the crowd had closed, then back at me.
The name was common. There was nothing in that beyond coincidence.
I told myself this the way I told myself things I was not finished thinking about.
"A-Class," Tessira said. "Both of us. Different tracks, same bracket." A pause. "There were three students admitted under unregistered family names this intake. No house affiliation. One placed A-Class in the general track."
I looked at her.
"Anastasia received a hand-delivered letter from the head of the assessment division," she said, in the same tone.
Anastasia was near the corridor entrance, holding the letter open, reading the courtyard through the window.
I started toward her.
In a room that did not appear on any map given to first-year students, four faculty members sat with a report between them.
The Combat Director had read it three times.
The Magic Analysis Professor had read it once and set it down.
"Hell’s Fire changing color is a documentation error," the Combat Director said. "The crystal caught interference."
"The isolation wards run throughout the session," the Magic Analysis Professor said. "Interference does not reach the crystal."
"Students have surprised the crystal before."
"Not like this." She looked at the report. "Hell’s Fire burns black. His was blue. That is not a variance. That is a different property entirely."
The Vice Dean had not spoken. She stood at the window, which showed the first-year dormitory across the courtyard, lights coming on in sequence as students returned from the board.
"The unclassified companion registration," she said. "The assessment division’s provisional classification."
"Ancient Entity, Academic Status Pending," the junior examiner said from the door. "The head of the division is requesting a meeting."
Silence.
"We admitted one anomaly," the Vice Dean said, to the window. "This is the second."
She turned from the window.
"Run the verification again. Full spectrum. And find out who was in the faculty balcony this morning when the blue flame appeared, because someone stopped walking and I want to know who."
Nobody argued with that.
The Combat Director looked at the report.
"The margin note," he said. "In the daemon biology section. The Sanguine Compact attribution."
"What about it," the Magic Analysis Professor said.
"He wrote that the original authorship predates Veritas by two centuries. And that attribution requires revision."
The room was quiet.
"The original authorship does predate Veritas by two centuries," the Magic Analysis Professor said. "We know this because we have the pre-classification records in the restricted basement archive. That information is not available in the student materials."
Another silence.
"How does a first-year student from a house with no carrier history," the Combat Director said, "know what is in the restricted archive."
Nobody answered.
The report stayed on the table.
The lights in the first-year dormitory kept coming on, one by one, and the corridor below was still moving with students carrying the results of three days of examination back to their rooms, and somewhere in that building a name had passed through a crowded corridor and made someone go still.
The Vice Dean looked at the window for a long time after the others had gone.
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