By the time Astor arrived, all twelve places were full.
Professor Astor wore a coat the color of dark wine and had a Mark uncovered on the back of his right hand. He didn’t waste time with introductions. He sat at the head of the oval table and looked once around the room.
His gaze stopped on me.
“Miss Verita,” he said.
Every pen in the room paused.
Except Cosima’s.
“Parallax. What is it?”
The word landed without context, like something breakable set too close to the edge.
A boy two seats down from me looked at his tag instead of at Astor. The girl beside him put her hand over the Mark on her wrist. Across the table, someone stopped breathing through their nose.
So the word meant something.
Or the fact that he had given it to me did.
I looked across the table at Cosima.
She studiously avoided looking at me.
So I gave Astor the answer she had given me.
“What are we measuring against?”
Astor stared at me for five beats with raised brows.
Then he nodded and said, “Good.”
He turned to the room.
“Most failures in Mark-reading begin with the observer mistaking position for truth. A Mark observed from one angle may appear unstable. From another, responsive. From a third, dangerous. The Mark has not changed. The observer has.”
My pen stopped as I considered that.
Across the table, Cosima’s did too.
Astor continued.
“The Council does not ask whether an observer has moved. The Council asks what the observer saw. This is efficient. It is also incomplete.”
Astor’s Mark darkened once on the back of his hand.
“Miss Verita.”
Of course he called on me again.
I met his gaze.
“If three observers report three different readings of the same Mark, which report is correct?”
The room went so quiet my breathing sounded offensive in the silence.
Cosima avoided looking at me with great care.
