Chapter 14 CHAPTER FOURTEEN: What Sera Said
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: What Sera Said
I found her in the east stairwell.
Not by accident. I had a feeling, after two weeks of watching how Sera moved through this academy without anyone noticing her, that she preferred the spaces most students avoided. The east stairwell was cold, poorly lit, and had a broken step on the second landing that made it inconvenient enough that most people took the other stairs.
She was sitting on the third step from the top with a small book open on her knee.
She did not look up when I came through the door.
"Vayne invited you to the upper session," she said.
"Yes," I said.
"I know." She turned a page. "I heard."
I sat down on the step below her. "Is that a problem?"
She was quiet for a moment. "It depends on who else heard."
I thought about that. "You think Thane has people watching the training sessions."
"I think Thane has people watching everything," Sera said. "She has been running this institution for eleven years. She did not do that by missing things." She finally looked up from her book. "The question is whether Vayne invited you on her own or whether someone suggested it to her."
"You think Vayne is one of Thane's people?"
"No," Sera said. "I think Vayne is exactly what she looks like. A hard instructor who recognizes something worth paying attention to." She looked at me directly. "Which is its own problem. Because Thane is also watching for students worth paying attention to."
I understood what she was saying.
Getting noticed by Proctor Vayne was good for my plan. It put me in the same training space as Sable. It gave me a reason to be somewhere I was not supposed to be that could not be questioned.
But getting noticed in general was dangerous. Because the same quality that drew Vayne's attention would draw Thane's.
"What did Sable do when the session ended?" Sera asked.
"He looked at me," I said. "He did not say anything. But he was still watching when I left."
She nodded slowly. "His core is responding to yours. I have been able to feel it from across the courtyard when you are both outside. Your Aether signature is unusual enough that a sensitive reader would feel it even at a distance." She paused. "Thane will feel it too, if she is close enough."
"Then I need to move faster than I planned," I said.
"Yes and no," Sera said. She closed the book. "Moving too fast with Sable will break it. He does not open to people quickly. If you push, he will pull back and you will lose the ground you made today." She looked at her hands. "But you also cannot wait for him to come to you on his own timeline. Three months is not enough of a margin."
"So I find the middle," I said.
"You find reasons to be near him that feel natural. Not forced. Let him ask the questions." She looked up. "He will ask them. What happened in that ring today left a mark on him. He is going to want to understand it and he will not be able to stop himself from looking for the answer."
That matched what I had read from his expression when he walked away.
"What about the archive?" I said.
She went still.
"What about it?" she said, carefully.
"Third floor. East corridor. Restricted. Sable avoids that corridor. I have been wondering why."
She looked at me for a moment longer than was comfortable. "How did you notice that?"
"I notice things," I said.
She looked at her book. Then back at me. "The archive contains records. Core assessment histories, student files going back forty years. Bloodline documentation." She was choosing her words. "Thane keeps certain records there that are not part of the official academy system."
"Records of the students she selected," I said.
"Records of all of them. What she did to them. What happened after." Her voice was flat and even. "Sable's full file is in there. His parents' files. His grandparents. Everything she changed and everything she built." She looked at the broken step below us. "He found out about the corridor two years before he came here. He does not know what is inside. He just knows something about it unsettles him and he has learned to stay away from things that do that."
"He senses something," I said.
"His core senses something," she said. "He does not know what to do with the information yet."
I thought about a boy who was rank one in this entire academy, built specifically to be sensitive and powerful, who had been walking past a corridor for two weeks because something deep in him said stay away and he listened without understanding why.
He was already protecting himself. He just did not know what from.
"I am going to the upper session tomorrow," I said.
"I know," she said.
"If Thane has people watching, this accelerates everything."
"Yes," she said. "It does."
She opened her book again. That was the end of the conversation. I had learned that about Sera. When she was done, she was done, and pressing further never produced anything useful.
I went back down the stairwell.
At the bottom, standing in the corridor with his arms crossed and his expression somewhere between worried and annoyed, was Ren.
"You said later," he said.
"This is later," I said.
"Zane."
I looked at him. He was not asking because he was nosy. He was asking because he was my friend, which was a word I still was not entirely sure how to carry, and he could see that something was moving around me that he could not fully see yet and it was making him worried in the specific way that loyal people get worried when they cannot help.
I thought about it.
"There is someone in this academy," I said, "who is a danger to at least one student here. I am trying to stop it before it goes further."
He looked at me for a long moment.
"Which student?" he said.
"Sable Voss," I said.
He stared at me.
"The one ranked first," he said.
"Yes," I said.
He was quiet. Then he said, very carefully, "You have been here two weeks."
"I know," I said.
He let out a breath. "What do you need from me?"
That was Ren.
Not: why. Not: are you sure. Just: what do you need.
"Stay close," I said. "And watch the staff."