The Silver Table

On Sunday, they sent for him at dinner.

It was a small thing, done without ceremony. The dining hall was filling with its usual hush, the clink of spoons, the shuffle of boots. Cassian had just sat down between Ronald and Karl with a bowl of thin barley soup when the doors at the far end swung open and a Prefect with a seam of a mouth came walking down the center aisle.

Every head turned. Every spoon stopped.

The boy stopped in front of Cassian and gave a short, stiff bow.

"Mr. Ward requests the pleasure of your company," he said.

Silence. A bench creaked somewhere. Ronald made a faint strangled noise.

Beside Cassian, Karl Brandt had gone absolutely still. His spoon hung an inch above his bowl. His knuckles were white around the handle. Cassian saw the muscles in his jaw work once, hard, and then Karl's face smoothed itself over like a lake after a stone, and he turned a pleasant, curious, appalled smile on the Prefect.

"Is that—is that an invitation for the whole room? Because I'd be—"

"Mr. Hale," the Prefect said.

Karl's smile hung on a moment longer, then slid off.

Cassian rose. His legs felt odd. He walked the length of the dining hall with three hundred pairs of eyes on his back, past the long tables, past the bowed gray heads, and came to a stop at the edge of the open space around the table by the east window.

Fifteen feet of bare floor. He crossed it, one pace at a time.

The Chosen sat in a shaft of late sun. They did not stop eating. There were eight of them, silver at the collar, ranged down both sides of a long table covered with a white cloth, and the meal in front of them looked like something from another life: a roast, steaming, dripping juice onto a silver tray. Bread, golden, with the crust split. A bowl of red apples. A decanter of something dark.

At the head of the table, Silas Ward laid down his knife and fork.

"Cassian."

He said it as if they had known each other for years.

"There's a chair."

There was. At his right hand, pulled out from the table, cushioned in green velvet. Cassian looked at it. Then he looked, because he could not help it, to his left, where Tessa Quill sat with her eyes on her plate and a face like a wall.

He sat.

The meat arrived in front of him without anyone seeming to bring it. A thick slice, pink at the center, the knife already beside it. The smell reached him a second later, rich and savory, and his stomach, which had known nothing but barley and gray bread for three weeks, clenched so hard it hurt.

"Eat," said Silas. "You look hungry."

"What do I owe for this?"

A tiny pause around the table. Someone's fork clicked against a plate.

Silas smiled. This time it was almost real. "Direct. Good. I like that. The answer is nothing, tonight. You're a guest." He picked up his glass. "That's a word with a very particular meaning here. I'd advise you to enjoy it."

Cassian picked up the knife.

It was a good knife. Heavy, well balanced, the edge honed fine as a razor. His hand closed on the handle without thinking, finding the weight, and across the table one of the older Prefects glanced up, and glanced at the knife, and glanced away.

He cut the meat. It was the best thing he had ever put in his mouth.

…

They talked as they ate.

It was nothing like the kitchen. There was no stifled whispering, no fear of the monitors. The Chosen spoke in ordinary voices about ordinary things. A Latin quiz on Monday. A broken heater in the east dormitory. A Prefect named Hollis whose mother had sent a cake. Their laughter was low, easy, and tinged with a certain tiredness, a fellowship like soldiers on the same long march.

"The privilege," said Silas, noticing Cassian's glance around the table, "is simpler than the other boys believe. We eat well. We sleep warm. We go home at the midterm, a week in October, one at Easter. Our parents receive a letter each month praising our diligence." He turned the stem of his glass between two fingers. "And when we want something, we are given it."

"Anything?"

"Within reason." A shrug. "A book. A coat. A tutor. A phone call."

Cassian's hand froze on his fork.

"A phone call?"

"Of course." Silas's smile didn't alter. "You have been so careful, Cassian. Paying a dollar a minute to an old man in a library for the privilege of speaking to a nurse. It's touching. Terribly resourceful." The fork moved lightly in the air. "But there is no need for that here. If you were one of us, you could call your mother from the Rector's own study. Every day, if you liked. Privately."

The words struck him in the chest like a thrown stone.

He hadn't spoken to his mother since that night in the bathroom. He'd been afraid to try Pike. He'd been lying awake every night with her voice going around and around in his head: Where's my boy?

Every day.

"If I were one of you," he said slowly.

"Yes."

"I'm not."

"No." Silas set down his glass. "Not yet."

Across the table, a Prefect with a gold ring turned toward his neighbor and murmured something. The neighbor nodded. A flash of something crossed his face. It might have been envy. It might have been pity.

At the end of the table, a chair scraped.

Cassian turned in time to see Tessa get to her feet. She had not touched her meal. She stood with her napkin crumpled in her fist and said, to no one, in a thin, steady voice, "Excuse me," and walked out. Nobody called after her.

"She'll come around," said Silas, mildly. "Eventually."

"You took her place."

"Did I?" His light eyes were steady. "I wonder. I've known Tessa four years. I think her place was never the one she wanted." He sounded, for a moment, almost tired. "But I don't suppose you'd find that comforting."

…

At the far side of the hall, a ripple ran through the Sunday dinner.

Cassian saw it first in the way the bowed heads came up. Spoons stopped. A bench creaked. He looked past Silas's shoulder and saw Karl Brandt standing at the edge of the open space.

He must have come across the floor while no one was looking. He stood with his gray cloak hanging straight, his hands behind his back, his glasses catching the light. His smile was bright, wide, and terribly reasonable.

"I hope I'm not intruding."

Silas turned his head. "Mr. Brandt."

"I've been looking for an opportunity to speak to you." Karl bowed, correctly, from the waist. "I've been in the Student Council office every afternoon since September. I've filed the attendance rolls. I've delivered the library records. I believe Miss Quill has spoken well of me. And I thought, given that Mr. Hale and I share a room, that I might perhaps be of use..."

He trailed off. Nobody was looking at him. Silas had turned back to his glass.

Karl swallowed.

"I know the Latin," he said, a little too loud. "The whole first litany. I can recite it. Hospes veni—"

"Karl."

Silas had not raised his voice. He had not even looked around. But the sound of it fell on the table like a cold hand, and in the silence that followed, Cassian heard the younger boy's breath catch.

"Never say those words in this room," Silas said gently. "Not even in jest. You don't know what they do."

"I only—"

"You only wanted to be seen. Yes." Silas turned, and the pale eyes rested on Karl with a mild, remote, absolutely dispassionate regard. "You've been very diligent. We have noticed. But this table is not a reward for diligence, Brandt. Not everything that is earned is given."

Karl's face went from white to red. The smile still hung on it, frozen, like a mask on a corpse.

"Of course," he said. "I understand."

He bowed again. Then he turned, and crossed the floor, and walked out through the great doors with his back absolutely straight. He did not look at Cassian. But as he passed the end of the table, Cassian saw his hand, hanging at his side, close slowly into a fist so hard that the knuckles cracked.

I didn't ask for this either, Cassian thought. It was a feeble thought, and he knew it.

Across the hall, Ronald Fisk was staring at him with his mouth open and his eyes enormous. When their eyes met, Ronald gave a small, hopeless, wobbling wave.

…

The meal ended at half past six.

The Chosen rose in a single movement, as if at a signal. Silas came around the table, unhurried, and stopped beside Cassian's chair.

"Walk with me," he said.

They went out into the courtyard. The dusk had come early. The sky above the valley was a dim bruised violet, and the first lamps were being lit along the colonnade. They moved in silence for a while. The gravel crunched under Cassian's new boots.

"You want to ask me what it was," said Silas.

"Yes."

"I won't tell you."

"Then why am I here?"

"Because someone else will." Silas stopped by the fountain. In the failing light his hair was the color of ash. He looked, at that moment, much more than eighteen. "You've seen the edge of it. It can't be unseen. The Deacon says you grabbed its wrist and it bowed. Do you know how long we've waited for something like that?"

"I don't know anything."

"No. That's exactly right." Silas's voice was very quiet. "You don't know a single thing. You don't know what you are, or what you're for, or what's been done to bring you here. And I'll tell you something, Cassian, as a courtesy, the only one I can give. Whatever Rector Kell offers you tonight, take a while to answer. Think carefully. And think about your mother."

Cassian's head came up.

"What does that mean?"

"Only what I said." Silas's mouth twitched in something that was not a smile. "He'll send for you after supper. Go to the cloister door. Alone." He turned, and his cloak swung, and the silver at its edge caught the lamp.

"One more thing."

"What?"

"I've been in this school since I was thirteen. I have never had a friend." Silas did not look back. "I would like very much, I find, to start with you. Don't take that lightly."

He walked away across the dim courtyard, a pale slender figure going toward the black bulk of the chapel. Cassian stood by the fountain with his hands shaking, and the cold evening settled around him, and the small bell on the dining hall roof struck the hour, thin and ordinary, and the dark came down.