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The Warden looked down.

I stood at the foot of the dais with my bandaged hands clenched at my sides and watched Oda rest one hand on the closed Charter.

She had faced the Council on its own ground and used the law it claimed to uphold against it. Whatever happened next, she had stopped Aldric from taking me.

For now, that was enough.

As the envoys began to rise, Oda caught my eye. The corner of her stern little mouth shifted, almost too slightly to notice, and then she turned back to the Council.

The moment the envoys were gone, I ran to the infirmary.

It occupied the bottom floor of the west tower, a long whitewashed room lined with iron beds and tall windows looking out over the sea. Gray afternoon light filled the room, and the air smelled sharply of carbolic beneath the lavender someone had tried to use to soften it.

Silas was in the last bed by the window, propped against several pillows. His stitched arm rested in a sling, there was a dressing at his hairline, and bruises had spread across his bare chest in ugly shades of purple and green. In his good hand, he held a stiff sheet of cream-colored paper.

A black wax seal had been pressed into the bottom.

The owl of the Flight.

Oda's seal.

Silas wasn't reading the paper when I came in. He was simply staring at it, his thumb resting along one edge as though he still wasn't entirely sure it belonged to him.

He looked up when he heard me, and something in his expression stopped me halfway down the room.

"She sent it down," he said quietly. "Before she went up to the Hall. Before she'd even finished dealing with the Council."

He looked at the paper again.

"Recertified under the authority of the Headmistress and the Elder of the Flight. All conditions of probation lifted."

He read the last words more slowly.

"All conditions."

I went to him and sat on the edge of the bed. The iron frame gave a protesting creak beneath our weight.

"I was nineteen when I signed their first paper," he said. "I barely read it. The recruiting officer bought me a pint and told me I'd be protecting people." He turned the certificate over carefully in his hand. "Eight years. Six in the squads, then two locked up. The whole time, someone else decided where I went and what I was allowed to be." He was quiet for a few seconds. "I don't think I know what comes next when nobody gets to decide that for you."

"You get to find out," I said.

He looked at me then, and his brown eyes filled before he could stop them. He didn't turn away or pretend it wasn't happening.

I put my arms around his neck, careful of the sling, and he leaned into me, resting his face against my shoulder. We stayed that way for a while, neither of us saying anything.

Eventually he spoke into my sweater.

"Tonight." His voice had gone rough. "After the party. After everything settles down. I'm taking you somewhere."

I leaned back enough to look at him. "Where?"

He lifted his head, and for once there was something almost playful in his expression.

"Somewhere that's owed you," said Silas Thorne.

The envoys' black launch left at noon.

Aldric Vance stood at the rail while the Enforcers filed down the three hundred and eleven steps behind him and boarded in silence. By then, almost everyone on Ironmoor had gathered along the walls to watch.