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years 
I studied here. Though it might have always been in another section — or even in another room, as disordered as things are in the areas Master Hotchkiss hasn’t cataloged. He found it in a stack of ancient poetry, and it might have been there for years. If I had copied my thesis, that would have been a good place for me to hide 
it after I copied the parts I wanted. But I didn’t.”
    The passion had left his voice now, only defeat remaining. I knew what ’twas like, to stand before a tribunal and be condemned, so I gave him an encouraging slap on the shoulder on my way into Chant’s stall. I dumped a measure of oats into the feed bin, checked to be sure he still had enough water, and then departed, giving my horse a farewell slap on the rump. Much the same gesture I’d used on Benton, now that I thought on it.
    “If that other paper was so much like yours, and 
you didn’t copy it, then whoever created it must have copied you,” I said. “How long is this dissertation of yours? Twenty pages? Forty?”
    Benton cast me a wry look. “Two hundred and fifty-two. Though some of that is diagrams, and examples of how you might show the relationship of objects buried at different depths. You see, the deeper an object is buried the older it will be. So if you can determine the age of any item on that level, you can—”
    “So creating this new dissertation, which mimics yours, would be no small task. Who hates you, Benny?”
    The childhood nickname made him grimace, but he made no protest as he led True and me up a creaking side stair to the rooms he leased on the second floor.
    “No one. And the dissertation Master Hotchkiss found wasn’t new. It was dated from the reign of Liege Harold, almost ninety years ago, and the paper was yellowed, the leather cracked and—”
    “There are ways to fake that.” I knew someone who would have known how. But he wasn’t with me, anymore.
    Except now, as I restlessly paced the dark campus, it seemed he was. Or if not with me, at least in the same town, and in need of my rescue! When was this lecture going to end? I was circling the back of the buildings that ringed the square, so when people poured into it I could swiftly return. But every time I peered down the lane between buildings, ’twas still empty.
    I wondered what Fisk would make of Benton’s tale, when he heard it. As my brother had led me up the side stair to his rooms, he’d assured me that no one hated him, or sought his job as a junior professor of history specializing in the ancients.
    But I paid this almost no attention, because when 
he opened the door to a pleasant sunny room, with padded benches and chairs, there was a young woman sitting at the table reading one of the stacked papers.
    I hadn’t seen Benton for almost six years, but I’d recognized him instantly. I had seen Kathy only a little over three years past, but even as she rose and came to hug me, I scarce knew her.
    “You’ve grown up!” I broke her embrace and held her off a little, so I could look her over.
    She snorted, and pushed up the spectacles that had slipped down her nose. “It would be peculiar if I hadn’t. I wrote you — well, I wrote for Fisk to tell you — that Father had packed me off to court for the Liege’s marriage fair. Did you think I was still fourteen? Although me going to court may turn out to be a good thing, because I know about something that might have given someone a motive to do this.”
    I was still staring, even as True frolicked up and introduced himself, and Kathy bent to give him a pat. She was thin, as always, with mouse brown hair and mouse gray eyes. But the child’s gawky awkwardness had given way to the grace of a stalking marsh heron.
    “Michael.” She waved a hand in front of my eyes. “Pay attention. The Liege’s only son, Rupert, is in love with a Giftless woman.”
    My brows flew up. “That’s unfortunate. For everyone involved.”
    Magic doesn’t exist in normal humans,