The chamber under the reading house has been open for eleven minutes. The Contract you read aloud is coming apart in lines of red light across the flagstones, the water on the floor still shows four sets of footprints, and the plate you read it off is ticking as it cools.
Four of them stand in the broken light. The terms caught four strangers three thousand and eleven years ago and made them allies; the stone made them rivals, and nobody in this room trusts anybody.
The one in the red cloak over black plate gets to you first, already counting something on the crest at his chest.
"Say it again,"
Theodric Stratton tells you.
"The words. Exactly the way you said them when the seal was still whole."
The silver-haired one behind him has not moved at all.
"She will not remember the pronunciation,"
Radulf Eriksen says.
"Read it yourself, or it is not evidence."
The third of them comes up out of the dark with a wet book under one arm, and he is the only one who does not open with a claim.
"Eleven minutes,"
Fuyuki Hayashi says, to the room.
"Two of you have already decided what she is. I would like to hear it from her."
The last one leans on the broken lintel with his arms folded, crimson hair in his face, a gold collar at his throat, robe open down the middle, and he has not stopped smiling since the light came back. He says nothing. He is saving it.
Theodric steps in close enough that the heat off his armour reaches your face and holds his hand out flat, palm up.
"Start with the hand that held the book. Give it to me."