“With all due respect, sir,” Preston cut in, “this paper is as much Effy’s as it is mine. It couldn’t have been written without her. We wouldn’t have found the diary or letters if not for her. And she’s more brilliant than any of my colleagues at the literature college, so if you’re planning on trying to leave her out of this somehow, I’m more than happy to take my paper elsewhere. To a tabloid journalist, perhaps?”
Dean Fogg’s thin lips thinned further. “You make a very sorry scholar yourself, Mr. Héloury, if you would leave this discovery to a newspaper gossip column.”
“It’s not my first choice,” said Preston, “or else we would be in the offices of the Llyrian Times right now instead, meeting with their editor in chief. But if you object to Effy’s inclusion, well, that’s just what I’ll have to do.”
Effy gave him a grateful smile as she rubbed the abrupt end of her ring finger.
“You’ve always been such a stubborn lad.” Master Gosse looked amused. “I never thought you would try and extort the university, though. Good on you.” He seemed to mean it genuinely.
Dean Fogg gave a disgusted snort. “How do you think it will look for the university to publish a groundbreaking thesis with a woman’s name on the cover sheet? There’s never been a woman at the literature college before. It’s unprecedented.”
“It’s an absurd, archaic precedent,” Preston said. “It should embarrass the university.”
“Watch yourself, Héloury,” Dean Fogg said.
Effy looked around the room again. Angharad had been here before: three men arguing over her work, laying a framework for her future. She had been silenced then.
But Effy would not be silent now.
“This thesis is a story about a young woman who was taken advantage of by powerful men,” she said. “She was bartered like a head of cattle, traded by men who tried to claim her work as their own. How do you think it will look for the university to do precisely the same thing? If we do hand over the thesis, and you publish it without my name, I’ll go straight to the offices of the Llyrian Times and tell them yet another story about men using young women. If that’s the sort of legacy you want for yourself as dean.”
It was impressive how quickly Dean Fogg’s face turned red, then purple. Effy had determined, upon further inspection, that the thick white hair was in fact a wig, and in his shock it slipped incrementally to one side.
He took a decorous sip of tea, as if to calm himself, and then said, “So you would have me admit you as a student of the literature college? There’s no other way to justify it, the name of some obscure architecture student on the title page.”
Effy’s breath caught a little bit in her throat, but after a moment she was able to answer. “Yes,” she said. “I’ll be the first woman in the literature college, but not the last.”
Dean Fogg nearly choked on his tea, but Master Gosse gave a delighted chortle. “Oh, I like this,” he said. “The university will finally be catching up to the times . . . and it will make a good story, won’t it? A story in which the university is a beacon of progressivism, and its dean a fierce but benevolent advocate for the rights of women.”
Yet something stuck in Effy like a splinter. Her mouth had gone dry, and she had to swallow hard before she could manage to speak.
“You can’t tell the story unless you fire him,” she said, voice wavering.
“Fire who?” Dean Fogg demanded.
She drew a breath. “Master Corbenic.”
And then Dean Fogg laughed, a hacking sound of disbelief. “Now, you listen to me, Euphemia,” he said. “Master Corbenic is a tenured professor. He’s esteemed in his field, and a personal friend of mine. If you think we’re going to fire him at your behest, because of some schoolgirl’s grudge—”
“‘Some schoolgirl’？” Effy’s voice suddenly became hard, her blood running hot in her veins. She had just interrupted the dean of the whole university, but she didn’t even care. “That’s all Angharad was, too. A girl. Unless you fire him, you’ll never see a page of these letters.”
There was a long silence, during which Effy’s heart pounded so loudly she could scarcely hear anything else, and during which Master Gosse looked quickly and eagerly between the two of them, as if waiting to see who would flinch first.
Preston’s jaw was set, his hand moving to grip the edge of her armchair.