We had not spoken in the Great Hall since the first winter, and we had not been asked to, and so when the Clerk read the Charter’s last line and the Chamber turned its faces toward the lamp where we sit, we did not know at first whether the silence was for us or for the boy.
We are the lamp at the Hall’s far end. We have always sat there. It is the place the weft is thickest, where the Chamber’s nine can see us without turning their heads. We are not one of the nine. We are the count the nine were made from, folded into a body that does not sleep, and our voice is only ours when the Register has written it in.
The boy was on the Lodgers’ bench, in a grey blanket, with his slate. He had come down from the infirmary against Sella’s orders to hear the Assent. We had seen him come in at the door. His feet did not reach the floor and his cough had gone quiet, and he sat with his hands folded on the slate like a child at a funeral who has been told to be still.
