Fair is for people who are used to things going their way

It took me a moment to catch up enough to parse all of that, and then I was horrified. “You think I cheated on my detective course examinations?” There was a long, deflating silence during which she didn’t speak, or at least, one that felt long to me, and when she still didn’t speak I finally had to ask, “Well, is there any way to prove I’m not, or is that just it?” I felt vaguely as though this woman had tricked me, with all her overly familiar talk about Csoglaran stuff, when all along she thought I had played false on my exams. I swallowed the sob trying to climb out of my throat, because I couldn’t very well let a person who thought I was a cheat see me cave in on myself with panic.

Instead of answering my question she opened her bag and pulled out a sheet of paper. “What did you mean when you wrote, I must be less remedial at oral examination?”

“Just as it says,” I answered, more sullenly than I meant to, because I knew what it meant when things like this happened and people ignored your questions about how it could be made right again, and because this conversation was the most unpleasant cap I could imagine to a week that had already been no fun at all, and because I was determined I would not cry in front of this awful woman. “And you saw well enough yourself how shit I am.” She had been there, after all, and had a front seat to my terrible live examination.

I hadn’t at first minded the woman’s expression of detached curiosity as she considered me, but now I actively disliked it. “Your commanding officers in the Watch Guard think very highly of you,” she observed as she wrote something down on the paper. “Both the chief guarder and the captain of the Fourth wrote letters recommending your admission to the detective course despite your youth.”

For this I could think of no reply, and I didn’t see what any of that mattered anymore if she was just going to accuse me of cheating and flunk me out anyway. I fixed my eyes on the table and said nothing.

“And your instructors from the detective course were surprised to be approached about this by the examination board.”

Because of course this woman from the board had gone and informed all of them about her suspicion.

“All of them expressed their surprise at any suggestion that you would compromise your integrity by cheating on exams,” she went on, “and further that you would even need to given your performance and course marks.”

I really oughtn’t to have made myself so miserable over all this the last two weeks, or tried half so hard, or listened to Curry’s well-intended encouragement when I knew perfectly well that being able to do it a bit at home wasn’t the same as being able to do it for the real exam. Better I should have failed outright on my own merits, instead of over-preparing so much that I had the whole written part more or less memorized rote, being terrible for the other part anyway, and this fact appearing as a conspicuous scoring discrepancy to the exam board people.

When I still didn’t speak, the woman asked, “Do you wish to respond to any of this?”

“No,” I said with gloomy resignation, wondering how long it would take Curry to get worried and come looking for me, if instead of going home where I’d have to tell him and Nan I would never be a **** guard, I went from here straight to our local to get properly wrecked.

“Why not?” she wanted to know, sounding puzzled.

This question felt offensively cavalier to me. “Because when somebody makes up their mind you did something wrong, it usually makes more trouble arguing about it than to just shut up and take whatever punishment they want to give you,” I told her crossly. I was pretty sure she could kick me out of the detective course, and further that she would, but I didn’t think she had the authority to dismiss me from the Watch altogether. At least, not if she didn’t have anything bad she could report about my conduct with her today.

The woman seemed not to know how to react to that. “Most students immediately deny an inquiry into academic dishonesty,” she said finally. “You don’t think it’s worth protesting something you don’t think is fair to you?”

“Fair is for people who are used to things going their way,” I said, because I didn’t know a better way to say it. When it really came to it, fair was for people like Curry, and not for people like me. I had hitched a ride with him for a time, and that time had been very good while it lasted, and now it was over. I had let Curry, with all his naïve, appealing notions about how things ought to be in the world, soften me so much that I forgot how it really worked when a person didn’t come from a nice family with means.

Or from a family at all.

Now I really was feeling rather close to tears. “I understand what the punishment is for cheating,” I told the woman, when all she did was look at me with a sort of perplexed confusion. “They told us when we first started the detective courses that we would be chucked out and formally reprimanded, if we did. So you should just do whatever is supposed to happen now. I would like to go home, please.”

I resented it very much, that this woman had been so chatty, and that this had seemed so neutral at first that I had foolishly told her all that stuff about being from Mivia. I had let Curry make me so stupid as to think that being a constable in a good ward, and a detective candidate, meant it didn’t matter anymore that I came from the kind of ignorant, back country Mivian trash everybody here in the south looked down on most. Properly I was supposed to conceal that fact, and I had forgotten that unstated rule because I wanted so badly to believe I was a person with prospects.

There was another long pause, and then the woman said in a sympathetic tone I didn’t trust one bit, “You haven’t gotten a lot of sleep this week, have you, dear?”

I looked stonily at the table without answering.

“I have some idea of the truth, but I need to ask you outright,” she said after a moment. “Did you receive any unapproved assistance on this week's examinations, or bring nonstandard materials into a testing room at any time?”

I looked at her with distaste. “No,” I said sourly, because this question had the feeling of a trap, even if I couldn’t work out exactly what kind of trap. “I did not cheat on your shitty exams.”

She surprised, but did not endear, me by laughing at this reply. “Very good. Then that’s that. Are you interested in retaking your oral examination, in a different format?”

She had left off the cheater thing so abruptly, and now she was trying to trick me into… something, and I didn’t know what, and I didn’t like not knowing. I scowled at her.

“Actually,” the woman said, standing and picking up the papers she’d brought in, “let’s finish this up in a room that isn’t wardbonded. These rooms have the unfortunate side-effect of making some people a bit paranoid, particularly when they aren’t feeling their best, and I suspect you’re one of them.”

“Ward-what? And what difference does it make what room we’re in?” I asked in bewilderment. I just wanted to go home and never leave again, and switching rooms would only make this terrible conversation take still longer.

She turned back to me, frowning slightly. “The clerk didn’t caution you?”

“About what? He said ‘they’ would be here after a while, and then a good long time went by, and then you came.”

The woman muttered something that sounded like, goddamnit, under her breath. “Interviews like this are conducted in rooms enchanted to make people forthcoming and **** to lie. But in some cases the compulsion has the less desirable effect of creating resentful paranoia, especially if someone shares personal details they might not tell most people. Ordinarily the student is advised of this. I ought to have asked and confirmed that had happened before we spoke, but I forgot, because your Csoglaran lines surprised me, and… because it’s been a very long week. I’m sorry. Truly.”

I was still struggling to catch up with this, and wound up simply staring at her.

“I firmly believe you did not cheat on your detective course examinations, regardless of what the score distribution flags might suggest,” the woman clarified when I didn’t reply, then pulled open the door. “No accusation will be brought against you. And after being questioned about it without a proper briefing, you have every right to storm out without further discussion. But, I plan to recommend your live examination score be struck and that you be allowed a retake with alternate accommodations. If you would like to remain here and discuss that, I suspect you will be pleased with the outcome.”

She paused here to see whether I had anything to say, but all I did was look suspiciously at her, because I had no idea what any of that meant.

The woman stepped outside and beckoned me to do the same. “Come on out of here, will you? We can’t constructively discuss your retake while you still think I’m an evil shrew bent on your destruction.” She stepped out and looked back at me.

I picked up my bag from the chair and followed her out, half expecting that I would feel some dramatic difference, once I wasn’t in the room anymore, but mostly I just felt very tired. The woman motioned me to follow her, and I did, to a different room with a desk and chairs and a little table. I realized this must be her office. I sat in the chair she pointed to, and she sat behind her desk, and I waited for her to tell me what came next.