The academy couldn't afford to lose the Count's support.
Count Manos was not a passive donor or a distant name on a funding record — he was an active presence in the financial architecture of this place.
His continued goodwill and donations were the kind of thing that the academy's leadership had collectively decided was worth more than the comfort and safety of students who didn't come with comparable backing.
So the calculus had been made, quietly and without ceremony, and then made again each time Lloyd provided occasion for it.
The weak students, the untalented ones, the ones from families that couldn't push back — they absorbed what they absorbed, and the institution found reasons to look in a different direction.
It had worked, in the narrow sense that nothing had exploded.
