Chapter 165: Too Neat

"It’s your handwriting," Solene said.

"I didn’t write it."

"I know."

That stopped me. I’d come out of the kitchen at three in the morning with the card folded in my sleeve, and I’d spent three hours not looking at it. Now she held it up in the cold grey light of the east gatehouse, and I realized she’d been waiting under the arch for me the whole night.

"You don’t write like this," she said.

"It’s *my* hand. The *V,* the sevens—"

"It’s your hand on a good day. On a *perfect* day." She turned the card, and the early sun slid over the ink. "I’ve shared a table with you for three weeks, Valen. Every list you write wobbles by the third line. Your sevens lose their hook. You press too hard when you’re tired, and you’re always tired. This is clean from top to bottom."

I stared.

"Whoever made it," Solene said, "copied you at your *best.* Nobody writes at their best forever." She gave me the card back. "That’s the only crack I can find in it. Don’t lose it."

"You believe me."

"I believe you’re a lot of things. I don’t believe you’re stupid enough to leave your own handwriting at a crime scene." She almost smiled. "That’s six, by the way."

---

Gareth’s office was the size of a closet, and he looked like he’d slept in it.

He sat behind a desk covered in maps and cold tea, a broad, scarred, grey-haired man with a veteran’s shoulders and the gray, flat eyes of someone who’d read too many casualty lists. He listened to me for ten minutes without blinking.

I told him about the kitchens. The thumbprint loaves. Seven hundred on the racks, two thousand planned for the Feast. I told him the bakers were marked, and that the marks killed them when they talked.

I didn’t mention the card. I kept it in my sleeve against my wrist, where it felt like a coal.

"Seven hundred loaves," Gareth said at last.

"Seven hundred, and counting."

"And you and the Terza twins went in alone."

"Pollux voted now."

His mouth twitched. "She would." He picked up a bell and rang it. A guard stuck his head in. "Take six men to the kitchens. Seal them. Nobody touches anything."

The guard ran.

We waited. Castor stood stiff as a post by the window. Pollux sat on the corner of Gareth’s desk, swinging her boots, with dried blood in her hair and a smile like a knife. Neither of them said a word.

The guard came back twenty minutes later, pale and out of breath.

"Sir. The racks are empty."

"Empty?"

"All of them. The ovens are cold. Somebody’s mopped the floor." The man swallowed. "But there are five bodies in the back pantry. Bakers. Stabbed, crushed, and broken. Two of them are..." He cleared his throat. "Two of them are still pinned to the table."

The room went very quiet.

Gareth looked at me, then at the twins, then back at me, and I watched him do the arithmetic that anyone would.

"Five kitchen staff," he said, quietly. "Murdered. And three cadets who were there last night."

"Self-defense," Castor said. His voice was flat and calm. "They were marked, Commander. Black veins. They attacked first."

"Where are the marks now?"

Castor paused.

"On a dead man," Gareth said, "a mark is only a bruise."

I felt it go sideways under my feet. The cultists had cleaned up everything that proved us right and left everything that proved us guilty. The loaves, gone. The marks, gone. The bodies, left behind like gifts.

"I believe you," Gareth said slowly. "God help me, I think I do. But the Tribunal doesn’t know you, and they’ve got a doctor and two Inspectors who’d love an excuse." He rubbed his face. "Say nothing. To anyone. Not a word until after the Feast. I’ll hold the bodies. I’ll *try* to hold the Inspectors."

"Commander," I said. "The Feast. It’s the loaves—"

"I know." He met my eyes. "And I’ve got two thousand people who’ve been waiting a year for tonight and not one piece of proof. If I cancel the Feast on the word of three cadets and an empty room, I’ll be dragged out of this Academy by dawn." He stood. "I’ll have the kitchens watched. I’ll have the ovens watched. I’ll taste every loaf myself."

"That won’t—"

"It’s the best I can do, boy." He said it kindly. It was the kindest and the worst thing he could have said.

"He’s going to taste every loaf himself," Castor muttered, as we left. "That’s a very brave plan with a very short future."

"I like him," Pollux said. "He’s going to die heroically."

---

By noon the Academy was dressed for a party.

Banners hung from every balcony, white and gold, with the founders’ crest stitched in silver thread. Students in their good coats streamed up the long marble steps toward the Great Hall, laughing, bumping elbows, smelling of soap and nervous excitement. Somebody had hung paper lanterns along the arcade. Somebody was playing a fiddle.

I walked through it like a ghost at a wedding.

*Valerian.* A faint, scratchy voice from my pocket. *Darling. Are we still alive?*

"Aurelix!" I cupped a hand around the little gold lizard. She opened one eye. She was still pale, but she wasn’t shaking anymore. "How do you feel?"

*Like a very old pie.* She yawned, tiny and pointed. *I heard it all. The chart. The empty racks.* Her eye narrowed. *They’re quick, these people.*

"They’ve been planning this a long time."

*Mm. And you, my love, have been planning it for four days.* She tucked her nose under her tail. *Look at the head table.*

I climbed the steps and stood in the doorway of the Great Hall.

It was beautiful. Long tables, white cloths, silver candlesticks, crystal glasses in rows. At the far end, on a low dais, stood a long head table with seven tall chairs, and at every chair a small white place-card.

I walked up the aisle until I could read them.

The first four were right, the way I’d written them three weeks ago. The Representatives of the first four Cells.

The fifth was *CASPER.*

The sixth was *MIRAIN.*

The seventh was *VALEN.*

My blood stopped.

Somebody had swapped the cards after I’d drawn the real chart. Somebody had done it so cleanly that no one in the hall had noticed. Three names in my own neat, perfect handwriting, where three Representatives should have been.

*They aren’t hiding it,* Aurelix said softly. *They want it found.*

---

"Don’t sit there."

I turned.

Mirain stood at my elbow in a formal grey coat with silver buttons. Her hair was brushed, her eyes were dark-ringed, and her hawk wasn’t on her shoulder. I’d never seen her without it. She was holding her own place-card between two fingers like it was something dead.

"I can’t *not,*" she said. "I’m a Representative. If I’m not in my chair when the bell rings, Gareth will send someone to fetch me."

"Mirain..."

"I know what it is." Her voice wobbled, then steadied. "I’ve known since the hall. I keep it in my coat, and it keeps *talking.* It’s so gentle. It says if I just eat it, I’ll never be second again. It says I’ll be the one they all look at." She laughed, high and thin. "Do you know how long I’ve wanted somebody to say that?"

"Mirain."

"I’m not going to eat it." She looked at me, and her eyes were bright and frightened. "I’m *not.* But it’s so *hard,* Valen. It’s so hard."

I didn’t know what to say. I’d spent a lifetime as the person people were jealous of, and I’d never once been the person she needed.

So I did the only thing I could. I took her hand, the one holding the card, and I held it.

"I’ll be at the next chair," I said. "If it gets bad, kick me."

"You’ll be in the seventh chair." Her mouth shook. "That’s the whole *point.*"

"Then you’ll have somebody to kick."

She laughed. It cracked. She wiped her eyes on her sleeve and let go.

"Thanks," she said. And then, very quietly, so only I could hear: "That’s still two."

---

The bell rang at dusk.

Two thousand people stood in the Great Hall in the golden light of a thousand candles. Gareth rose at the head table in his dress uniform, grey and straight. The Inspectors sat to his right. The Doctor sat among them, small and pleasant, his hands folded on the cloth.

He caught my eye across the room. He smiled.

Cell One’s table sat halfway down the hall. Lyra had Casper by the wrist. He was gray in the face, staring up at the head table, where a little white card with his name on it sat in front of a tall empty chair.

"I’m not a Representative," he whispered. "Why is my name up there?"

"Nobody’s sitting in it," Lyra said fiercely. "Nobody."

Servants entered through the side doors, in long white rows, carrying trays.

Bread.

Hundreds of loaves. Golden, round, steaming, each with a perfect thumbprint pressed into its crown. They set one at every place. Two thousand plates. Two thousand loaves. The smell rolled through the hall like a warm hand.

Gareth lifted his cup. "To the founders!"

"*To the founders!*"

Students laughed. Chairs scraped. Hands reached for the bread.

*Valerian,* Aurelix whispered. *Valerian, look.*

I looked.

Two thousand loaves sat on the cloth. And every one of them, very faintly, in perfect time, was *breathing.*