Sable had a tell.
Not a big one. Not the kind that got people caught in the novels I used to read on flights between cities where someone had died in an interesting enough way to require my particular set of opinions. It was small. When she was deciding whether to trust information she had but hadn't verified, her right thumb moved against the side of her index finger. A small pressing motion. Like she was testing the edge of something.
She did it twice while I waited for her to respond.
"The symbol appears at all four prior scenes," I said, since we were apparently doing this now. "Same position each time. Low on the tree. Knee height on a crouching adult. Which means whoever's doing it isn't standing when they carve it."
The thumb stopped moving.
"They kneel," she said.
"They kneel."
She looked at the tree for a long moment. Then at me, with the specific quality of attention that was not comfortable to be on the receiving end of, the kind that was taking inventory.
"You read forensic analysis," she said.
"Professionally."
"You're a second year student."
"I was a forensic psychologist for eleven years before I was a second year student," I said, which was technically true and also the kind of sentence that required follow-up I was not prepared to provide.
Sable stared at me.
"That is a strange thing to say," she said.
"I have a complicated history."
"Belwick transfer." She said it like she'd already looked it up, which she had, because of course she had, because Sable Vane ran case four on a campus map and climbed four-story walls to deliver notes and had a father who used to run academy security before whatever required a reform. "Belwick's applied interpretive program. That's memory reconstruction, isn't it. Arcane access to recalled experience."
I had no idea. The System had not told me what applied interpretive arts meant and I had been operating on context and inference.
"Among other things," I said, which was the answer you gave when you needed to agree without confirming specifics.
"So when you say eleven years." She was working through it in real time, I could see the processing. "You mean you have access to recalled experience that isn't yours."
That was a better explanation for Harlan Voss's situation than anything I had come up with. I filed it immediately.
"Something like that," I said.
We stood in the forest for another minute in a silence that was less hostile than the previous ones had been, which was not the same as comfortable but was movement in a direction.
Then Sable said: "Calder Noyne came back this morning."
"I saw him at lunch."
"He'll come here within three days. He has four prior scenes to read first and he'll do those in order." She was still looking at the carved symbol. "His window for reading a signature is about two weeks from point of death. Scene one is already past threshold. Scene two is borderline."
"You know how his ability works."
"My father worked with him." A pause. Small one. "Before."
Before the reform. Before whatever had been removed from the archive. Before the thing that had required a containment protocol and a quiet arrangement for at least one transfer student from a northern institute that specialized in remembered experience.
I was building a picture and I didn't like what the shapes were suggesting.
"The symbol's audience," I said. "You have a theory."
The thumb moved again. Pressed once against the index finger and stopped.
"I have a partial theory," she said. "And I'm not sharing it with someone I've known for three days who keeps turning up at my crime scenes."
"Your crime scenes."
"Yes."
"Plural."
"Correctly plural."
I looked at her. "You have a case number on your notebook cover. Case four. Which means you have case numbers for the others. Which means you opened active files on all of them." I paused. "Who authorized that."
"I authorized it."
"You're a student."
"I'm also the person doing the work." She finally turned to face me properly, and the tired quality I'd seen earlier was still there but there was something underneath it that was not tired at all. "What do you want, Voss. Actually. Because you're not here because you're curious and you're not here because you're worried about Cedric Mallow."
The bird above us restarted. A different sound this time, lower, repetitive.
"I want to know who's ahead of us," I said.
The us came out without planning and I heard it after it landed and so did she, and for a second neither of us addressed it.
"There's no us," she said, but it came out slightly flat.
"There are two sets of footprints at this scene and one of them isn't mine," I said. "Someone is running four scenes ahead of your case number and they kneel when they mark their work and they came back after the body was cleared to do it. You have a partial theory and nine days before Calder reads this scene and I have a skill set you're not utilizing."
"Because I don't know you."
"You know my footprints."
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]
Social Interaction Flag: Sable Vane
Profiling Progress: 71%
Alert: She is running her own profile on you.
Her current assessment: Anomalous. Possibly dangerous. Possibly useful. Undecided.
Recommendation: Do not push further today.
For once, just listen.
For once.
I closed my mouth.
Sable looked at the symbol one more time and then pulled out her notebook. Not the campus map one. A different one, smaller, grey cover, the spine cracked from being opened flat too many times. She flipped to a page near the middle and held it out.
A sketch of the symbol. Precise. Four versions of it, actually, each slightly different in a way that was not stylistic variation but degradation. The earliest one was deeper cut, more controlled. The most recent one, Cedric's tree, was lighter. Faster.
"They're getting quicker," she said. "Each scene the carving takes less time. Either they're getting more comfortable with it or the ritual is losing meaning and they're going through the motions."
"Or they're being rushed," I said.
She looked at me.
"If they're working on a schedule they didn't set," I said, "and the schedule is accelerating."
"Something is pushing the timeline," she said slowly.
"Something or someone."
She took the notebook back. Closed it. The grey cover had a small water stain in the bottom left corner shaped roughly like a boot, which was specific enough that I was fairly sure it meant something to her and none of my business.
"I'm not sharing my files," she said.
"I'm not asking for your files."
"Then what are you asking for."
I thought about it honestly for a second, which was unusual for me in social situations.
"Tell me what your father found," I said. "Before the reform. Whatever it was that required a reform."
The silence this time was different. Not assessing. Something with more weight in it.
"He didn't find it," she said. "It found him." She put the notebook in her bag. "And then he left and never told me what it was. He just said the academy was built on something that didn't finish dying." She zipped the bag. "I've been trying to figure out what that means for two years."
She walked away through the trees. Same north path as the other set of footprints. Which meant she knew that path. Which meant she'd used it before.
I stood next to the carved word and thought about something that didn't finish dying and an academy built on top of it and a symbol that meant "Returned" carved at the knees of a person who was either grieving or following instructions.
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]
Profiling Progress: Sable Vane: 89%
New Assessment: She is not investigating the murders.
She is investigating the academy.
The murders are a symptom.
Update: Pell Orin did not attend afternoon classes.
His current location is unknown.
Narrative Weight: MEDIUM.
You have seven people in your orbit now.
That is too many.
That is far too many for chapter 9.