The Guild Says No

I took the four-hundredth route to the guild, because that is the correct thing to do, and the guild's response taught me more than the chart had. The registrar looked at the page for a long time. Then she did not say it is a mistake, and she did not say your master was confused in his age. She closed the book, very carefully, and said this route is not to be flown, it is not to be copied, and you are not to speak of it, and she said all of this in the particular flat voice of a person repeating an instruction rather than forming an opinion. Someone had told her, in advance, what to do if this page ever surfaced. Which meant the guild knew about the four-hundredth route. Which meant Velo had not kept the secret alone. I left with the book and a new understanding, which was that my gentle old master had been carrying something for nine years, and the guild had helped him carry it, and now it was mine.