Decoding

Pike did not look up when he came in.

It was nine on Saturday morning and the library was nearly empty. A few seniors dozed over atlases. A Prefect leafed through a periodical. At the far end of the reading room, behind his oak counter, the old man sat with a pen and a ledger and a cup of tea gone cold, and his white head bent so low over the page that Cassian could see the pink of his scalp through the thinning hair.

"I need a Latin dictionary," Cassian said. "And a grammar. The oldest you have."

The pen paused.

It paused for perhaps three seconds. Then it moved on, and the old man said, to the ledger, in a voice like dry paper, "Fourth stack. Third shelf from the floor. Green binding."

"Thank you."

"Don't mention it."

He found it where it was supposed to be: a thick green volume, cracked at the spine, stamped Lewis & Short, A Latin Dictionary. Beside it sat a battered grammar from the 1890s, with marginal notes in a dozen different hands. He carried them back to a table in the corner and sat, and when he looked up, there was a third book at his elbow.

He hadn't seen anyone put it there.

It was small, narrow, bound in blackened calf, with a strip of paper pasted to the spine. Medieval Latin, Corruptions & Variants. Someone had slipped a piece of tape across the title page, and under it, in a faded hand, written Property of A. Pike.

He glanced toward the counter.

The old man was writing in his ledger. He did not lift his head. But the hand that held the pen was shaking, a fine fast tremor, like a leaf in wind, and a single tear had fallen on the page and spread in a small dark star.

Cassian looked at the book.

He did not say thank you. He thought, perhaps, that it would only make it worse.

…

He worked for four hours.

He had the hymn in his head. He had been hearing it for six weeks, and in the circle he had caught the words clear enough to write down, in a phonetic scrawl, on the back of a page torn from his notebook. He spread it out beside the dictionary. The lines crawled across the paper in his awkward hand, half sounds, half guesses:

Veneeteh, hospess, ad menzam nostram.

Menza parahta est. Sangwiss foosoos est.

Manoom dahmuss, oot sahtoorehmeenee.

He tried the first line, word by word.

Venite. Come. He knew that. Hospes. Guest, host, stranger. He wrote it down, and under it the dictionary's long, stuffy entry, with its quotations from Cicero and Plautus. Ad. To. Mensam. He looked it up. Mensa, ae, f. A table. A dining table. An altar. A banker's counter.

Nostram. Our.

Come, guest, to our table.

He sat looking at it. It was a lovely thing, in its way. It was a line from a poem about hospitality. It sounded like something you'd find carved on a doorstep.

He wrote the second.

Mensa parata est. The table is ready. Sanguis, blood. Fusus est: is poured. He had to consult the grammar for that, a past participle of fundere, to pour out, to shed. He wrote it as the dictionary gave it, and then looked at the English, and a hand closed slowly around the base of his throat.

The table is ready. Blood is poured out.

"What are you reading?"

He started.

Ronald Fisk stood at his elbow with a stack of books balanced on one forearm and a look of exquisite innocence on his round face. He had obviously been there some time. His eyes were fixed on the page.

"Ronald. The Deacon said—"

"The Deacon said I couldn't talk to you during your service hours." Ronald lowered his voice. "It's Saturday. It's nine, ten, whatever. That's not the afternoon. It's a loophole. Karl says so."

"Karl?"

"He's right behind me."

He was. Karl Brandt came around the end of the stack with a book under his arm and his glasses flashing, the picture of scholarly goodwill. "Hale! I hear you're after some Latin. I thought I might lend a hand. I did two years of it at my grandfather's in Hamburg, you know. And what's that you've got there?"

He leaned over the table, his hand on the back of Cassian's chair.

Cassian turned the page face down.

"Homework."

"On a Saturday?"

"I'm behind."

"Of course." Karl smiled. His eyes were on the corner of the sheet, which had not quite covered the pencil scrawl. "You know, hospes can mean 'host' as well as 'guest.' It's a curious word. The one who receives and the one who is received. Same root." He tapped the table with one finger. "It depends entirely on who is sitting at the head."

"That's interesting."

"Isn't it?" Karl said. "I thought so. I just wondered what you thought it meant. In context."

There it was.

Cassian looked up at him. He saw, quite clearly, the faint tightness around the mouth, the little muscle jumping in his jaw. Karl was fishing. He was fishing hard, with great skill, and under the smile there was a fine fierce hunger. He wanted to know what the Chosen knew. He wanted to know what the hymn said. And he would give it to Tessa Quill the moment he had it.

You think I'll tell you.

"I think it means a guest," Cassian said.

"Just a guest."

"It's a dictionary word." He closed the notebook. "I'm sorry, Karl. I need to focus."

Karl's smile did not alter. But something behind it cooled by a degree.

"Of course," he said lightly. "You know where to find me."

They went. Ronald trailed after Karl, glancing back over his shoulder with an expression of helpless apology. Cassian watched them go. Then he opened the notebook again and bent his head, and the room went quiet around him, and the old man at the counter did not stir.

…

Manum damus, ut saturemini.

It took the rest of the morning.

Manum was easy. A hand. Accusative, singular; the thing being given. Damus, we give. He knew that from a hundred prayers, from dona nobis pacem. The last word took longer. Saturemini. He turned over the dictionary until the paper tore at the edge. It was a subjunctive, a passive plural. Satur, full, sated. Saturare, to fill. To feed.

We give a hand, that you may be filled.

He put down the pencil.

The reading room was bright with noon light. Dust floated in the air. At the far end, the old man had gone back to his ledger. Everything was normal. A normal Saturday. A normal library. He sat very still with his hands in his lap and the page in front of him, and the cold crawled up the nape of his neck and settled between his shoulders.

He wrote the rest by feel.

Sanguis, limen, custodi. Blood, threshold, guard. Hospes, sede. Guest, sit. Hospes, ede. Guest, eat. Hospes, ne abeas. Guest, do not go away.

When he was finished, he laid the lines out one beneath the other. They sat on the page, plain and clear.

Come, guest, to our table.

The table is ready. Blood is poured out.

We give a hand, that you may be filled.

Blood, threshold, guard.

Guest, sit. Guest, eat. Guest, do not leave.

It was not a hymn.

He had called it that for six weeks without thinking. He had lain in the dark with his hands over his ears and thought of it as a hymn, a chant, a ghostly sort of lullaby. A strange religious ceremony, mournful and ancient, the kind of thing a dying sect clings to. He had thought it was a prayer.

But a prayer asks. A prayer begs. It sings of glory and of mercy.

This invited.

It set a table. It laid out a feast. It said, in a patient, courteous voice, Come in. Sit down. We have made you dinner. It said it every night at the seventh bell, for six weeks, for six years, for one hundred and thirty-three. And all that time, in a stone vault beneath a hill, something had been lying in the dark, listening to a choir of children calling it home.

Hospes, ne abeas.

Guest. Do not go.

He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes.

It was a rite of summoning. It was not a ritual of worship but of keeping. A hundred and thirty-three years of singing, every night, to hold something in place. To keep it fed. To keep it close. And the valley's famous grace, the prosperity, the peace, the clear skies, was just the shine on the back of a trap.

He thought of the circle of Chosen. The cold, blue light. The drone from below. He thought of the cloak on his shoulders and the warm pulse that rose in his hand whenever the voices began. The Guest likes warm hands.

We give a hand.

His own hand lay on the table. The scar across the palm had turned white and raised, as though something were pressing up beneath the skin.

We give a hand, that you may be filled.

He stared at it, and a sound came out of his throat that was not a word.

Across the room, the old man's pen had stopped.

Cassian did not look at him. He closed the dictionary with trembling fingers. He gathered the loose pages, and folded them, and tucked them inside his shirt against his ribs, where the paper made a small dry crackle with each breath. Then he rose. His legs held. He went to the door. The reading room seemed very long.

On the threshold, he stopped, and without turning, he whispered, so low that he could barely hear it himself:

"I'm singing it every night. I'm singing to wake it up."

Behind him, the pen began to move again.