Found Out

They came for him on Tuesday afternoon, in the middle of Latin.

He had known they would. He had known it since breakfast, from the way conversation died when he entered the dining hall, the sidelong glances, the quick looks away. He had known it since Monday night, when he lay in the dark and listened to the hymn and thought: Ronald told Aldous. Aldous told his cousin. His cousin has a girlfriend in the kitchen. It was a matter of hours. A single loose thread in a very tight cloth.

Still, when the classroom door opened, his stomach dropped through the floor.

The Latin master stopped mid-sentence. Twenty heads turned. Deacon Thorne stood in the doorway in her long black dress, with her hands folded and her key ring still at her hip. She did not step across the threshold. She did not look at the master, or the class, or anyone at all. Her eyes found Cassian, in the third row, and rested there.

"Mr. Hale," she said.

Nobody breathed.

"Will you come with me, please."

It was perfectly polite. It was the voice of a woman asking a boy to carry a parcel. Cassian rose from his desk. His chair scraped. He laid his pencil down. He did not look at anyone as he walked up the aisle, but he felt them, twenty pairs of eyes pressed against his back, and he heard the rustle of a hundred whispers rising behind him like a flock of startled birds.

At the corner of his vision, in the fifth row, a round pink face dropped to its desk.

Ronald Fisk was staring at his hands. His ears had gone the color of beets.

…

The Rector's study was as warm as ever.

The fire crackled in the hearth. The kettle sang on the hob. Rain ran down the high window in long slow lines. Rector Kell sat in the leather chair with his slippered feet tucked under him and his round pink face turned toward the flames. He did not rise when Cassian entered. He did not smile. On the small table at his elbow, a cup of tea stood untouched.

In the corner, almost lost in the shadow of the bookshelves, a thin figure stood with his hands clasped before him.

Headmaster Gregory Vance.

He was sweating. A bead of it ran down his temple and into his collar, and he made no attempt to wipe it. His face was gray. His eyes, large and dark and red-rimmed, darted to Cassian once and slid away, and he stared hard at a spot on the carpet, as though the pattern might open and swallow him.

"Sit down, my boy," said the Rector.

"I'll stand."

"As you like." Kell sighed. "Miriam, you may go."

The Deacon withdrew. The door clicked shut.

For a long moment the room was silent but for the fire. Kell watched the flames. Cassian watched Kell. He had braced himself for rage. For a thunderclap, a voice from the pulpit, the veil torn aside to reveal the monster behind the cardigan. He had rehearsed what he would say. But the old man simply sat there, small and soft and gray, and the grief on his face was so deep and so apparently real that Cassian felt the speech die in his throat.

"I had hoped," said Kell, at last, "that you would be a patient boy."

Cassian said nothing.

"I'm not angry. I want you to know that. I have never been angry with a child in my life." He turned his head. His eyes behind the wire spectacles were moist. "I am only disappointed. I thought you understood. I thought, when you sang so beautifully on Saturday, that you had made your peace."

"I did—"

"You read what was not meant for you."

The words fell quietly.

"You went to the library. You took a book from the shelf. And instead of leaving it there, as a wise boy would, you opened it, and translated, and carried the results to your friends." Kell shook his head slowly. "Those were not your secrets to give. You had not earned them. And now four children who were sleeping peacefully in their beds know that which they cannot unknow."

"They deserved to."

"Did they?"

"They're going to be fed to it!"

It burst out of him, hot and furious. He felt the blood climb his throat. "Albert's going to die! Everyone knows it, you all know it, you've got him in a white robe and you're just waiting. And Ronald, and Karl, they're next, aren't they? Every seven years. Every time. You keep a farm of kids, and you tell us to keep quiet, and you act like I'm the one who's—"

"Cassian."

It was a very gentle voice. It stopped him anyway.

"Sit down."

He sat.

The chair was soft, and deep, and held him like a hand. He hated it. He sat with his fists clenched on his knees and glared at the old man's slippers.

"I will not insult you with a lie," said the Rector. "Yes. There is a Seal. There is always a Seal. It is one of the burdens of the work, and I have carried it more times than I care to remember. I do not enjoy it." His breath caught. "But I will tell you what I have told every Hand before you. The valley is not a farm. It is a home. There are eleven hundred souls in Hollis Creek who sleep tonight because of what we do. They have children, Cassian. They have grandmothers. They have little gardens. And the price of all those gardens is a single boy, once in seven years, who goes willingly into the dark."

"Willingly."

"As willingly as any of us go anywhere." A pause. "I do not ask you to like it. I only ask you to be patient, and trust that those who came before you, wiser than you, saw further."

"I don't believe you."

"I know." Kell smiled sadly. "That is why I'm not angry."

In the corner, Headmaster Vance made a small wet sound, like a man trying not to be sick.

…

"A friend of yours came to see me," the Rector said. "Yesterday evening. He was most distressed."

Cassian's head came up.

"A boy of good character. Very conscientious. He had heard something at the edge of his room, in the dormitory, a rumor, a whisper. He was frightened. He was frightened for you." Kell stirred his tea. "He asked whether it was wise to let you wander alone, in your state. He said you had not been sleeping. He said you spoke wildly. I thanked him. I told him he'd done well."

Cassian's mind went white.

Ronald.

He saw it, plain as day. The pink round face dropping to the desk. The ears gone red. The shamed, miserable bowed head. Ronald had promised on his mother's life. And Ronald, who could keep nothing in his mouth, had gone running to the Rector the moment he got scared. Not out of malice. Out of love. Out of terror. He had done exactly what a good little boy would do.

It's not his fault, he thought. He couldn't help it.

But it hurt anyway. It hurt like a punch to the stomach.

"Don't blame him," said Kell softly. "He acted from the purest motives. I shall see that no harm comes to him." He set down the spoon. "The matter before us is what is to be done with you."

He nodded toward the door.

…

The room was at the end of the east corridor.

It had been a store cupboard once. Perhaps a linen closet, or a priest's cell. It was ten feet by six, with a narrow iron cot, a bucket, and a window the size of a book, set high in the wall and barred. The stone floor was bare. The walls were plastered over rough rubble and flaked in places, and the light that came through the window was a dull gray smear on the ceiling.

"Three days," said the Deacon.

She stood in the passage with the lantern in her hand. Behind her, Silas Ward waited with his arms folded. His expression was closed.

"You will be provided with bread, water, and a Bible. You will not leave the room. You will not communicate with anyone. Your privileges are suspended; I will have your cloak." Her gray eyes rested on him, expressionless. "You will not use the telephone. The scheduled call to your mother has been canceled."

"What?"

"It will be rescheduled at the Rector's discretion."

"You can't do that." The heat rose in him like a fist. "She's expecting it. She's sitting by the phone. She'll think something happened—"

"Mr. Hale—"

"She just got out of a coma! You can't just—" His voice cracked. "Please. Please. You can have the cloak, anything. Just let me tell her I'm okay."

"It is not within my authority."

"Then who?"

She said nothing.

He didn't remember deciding. His fist was in the air, and then it was in the wall. It struck the plaster with a crack that shook his arm to the shoulder. A shower of dust fell. Pain exploded across his knuckles. He drew back and struck again, harder, and felt the skin split, and would have struck a third time, but arms closed around him from behind.

They were strong. Thin, but strong. They locked across his chest and pinned his elbows, and he thrashed, and heard Silas Ward's breath hiss in his ear.

"Stop. Stop it. Cassian. Stop."

"Let go!"

"I can't. Not till you stop."

"She's—"

"I know." The voice was low, urgent, almost soft. "I know. I know. Be still."

He went still.

His whole body was shaking. His hand was streaming blood down his wrist, and he could feel his heart beating in the split skin. He leaned back against Silas's chest, panting, with his eyes shut, and the walls of the little room seemed to close in and tilt.

Behind them, in the passage, someone cleared his throat.

The Rector had come up so quietly that no one had heard. He stood at the end of the corridor in his cardigan and slippers, with his hands folded over his round belly and his head slightly tilted. He looked at the bleeding fist. At the white plaster. At the boy's face.

"Ah," said Kell sadly. "There. You see."

Cassian glared at him.

"I need a Hand, my boy," said the old man. "Not a temper." He sighed. "Three days will cool it. Please. Don't make it harder."

He turned and walked away, slippers whispering on the stone. The Deacon looked at Silas. Silas let go.

Cassian staggered a step. His knees buckled. The cot caught him.

The Deacon stripped the silver-collared cloak from his shoulders with two quick movements, folded it over her arm, and stepped out of the room. Silas lingered a moment at the threshold. His pale eyes met Cassian's, and in them was something unreadable, a flicker of pity or of reproach. He opened his mouth. He closed it.

He pulled the door shut.

Cassian sat in the gray light with his hand in his lap. Dust drifted slowly down from the broken plaster. The room smelled of damp stone and old straw.

And then, from the other side of the door, there came a sound he had never heard in all the weeks at Blackthorne.

A heavy, iron, final clack.

A bolt, being shot home.

Nobody locked a door at Blackthorne. They didn't have to. That was the cruelest truth about the place, the first thing he'd understood on the very first night: the doors were unlocked because the school didn't need locks. The thing that kept you in was fear.

But now there was a lock.

For the first time in his life at Blackthorne, Cassian Hale was locked in.