Chapter 19: The Badge

Ivo's POV

The courier had taken a room over the Ironwood feed store, and I knocked on her door at midnight.

She opened it in her stocking feet with a pen in her hand, and she did not look surprised.

"Warden Stannard."

"I have something for the Council."

I held out the letter.

It was four pages, in my own hand, and I had not slept to write it.

She looked at the envelope, and then at me, and then she stepped back and let me in.

There was a lamp, a bed, and a telegraph key on the table, wired into the feed store's line.

"You should know what happens to a Warden who opens with his own breach," she said.

"I know."

"Do you?"

"I read a sealed file in the first week and told no one. I have written that, and I have signed it."

She sat down at the table with the pages.

She read the first one slowly, and the second one faster, and when she reached the bottom of the third her eyebrows came together.

"You say here you kept the oath of silence."

"I did."

"You didn't break it. The oath does not require a Warden to report a Supreme."

"It required me to tell the student that her file existed, if she asked."

"She didn't ask."

"I didn't give her the door to ask through."

The courier set the pages down very carefully.

"You'll lose the post," she said. "You know that.

"The Board strips any Warden who held a Supreme's rank and didn't report it that same week. It's automatic."

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