Chapter 3: The Academy of Applied Certainty

Inside the gate, the Academy began with counters. Six of them, under hanging signs, ranked along the intake hall like tollgates on a river of persons. ARRIVALS. ARRIVALS WITH MATERIALS. ARRIVALS UNDER SEAL. ARRIVALS UNDER BOND. ARRIVALS WITHOUT PAPERS. And at the end, beneath the sixth sign, a woman with folded hands and the patient face of someone who had watched every philosophy fail: ARRIVALS WHO DISPUTE THEIR ARRIVAL. "Do people dispute their arrival often?" Genna asked the runner assigned to them. "Constantly." "Do they win?" "No." "Then why have the counter?" "To receive the dispute." Over the inner arch, carved across stone that had plainly been measured for a shorter institution, ran the full official style: THE ACADEMY PROVINCIAL OF APPLIED CERTAINTY. The mason had run out of lintel two words early and wrapped the remainder beneath, smaller, where it huddled like an apology. Somebody had raised the problem, Genna judged, and somebody senior had overruled it, and the stone now recorded both facts forever, which was the most honest document she would see all week. They were received under bond. The clerk at that counter reviewed the writ record, reviewed Daniels' orders, and paused at the orders as her father had paused at them in the yard. He read the style aloud from the top sheet. "Lord Daniels of." He waited. He looked up. "There is no of." "No," Genna said. "There wouldn't be." Daniels inclined his head, accepting the absence as a matter already settled by a higher authority or possibly by himself. The clerk recorded a nothing in a box built for a something, and went on. "These orders convey the subject safely to assessment," the clerk said. "Yes," said Daniels. "They contain no terminating clause." "No," said Daniels, who had plainly read them more carefully…