Chapter 5 5

Alejandro-

My wolf had been doing something since the first day of term that I had not, in two years of attending this school, had occasion to deal with, and that I was handling by not handling it, which was a strategy with a limited operational lifespan.

Ruben had been watching me not handle it since the first full week, with the patience of someone who had a great deal of practice at waiting for me to stop pretending a thing wasn't happening. He said nothing about it until day six, in the Council office after the evening agenda session, which meant he had waited three days longer than I had expected him to, which either meant he had decided the timing required care or that he had been entertained enough by the not-handling to let it run.

With Ruben it was usually the second one.

"The north staircase," he said, setting his agenda folder in the outbox with the measured quality of someone about to say something they have prepared.

"What about it?" I said.

"You told her it was the faster route to Heritage Studies," he said.

I looked at him. He looked back with the patient expression.

"She was going to be late," I said. "It's a factual observation about building layout."

"You told her Block D wasn't your housing recommendation," he said.

"It wasn't," I said. "The committee made an incorrect decision that could have been avoided with a slightly better application of the housing protocol. That's an accurate statement."

"You don't disclose committee deliberations to students," Ruben said. "You've been on the housing committee for two years and you have never disclosed a committee recommendation to a student."

I picked up my own folder. "She had just been placed in the worst-resourced block in the school as a visible message about what kind of admission she represented. She deserved to know it wasn't unanimous."

"She deserved," Ruben repeated, with a particular emphasis.

"That's what I said."

"Alejandro." He leaned back in his chair and looked at me with the full weight of his attention, which was a significant quantity of attention. "How long have we known each other?"

"Since we were eleven," I said.

"And in eight years, how many times have you told me that a student deserved something based on an encounter you could measure in minutes?"

I thought about this. "She made a sound methodological argument in the combined theory session today," I said. "Ramos agreed with it. I agreed with it. The argument was correct on its merits."

"I know," Ruben said. "I was there. I watched you do a twelve-minute discussion with a first-year about ability assessment protocol." He paused. "You don't do that. You participate in class discussions. You don't engage in extended dialogue with first-years about methodology. You have Council work. You have second-year coursework. You do not have twelve minutes of your class discussion time to spend on a first-year's methodological point."

"The point had merit," I said.

"The point had merit," he agreed. "And there have been other students with meritorious points in integrated sessions who you've acknowledged with a sentence and moved on from." He picked up his pen and turned it over in his fingers, which was what Ruben did when he was deciding whether to say the next thing. He said it. "Your wolf has been different since the first day."

"The first day had a territorial challenge in the main courtyard," I said. "High ambient pack energy from the returning student body. An unusual admission in the first-year cohort. Any dominant wolf would run at a higher frequency for the first few days."

"It's day six," Ruben said.

I did not respond to this immediately.

"The higher frequency has continued past the adjustment window," he said, still mild, still patient. "I noticed it. Cam noticed it. Even Professor Torres mentioned it at faculty coffee last Thursday, and Torres doesn't notice anything that doesn't involve a direct ability violation."

"Torres notices everything," I said. "He just pretends not to."

"The point," Ruben said, "is that it has been six days and your wolf has not settled back to its standard operating frequency, and the direction of the difference is toward the lower tiers, and the lower tiers are where the Omega-blood scholarship student is housed, and you disclosed a committee decision to her on a staircase and then spent twelve minutes in a class discussion with her, and I am simply observing that these things are occurring simultaneously."

The window of the Council office faced north, over the edge of the mountain tier and out toward the Granada valley far below, and the sky at this hour was the deep blue of late evening in the Sierra Nevada in September, and I looked at it and thought about what I was going to say and about what was actually true and about the gap between those two things.

"The Montoya betrothal announcement is at the Blood Moon ceremony," I said.

"I know," Ruben said.

"The Southern Pack alliance is strategically critical. My father has made that assessment on the basis of the Andalusian territorial data, and the data supports the conclusion."

"I know that too," Ruben said.

"So whatever my wolf is or isn't doing in the direction of the lower residential tiers is not relevant to the strategic reality," I said. "It's pack instinct responding to an unusual ability signature. An UNCLASSIFIED ability readout is a significant event in this building's history. Of course a dominant wolf is going to register it and pay attention to it. That's not specific. That's instinct."

"Sure," Ruben said.

"I mean that," I said.

"I believe you believe it," he said, which was not the same thing.

I stood and collected my Council materials for the morning agenda, which was the productive thing to do with a conversation that had arrived at a place I was not going to continue it from. "The combined ability theory session tomorrow covers the integration protocol framework," I said. "The point she raised about assessment calibration needs to be addressed in the session design. Can you add a note to the academic committee agenda?"

"Sure," Ruben said, writing it. "The note should reference whose point it was, for the record?"

"The methodology discussion," I said. "The committee can identify the source from the session record."

"Of course," he said, with great professional neutrality.

I went to the door. "It's instinct responding to an unusual signature," I said again. "That's what it is."

"You've told me that twice," Ruben said. "Which means you're still deciding whether you believe it."

I left the Council office and walked down the north staircase, which was the fastest route to my residential suite, and on the second-floor landing I stopped for a moment and looked at the spot on the staircase where the papers had scattered that morning, and my wolf did the thing it had been doing for six days, the direction thing, specific and low and continuous.

I did not examine what the direction was pointing at.

I went upstairs.

The Montoya betrothal documentation was on my desk when I got to my room, the formal proposal records and the ceremony protocol and the political brief from my father's office that outlined the strategic necessity of the Southern Pack alliance in terms precise enough that I had read it three times and found no logical argument against any of its conclusions.

I sat at the desk and opened the brief and read it again, for the fourth time, and it was exactly as airtight as it had been on the previous three readings.

My wolf sat at its elevated frequency and pointed toward the lower tiers and waited, with the specific patience of something that was not in any hurry because it had already decided and was simply giving me time to catch up.

I did not give it time. I worked through the Council agenda and the betrothal documentation until eleven and then I went to sleep, and if my wolf was doing something directional in the lower frequency of my awareness while I slept, I was not awake to acknowledge it, and that was going to have to be enough.