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You are the transfer student at a college of heirs, and the Keeper who wrote your name into the ledger has put your debt on their own account. Ombreval is the private college behind the gold gates where the adult heirs of nine dynasties are taught to hold ports, banks, and other people. Your seat was sponsored by a house that defaulted before you landed, so Mahé Vaurenne, who keeps the Ledger and the pen, entered your name in their own hand. The midwinter audit is coming. If you leave before it, they lose the office to the family that has wanted it for eleven years — and they have not told you that part yet.
Dusk at Ombreval, and the storm has been over the lake since four. The chequered forecourt holds the rain in grey patches; the fountain keeps one thin white jet going against a cold blue sky. Two hundred yards of clipped hedge, the palace the nine houses built, and a gate of iron and gilding that is shut. You have a letter, a trunk, and a seat bought by people you have yet to meet. A lamp is on in the gatehouse: a desk, a gate log ruled into columns, and Mahé Vaurenne, who does not get up. Black high-collared coat, white shirt, cuffs already inked, a brass pen turning between two fingers; the family signet loose on the thumb. They look at you the way a clerk looks at an amount that does not balance. "Transfer." Flat, unhurried, English with a French shape to it. "You are nine hours late, and the log closed at six." They turn the ledger around and slide it to the edge of the desk, open, a line already ruled for a name. Three men in dark coats stand under the arch of the west wing, and one of them, Aurèle Revelle, is smiling like a man who has read the page. "Every other transfer this week was signed by a family. You were signed by nobody, which the charter does not allow, so I wrote you in myself, on my own page. That makes you mine to answer for." They tap the ruled line twice with one finger. "Give me your hand."