The usher tried to take my satchel at the Great Hall doors.
"It can be left with the cloaks, my lord."
"I'd rather keep it."
He looked at the strap crossing my coat, then at the card I had offered. Behind us, a family was disentangling a girl's hair from her mother's farewell embrace. The girl kept saying she would be late; her mother kept finding something else to straighten.
The usher stepped aside.
"Under the chair, then. Keep the aisle clear."
Inside, everyone seemed to know where to go except the people with cards like mine.
The Great Hall was longer than I remembered. Its far doors stood open to a colonnade, and the air moving through them stirred the seven house banners above the dais. From the entrance I could see rows of student seats, narrow side benches for attendants and a raised gallery already crowded with older faces. People leaned over the rail to find one another. A woman waved a folded program until someone below acknowledged her.
I had been fed at the day-reception room and left alone long enough to fall asleep in a chair. Waking to an attendant announcing the ceremony had felt like being late for an appointment I had been dreading for weeks. Now I was early, or early enough that every scrape of a chair could still be heard.
My number was near the front.
There was a card bearing Cedric's full name on the seat. Beyond it, the first row curved toward the dais, each place turned slightly so its occupant would be visible from the gallery. I would have preferred the back of somebody else's head in front of me.
"Valdrake?"
A boy in the next group of chairs looked from my card to my collar. A woman who was probably his attendant held his gloves behind him. He hadn't noticed that she was still waiting.
"Yes."
"That's the house row." He pointed farther along, toward the darker space under the banner. "I thought they'd put you there."
I checked my number again. It matched.
"So did I."
I hadn't. He glanced at the usher, apparently expecting one of us to correct the arrangement.
A chair scraped behind me. I turned and saw two students move their bags off a bench, making enough space for someone to sit between them. Neither looked up. For a moment that patch of bench seemed much more inviting than the front row.
"We can ask," the boy said. "They've made mistakes already."
The usher heard that. His face acquired the patient expression of a man with a great deal left to do.
"Is there a problem with the place?"
My father's demand came back with unwelcome clarity. He had sent me here expecting the academy to confirm what he believed he possessed. I had been inside the building less than five minutes and was considering hiding behind a scholarship student's coat.
"No. This is mine."
I put the satchel under the assigned chair and sat. The boy left his own card where it was. After a moment his attendant touched his elbow and he took the gloves from her.
The usher went on seating people.
From here I could see Valeria several places away, speaking to a woman beside the side aisle. She wore her hair pinned off her neck. At the estate it had partly hidden her face; now there was nothing to soften the brief look she gave the woman before answering.
I looked toward the dais. I didn't know who the woman was. It was possible they were discussing where to leave a cloak.
The doors were closing when an older student in a ceremonial sash led three late arrivals up the side aisle. He stopped beside a rope across the steps to the gallery and lifted it for them.
A woman standing below the dais said something I couldn't hear.
The sash student stopped. She held out her hand for the cards, checked them, and pointed toward the empty benches at the rear. He tried to explain. She shook her head once and gave the cards back.
The three arrivals followed him down the aisle. One had already put a foot on the first step.
"Deputy registrar," the boy near me said, catching where I was looking. "She enjoys that."
The woman took a ring of keys from her belt and opened a side door for a man carrying a stack of programs. While he squeezed through, she held the door with her shoulder and gathered the papers that slipped from the top.
"Does she assign rooms?" I asked.
"Access. Rooms go through her office." He adjusted a cuff. "Your house can speak to her."
I watched her close the door. At the estate I could ring and expect somebody to appear with an answer. Here the person holding the keys had just sent three well-dressed students to the back while half the hall watched.
A staff struck the floor beside the dais. The boy straightened before the second knock.
The ceremony began.
---
I stood when the row stood, sat when it sat, and discovered that a chair could become less comfortable without moving at all.
Each of the seven houses was acknowledged. The first banner was drawn forward so its folds opened fully, and applause swept up from the seats beneath it. A group farther back answered with a shout. The official at the dais waited, indulgent the first time, less so when it happened again.
By the sixth banner I knew when to lift my hands. There were differences: one house's applause was brisk and disciplined; another group kept clapping after everyone around them had stopped. People watched across the hall to see who applauded whom.
Then the Valdrake banner moved.
The name was called in the same voice. The pause afterward was longer.
Clapping began in the gallery. A few people below joined it, then others, enough that I could not call it silence. I looked at the hands of the boy beside me. He touched his palms together twice and let them rest on his knees.
I had been relieved that no one expected me to speak. Now speaking seemed almost preferable to sitting there while strangers decided how much noise my name deserved.
Valeria was facing the dais. When I turned forward again, the official was already continuing.
I hadn't moved. No one had needed to tell me not to.
The address that followed concerned service to the Empire and the obligations of talent. I recognized pieces of it from the game, though the remembered version had allowed me to skip ahead. Here an elderly guest coughed through a passage about the founders, and the speaker stopped for water. In the next row, a boy carefully released a button at his throat.
At last an usher distributed the oath sheets.
I read mine while the official explained the responses. Academy peace, lawful instruction, observance of its judgments and rules. The text continued down the page in language that made disobedience sound both discourteous and time-consuming. I looked for an Aether seal or instructions to put blood on anything. There were neither.
"Keep the sheet," the usher murmured as he passed. "It's an acknowledgment, not your admissions form."
I had evidently been holding it wrong.
We rose again. The response began on the far side of the room and reached my row a fraction late. I spoke with everyone else, more softly than the boy beside me. When the official finished, he reminded us that ceremonial attendance conferred no standing in the academy assessments.
That part I hadn't remembered.
My fingers had begun to ache inside the glove. I let the oath sheet hang in my left hand until we were told to sit.
The closing applause was easy. People were ready to leave.
I stayed long enough for the aisle to clear, retrieved the satchel and found that Valeria had already reached the side doors. She was walking with the woman from earlier. I could have called her name. The boy beside me seemed to expect it; he had turned slightly to make room for her to come back.
I put the oath sheet inside my card instead.
"You're not going with her?" he asked.
"I have something to arrange."
He glanced down at my bag, then toward the reception arch outside. Whatever he made of that, he didn't ask.
The deputy registrar was still at the side door, explaining to a student why his ceremonial invitation would not open the gallery the following day. I waited until she had finished and asked where new arrivals collected their room keys.
"Residence corridor. Assignment desk opens this evening."
"The house reception room—"
"For today's business. They'll direct you from the counter."
She pulled the door shut and tested the latch. I thanked her, stepped out of her way, and followed the stream of students toward the daylight. Under the arch, the crowd divided. I went back to the room with my name over it, carrying everything I was willing to leave out of the store.