Backward

Leo read.

He stood at the foot of the pedestal with the notebook held out before him in both hands and the flashlight wedged under his arm, and his lips moved, and the words came out slowly, hoarsely, in a flat singsong, one at a time. They were the same words Cassian had sung for a month. But they were in the wrong order. They came from the bottom of the page. They marched upward from the last word to the first, as a procession marches back into a church.

Abeas ne. Ede. Sede, hospes.

The cold dropped.

It dropped all at once, like a hammer. Cassian felt it go through his coat. The beam of the flashlight shuddered. The black frost ran out from the base of the pedestal and across the floor in feathery rays, crackling, and the air in the chamber took on a thick and viscous quality, like oil. He heard something move overhead, a great weight turning over in its sleep.

Satureminis ut, damus manum.

"Louder," said Cassian.

Leo swallowed. "I can't. My throat—"

"You can."

Fusus est sanguis; parata est mensa.

It was not just the sound. That was the part Elias had understood, and which the Rector had made sure no one else would. It was the sense. To say it backward, as the rubric said, you had to mean it backward. Every word of welcome had to be unsaid. Every come had to become a go. Cassian stood by the stand and felt the meaning unspool in the dark, line by line: Don't stay. There's no meal. The blood is not for you. Our hands are our own.

Nostram mensam ad, hospes, venite.

The breathing above them changed.

It was no longer slow. It quickened, and caught, and deepened, and with every breath the walls shivered, and a fine white dust sifted from the vault.

"It's listening," whispered Leo.

"Go on."

…

Cassian took the knife from his belt.

He had carried it since the Sunday of the first night, wrapped in its cloth, a bone-handled boning knife with a blade like a half moon. It had been given to him by Tessa Quill. It had cut forty-nine throats. He drew it out and the steel caught the dim green glimmer and flashed, and in the pit of his stomach he felt the old shiver, the ancient, shameful, familiar comfort of the grip.

Hand.

The word came out of the walls.

"Hand of ours."

He did not turn. He stood with the knife held low at his side, and kept his eyes on the great gray book.

"Here is the table. Here is the offering."

On the stone beside him, soundlessly, something had been laid. He did not look at it. He could feel it there: a small warmth, a quiver, a breath. A white shape on the black. A dove. A kid. A piglet, with a pink snout. He could smell it, the clean animal smell. He felt his arm lift of its own accord, felt the old patient mechanics of the shoulder and the wrist, the fingers shifting on the bone.

Don't.

The scar-mark flared in his palm.

Don't. Don't. Don't.

His arm came down. It came down slowly, trembling, and the point of the knife wavered in the air a hand's breadth above the pedestal, and he clamped his jaw so hard his teeth ached.

I refuse.

He did not say it aloud. He didn't have to. He felt it go out of him like a breath: a plain, clear, cold, final no. He felt it hit the dark. And the dark flinched.

…

The first scream came from the stairs.

"Stop them!"

It was Silas Ward's voice, raw and cracked. A clatter of boots on iron. A lantern swung in the arch of the door and dazzled across the walls, and a tall figure in gray hurled itself into the chamber with its arms out. Silas's face was bleeding. His pale hair was matted. He had a cut over one eye. He was shouting something unintelligible, and behind him came the Rector in his dressing gown, white to the lips, and Deacon Thorne with her black key raised like a dagger.

"Stop it! Stop him! He'll kill us all!"

"Hale!"

"Kill them!"

Silas threw himself at Leo.

He took the smaller boy at the waist and bore him down, and the notebook flew from his hands and skidded across the stone. Leo cried out. The two rolled over and over on the frozen floor, Leo scrabbling, Silas gripping, a pale white hand clamping down on the thin throat. Leo kicked. He choked. His eyes bulged.

Cassian was moving before he had thought.

He crossed the room in three strides. He caught Silas by the collar of his cloak and wrenched him backward, and the tall boy came round with a snarl, and for one instant Cassian saw his face: bloody, wild, wide-eyed, the pale eyes dilated to black. Silas who had said Stay warm. Silas who had never had a friend. He swung.

Cassian ducked.

He drove his fist into the pit of Silas's stomach, and then, as the other doubled, brought up his knee. It was done in a second. A thing from the plant, from the alley behind the elementary school, an ugly quick economical reflex. Silas went over like a felled tree. His head struck the stone. He lay there, with his mouth open, quite still.

Cassian stood over him, breathing hard.

"Leo."

"I'm—" Leo coughed. He crawled out from under, one hand at his throat. "I'm all right."

"The book."

"I've got it." He snatched up the notebook from the floor and staggered to his feet. His lip was split. His eyes were streaming. "I've got it. Don't stop."

…

"Cassian."

It was the Rector.

He had not rushed in. He stood just inside the door with his hands outstretched, trembling, like a man trying to calm a horse. His eyes were red-rimmed and dazed. His white hair stood out about his head in a halo. In that dim light, with his round soft face and his dressing gown and the gray stubble on his cheek, he looked like somebody's grandfather caught in the night.

"My child. My dear child."

"Stay back."

"You don't understand what you're doing."

"I do."

"You will bring the roof down upon our heads." The old man's voice cracked. "The pact is the only thing holding it. If it breaks, if it breaks entirely, there will be no one to bind it. You've seen what it did to the Brandt boy. You've seen. It will come up through the school like a flood."

"You're lying."

"I'm not." He took a step forward. "I'm telling you the truth. Please. Think of the children."

"I am," said Cassian.

The Rector wavered.

"Think of the ones you fed it."

A cry, behind him. The Deacon clapped her hands over her ears. "Ambrose, he's—"

"I know." The old man's face worked. "I know, Miriam." He turned back, and there were tears in his eyes. "I did it to save them. All of them. You don't know what I've been through. You don't know what it's like to be the one to choose..."

"You didn't choose," said Cassian.

He lifted the knife.

"You were afraid."

…

A thunder of boots on the stair.

It was a heavy tread, uneven, and with it a hoarse sound, a man weeping and cursing at the same time. The lantern in the arch swung wildly, and a figure came out of the dark, a tall stooped man in a dinner jacket and a loosened tie, with his hair wild and a long red-handled fire axe gripped in both fists. His face was gray. It was a long, fine, hollow face, with a high forehead and the same dark eyes.

Leo gasped.

"Dad."

The Headmaster stopped dead.

He stood in the doorway of the vault and looked at his son. The axe sagged in his hands. His mouth opened and no sound came out. His lips shook. His eyes went from the boy's split lip, to the green notebook in his fingers, to the Ledger on the pedestal and the knife in Cassian's fist, and a look passed over his face that Cassian would never forget: a look of such utter, naked, helpless grief that he felt it like a blow.

"Leo."

"Dad, I'm sorry, I—"

"No." His voice broke. "No, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Oh, my boy. My son. I'm so sorry."

"Gregory!" screamed the Rector. "Stop them! You swore!"

The Headmaster did not move.

"You swore an oath! The clause! Your wife—"

"I know the clause."

"Then—"

"I know it." Gregory Vance's voice shook, and steadied, and shook again. He raised the axe. "I have known it for fifteen years. I have lain awake every night for fifteen years and known it." His eyes were fixed on Leo, and they brimmed. "And I have never once, in all that time, done a single thing to deserve you."

He turned.

He hurled himself on the Rector.

They crashed together against the wall. The axe rang on the stone. The old man shrieked. The Headmaster, who was a scholar, thin and long-boned and unused to violence, wrestled him down with clumsy desperation, arm across the throat, knee in the ribs, and the Deacon screamed and flew at him with her key. A blow. A cry. Gregory's head snapped to one side, and blood sprang from his brow, and ran down his face.

"Do it!" he roared, over the din. His eyes were blind with blood. "Leo! Do it!"