Page 137 of Legacy Ascended

"Yes."

Her voice is low and tired.

"Miss Rask has declined to discuss her documents with me," Falken says, sitting. "She's been consistent about it."

"I asked him for you and he got me a sandwich instead, which I did appreciate." She sets the cup down. "Can I put things on the table?"

"Please."

She opens the canvas bag.

Not nervously. Carefully — the way you open a bag that is important to you.

A folder first, brown, soft at the corners. Then a second folder, newer, with a printed label on it. Then a flat parcel about the size of a book, wrapped in a piece of cloth and tied with a cord, which she sets down on top of both and does not untie.

Then, last, a narrow wooden box.

It's dark with age and there's a hinge on one end and no lock, and when she puts it down she keeps two fingers on the lid.

Jon stops breathing properly beside me.

I turn my head. He hasn't moved at all.

"What?" I say.

He doesn't answer.

The woman looks at him for the first time since I came in.

"You know what it is."

"I know what it looks like," Jon says.

"Good." She takes her hand off the lid. "Then you'll understand why I haven't let anybody open it."

Falken's chair creaks. "For my own clarity — what are we saying it looks like?"

“A matrix case,” Jon says. “Or it could be. There are four similar cases in the academy collection.” He puts his hands in his coat pockets, which I have learned is what he does instead of reaching. “I want to be extremely clear, Chancellor. The box is consistent with a seal-matrix case. That doesn't tell us what's inside it.”

"Understood."

"There is no circumstance in which I open it," Jon adds, "and there is no circumstance in which she should, either. It goes to a conservator, with two signatures, and witnesses."

"That's what I want," the woman says.

I look at her.

"You do?"

"I've carried that box on three trains and I'd like somebody with proper equipment to tell me whether my family has been right about it for generations, because I genuinely don't know." She says it flatly, without drama. "I'd also like it done by somebody who doesn't work for a Great House."

Falken and I look at each other.

"You told me you wanted to speak to Miss Miller before anybody examined these," he says.

"I did."

"Why?"