“Juno is generally right.”
“And Hale?”
“Hale is proof they failed to keep one of their own Marks quiet.”
For a second I saw Hale exactly as the Council would: not a man, not an instructor, but a lock someone had broken open.
“I didn’t choose that.”
“They do not need you to have chosen it,” Cosima said. “They need witnesses to see it.”
The notebook blurred for a moment. I blinked until the last words became words again.
Article Seven.
I’d never heard the phrase before, and I knew immediately that was not an accident.
I pointed to the word. “Tell me what that is.”
Cosima went still.
“Article Seven is not part of the formal,” she said. “It is what they can open if the formal fails.”
“Open?”
“Authority leaves ordinary school procedure. Quill no longer has to make his argument to students, instructors, or polite witnesses. He makes it to the Council.”
My mouth had gone dry.
“And the Council does what?”
“Decides whether public choice has become too dangerous to allow.”
Delphine at the west door.
My mother’s name in a book that should not have existed.
My Mark splitting itself into three bright accusations in a room full of people.
“Containment.”
Cosima didn’t soften it.
“Exactly.”
“How do they get there?”
“A question first.”
Morning light thinned across the window behind her, turning the glass paler.
“Linden will ask whether your refusal presents a risk to the school and society.”
“And Quill will answer.”
“Quill will look to Aldric.”
Aldric’s voice returned to me:Welcome to Ring One, Verita.
