Chapter 5 The Voice Behind the Wall

The silver lines on Elysande's wrist began to burn the moment she stepped into the library's east wing.

"Stop," she whispered.

Tavian Wren stopped, one hand still holding a heel of bread. It was well past the seventh bell, and the vaulted reading hall was empty, lit only by a few floating lamps. "Did you hear something?"

"I felt it." She pushed back her sleeve. The markings pulsed in slow, steady beats. "It is the same pattern. The hook from Wynne's ward. It is close."

"Close where?"

She walked along the shelves with her arm stretched out, and the pulse quickened and slowed with every step. It led her past Histories of Wardcraft, past a row of dusty ledgers, and stopped dead against a blank stretch of panelled wall.

Tavian raised an eyebrow. "That is a wall."

"The lines say otherwise."

"The lines are very opinionated." But he came forward and pressed his palm flat against the wood, closing his eyes. "Concealment charm. Old. Layered under a decoy wall. Clever." He opened one eye. "Would you like me to pick it, or would you like to do the dramatic thing with your hands?"

"What is the cost of the dramatic thing?"

"Probably a headache and a stranger's grandmother in your head."

She looked at her wrist. A headache she could afford. A grandmother she could not. "Pick it."

Tavian worked in quiet, whispering over the panel, until something clicked. A section of the wall swung inward on soundless hinges, and cold air breathed out of the dark.

He stared into it. His easy grin faded.

"Tavian?"

"My sister was a student here," he said, without turning. "Four years ago. She walked out of the front gates one evening and could not remember her own name. The academy called it a stress collapse." He took a lamp from the shelf. "I have been looking for this door since the day I arrived."

Elysande's chest tightened. "You did not tell me that."

"You did not ask." The grin crept back, thinner. "Shall we?"

---

The passage sloped downward, narrow and low, its stone walls slick with damp. Their lamp painted two long shadows across the floor. At the bottom, an iron door stood half open. A brass plate above it read Unlicensed readers keep nothing.

"Friendly," Tavian muttered, and pushed inside. Beyond lay a room full of filing cabinets.

Hundreds of them. Black iron, floor to ceiling, each drawer labelled with a year.

"Records," Tavian breathed. "Student records. Why would you hide student records?"

Elysande pulled open a drawer at random and lifted out a folder. A boy's name. A list of spells mastered. Beneath it, in red ink, a stamp.

MEMORY ADJUSTED. Subject reports no distress.

She opened another. MEMORY ADJUSTED. Another. ABILITY REDUCED. CONSENT NOT REQUIRED.

Her mouth went dry. "Tavian."

"I see it." His voice had gone flat. He held up a folder of his own, his hand trembling. "This is a list of every student who has been through the infirmary on a 'wellness visit' in the last ten years. Three hundred names. Every single one has a stamp."

"They are taking things from them."

"And writing it down." His laugh was brittle. "Gods, they are proud of it."

Elysande pulled folder after folder. Every stamp bore the same seal, a thorn inside a circle, and every margin held a line of small print. RESERVE: +2. RESERVE: +1. RESERVE: +4.

"What is the reserve?" she asked.

"Whatever it is," Tavian said grimly, "they are counting what they take."

Elysande moved deeper into the room, her heart pounding. At the far end stood a single cabinet set apart from the rest. Ancient. Dense with iron. The drawer bore no year, only a small brass plate stamped with a single letter.

V.

She pulled it open.

There was only one folder inside.

VEYR, ELYSANDE.

Her fingers had gone numb. She laid it on top of the cabinet and flipped the cover open, and a handwritten page stared back at her. A date, written in neat black ink.

The fourteenth of Ashenmoon. Six years ago.

Below it, a heading, underlined twice.

Procedure of Sealing.

"Elysande," Tavian said quietly. "What is it?"

"My file." She could barely hear her own voice. "They have a file on me. From the night everything happened. It says…"

Her eyes moved down the page.

Subject unwilling. Subject conscious during procedure. Authorising officer…

The ink beneath that line had been scratched out, so heavily the paper had torn.

The brass plate on the cabinet flared red. She had read past the heading without a sealing officer's sigil, and the cabinet knew.

A low grinding rumbled through the floor.

Tavian spun around. "That is the door."

The iron door they had entered through was swinging shut, slow and unstoppable. Behind it, the passage walls were sliding together, stone grinding against stone.

"Take the file!" Tavian shouted.

She snatched it, but the folder crumbled in her hand. The paper turned black at the edges and dissolved into ash that drifted down through the lamplight. In seconds, nothing remained but a thin grey smear on her fingers.

"A sigil-lock," Tavian swore. "It burns the page if the reader carries no officer's mark."

"I read three lines," Elysande said, numb. "Only three."

The door slammed. The lamp flickered. The room went still, and then the whole wall behind them shuddered open on a different hidden hinge, spilling in pale light and a tall, dark figure.

Dacien Rook stood in the doorway, a thin silver key in his fist. He had not needed to search for the door.

His coat was dishevelled. His breath came hard from a sprint across the whole academy. His grey eyes swept the room, the open drawers, the scattered folders, Tavian's white face, and finally the ash on Elysande's hand.

For a moment, he said nothing.

"Get out," he said.

"Magister…" Tavian began.

"Get out. Both of you. Now."

"Dacien," Elysande said. "They keep records on students. On what they take. On me."

"I said now."

"You knew."

He crossed the room in three strides and seized her shoulders. His gloved hands were shaking.

She expected fury. She expected a cold lecture, a threat, an order.

Instead she saw it in his face. His skin was pale, his pupils wide, his breathing ragged. Dacien Rook was not angry.

He was terrified.

"Please," he said hoarsely, and no tutor had ever said a word that way. "Please, Elysande. Leave this place before it notices you."

Tavian took her arm and tugged her toward the exit. Dacien released her at last, and she stumbled backward into the corridor, her mind spinning.

The wall began to close behind them.

And as the last sliver of light vanished, a thread of silver crawled through the mortar, and a voice drifted along it. Low, ragged, achingly familiar. A voice she had not heard in six years. Beneath it, so faint she almost missed it, someone was humming.

Her breath stopped. The corridor blurred, and her hand flew to her mouth.

"If you've come back, little sister," Orren Veyr whispered, "don't let him seal you again."