Page 121 of Zenith Tower

I found it beneath the copied Council responses, folded once and fixed to the back cover with two narrow stitches. The paper was thinner than the pages my father had shown me. When I eased the first corner free, a watermark appeared in the gray light: scales crossed by a key, the mark of the Council’s central registry.

My father had made me learn the seals before I was old enough to understand why anyone would counterfeit them.

The registry mark was real.

The first page carried no letterhead. A number had been written at the upper right in faded brown ink, followed by a newer notation in black.

Reconciliation Ledger: Article Seven Dispositions.

Extract certified for response review.

Scope: Ashford inquiries concerning Delphine Moreau and Sadie Corwin; related Verita emergency control classification. Supporting policy excerpt attached.

The certification bore the outer records office stamp and a signature I had seen beneath faculty reports at Zenith Hall.

Aldric had signed it.

I read the first entry.

MOREAU, DELPHINE. Educational record closed under Article Seven. Hall departure confirmed. Tower intake confirmed same date. Resident status active pending reassessment.

Below it, in a different hand:

External response authorized: case resolved. No transfer details required.

My father’s inquiry lay beneath the annex, carrying the answer the Council had chosen to give him.

Delphine Moreau is no longer resident at Zenith Hall.

The response omitted the Tower intake, and the note beneath Delphine’s entry showed that the omission had been approved before the answer left the Council office.

I had stood in her cell while she leaned against Astra, too weak to cross the room without help. The people who authorized that answer knew exactly where she was being held.

I turned the page.

Sadie Corwin’s name appeared halfway down.

CORWIN, SADIE. Tower status closed following custody reassignment. Destination sealed under directive 7-C. Receiving signature removed from local reconciliation by Council order.

No destination. No escort. No confirmation that Sadie had survived the transfer. But the entry proved the absence was deliberate. Someone had removed the receiving signature from the record Marrow searched and then recorded the removal in a ledger kept beyond his reach.

A number had been added beside the order. It matched the notation Aldric had written beneath his certification.

Source directive retained in central registry. Access denial entered on three subsequent requests.

Marrow had said he made two requests before the Council threatened his position. Someone else had asked a third time.

I thought of Aldric standing beside Juno during the formal, challenging Quill while the rest of the faculty watched Article Seven become our sentence.The Dean stands where he stood.

He had continued asking after we left the Hall.

The next entry concerned a source record opened nine years earlier.

VERITA, SELENE. Comparative reference approved for Corwin review. Source record restricted. Cross-reference removed from Tower working file after Council objection.

The line in Sadie’s file had not been an overlooked note. The Council had ordered it removed. Whoever carried out the amendment had preserved the correction here because the registry required every altered reference to be reconciled somewhere, even when the alteration itself was meant to disappear.

For nine years, Astra had carried a brooch and the few memories childhood had left her. Since arriving at Zenith Hall, she had been assembling the rest from warnings her mother hid. All that time, the Council had possessed another piece and issued an order to remove it.