Chapter 9: Tea With the Provost

The Provost of the White Crown sat at the end of Grey Thorn's long breakfast table with her gloves folded in her lap.

She was fifty-two, slim and upright, with silver hair pinned flat under a grey hood and a face so calm it looked ironed.

Hedda poured her tea with a hand that wanted very much to throw it.

"Thank you, dear," the Provost said. "What a good leaf. Northern, is it?"

"From the village."

"How charming."

Two hundred students ate their porridge in the same silence, watching her over their spoons.

She had walked through the north gate alone and nobody had stopped her.

Nothing in Grey Thorn's charter said a woman couldn't have tea.

Ansgar stood behind my chair with his arms folded.

I could feel him there.

"Linnea," the Provost said. "You look well. The cold suits you."

"Provost."

"I won't waste your morning."

She sipped.

"My son behaved abominably on Friday, and I've told him so.

"He'll write you a proper apology."

"Will he?"

"In his own hand. And Calista will be sent home to her mother in Marren Cross, if that's your wish."

She said it exactly the way someone offers a second lump of sugar.

I didn't take it.

"What do you want?" I said.

"Only what I wanted from the start. You, safe and in the right place." She set down her cup. "I've brought something."

From her sleeve she drew a small velvet box and laid it between us.

She opened it.

A second ring sat inside, new and whole, the pale stone clear.

"A Lorimer piece," she said, "made fresh by the Crown's own artificer.

"Wear it to Convocation, and afterwards put it in a drawer if you like.

"You'd have a room in the Archive tower, and a chair in your own right.

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