Chapter 18: Convocation Eve

"Then we have until noon the day after tomorrow," Ansgar said, "and she's alive until then."

He sat very straight at the guest tower table, one arm pressed to his bound ribs.

"The trap, the stair and the door. We can't open it from the stair."

"I can," I said.

"Not without the Provost's ring on the other side of it."

"The ring is only a lock, Ansgar. I undo locks."

He looked at me for a long moment, and then, slowly, he nodded.

"What about the Ledger?" Hedda asked. "You're hugging a book that will get us all hanged."

"Not hanged. Read."

A page boy had slipped a card under the door while we talked.

The Provost of the White Crown requests the pleasure of Miss Aldwin's company at the Eve banquet, with her friends.

"She wants me at the high table," I said, "where she can see my hands."

"And you'll go," said Hedda.

"I'll go. Where's Grey Thorn?"

Hedda smiled, and it was not a kind smile.

"I sent a rider north the day we left. They were told to come in a body, with banners, in time for dinner."

At dusk on the Eve, two hundred students in grey wool coats came up the White Crown's steps in a double file.

They carried black banners with a silver thorn.

They didn't sing or cheer.

They tramped through the gate in rows, snow on their shoulders, and the gate porter watched them go by with his mouth slightly open.

"Section nine," Hedda told him, passing.

"There are two hundred of you."

"It says scholars. It doesn't say how many."

The Great Hall of the White Crown was lit by a thousand candles in gold branches.

Long tables ran beneath a vaulted ceiling.

At the head of the room, on a dais, sat the Provost in grey silk with her hands folded.

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