Chapter 104 — Wrong Questions

Chapter 104: Chapter 104 — Wrong Questions

~ Raven ~

Raven did not come closer.

She stayed by the door with her bag hanging from one shoulder, because she had already lost far more of the afternoon to this room than she intended, and every additional minute was another minute she was not in the library.

"Rivers."

"I heard you."

Berry tapped the board twice beside the two chalk sigils still sitting there.

"You can register."

Raven waited.

Of course there was more.

"Don’t misunderstand what happened here." Berry turned toward her. "You have unusually good inscription aptitude. Your hand follows patterns very well. That does not mean you know what you’re doing."

"I’m aware."

"No, you’re not. If you were, you’d be more concerned."

Berry picked up the cloth and wiped one of Raven’s sigils from the board.

"You don’t understand anchors. You can’t read essence flow. You don’t know how to judge tolerance on a living bearer, and if two inscriptions began conflicting under your fingers, you wouldn’t know until something went wrong."

Raven’s grip loosened slightly on her bag strap.

"A poor writer draws badly and the sigil fails," Berry continued. "A talented writer with no theory draws beautifully, puts the right pattern on the wrong body, and somebody spends the next year learning how to walk again."

Well....That did sound slightly more concerning.

"So you’ll register," Berry said. "And I’ll be watching your progress personally until you understand the difference between reproducing a sigil and knowing when it should be used."

Wonderful.

That bright, unpleasant interest was still sitting behind Berry’s eyes. It had been there since Raven finished the second sigil, and apparently it intended to remain there.

Raven had just begun considering whether irregular attendance might solve the problem when she remembered Berry also taught first-year Sigil Theory.

Twice a week.

So that’s the entire term ruined, then.

"Fine."

"Good. You can—"

"You still haven’t answered me."

Cassian had not moved from Berry’s desk.

The change in Berry was immediate. The sharp interest vanished from her face and irritation took its place.

"Heir Blade."

"You’ve had four days."

"I’ve had three days of you."

"You’ve been avoiding me."

Cassian said it with the same mildness someone might use to comment on rain.

Berry’s jaw shifted.

"And yet you’ve managed to find me."

"No. It hasn’t worked."

Raven’s eyebrow lifted.

Cassian shifted his weight and settled more comfortably against the edge of the desk, making it very clear that he had nowhere else to be.

Berry looked at him.

He looked back.

Raven adjusted the strap on her shoulder.

Whatever strange war the two of them were fighting had nothing to do with her.

"Right. Well, if you don’t need me—"

"The Founders’ Ward," Cassian said.

Raven closed her mouth.

"Were you part of the final inspection?" Cassian asked.

Berry folded her arms. "Of course I was."

"The secondary working they found afterward. Could someone with ordinary inscription training have laid it?"

"No."

"Could they have damaged an anchor and concealed the damage? Same result."

"No."

"Why?"

Berry made a short, impatient sound.

"Because that isn’t what happened. The second working wasn’t placed on top of the Ward. It was built beneath the original construction and threaded through channels that were already there. The Ward continued reading as sound because, until the second working activated, it was."

Raven frowned.

The Headmaster had already told her the Ward had passed every ordinary review and the Hunt certification.

What she had never explained was who had actually performed them.

"Access," Cassian said. "Would whoever did it have needed to reach the anchors themselves?"

"Yes."

"Not simply access to the Hunt grounds."

"Not remotely." Berry’s answers were getting shorter. "They would have needed time with the construction. Enough to work into the existing channels without visibly disturbing them."

"And knowledge of how Valerius inspects the Ward."

Berry paused.

It wasn’t a long pause.

It was still the first one Cassian had managed to get out of her.

"...Yes."

"Why?"

"You might hide something from one inspection without knowing what the inspectors are looking for," Berry said. "You do not hide it from every stage. If that working survived all of them, whoever built it either knew how each inspection worked or was extraordinarily lucky."

Neither of them seemed to believe in luck.

Raven’s attention had left the door completely now.

Cassian wasn’t asking questions because he was curious.

He was working through something.

"The Hunt certification," he said. "How does it differ from the regular reviews?"

Berry watched him for a moment before finally moving around the desk and sitting against its edge.

"The twice-yearly reviews are broad. Several offices are involved. Plenty of people sign them, and most of those people never touch an active anchor. The final Hunt certification is different. By then the structure has already been accepted as sound. Nobody is rebuilding or re-proving it."

"How many people?"

"Few enough that every name matters."

Cassian waited.

Berry’s mouth tightened.

"Only the Sigil Masters handling final certification have a legitimate reason to work directly on the active anchors. Small adjustments are normal at that stage. Nobody questions someone making one if they’re supposed to be there."

"Were you?"

"Yes."

Cassian said nothing.

Berry stared at him, then continued before he could ask.

"If the second working was already buried inside the Ward before final certification, somebody on that chain failed to see it."

She paused.

"Or made certain nobody else did."

Silence settled over the room.

Raven had forgotten the library entirely.

"The lower eastern face," Cassian said. "Who handled that anchor?"

Raven’s head turned.

Eastern?

During the Hunt, she had stopped beside one of the Ward anchors.

She had not meant to.

Something had pulled strangely inside her chest for a few seconds while Brielle examined the construction, and then the feeling had disappeared. Brielle had found nothing, so Raven had forced herself to keep walking.

Berry’s eyes narrowed.

"Why that one?"

"The Ward began behaving incorrectly there before the inversion became obvious."

"That isn’t in any report."

"No."

Berry studied him more carefully.

"You’re asking me who had access to the eastern anchors during a restricted certification I participated in."

"Yes."

"You understand what you’re implying."

"I do."

Berry’s face went still.

Cassian remained where he was.

"Someone with my training could have built that second working," Berry said slowly. "Someone with my access could have concealed it. Someone on my certification chain could have signed that Ward clean."

Cassian’s expression did not change.

"Yes."

Raven’s eyes widened slightly.

Oh.

So that was where all those questions had been going.

Cassian had not accused Berry of anything. He had simply asked one question after another until every answer had closed another path behind her.

For the first time, Raven wondered if he actually suspected her.

Berry stared at him.

Cassian waited.

Neither of them raised their voice.

Then Berry looked at Raven.

Something about the look made Raven’s stomach sink.

No.

"Rivers. A practical question."

"...Instructor."

"Do you and Heir Blade intend to formally acknowledge the mate bond?"

For a second, Raven genuinely thought she had misheard her.

"What?"

"You publicly identified him as your mate in front of a considerable portion of this academy." Berry spoke with exactly the same clinical tone she had used while discussing damaged tendons. "Neither of you has formally acknowledged the declaration since. Is Valerius meant to recognise the bond, or are the two of you intending to proceed as though nobody heard you?"

Raven stared at her.

Then understanding arrived.

You absolute snake.

Berry was changing the subject.

Cassian had asked who touched the eastern anchors, and Berry had apparently decided the fastest escape route was to throw Raven directly between them and hope the explosion covered her retreat.

Heat climbed Raven’s neck anyway.

Which only made her angrier.

"That’s—"

"I’m asking both of you."

Cassian said nothing.

He did not look at Raven. He did not shift or clear his throat or give Berry even the smallest sign that she had managed to make him uncomfortable.

He simply waited until she finished.

Then said,

"Who inspected the eastern anchors instructor?"

Raven wanted, briefly and sincerely, to kill both of them.

Berry’s palm came down against the desk.

"I’m not answering that."

Cassian waited.

"Blade."

Nothing.

Berry’s eyes narrowed.

"Stop that."

Cassian’s eyebrow rose.

"Stop what?"

"That." Berry pointed at him. "The waiting. The questions. The entire bloody routine. You know perfectly well I did not sabotage that Ward."

"Do I?"

"Don’t insult me."

Cassian remained silent.

Berry looked one inconvenience away from throwing her register at him.

"Your intelligence has been my problem for three days," she snapped. "If you genuinely thought I altered that Ward, you wouldn’t still be leaning against my desk asking polite questions. You would have taken whatever evidence you found to the Headmaster and let her come for me."

Cassian’s expression remained completely neutral.

That seemed to irritate Berry more.

"You cleared me before you ever started knocking on my door," she said. "I’m not your suspect. I’m your bloody source."

Cassian did not deny it.

Berry stared at him.

"What do you actually want?"

"Your list."

"My what?"

"The people you believe could have done it."

Berry went quiet.

Cassian waited.

Raven watched the silence stretch.

Goddess above.

Berry finally exhaled through her nose and moved behind her desk.

"Stop wasting time on everyone who signed the routine inspections. There were dozens, and half of them never got within arm’s reach of a live anchor."

Cassian straightened slightly.

Berry began squaring a pile of papers with far more force than the task required.

"Your useful pool is the restricted certification. Cross those names against anyone who had the technical skill to hide a second working and a legitimate reason to remain at the anchors long enough to do it."

"Which stage?"

Berry stopped moving the papers.

"The third."

Cassian waited.

"The pre-seal adjustment pass," she said. "It’s the only stage where the anchors are live, the array remains open, and access is restricted enough to matter."

"And attendance was recorded."

Berry gave him a flat look.

"Obviously."

"Where?"

Berry closed her eyes.

Raven almost smiled.

One answer.

One new problem.

"You are a plague, do you know that?"

"Would an alteration made before that stage appear in earlier copies of the array?"

Berry opened her eyes again.

"No."

"No?"

"No more bloody questions."

Cassian waited.

Berry pointed toward the door.

"Leave."

"I can come back tomorrow."

"That was not an invitation."

"It wasn’t intended as one."

And somewhere in the middle of watching the two of them quietly ruin each other’s afternoon, Raven finally remembered her own.

Library.

Dreamwalkers.

The entire reason she had walked through the wrong door in the first place.

She turned toward the desk where she dropped her things and began gathering her things.

Notebook.

Ink.

Loose pages she’d filled after running out of space.

Behind her, Berry was telling Cassian something about sealed records, while Cassian appeared to be finding new questions inside every sentence.

Raven shoved the notebook into her bag.

One of the loose pages slipped from beneath her hand.

It fluttered sideways and landed near the end of the aisle.

Cassian bent and picked it up before Raven reached it.

"Give me that."

His gaze dropped to the page.

Raven held out her hand.

Cassian didn’t immediately return it.

He was reading.

Her patience, already abused beyond reason by Berry dragging the mate bond into a conversation that had nothing to do with it, snapped.

"Blade."

Still looking at the page.

Raven crossed the remaining distance, caught the top edge and pulled it straight out of his hand.

Cassian let go.

She looked down.

Most of it was ordinary class work.

Berry’s terminology ran down one side. Two half-finished examples sat beneath it, along with a sigil diagram Raven had copied so badly it looked more like a spider somebody had stepped on.

Then her eyes reached the margin.

Three things were written there in her own hand.

Dreamwalker.

Cassian.

Dante.

Raven stared at them.

She didn’t remember writing the three together.

That hardly mattered now.

Cassian had already seen them.