Page 54

“Me too,” she says. “We’re practically in our nether things.”

“At least the boys are too,” Nelle says, also not sounding impressed. She jerks her chin at Ambrose who keeps his robe cinched tightly across his waist with his hands, as if a breeze will come by and blow it wide open. “Nice legs,” she says to him. “They belong to a chicken?”

Ambrose looks down at his bare legs in shock while Harken bursts out laughing. Harken’s robe is wide open, obviously not caring about how feminine and revealing his outfit is. It sounds silly but I gawk a little bit. I can’t help it. It’s not often you see a man’s legs, though frankly they aren’t much to look at.

“Uh oh. Caranthis is here,” Avelene says and everyone falls into silence.

I turn and see him standing with Hetch and Renata. This is the first time I’ve actually seen the notorious headmaster of the Mortis. He is tall and thin, taller than Hetch, with hair black at the crown and a wide streak of silver at both temples that runs through to the back. His face is long and clean-shaven with beady eyes set deep beneath arched black brows and a wide mouth. He wears the crimson hooded robe the other faculty wear, but his is longer, and the hood is pushed back off his head so that he can watch the gathering without having to turn. His eyes move from student to student and when they come to me they rest for a second too long before they move on.

I feel an icy finger trail down my spine.

A gong sounds from somewhere near the gatehouse and we all start to move in a long double file down the back lane, hoods up against the cooling air, the faculty with their lanterns at the sides. The path takes us out of the back of the Mortis grounds and into the island woods through a stand of old birch I didn’t know was here, like a secret forest.

Twinkling chartreuse fireflies come up out of the grass as we go, creating a dazzling display of light. They come close enough to settle on my sleeve, on the hood of the student in front of me, on the lantern of the faculty member at my left. The further we go, the clearer it becomes they are not ordinary fireflies, not just because of their glowing green color. They seem to flit around with purpose and synchronization.

One lands on my forearm and stays there.

Go back, it says to me. The voice is bright and very small. Not for you, this part.

I don’t answer. The firefly stays on my arm for a moment and I understand that this is the kind of warning the woods give that is not expected to be heeded.

And anyway, it’s too late. The path opens into a clearing of short grass, and all around the perimeter the fireflies have gathered into a soft moving brightness that resembles a fence. In the center, on the beaten ground, bones have been laid—two long lines of them that cross at the center and extend to the edges of the clearing in four directions, pale against the dark grass, catching the lantern light with a soft shine. A low iron ring at the crossing of the lines holds a shallow dish of fire. Four faculty stand at the four points where the lines meet the edge, each with a lantern at their feet.

Baz is at the north point, the gold in his eyes catching the flame of his lantern as his head turns toward us. His face remains impassive and shadowed beneath the crimson hood and, while I can’t see his eyes anymore, I can feel them.

Headmaster Caranthis stands at the ring of fire, the firelight on his face from below, which makes him look positively ghoulish, carving out deep lines under his high cheekbones, creating shadowed sockets under his brows. He has a small roll of parchment in one hand. He waits.

A second gong sounds, further off than the first.

“Hallward,” Caranthis says in his deep, dry voice.

Ambrose steps forward, nervously glancing at his sister before he walks to the edge of the circle at the point where the north line begins. An attendant steps up and lifts Ambrose’s robe off his shoulders. Ambrose underneath is in his white shift, bare-armed, bare-legged below the knee. He steps out of the slippers and leaves them beside the robe, then walks barefoot across the grass to the center.

The white of the shift catches the lantern light brighter than anything in the clearing except the fireflies, and he’s practically glowing against the darkness.

Caranthis bends his head toward him. He speaks something I cannot hear, and Ambrose kneels at the ring of fire with his hands flat on the earth. He closes his eyes.

The clearing goes still.

Long enough that I feel my chest tighten. Then Ambrose draws a sudden breath, as if he’d come up from under water, opens his eyes, and gives Caranthis his answer. Caranthis makes a small mark on his parchment then Ambrose stands and walks back across the grass with his hands shaking at his sides. The attendant drapes the robe over him while he steps into his slippers and rejoins the line.

That was it? It was so quick. And nothing happened. I’m not sure what I was expecting but I thought it would have been a touch more dramatic to watch.

Avelene puts her hand on his elbow. “Alright?”

“Alright,” he says but his voice is reedy.

Caranthis calls Nelle next. She disrobes and crosses over. She kneels, is under for less time than Ambrose, returns with her word, and comes back to the line beside me with her face as cool as it had been when she went in.

Then it’s Avelene’s turn. She gives her cane to Nelle before she limps slowly toward them, head high, jaw tight. She kneels at the fire and is under for a long time, longer than Nelle or her brother. When she comes back, she looks pale and absolutely rattled. She takes the cane back from Nelle and stares down at the ground.

“Winterbourne,” Caranthis says.

Sable disrobes and crosses to the center, going to her knees at the fire with her pale hair catching the firelight.

She is under longer than Avelene was.

The clearing goes quiet in a way it hadn’t been quiet before and Caranthis is watching Sable with his brows furrowed. Baz and the pull-back officiants at the four points of the lines have straightened tensely, as if ready to spring into action.