That seemed to be the point.
In the front of the room, a basin was set into a low platform.
Headmaster Quill sat beside the basin as if the chair had been placed there because he had decided where the room’s center was and that he would be in it.
His dark coat was immaculate. The silver at his temples looked less like age than a deliberate part of the uniform.
A narrow black folder rested on his knee.
When I came in, he looked at me once, utterly expressionless, then he looked away.
I sat in the back row. Three first-years were already there. None of them looked at me or moved over to give me a place. I took the aisle because it was open and because I would be able to escape faster after.
The hall filled by year, first-years pushed to the back, older students closer to the basin.
Faculty stood at the sides: one at each corner, two at each main door. Aldric was at the southeast corner. Caswell was at the northeast. Astor was at the southwest.
Juno wasn’t in the hall.
Linden was at the side door on the west wall. The door that opened on the names.
Quill raised a hand at four o’clock exactly. The hall stopped breathing all at once.
“This is the eleven hundred and seventy-eighth public reading at Zenith Hall,” he said. “I have presided over four hundred and three of these. The protocol is unchanged in my time at the chair, and it remains unchanged today. I will read each first-year in the order the school has written. I will leave settled Marks unnamed. I will announce any Mark that has failed its expected shape.”
The hall exhaled.
Quill opened the black folder.
He read four names before he read the one I had been waiting to hear.
“Delphine Moreau.”
I had been listening for it. Waiting for it.
A chair scraped near the west wall.
The sound came from a place I hadn’t noticed because someone had placed it just outside the line of the back row, near the side door Linden guarded.
Delphine stood there, separated from the rest of us before her name had even left the air.
My stomach dropped.
She had been in the room the whole time.
Set aside.
Already halfway to gone.
Delphine dragged her feet as she walked to the basin.
Her face was pale, her sleeve already pushed back, the Mark on her forearm exposed before Quill asked for it.
She knew what would happen next.
She put her right palm on the rim of the basin.
For the four students before her, the basin had brightened the Mark and let them go.
