Pendleton gestured toward the window again.
"You recognize the redhead, don’t you?"
A red-haired girl stood by the window. It was Catherine.
She held her tea without drinking much of it, nor did she try to socialize, likely aware that few would pay her any mind even if she approached them.
"I do," Richard answered. "We exchanged a few words after the Cicero Cup."
Catherine, sensing their gaze, turned her head and gave Richard a slight nod.
Richard nodded back, not letting his thoughts linger on Catherine.
’Some things only attract trouble the more you dwell on them.’
"The rest of them are more or less the same."
Pendleton lowered his hand. Just as he was about to withdraw it, he stopped mid-motion and changed direction.
"Oh, there’s one more. You two might hit it off."
He was referring to a person in the farthest corner by the window.
It was a girl in a plain, dark dress, without a single piece of jewelry.
She too was watching the people in the hall, but her method was different from Pendleton’s.
Pendleton was watching the spectacle; she was watching the etiquette.
Which gestures accompanied a greeting, what kind of person stood in what position—she stared, memorized, and learned.
She was learning a set of rules no one had ever taught her.
"Edith Carter."
Pendleton announced the name.
"The only one in this year’s fellowship to get in on a recommendation slot."
When Richard saw the girl, his gaze froze.
He saw in her a shadow of someone familiar.
"What does ’recommendation slot’ mean?" he asked, turning back.
"An old tradition of the Classical Society," Pendleton explained.
"Every year, aside from the main recommendation list, they reserve a spot or two for promising candidates from humble backgrounds.
The funding comes from the estate of a former president of the society.
He was poor in his youth, and on his deathbed, he established a fund dedicated to helping struggling children who couldn’t afford to study.
One or two a year, and in all the decades since, you can count the ones who truly clawed their way to the top on one hand."
Richard looked at the girl in the corner. "What’s her story?"
Pendleton continued his explanation, his mind like a thick dossier of personal information.
"A small town in the North. Her father hauls sacks at a mill."
"When she was fourteen, the Classical Society sent people to the countryside to select Miaozi, and they found a stack of her transcriptions in a wastepaper pile at a Sunday school.
She had taken an old, illegible stone tablet in the old town church and painstakingly deciphered most of it, character by character.
With no reference key, no Guide, just her own two eyes and sheer grit."
Something tugged at Richard’s heart.
’So similar. They’re so incredibly similar.’
"How far do you think she’ll go?" Richard asked.
Pendleton picked up the pastry that had been sitting out, finally put it in his mouth, and chewed slowly.
"The honest truth?"
"The honest truth."
"At best, she might touch the threshold of Minor Mastery, but she won’t be able to cross it." He swallowed the pastry.
"There’s no one to lift her any higher. That door is welded shut for her. There’s no way she can gather the resources for the first oath ceremony on her own."
"Then why does the Classical Society even keep these recommendation slots?"
"Because they’re useful." Pendleton placed the saucer back on the windowsill.
"Running the field assignments no one wants, guarding the old Seals no one wants to watch over... that’s all done by those who came in on recommendation. The young masters and ladies of the great families are far too precious—they wouldn’t touch any of it."
Richard thought of what his Mother had called the "Gear System."
The official system couldn’t be composed entirely of Hunters, of course. The recommended candidates were likely the staff officers of this army.
"Not that there aren’t exceptions," Pendleton said, brushing the pastry crumbs from his hands. "Ever heard of Haldane?"
"The author of *Introduction to Curtain Dynamics*." The name was legendary.
"That’s him," Pendleton nodded.
"Haldane started on a recommendation. The son of a country blacksmith who fought his way to a chair at the Imperial University and wrote the book that still surpasses all others to this day."
Richard looked at the girl in the corner, Edith.
She was still watching, still learning.
’This might have been the path Lillian could have taken.’
’But she glanced to one side instead.’
’She saw a faster path—one that could get her Mother out of the nursing home.’
Edith noticed his gaze. Across the hall filled with the finely dressed children of the nobility, their eyes met for a moment.
She gave a shy smile and nodded at Richard.
Richard nodded back.

Comments

Loading...