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The email came at ten to six, and Alexander read it at the desk by the door before he had put his shoes on.

He read it twice. Then he put the telephone down on the desk, square to the edge, beside the programme, and sat with his hands on his knees in his socks, and looked at the wall.

“Brennan,” said Frederick, from the bed by the window.

“Brennan.” Alexander did not look round. “He has been awake since four. Marking. It says so.” He considered the wall. “He writes that he has decided to be done, and that he is sending them in the order of the register, and that I am under H.”

“What did you get?”

“For the spring, an A.” Alexander picked the telephone up again and looked at it. “For the year, a B. The C and the A, averaged.” He put it down. “He writes that he is bound by his own rules, and that I know it, and that he would like me to know that he minded the arithmetic.”

“Read me the rest.”

Alexander read it. He read it in the voice in which he read the box, level, every comma in its place.

“Mr Hohenzollern. You were wrong in one respect, in the second question, as you will have found. You said that the minute is where a sovereign is dangerous. Not in this Realm. Here the minute belongs to whoever signs at the bottom of the page in ink, and that is the minister, and the yes is his. The King’s initial goes in the top corner in pencil and says only that he has read it. It is the lightest thing on the page.” Alexander stopped. “I have this on good authority, by personal communication, which I am permitted to cite, because I am not a candidate. The rest of the paper was the best in the section. You did not cite yourself once, or Mr Hanover, which I checked, twice. H.B.”

There was a silence in 312.

“He cited you,” said Alexander.

“He cited my father.”

“He cited your father through you, on a bench, a year ago.” Alexander looked at the telephone. “He has been waiting a year to use it. He has used it on me.” He was quiet for a moment. “It is correct. I was wrong in that respect. I wrote that the minute was dangerous because in my own country I have sat in the minute. I did not think about where the ink goes in yours.”

“Do you mind?”

Alexander considered this honestly, in his socks.

“Yes,” he said. He held up his finger and thumb, a little way apart, the way Brennan held them up about being a republican. “About this much less than in December.”

Then he put his shoes on, the left and then the right, and ticked 05.50 on the programme, which had a line on it that said 05.50. Brennan (email), because he had known it would come at ten to six, and it had.

---

Ashby’s office was in the brick building with the ivy, on the second floor, at the end of a corridor that smelled of old paper and floor polish, through a door with a frosted glass panel in it and a card on the glass that said DR N. ASHBY. OFFICE HOURS TH 11 TO 12, OR, UM, BY ARRANGEMENT, in somebody’s handwriting that was probably his.

Frederick knocked at eleven.

“Yes, sorry, come in,” said Ashby, from inside, in the voice of a man who has been expecting a knock for twenty minutes and has still been surprised by it.

The office was small and full. There were books on every wall from the floor to the ceiling and on the floor in front of the books, in stacks, with slips of paper coming out of them; and there was a map on the back of the door, an old one, of the colonies in 1775 with the lines of the Four-Year War drawn on it in pencil, and a radiator under the window that nobody in Arizona had ever turned on. The window was covered on the outside with ivy, so that the light that came through it into the room was green, and moved a little, and made the office feel like the bottom of a pond.

Ashby was at the desk in a tie that was too tight, a blue one, with a stack of papers in front of him in a box.

“Mr Hanover. Sit, sorry. Sit.” He stood up, which he did not need to do, and sat down again. “I’ve, um. I’ve done them. All thirty-nine. I was up.” He found the paper in the box without looking for it, which meant that he had put it on the top on purpose and then put the others on top of it so that it would not look as though he had. “Yours.”

He held it out across the desk.

---

It was the paper. Three thousand one hundred words, stapled at the corner with a German staple from the bottom drawer of the desk by the door, because Alexander had said that he could, and had counted what was left. On the front, in the plain type of the lounge printer, the title.

Whose Mercy: The Pardon of 1974 in Three Accounts.

And beside the title, in the top right-hand corner, in red pen, in Ashby’s small sloping hand, there was a letter, A, and after it, firmly, a short straight line.

He had had three Bs and a C in his first fall, and a B plus from this same man in December, and an A from Dr Pike in December, which Kessler said she gave to everybody who came at eight, and there had been two; and none of them had been for a thing he had written, and found out, and argued, and put his name to at the end. He looked at the letter in the corner for longer than it took to read it.

“Is that, um,” said Ashby. “Is that all right?”

“Yes.”

“Only you’ve gone quite quiet.”

“It’s the best mark I’ve had for anything I’ve written,” said Frederick.

Ashby looked at him across the desk in the green light for a moment, with his tie too tight, and his face did the thing it had done in February in the third row, when he had been handed a thread; and then he looked down at his own hands.

“Well,” he said. “It’s the best paper I’ve had. Since I came. Which is, um. Which is only since January. Last January.” He looked up. “So.”

---

“The minus,” said Frederick.

“Yes.” Ashby leaned across the desk, and turned the paper round, and turned the pages, to the last one, where there was a paragraph with a red line down the side of it, and a comment in the margin, three lines long, which had been rewritten at least once, because there was a word crossed out at the beginning of it. “It’s the last page.”

Frederick read the comment.

You have three accounts, and you have treated two of them exactly as a historian should: the textbook as a secondary source that compressed and then invented, and the family as an oral tradition that is sixty years late, second-hand at best, and convenient. You have then treated the third, the carbon in the Goldwater papers, as a primary source, which it is, and said what it does not tell us, which is what the question was.

And then on the last page you tell us what it was. From your father. On the telephone. In March.

He looked up.

“You, um. You cite him,” said Ashby. “Which is fine. It’s allowed. I asked you in December if you could cite fewer of them from your family, and you’ve cited exactly one, and you’ve cited him properly. Oral account, 4 March 2035. That’s correct.” He looked at the paragraph. “And you’ve said what’s wrong with it, as a source. You’ve said it was more than sixty years afterwards. You’ve said he has, that he had a stroke in January, and an injury before that, and that he speaks in single words, and that you asked the question and he answered it, and that a question asked by the person who wants the answer is the worst kind of question. You’ve said all of that.” He looked up. “And then in the last two sentences you believe it.”

Frederick did not say anything.

“Whose mercy.” Ashby said it quietly, as though it were somebody else’s property, which it was. “You say that’s what he asked. Chisholm, the night before. In writing. And that her demand for written reasons from Ford was the answer to it.” He turned the paper back round. “And it fits. It fits the carbon. It fits what the books say she required. It’s very good. It’s probably true.” He looked at the red line down the side of the paragraph. “But you don’t know it. You’ve got one old man’s two words, sixty years on, to his son, on the telephone, and you’ve built the end of the paper on them. And the letter doesn’t say. Goldwater doesn’t say. Nobody wrote it down.”

“He did,” said Frederick. “He wrote it down. He asked her in writing.”

“Then where is it?”

Frederick looked at him.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“No,” said Ashby. “Nor do I.” He looked at the paper for a moment. “That’s the minus. It’s not for being wrong. You might be right. It’s for stopping. You had a question nobody’s been able to answer for sixty years, and you answered it from the family, which is the thing the whole paper says you can’t do.” He pushed the paper an inch across the desk. “The family was wrong once already. In February. In my room. You said so.”

“Differently.”

“Differently,” Ashby agreed. “That’s the best word in the paper. It’s on page four. I underlined it.”

---

There was a silence in the office in the brick building with the ivy, and the green light moved on the books.

“Can I ask you something,” said Frederick.

“Um. Yes. Of course.”

“Do you believe it?”

Ashby looked at him for a long moment. Then he looked at the map on the back of the door, at the lines of the Four-Year War in pencil, which he had drawn himself, and rubbed out, and drawn again, Frederick could see, in several places.

“Yes,” said Ashby. “I do.” He looked at his hands. “That’s why it’s an A minus and not a B plus. If I didn’t believe it I’d have taken more off.” He made a small helpless movement with his shoulders. “That’s, um. That’s not a very professional thing to say. I’d like it not to go in the Devil’s Advocate.”

“It won’t.”

“No, I know. I know it won’t.” Ashby picked up a pen and put it down again. “Where is it? Do you think? The paper. If he asked her in writing.”

“I don’t know. Somewhere. Columbia Palace. The Household archives. London.” Frederick looked at the paper in his hands, at the title. “Somebody keeps everything. My father keeps everything.”

“Could you,” said Ashby, and stopped. “Would you mind. No. Sorry. That’s not, that’s not something I can ask.”

“You can ask.”

Ashby looked at him across the desk.

“Would you look?” he said. “Not now. Not for this course. It’s finished. Just. Some time. If you were, um. If you were a historian.” He went red to the collar of the tight blue tie. “It’s a question. I’d like to know.”

“So would I,” said Frederick.

---

At the door Ashby stood up again, which he did not need to do.

“You’ll declare?” he said. “Sorry. I know it’s not. It’s not my business. Ms Ybarra’s office sends us the list. I’ve seen the list. You’re on it. Under H.”

“Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow.” Ashby looked at the paper in Frederick’s hand, and then at the card on the frosted glass of his own door. “Is it, um. Is it going to be…”

He did not finish, and Frederick did not finish it for him.

“We’d, um,” said Ashby. “We’d be very glad. The department. If it was.” He looked at the floor. “I’d be very glad. That’s all. You don’t have to say anything. Brennan said you wouldn’t.”

“Brennan asked as well.”

“Brennan told me you didn’t answer him.” Ashby almost smiled, in the tight tie, in the doorway. “He said it was the first time in two years you’d kept him waiting for something and he’d enjoyed it.”

---

The marks for The Executive II went up at two.

They went up on the department’s page, in a list, by student number, without names; and Rhys and Alexander read them on the landing at seventy-nine degrees, side by side on the step under the narrow window, each on his own telephone, at the same moment, because Rhys had come down from 316 at two minutes to and Alexander had come down from 312 at two minutes to, because it was on the programme; and Frederick, who had come down to ring Coln and found the step occupied again, stood on the half-landing two steps below with the same view and watched them find their numbers.

“Ninety-six,” said Rhys.

“Ninety-six,” said Alexander.

They looked at each other.

Rhys went pink. He went pink from the ears inwards, slowly, the colour of the A, and put his telephone in his pocket, and took it out again, and looked at the number, as though it might have moved.

“I’m not going to his office hours,” said Rhys.

“Nor am I.”

“In December he said if either of us came in to argue the other one’s mark up again he’d fail us both and write to our parents.” Rhys looked at the thermometer. “He said he didn’t care who our parents were.”

“He said that to me in particular,” said Alexander. “He said he would write to the Reichstag.”

“He doesn’t know where the Reichstag is.”

“No,” said Alexander. “That was what made it frightening.”

They sat on the step for a moment, side by side, with their telephones, and the thermometer at seventy-nine above them, and the narrow window with its concrete fin and its view of the car park and the four palo verdes, where the ABC’s van had stood yesterday in the sun.

Then Alexander held out his hand.

Rhys looked at it. Then he took it, and they shook hands on the step under the narrow window, the political scientist from Wilmington and the German Emperor, correctly, once; and Alexander did not put his other hand on top, but he held on, exactly, for one second longer than the handshake needed, and let go.

“Tie,” said Rhys.

“Tie,” said Alexander. “Accepted.”

On the half-landing, Frederick heard a small sound beside him, and turned his head. Sam had come down the next flight without anybody hearing him, with his notebook open, and was writing in it, small, in pencil.

3.V. Exec II. 96/96. Tie. Accepted.

“You’ve got a column for this,” said Frederick.

“Since September,” said Sam. “It’s been the same number every time.” He closed the notebook. “It’s the only column I’ve got where the variance is zero.”

---

Kessler drove Alexander to Phoenix at a quarter past three, because it was Thursday, and Dr Sato was on Camelback Road at four, and had been on Thursdays since November; and Frederick stood under the arcade in ninety-seven degrees and watched the dark car go out of the car park and along the road, past the dentist’s, where the blind was halfway down, and turn, and go.

He went back up the forty-five steps. He counted them. He got forty-four, because he did not count the little one, and he did not count the little one on purpose, and there was nobody on the stairs to argue with him about it.

Callum was at the door of 312 with a clipboard.

“Housing forms,” said Callum. “For next year. They’re due tomorrow. Five o’clock.” He looked at the clipboard, on which there was a list of the third floor, with ticks against most of the names in a pen that had been pressed very hard. “Yours is done. The, um. The sergeant did it. It came over from Residence Life on Monday. It just says as now.” He looked at the tick. “I didn’t know you could put as now.”

“Kimura can.”

“Yeah.” Callum looked down the list. “Alex hasn’t. Is he…? I can’t find him.”

“He’s in Phoenix. He’ll be back at six.”

“Okay.” Callum made a small mark beside the name, not a tick. “It’s just, it’s tomorrow. And most sophomores do singles. In Ironwood. That’s what people do, second year.” He looked at the door of 312, at the paper sun on it, ALEX, and the rectangle of old tape beside it where FRED had been until Tuesday. “I just didn’t want him to miss it. The singles go fast.”

“I’ll tell him.”

“Thanks.” Callum turned to go, and then turned back. “Sorry. I know it’s not. I know it’s not my business.”

He went along the corridor with the clipboard, to 314.

Frederick went in and sat on the bed by the window.

---

Tyler came at four, for the quiet, from Ironwood, with the hood up and a bottle of Glacier, and sat on the floor between the beds with his back against Frederick’s, and put his headphones on, and then took them off again.

“I did my final,” said Tyler. “The fire. With the people.”

“How did it end?”

“They go and get wood.” Tyler looked at the ceiling. “If you don’t feed it. They get cold, and they move closer, and then if you still don’t, one of them gets up and goes and gets some.” He drank some of the Glacier. “I didn’t know that was going to happen. I just wrote it at like three in the morning and it did that.” He considered it. “That’s the condition. Somebody gets up.”

Frederick looked at the back of the hood.

“That’s good, Tyler.”

“Yeah.” Tyler put the bottle down. “The professor said it was a weird ending. She gave me a B.” He shrugged, deep in the hood. “Callum’s doing housing. Brayden’s getting a single. In Ironwood. Thank God.” He was quiet for a moment. “I’m getting one too. I’m going to have, like, no one talking. At all.”

“You’ll come here for quiet.”

“Yeah, probably,” said Tyler. “Habit.” He picked at the label on the bottle. “Is Alex getting a single?”

Frederick looked at the desk by the door, at the programme on it, stapled at the corner, ticked as far as 15.15, with the pencil beside it parallel to the edge.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“You didn’t ask him?”

“No.”

Tyler considered this, from the floor, for some time.

“Okay,” said Tyler, and put the headphones on.

---

Alexander came back at six, up the forty-five steps, in the linen jacket, buttoned, and stopped on the landing at the seventy-nine and looked at the thermometer; and came into 312, and put his telephone on the desk by the door, square to the edge, and ticked 16.00. Dr Sato and 17.15. Return, and sat down.

“Callum came,” said Frederick. “With the housing forms. They’re due tomorrow at five.”

“I know,” said Alexander. “It is on the programme.”

He did not say anything else. He took the programme for the week off the desk, and turned to the second sheet, and looked at Friday; and Frederick, from the bed by the window, could not read it from there, and did not get up.

They went to dinner. Alexander ate it.

---

At half past ten the light by the bed by the door went off, exactly.

Frederick sat on the step under the narrow window on the landing, under the thermometer, with the paper on his knees and the window open an inch and the heat coming in off the car park at eighty-eight in the dark; and he turned to the last page, and read Ashby’s comment again, all three lines, in the light from the stairwell.

Then he opened the History folder.

It had been on the inside of the cover since March, in pencil, in his own hand, small, the way his father initialled the corner of a page: two words, and a date, under the eleven questions.

Whose mercy. 4.iii.35.

He looked at it for a long time, on the step, in seventy-nine degrees, with the paper on his knee that said he did not know it, and the man who had marked the paper believing it, and his father in London asleep, where it was half past six in the morning and he would be awake soon, because he always was.

He did not rub it out.

He took a pencil out of his pocket instead, and under the date, small, in the same hand, he wrote one more word, and put a question mark after it, because it was a question, and he wanted to know.

Where?