Chapter 67 Inquiry

The gray figure among the broken survey instruments was gone by the time Damien crossed the camp, leaving a patch of stone scrubbed clean of dust.

Blank sat on his shoulder through the entire search with its edges held sharp, and only softened once the transports were loaded.

’Clean stone in a camp full of ash, damn, something stood there long enough to unmake the dirt and then walked off politely.’

Halcrest’s inquiry hall held four board members behind a curved bench, with a recording crystal on a stand and one chair placed too far from everything.

Dean Serrin Halbeck chaired it, a tall man with a white beard trimmed into a blade shape and reading glasses he used entirely for aiming.

To his left sat Auditor Perrin Quillon, thin, gray-suited, with a stack of ledgers instead of notes and a pen that never once moved while people talked.

’The auditor is the problem, yeah, three of them want a tidy answer while he wants a true one.’

"Mr. Sterling, you altered eleven squad placements, redirected an evacuation and commanded proctors without rank," the dean said, opening the file.

"I recommended eleven placements to a proctor with authority, and she issued every order that followed," Damien answered.

"Recommendations do not usually predict a bracket failure to the hour," the auditor said, and his pen finally moved a single centimeter.

"That prediction is filed, stamped and dated seventeen hundred on the first day, along with the reason I gave for it," Damien replied.

Bram put three copies of that filing into separate hands before the transports left the shelf, which cost him most of a night.

The board read the stamped copy while Damien sat with his splinted forearm across his knee and let the paper do the talking.

"Your stated reason was a wall bracket rated for dry stone in a location that sweats," the dean said, holding the sheet toward the light.

"House Sterling appraises property for a living and I have been reading bracket ratings since I could reach a shelf," Damien answered.

’Mundane, boring, checkable, good, keep every answer inside things a bored heir could plausibly know.’

The instructor testified second, bruised across one cheek and looking at Damien like something he had found on his boot.

"The student ordered me off the ridge with an emergency route and I obeyed it, which I would like recorded as reluctant," he said.

"So a licensed instructor took an emergency order from a first-year student," the auditor replied, and the pen moved again.

"I took a route rather than an order, and forty children walked down it while the registered corridor filled with warped beasts," the instructor answered.

"Why were you positioned on the western ridge at all, since your rotation had no assignment value there," the dean asked.

"Because the Sterling boy wasted my evening and I intended to write him up for it in the morning," Pike said.

Half the board wrote that down as motive, and none of them noticed it was also a placement Damien had arranged four days earlier.

’He just corroborated the whole plan while insulting me, yeah, and hostile witnesses are the only ones nobody suspects of cooperating.’

Mina came third with the equipment trail, a folder of tempering receipts, the flat delivery she used whenever she was furious.

"Forty relay charms were tempered at my station, logged under a Sterling security drill, and every serial number appears in the survivor tracking data," she said.

"You are asserting that a student’s private drill produced the tracking that our proctors used," the dean replied.

"I am asserting that your proctors had no tracking at all, since the academy did not fund any," Mina answered.

The recording crystal caught that line, and the auditor’s pen stopped moving for the first time in an hour.

Vivienne testified fourth, in the Ashe half-cape, having ignored two written instructions from her own detachment about staying away.

"House Ashe assigned me to convoy security and my commander ordered the eastern corridor held," she said.

"Hmm, and your detachment’s own report says the corridor was abandoned," the dean replied, checking the filed page against her testimony.

"I held it until the roof came down, then took my men through a route this student found, which is why four of them are alive," Vivienne answered.

"Do you consider your working relationship with Mr. Sterling to be a partnership," the auditor asked, and every head on the bench turned.

’And now the fiancée question, dressed up in procedure, damn, she is going to hear that one in every room she walks into this year.’

Vivienne answered before the pause could turn into an implication, her voice going flat and formal at the same moment.

"I make operational decisions with him and I answer to my own house for every one of them," she said.

"A partnership was neither confirmed nor denied in that sentence, which I notice," the auditor replied, tapping his ledger shut.

"It was a description of my own judgment, which this board can file exactly as it stands," Vivienne answered.

Nobody wrote anything for a moment, and Damien discovered he had stopped breathing somewhere in the middle of that sentence.

’She just told an academy board to mind its own business in formal register, okay, that is the most Ashe thing I have ever heard.’

The board recessed for two hours, during which Bram stood in the corridor outside turning away a newspaper stringer and both house couriers.

"The Marlowe courier wanted words about Isolde while the Arden one came shopping for something quotable," he reported, sweating through his collar.

"No comment for either, and log both requests with times, since somebody is going to claim we spoke," Damien replied.

The dean read the finding at four in the afternoon with the recording crystal live and the hall’s public gallery half full of students.

"The board finds no violation of academy conduct, and notes that the survivor count exceeded the projected casualty model by a significant margin," he said.

"Sir, how significant is significant when you are talking about dead first-years," a student called from the gallery, breaking every rule the hall printed on its door.

"The model projected between thirty and forty-five fatalities for a breach of that class, with nine recorded," he answered.

The hall made a sound Damien had never heard directed at his body before, it took him a second to identify applause.

[Script Quest: The Averill Shelf Expedition - Perfect Clear]

[Hidden achievement: Overturned Casualty]

[System Points: +1,800]

’Perfect clear on a Chapter I rewrote with a saber, yeah, the ×10 already paid, so this part is just the receipt.’

The auditor did not applaud, nor leave with the others when the bench cleared.

He came down to the witness chair with one ledger open, and up close his eyes were the tired kind that read numbers for pleasure.

"Your explanation is consistent, checkable and entirely sufficient for that finding," he said, tapping the page with one dry finger.

"You have the exact tone of a man about to attach a word beginning with H," Damien answered.

"However, I have compared four years of rescue attributions and the arithmetic around one student stopped working eleven months ago," he replied.

’He is not even looking my way, shit, that man is watching Lucas, he found the siphon by doing bookkeeping.’

"Then you should take that to your board, since arithmetic is what they claim to like," Damien said, keeping his face bored.

"My board wants a clean file this week, so the memorandum stays private until it stops being inconvenient," the auditor answered, closing the ledger.

He left through the side door, and Blank came off Damien’s shoulder to stare after him with its edges going momentarily sharp.

Later, in the empty hall, Damien read the copy of that memorandum Bram had acquired through a clerk who owed his aunt money.

The document listed twenty-two incidents where credited rescues had been reassigned to a single first-year after the fact, with the original responders unnamed in every case.

It used the phrase statistical laundering twice, it never once mentioned Damien Sterling in any line of its four pages.

’He is building a case against the protagonist without knowing what stands behind him, damn, that auditor is going to get himself killed.’

Vivienne waited at the hall’s outer steps with the evening bells starting over Averill, her cape already unpinned for the walk.

"You have three days before the city decides what this expedition meant, since both houses intend to write that story themselves," she said.

"Then we reach Averill tonight and write it first, since the footage is already public with every number on our side," Damien answered, going down the steps.