The Names of the Wards

The ward register was a handsome book.

Its corners were brass. Its pages had been ruled by someone patient. Against each young person's name stood a province, a household allocation, a course of study and a sequence of permissions describing who could visit, where letters could go and under what conditions travel might be approved.

Cal found his first entry near the middle.

Eleven years old. Suitable for advanced instruction. Resident as an assurance of continuing amity.

Someone had drawn a small correction through the length of his intended stay. The revised entry said subject to review.

Ada stood beside him, not looking until he moved the book where she could see it.

“They made it sound like a scholarship,” he said.

“Did you want the instruction?”

“Yes. Some of it. That's the part people use when they want me to agree the rest was kind.”

Across the room, the other wards were meeting with independent clerks. The younger children had adults they trusted beside them. Those who did not have such a person were offered a choice of advocates, not assigned the first official willing to call himself one.

One boy wore a yellow ribbon around his wrist. Ada recognised him from the waiting corridor, where he had been trying not to cry while a tutor described homesickness as a temporary disorder of discipline.

His name was Deren. He was thirteen.

“Do I have to go back?” he asked Cal.

“Not because we are ending the restriction.”

“My brother says Father won't let me study if I come home. But I don't want to stay here if they can lock the outer door again.”

Cal sat at the same level as him.

“We're writing the right to leave into the new arrangement. And the choice to continue studying. They need to be separate.”

“Will that work?”

“I don't know every person who will try to interfere with it. I know who will hold your copy and who you can ask when someone does.”

He showed Deren the names, including one clerk outside the household office. The boy read them carefully.

Ada watched Cal resist the impulse to promise more. His voice remained warm without becoming certain about a world he did not control.

Later, Oren arrived for his own meeting. He did not enter the room where the young people were speaking. He waited until Cal came out.

“I have signed the release request,” he said.

Cal looked at him. “I'm not asking to be transferred.”

“I know. I signed the end of the condition, not a transfer of custody.”

He handed over the page.

Cal read it standing in the corridor. His father's name was beneath a sentence stating that no provincial supply obligation could be secured through his residence, correspondence or travel.

Oren waited.

At last Cal folded the paper.

“Thank you.”

The words did not contain forgiveness for everything. His father seemed to hear them at their actual size.

“What will you do?” Oren asked.

“Finish this work. Then perhaps come north for a while. As a visit.”

“You have a room.”

“I'd like a door I can open myself.”

Oren swallowed. “Yes.”

They embraced awkwardly, the injured arm and the Governor's stiff knee making an ordinary human problem of what had been a political one for years. Ada turned towards the window and let them have it.

The formal end of the ward travel restrictions was read that afternoon. It was not enough by itself. Some families were far away. Some young people needed money, safe escort, continued housing or a place in a different school. Tovan assigned officers to those tasks and required written confirmation that the choices belonged to the people concerned.

Cal asked that the register remain intact.

An official suggested replacing the old descriptions with more appropriate language.

“No,” he said. “Add the new order. Don't make it look as though this is what the old words always meant.”

Neris marked the page for preservation.

When Deren left the meeting room, he still wore the yellow ribbon. He had chosen to stay through the end of term under the new arrangement and to spend a fortnight with his brother first. He showed Cal the travel pass twice, unable to believe the destination had not been chosen for him.

“Keep your copy somewhere dry,” Cal said.

“I have a tin.”

“Good.”

Ada and Cal walked back to the customs house by the ordinary street. It took longer than the household branch. They bought hot chestnuts from a woman who refused to break a large coin and waited while Cal found smaller ones.

At the crossing, he stopped.

“What?” Ada asked.

“Nothing.” He looked down both roads. “I don't have to report which one we take.”

She held out her hand.

He took it. They chose the road with the chestnut shells scattered along it, for no reason that required an entry in any book.