What Leo Could Say

He read the page that night, under the blanket, by the light of a candle stub.

It was not long. Elias had written it small and fast, in the red ink, and it covered one side of the leaf and spilled onto the other. Cassian read it four times. Then he burned the corner against the flame and watched it curl, and sat for a while with his knees drawn up, listening to the sleeping room.

If you're reading this, they have not caught me yet, or they have, and Mr. Pike was braver than I deserved.

I have worked out the Seal. I have worked out the Hand. I have worked out that the man in the study is not a monster but something worse, a man who has talked himself into it. I don't know how to stop it. But I know three things you will need. I have written down one. The second is a thing only someone on the inside can give you. The third is in the vault. I think you will have to be quick.

The pages I took out of my own notebook are in the ventilation shaft behind the boiler room. Third bracket from the grate. I don't dare keep them on me.

Whoever you are: I'm sorry. I thought I was clever. I wasn't clever enough.

—E.M.

He closed his eyes.

Fifteen. The same age. The same room. He thought of the boy lying in this very bed, fourteen years ago, with a candle stub and a pen, writing a letter to a stranger he would never meet. He thought of what that boy must have known as he wrote, and how steady his hand had stayed.

I'll find them, he thought. The pages. I'll finish what you started.

He lay down in the dark.

…

On the third night, Leo took him to the roof.

He did it without a word. He simply rose at midnight, in his coat and cap, and stood beside Cassian's bed until the other opened his eyes, and held a finger to his lips. They went along the corridor in their socks. At the end was a narrow door that Cassian had taken for a linen cupboard, and behind it a spiral stair of iron, black, steep, and bitterly cold.

They climbed.

The trap at the top gave onto a flat of lead and slate, ringed by a low parapet. The wind took Cassian's breath. A thick white fog lay over the valley, and the roofs of the school stood up out of it like islands, black and sharp. There were no lights. No Prefects. No wires, no cameras, no eyes. Only the sky, with a few cold stars torn in it, and the chapel below them, huge and silent, with its single red slit burning.

Leo went to the edge and sat down on the parapet with his legs dangling over the fog.

"No one comes here," he said. "It's too high. The old Headmaster used to come to smoke."

"And now?"

"Now it's mine."

Cassian sat beside him. They watched the chapel for a time without speaking. The fog moved. Somewhere in the valley a dog was barking, thin and far, like a thing at the bottom of a well.

"I'm going to tell you some of it," said Leo. "Not all. I can't. When I try to say a thing that's too close, my throat shuts. Like a hand." He swallowed. "So I'll say what I can, and you'll have to put it together."

"All right."

"My father has the key."

He said it very quietly.

"The key to what?"

"To everything. The vault. The chapel. The room where the Ledger is kept." His fingers were white on the stone. "He doesn't use it. He's afraid to. But he holds it. He has held it for fifteen years."

Cassian turned.

"Who is your father, Leo?"

Leo shook his head. He did not look round.

"I can't."

"Because—"

"Because if I say it, they die." The words came out in a thin rush. "Him. And my mother. Both of them. It's not a threat, it's a, it's just how it is. I've seen the page. I know the clause." He drew a shaky breath. "I know it sounds like I'm making excuses."

"It doesn't."

"I wish I could. I wish..." He stopped. "I've wanted to say it every single day."

Cassian put out a hand and laid it on the boy's shoulder, and felt it quiver under his palm like a bird.

They sat there a long time.

…

"There's a way down," Leo said at last.

He pointed. Cassian followed his arm. Below them, at the base of the east wing, a squat annex of soot-blackened brick jutted out from the main building: the boiler house. A short iron chimney rose from it. Beside the chimney, at about the height of a man's waist, a metal grille was set into the wall.

"The ventilation shaft. It runs from the boiler room, down under the cloister, and out into the old crypt. The crypt joins the vault." He spoke fast, in a low voice. "Nobody uses it. It's too narrow for a man, but a boy can get through. I did, once. In September."

"You went down?"

"I got as far as the first turn." A shudder. "I couldn't go farther. It was... it was awake."

"Third bracket from the grate."

Leo's head snapped round.

"That's what he wrote." Cassian's voice was steady. "Elias. He said the pages he tore from his own notebook are hidden in the shaft. Third bracket from the grate."

Leo stared at him with his lips parted.

"You've seen his handwriting."

"I've seen all of it."

"I thought..." The boy's eyes were blazing. "I thought I'd be the only one. I thought I'd have to do it by myself." A laugh, wet, shaking. He pressed his wrist to his mouth. "Oh, God. You're really going to do it."

"If you'll help me."

"Yes."

He did not say it as a promise. He said it as a man says his own name.

…

They sat on the roof for another hour.

Leo gave him what he could. He said it in pieces, each one costing something, with long pauses while he fought for breath. The Ledger lay in a black cabinet in the vault. The vault lay under the chapel. The cabinet was bound with a lock of iron and a curse, and could be opened only by one who held the key, or by the Guest himself. It was a book of names. Every Seal. Every Hand. Every soul that had been given.

"If it burns," said Cassian.

"If it burns properly. On the right night. With the right words said back to front by someone who understands them."

"The seventh night."

"The seventh night." Leo nodded. "Not before. Before, it's only paper."

"What's the word?"

"What word?"

"You keep saying the right words. There's one in particular. You hesitate when you say it."

Leo flinched. He was silent a long moment. Then he leaned very close, until his breath stirred the hair at Cassian's ear, and he said a single word, so quietly that the wind almost took it.

"Ledger."

That was all. Just that one word, and the boy sat back and wrapped his arms round his knees, shaking, as though the effort had drained him.

Cassian turned it over in his mind.

Ledger.

He would not forget it.

Far below, in the fog, the bell began to toll the second hour, and the chapel's red eye closed, and opened, and was still.