Chapter 36
Fen's Secret
He told Fen about the Valken meeting that evening.
She listened without interrupting, which was one of the things he'd come to rely on about her -- she collected information before she responded to it, which made her responses worth listening to.
'They knew before the duel,' she said when he finished.
'Yes.'
'Which means either they have someone inside the Academy, or they had information from outside before you arrived.' She was quiet for a moment. 'The letter. Whoever sent the acceptance letter -- if someone else knew about it, that's the point at which your name and situation became known outside your immediate environment.'
He'd thought about this. 'Or the Runestone. The cracked stone was filed as a failed reading, but it's still a record. Someone with access to Crown testing records would see an anomalous result.'
'The Crown stores those centrally. Access requires either official clearance or significant political influence.' She met his eyes. 'House Valken has both.'
He looked at her. 'Your turn,' he said.
She looked back at him steadily.
'You've been letting me know you have something to tell me for about two weeks,' he said. 'Every time we talk about my situation you get close to something and pull back. I'm not going to push you. But I think we're past the point where not knowing hurts my ability to handle things.'
A long pause.
'My family name,' she said finally, 'is Vael.'
He was quiet for a moment. 'The same as Professor --'
'She's my aunt.' Fen looked at the wall, then back at him. 'She doesn't know I'm here. Or she didn't when I arrived -- I assume she's realized by now. We haven't spoken since I enrolled.' A pause. 'My family carries a recessive Umbros lineage. Third generation -- it's diluted, it doesn't present consistently. My father has it and never developed it. My mother doesn't have it at all. I got a version of it that the Runestone couldn't classify properly because it's not pure Umbros expression, it's a hybrid that doesn't fit any registered category.'
She said it with the flatness of someone who had processed this a long time ago.
'The Bronze result on your badge,' Cyan said.
'My family paid for it. A sympathetic testing official who owed my father a favor. The real result was a dim hybrid reading that would have gotten me flagged as an anomaly.' She paused. 'The letter I received -- I think my aunt sent it. I think she found out about me from family records and sent the letter without telling anyone in the family, and I came because it was the only way to get to someone who understood what I was.'
'Have you spoken to her?'
'No. I've been deciding whether to.' She met his eyes. 'The complication is that registering my real lineage would invalidate my current rank certification. I'd be an official anomaly -- unclassified, same as you. The protections I have from the forged Bronze result would disappear.'
'But you'd have access to what she knows.'
'Yes.' A long pause. 'And you'd have confirmation that the person you've been trusting has a direct family connection to the most knowledgeable Umbros scholar in the Academy, which you should probably factor into your assessment of me.'
He looked at her.
'I already trusted you,' he said. 'This doesn't change that.'
She was quiet for a moment.
'Why not?'
'Because everything you've done since we met has been exactly what you said it was. You've been honest about your reasons every time, including just now.' He looked at the wall. 'Your aunt already knows about me. She's been teaching me. The family connection is a complication but it's not a betrayal.'
Fen was quiet for a long time.
'I'm going to talk to her,' she said finally. 'And I'm going to think about whether to register the lineage.'
'Take your time,' he said.
'I know.' She stood. 'Thank you for not making it a problem.'
'It isn't one,' he said.
She left.
He sat in the dormitory room and thought about a family that carried a suppressed school's lineage for three generations and hid it carefully, and the aunt who'd gone into research instead of hiding, and the niece who'd come to the Academy to find someone who would understand.
He thought about all the ways people organized themselves around things that weren't allowed to be known.