Chapter 45 CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE: What Lysa Knows
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE: What Lysa Knows
I stayed in her room for another hour.
Not to talk about the investigation or the board of inquiry or Thane. We had covered enough of that for one morning. I stayed because I had told her I would tell her what I needed, and that required me to understand first what she actually knew about this building.
It turned out to be more than I expected.
Lysa Crane had been at Ironspire for exactly as long as we had. Entry day was the same for all first-year students. But where most students spent their first weeks finding routines and adjusting to the ranking system, Lysa had been mapping.
She had not done it because she suspected anything specifically. She had done it because she was the kind of person who processed new environments by understanding their structure. She read floor plans. She noted where doors were. She paid attention to who moved through which corridors at which times.
She had never told anyone because it seemed like a strange thing to admit.
But she had noticed things.
She knew about the east corridor avoidance pattern before Sable brought it up. She had seen him take the long way around six times and had wondered but not acted on the wondering.
She had noticed Fenn.
Not by name. She had not known Fenn's name until I told her. But she had noted a woman in a grey coat who moved through the building in ways that did not match any staff role she could identify. Not maintenance. Not teaching. Not administrative in any standard pattern.
She had noted the timing of Thane's sub-level visits because the pattern disrupted the Aether density in the lower building in a way she could feel from two floors up.
She had been feeling these things and storing them and had no framework to understand what they meant.
Until now.
I listened to all of it and thought about what it added.
"The grey coat woman," I said. "Fenn. You saw her in the building after the evacuation night."
"Three times," Lysa said. "After the governance team arrived. She was still moving through the building. Not through the main corridors. Through the service passages."
I went very still.
"She was still here," I said.
"Yes," Lysa said. "I assumed she was staff who had been cleared by the governance team. She moved like someone who knew exactly where she was going and had permission to be there."
But Fenn had stepped aside on the west stairwell. She had given me the metal case. She had let us pass.
The governance hold covered all staff. No one was to leave the academy grounds pending interview.
If Fenn was still in the building moving through service passages, it meant one of two things.
Either the governance team had cleared her and she was cooperating with the investigation.
Or she had never actually left. She had handed me the case, let us pass, and then disappeared into the building's maintenance routes rather than going out through the gate.
Which meant she might still be working for Thane.
"When was the last time you saw her," I said.
Lysa thought.
"Yesterday evening," she said. "Near the administrative block. Service corridor entrance, east side."
The administrative block was where the secured suite was. Where Thane was being held.
I stood up.
"I need to tell Calloway," I said.
"Is it important?" Lysa said.
"It is potentially very important," I said. "If Fenn has been inside this building since the night of the evacuation and the governance team does not know her movements, then there may be a communication channel between her and Thane that is not being monitored."
Lysa looked at me.
"They could be coordinating," she said. "The procedural challenge strategy. Thane could be directing it from the secured suite through Fenn."
"Yes," I said.
She stood up too.
"I am coming with you," she said.
"You do not have to," I said.
"I saw Fenn three times," she said. "I can give Calloway specific observations. Times, locations, directions of movement. You cannot give her that from secondhand." She looked at me steadily. "I told you I wanted to help. This is help."
She was right.
We found Calloway in the main meeting room she had set up as her working headquarters.
Calloway looked at Lysa when we came in. Then at me. She read something in our expressions.
"Sit down," she said.
We sat.
Lysa gave her account. She was precise and organized. Times and locations without decoration, in the order they happened. Calloway wrote without interrupting.
When Lysa finished, Calloway looked at her notes.
"Fenn was interviewed on day two of the investigation," she said. "She claimed she had returned to the building after reaching Crestfall because she believed she had left personal items in her residential quarters. She was cleared to retrieve them and was noted as having departed through the main gate on day two at the fourth hour."
Lysa looked at me.
"The service corridor near the administrative block is not accessible from the residential quarters," I said. "They are on opposite ends of the building."
"No," Calloway said. "It is not." She stood up and went to the wall where she had posted a building map. She studied it for a moment. Then she put a mark at the administrative block. Then at the residential quarters. Then she traced a route between them.
The route did not cross the service corridor.
"She lied to us," Calloway said. Quietly. Factually.
"She has been in the building since day two," I said. "Moving through service passages. Near the administrative block." I looked at Calloway. "Thane is in a secured suite in the administrative block."
Calloway closed her folder.
She looked at Lysa.
"How specific is your memory of the times and locations," she said.
"Exact," Lysa said.
Calloway nodded.
She picked up her communication device and sent a message to her team.
Then she looked at both of us.
"This changes the investigation," she said. "If Fenn has been acting as a relay, everything Thane has submitted through official channels needs to be re-examined for coordinated framing." She looked at me specifically. "The procedural challenge documents she filed three days ago. The formal response to the suspension. All of it."
"They were building the challenge together from inside the building," I said.
"Yes," Calloway said. "That is what it looks like."
She was already moving.
We had given her something she had not had before.
And somewhere in the secured suite at the end of the administrative block, Thane was about to find out that the channel she had been counting on had just been identified.
I looked at Lysa.
She was watching Calloway work with an expression that was not quite relief and not quite satisfaction.
Something between the two.
Something that looked like a person who had been holding information in a quiet room for weeks and had finally found the right place to put it down.