The Bureau of Contract Verification occupied the basement of the administrative wing, which Alan considered an honest piece of architecture. Nobody who had ever filed a form wanted to find it on the ground floor.

He arrived early on Sunday morning, forty-six hours after the Rite and exactly two hours before the deadline. Every newly bound summoner was required to register their spirit within forty-eight hours of the ceremony, a rule that Tobias had summarized the night before with the immortal words, -- Do not be late, they will fine you in gold and humiliation. The corridor outside the Bureau was already lined with first years clutching their paperwork and trying not to look nervous. A small ember mouse sat on a shoulder. A cloud rabbit sneezed on a clipboard. The air smelled of floor wax and ink.

Alan took his place at the end of the line, folded his hands, and began a silent inventory of his own heartbeat.

-- You are doing the thing, -- said Priscilla's voice, lazily, from the depths of his skull.

-- What thing? -- he thought, and then, remembering that she could not hear thoughts, murmured it aloud very quietly behind his hand.

-- The thing where you straighten your cuffs every ten seconds. You have done it nine times. I am keeping count. It is a stress response. I find it extremely informative.

-- Please do not keep count.

-- Too late. It is on the chart.

-- There is no chart.

-- There will be.

-- Stop teasing him, -- said Seraphina. -- Alan, dear, you do not look well. Did you sleep? You tossed for hours.

-- I slept, Senior. A little.

-- A little is not enough, -- said Valeria, crisply. -- You will be useless at dawn tomorrow if you do not rest. Stand properly. You are slouching.

-- I am not slouching.

-- You are leaning forty degrees to the left, in the shape of a question mark.

Alan adjusted his posture. He felt faintly ridiculous. He also realized, with dull astonishment, that he had not been this nervous in a line since he was ten years old, and that at ten, nobody had been bossing him from inside his head.

-- All right, listen, -- said Nyx, and her voice dropped, intimate and quick. -- Here is the plan. You have the form I told you to write?

-- Yes. -- He touched his breast pocket, where a single folded sheet lay against his ribs.

-- Read it back to me.

-- Species: invisible spirit. Rank: F. Manifestation: none observable. Contract type: passive resonance. Bond depth: minimal.

-- And what do you say if they ask why the spirit has no visible form?

-- That it is the kind that has no physical shape. Like a draft. Like a thought.

-- Perfect. They cannot disprove something that does not exist. The beauty of paperwork, kid, is that it is the one battlefield where a liar always has the high ground. The form will do eighty percent of the work. The other twenty belongs to Priscilla.

-- I have prepared the interference sigil, -- said Priscilla, brightening visibly. -- It is a very elegant piece of work. A tiny spiral of noise. You will trace it on the detector glass with your fingernail while they read your signature. It will take eleven seconds. Do not stop, do not hurry, and above all, do not look guilty.

-- I always look guilty, -- said Alan.

-- Nonsense. You look like a boy who has been told off before he has done anything. It is much more convincing.

He did not know how to take that. He decided it was a compliment.

The line crept forward. Behind the heavy wooden door, a bell rang at intervals, and each time it rang, another first year went in with a hopeful face and came out looking vaguely dazed. At last the clerk, a thin man with a drooping mustache and a face carved by paperwork, called, -- Frost, Alan. Room three.

Room three was small, windowless, and austere. A long table stood in the middle, its surface scarred by decades of other people's nerves. On the table sat a brass instrument shaped like a bell jar, with a ring of fine copper wire around its base and a pane of smoked glass on top. Behind the table sat a man in his fifties, broad-shouldered and weathered, with a close-cropped grey beard and reading glasses perched halfway down his nose. He did not look up when Alan entered. He was busy sorting a stack of papers into several piles that appeared to follow a system nobody else would ever grasp.

-- Sit, -- he said. -- I am Professor Ardent Hale. I oversee the Bureau. Please give me your form.

Alan sat. He gave him the form. Hale read it slowly, with the weary precision of a man who had read ten thousand such documents and trusted none of them.

-- Invisible spirit, -- he said at last. -- Rank F. Passive resonance. Minimal bond depth. -- He lowered the paper and looked at Alan over his glasses. His eyes were a mild brown, tired and sharp at the same time. -- You understand that this is an unusual classification.

-- I was told it can happen, Professor. Sometimes the bond is not visible. The instructor said so.

-- The instructor was correct. It is rare, but not impossible. -- Hale slid the form aside and placed his hand flat on the table. -- Very well. We verify, we file, and we all go home. Place your hand on the glass, please.

Alan placed his hand on the smoked glass. It was cold and faintly oily. Beneath his palm, the instrument began to hum.

-- Now, -- whispered Priscilla.

He moved his index finger, slowly, in the pattern she had taught him the night before, a tiny spiral, then a hook, then another spiral turned inward. It felt like drawing in a dream. The glass seemed to drink the motion. The hum shifted pitch, rising, then wavering as if it could not decide which note it wanted.

-- Eight seconds, -- said Priscilla. -- Good. Keep your face still. Nine. Ten.

-- It is vibrating, -- said Nyx, in an alarmed whisper. -- Why is it vibrating?

-- It is within expected tolerance, -- said Priscilla, in a tone that suggested otherwise.

-- That does not sound like a pleased vibrating.

-- It is a mildly displeased vibrating.

The brass bell jar shuddered. A thin wire of blue light crept up the inside of the glass. Hale frowned, leaned forward, and adjusted his glasses.

-- Three seconds, -- said Priscilla suddenly, very quickly. -- When it flashes, you will not flinch. Count with me. Three. Two.

Something deep in the instrument pinged. A small blue spark jumped from the copper ring to the glass, hung for an instant, and vanished.

Silence. The humming faded. The wire of light dimmed and went out, leaving only an ordinary brass jar and an ordinary pane of smoked glass.

Hale looked at the instrument for a long moment. Then at Alan. Then at the instrument again. He wrote something on a sheet of paper in a small, neat hand.

-- Normal, -- he said.

-- Thank you, Professor.

-- Suspiciously normal.

Alan's stomach dropped through the floor. He kept his face still. He kept his hand still. He could feel five people holding their breath inside his chest.

-- I am joking, -- said Hale mildly. -- Mostly. I have a habit of distrusting readings that behave. In my experience, a perfectly calm result usually means the apparatus is broken or the subject is nervous. -- He looked over his glasses again, and the corner of his mouth moved, almost a smile. -- You are nervous, Mr. Frost. That is natural. Nearly everyone is.

-- Yes, Professor. Sorry.

-- Do not apologize. It is a fault of the machine, not of you.

The door opened behind them, without a knock. Alan felt a change in the air, a slight, careful cooling, like a draft from a window that someone had opened a crack. He did not turn around. He did not need to. He knew, from the way the room's attention shifted, that someone had stepped in with a very good coat.

-- Forgive the interruption, Professor Hale, -- said a soft pleasant voice. -- I am only observing. Please do not mind me.

Hale did not rise. His face did not change. But his shoulders tightened a fraction of an inch, and Alan, who had spent his whole life reading adults who disliked their visitors, noticed.

-- Inquisitor Corvin, -- said Hale, without turning. -- The Holy See sends its observers early this year.

-- The Holy See is attentive, -- said the voice, smiling. -- There was a ley surge on Friday. The Church wishes to be certain that the new students are safe.

Alan turned his head at last. The man in the doorway was perhaps thirty, tall and slim, with light brown hair combed back from a pleasant forehead and a long grey coat belted at the waist. He held a small notebook and a silver pen. He looked like a gentle young scholar. Alan had seen the coat before, that Friday, at the rail of the Rotunda gallery, and he remembered the very particular stillness of the man's head when the circle flared white.

-- Grey coat, -- said Nyx softly, from the depths of his skull. -- That is the one who looked up. Careful, kid.

-- I know, -- Alan thought, and clenched his hands under the table.

-- You are the one who bonded nothing, -- said Corvin pleasantly. He stepped forward, and the notebook opened. -- Alan Frost. A rare surname, if I may say so. I have only met it in the archives. May I ask what your family does?

It was a very soft question, and it hit like a stone dropped into a still well.

-- My family does nothing in particular, sir, -- said Alan.

-- Frost, -- said Corvin thoughtfully, tapping his pen against the notebook. -- There was a scholar by that name once. A researcher of the old forbidden arts. Brilliant, by all accounts. A great pity what became of him. -- He raised his eyes. They were a pale clear grey, kind and cold. -- Any relation?

For a heartbeat, the room was entirely silent.

Alan heard, in the depths of his chest, a sharp breath from one of the five, then another. Valeria's voice said, very low, -- Do not lie. Do not confess. Deflect. -- Seraphina's said, -- Steady, my dear. -- Nyx said, -- Say the truth, but only half. -- And Priscilla said nothing at all, which was somehow the loudest thing of all.

Alan lowered his head.

It was the oldest gesture he knew. A respectful tilt of the neck, a slackening of the shoulders, the posture of a boy who had learned in a house of relatives that the quickest way through a storm was to bow beneath it. He made his voice small and level.

-- He was my father, sir, -- he said. -- I did not know him well. He was declared a heretic when I was a child. I would prefer not to be associated with him. I want nothing from this academy except a quiet degree and a quiet life. Please do not let my name be a problem.

The room held its breath. Corvin studied him for a long moment, the way a man studies a painting that may or may not be a forgery.

-- A heretic's son who wishes only for quiet, -- he said at last. -- How very sensible. -- He wrote something in the notebook. -- Do not be troubled, Mr. Frost. The Church does not punish children for their fathers' errors. It only prays for them.

-- Thank you, sir, -- said Alan, and felt the words curdle in his mouth.

Corvin smiled again, tipped his head to Hale, and walked out of the room. The door clicked shut behind him. The air warmed by a few degrees, and Alan felt the muscles in his back unknot one by one.

Hale was staring at the closed door. When he spoke, his voice was quiet.

-- Mr. Frost, -- he said. -- Did you know that, strictly speaking, I am not obliged to record what the Inquisitor says in my interviews?

-- I... did not know that, Professor.

-- It is a technicality. -- Hale took off his glasses and began to polish them with a handkerchief. -- A very small one. But I am a man who respects technicalities. -- He put the glasses back on and wrote a short note on the form. -- Your registration is complete. Rank F, invisible spirit. You are free to go. Come to me if anything strange happens. Anything. I mean that.

-- Yes, Professor.

-- And Mr. Frost. -- Alan paused with his hand on the door. -- You are a very bad liar. I hope it keeps you out of trouble.

Alan did not know what to make of that. He bowed and left, walking at a very steady pace until the Bureau was behind him, and the corridor, and the stairs, and then he turned a corner into the narrow, empty stairwell that led down to the cellar passages, and put his back against the wall, and breathed.

-- That, -- said Nyx, -- was the most disgusting display of groveling I have ever seen.

-- It worked, -- said Alan, shaking.

-- I know it worked. I am telling you it was disgusting. I am also telling you it was beautiful. I do not know which one is true. Summon me.

-- What?

-- Summon me. Five minutes. You are about to fall over, and you need someone to prop you up who will not lecture you about posture. Valeria will lecture you. Priscilla will measure you. Seraphina will cry. I will just be rude. It is much more restful.

It was an extraordinarily bad idea. Alan had perhaps ninety-odd points left after the weekend leak, which would become eighty after an extra summoning, which would cut into tomorrow. But he was dizzy, and his hands were shaking in earnest now, and Nyx had spoken in a voice that was quite different from her usual drawl, a voice with no mockery in it at all.

-- Five minutes, -- he said, and pressed his palm to the cold stone wall. -- Nyx. Please come out.

The hollow in his chest flared. A ripple of dark violet light spread across the wall, and out of the shadow in the corner of the stairwell, as smoothly as a cat stepping off a ledge, a woman unfolded.

She was shorter than Valeria and moved like water. Her skin was warm brown, her hair a cap of plum-dark curls cut very short, and her eyes, when they opened, were pure amber, with pupils shaped like slits. She wore a close-fitting suit of dark leather and a short cloak that seemed to absorb the light around it. A thin silver dagger spun lazily across the back of her fingers. She looked at Alan as though she were seeing a new species of animal.

-- Hm, -- she said. -- You are smaller than you sound.

-- I am sorry, -- said Alan automatically.

-- Do not apologize for your height. It is not a flaw. It is an advantage. Small people are harder to hit. -- She slid the dagger away into her sleeve and leaned against the wall beside him, close, with one shoulder almost touching his. -- Breathe, kid. In for four. Out for six. Come on. Let me hear it.

He breathed in for four. He breathed out for six. After the third round, the shaking in his hands eased.

-- Better, -- said Nyx. She tilted her head. -- That Inquisitor. The one with the coat. I do not like him.

-- You have only seen him for two minutes.

-- That is how long it takes. -- Her amber eyes narrowed. -- Do you know what I do not like about him? He did not ask the question because he wanted the answer. He asked because he wanted to see how you would flinch. He is a man who collects flinches. I have met his kind. I founded a guild of them. I know them.

Alan looked at her. It was unexpectedly comforting, to hear it said so plainly.

-- Give me your wrist, -- said Nyx abruptly.

-- What?

-- Your wrist. I am checking your pulse. I have been dead for a thousand years, I am entitled to be curious about how the living manage.

It was a ridiculous excuse. Alan held out his hand anyway. Her fingers closed around the inside of his wrist, warm and light, and her thumb settled over the pulse, and for exactly three seconds she said nothing at all. Her skin was very warm. Her touch was very precise. His heart did something awkward and he felt it, a single hard beat against her thumb, and her eyebrows lifted.

-- Interesting, -- she murmured.

-- It is the stairs, -- said Alan quickly. -- I climbed them quickly. I should check on the, ah, Wednesday rotation. Seraphina's day is coming up and I have not purchased the herbs she requested. Also, the schedule for Monday might need revising, because Valeria will probably want to start before dawn, and I should confirm the location of the training ground, which I believe is somewhere behind the old orchard, but I am not certain...

-- Your ears are red, -- said Nyx, with immense satisfaction.

-- They are not.

-- They are scarlet.

-- It is cold in here.

-- It is a stairwell with a coal furnace twenty feet away. -- She released his wrist, grinning, and he felt the loss of the warmth a half second before he could stop himself from noticing. -- Oh, you are going to be so much fun.

-- Please do not make this a game.

-- Everything is a game, kid. You just do not know the rules yet. -- Her smile softened, a little, at one corner. -- But I will tell you one rule for free. That man in the grey coat. The next time he asks you something, you do not bow. You look at your shoes. There is a difference. A bow says you are afraid. Looking at your shoes says you are boring.

-- Boring is the goal.

-- Then you are already halfway there.

The violet glow around her began to flicker. Alan felt the draw on his mana tighten, a quick sharp tug, and he looked down at himself and realized that the five minutes were almost over. Nyx saw it too. She pushed off the wall, gave him an odd, careful look, the kind of look a cat gives to a closed door, and stepped back into the shadow in the corner.

-- Go and eat something, -- she said, already fading. -- And put on a second shirt, you look like a ghost.

The violet light folded into his chest. The stairwell was just a stairwell again. Alan stood alone in the quiet, rubbing his wrist, wondering why it still felt warm.

-- That, -- said Seraphina's voice, very smooth, very sweet, -- was very touching.

-- Senior Seraphina, I...

-- No, no. Of course. It is perfectly natural. -- A pause. -- I was only wondering. Did she touch you often, in the stairwell?

-- She took my pulse. It was a pretext.

-- Of course. -- Another pause, a slightly longer one. -- I would never have thought of such a pretext myself.

-- I see, -- said Alan, who did not see at all.

He climbed the stairs slowly, out into the pale sunlight of a Sunday in autumn, and began walking back toward the dormitory. His legs were heavy. His mana was down to eighty, and the leak in the pit of his stomach was a steady tick, tick, tick. But beneath the exhaustion, he noticed that something had loosened in his chest, a knot he had carried a long time.

He walked past the old fountain, and the chapel, and the long garden of clipped hedges. His hand drifted up to the left side of his chest again. This time he did not pull it away.

And then, quite without warning, the memory came.

He was ten years old. He sat in a narrow chair in his father's study, a room that smelled of ink and cold tea and paper. There were books stacked in towers up to the ceiling. His father, a tall man whose face Alan could never quite remember in the daylight, knelt in front of his chair with one warm hand pressed flat against the left side of his chest. A light was shining between his fingers. It did not hurt. It was only warm, like holding a small sun.

-- There, -- his father had said, quietly. -- It is done.

-- What is it? -- Alan had asked.

-- A promise, -- said his father. His voice was strange, rough at the edges, as if each word were being carried a long way. -- So that you are never alone, Alan. Whatever happens. Whatever they say about me. You will never be alone.

Alan stopped walking.

He stood in the middle of the garden path, with the autumn wind moving the hedges around him, and pressed his palm very hard against his chest. The warmth was there. It had always been there. It had hummed in him for eight years like a coal in a banked fire, and he had never once asked what it was, because he had been very busy with the business of not being noticed.

-- Alan? -- said Seraphina, softly. -- Dear? What is it?

-- Nothing, -- said Alan, and began to walk again, a little faster, his heart pounding in a way that had nothing to do with stairs. -- Nothing. Just thinking.

But the word his father had spoken lay under his ribs like a stone, warm and heavy and entirely impossible to ignore. Never alone.

He wondered who, exactly, had made that promise, and what, exactly, it had cost.