Chapter 18
The Warden
He received a summons on the fourth day.
Not a letter this time -- a small card delivered to his dormitory room by one of the Academy's construct messengers, a simple enchanted paper bird that dropped the card on his desk and dissolved. The card said: Report to the Warden's Office, Administrative Tower, third floor. No time specified. At your earliest convenience, which at an institution like this meant now.
He'd heard the title but not the name. The Warden was apparently a senior faculty position -- not the Academy's headmaster, but something adjacent to it, the kind of role that had administrative authority without the ceremonial weight. Students mentioned the Warden the way they mentioned weather: as a background fact of Academy life that occasionally became relevant.
The Administrative Tower was easy to find. Third floor, end of the corridor, a door with no nameplate.
He knocked.
'Come in.'
The office was large and organized in a way that suggested the person who used it thought about space carefully. Books on three walls, all arranged by system rather than alphabetically -- he could see the logic in the groupings without being able to name it. A desk with two chairs across from it. A window overlooking the central courtyard. And behind the desk, a man.
The Warden was older -- late fifties, maybe sixty, with the particular quality of a person who had been Silver-rank for a very long time and whose body reflected that. Mages who trained seriously for decades developed a density to them, a kind of settled weight that had nothing to do with physical size. This man had that. He also had eyes that were doing several things at once, the kind of eyes that were always reading.
He looked at Cyan the way Cyan looked at things he was trying to understand.
'Sit down,' the Warden said.
Cyan sat.
The Warden looked at him for a moment without speaking. Not an uncomfortable silence -- a considering one. Like he was checking something against what he'd expected.
'You're Cyan Aethon,' the Warden said.
'Yes.'
'Do you know why you're here?'
'I received a letter.'
'I mean at this institution. Do you know why you received that letter.'
Cyan looked at him steadily. 'No. That's one of the things I'd like to understand.'
Something in the Warden's expression shifted slightly. Not quite satisfaction. More like confirmation.
'Good,' the Warden said. 'That's the correct answer. Students who arrive here thinking they know why tend to stop looking once they believe they've found it.' He folded his hands on the desk. 'I processed your application. I'm familiar with your Runestone result.'
'The failed reading.'
'That's what the record says.' The Warden's tone was neutral. Not agreeing. Not disagreeing.
Cyan waited.
'You're provisionally enrolled,' the Warden said. 'The conditions are the same as every other provisional student. Evaluation at semester's end, pass or fail, no exceptions.' A pause. 'I will tell you one thing that is not in the official documentation. If you have questions about your specific situation -- about what happened at the Runestone, about things you may have experienced since -- my door is open.'
'Why?' Cyan asked.
The Warden looked at him for a long moment.
'Because some questions need to be asked in the right place,' he said. 'And this is the right place for yours.'
He stood, which was clearly a dismissal.
Cyan stood too. He was at the door when the Warden said his name again.
'One more thing. The mark on your hand.' Cyan went still. 'Keep it covered for now. Not because it's dangerous -- because it will generate questions you're not ready to answer.'
Cyan turned back. The Warden was already looking at the papers on his desk.
'How do you know about that?' Cyan asked.
'Come back when you have more questions,' the Warden said. 'You will.'
Cyan left.
He walked back to the dormitory slowly, thinking, and when he got to his room he sat at the desk and stared at his covered right hand and thought about a man who knew things he hadn't been told, and watched people with eyes that were reading, and had an open door for questions about things that weren't in any official documentation.
He added the Warden to the list of things he needed to understand.
It was a long list. Getting longer.