Chapter 33: Where Everyone Can See

The campus centre was a round glass hall in the middle of the hill.

Every path in the college ran into it.

At noon on the last day of term, it held four hundred students.

They stood in the queue for the cafe and sat on the steps with their results.

They shouted across the atrium at one another.

Dante stood by the central pillar in his one good coat.

He had been there since eleven.

The dean had walked past him twice and stopped the second time.

"Mr. Greco," the dean had said, and then, very low, "Mr. Rossi.

Whatever you are about to do, do it before I lose my nerve."

The warden, behind him, had said nothing.

He had only stood there, white to the lips, holding a clipboard in both hands.

At ten past twelve Daniel came in through the east doors, talking loudly about dumplings.

Javier was beside him.

His glasses were on, his bag over his shoulder, and his face was tired and closed.

Daniel steered him, with a hand in the small of his back, straight toward the pillar.

"Lunch," Daniel said. "You said yes to lunch."

"I said yes to a sandwich."

"A sandwich is lunch."

Then Javier saw Dante, and stopped.

The noise in the hall did not stop at once.

It frayed, and then it thinned, because four hundred people had seen him look.

Dante walked out into the middle of the floor.

The marble was cold through his trousers.

He went down on both knees, in front of everyone, with his hands open on his thighs.

The hall went silent.

"Javier," he said.

His voice carried without effort, as it had in the lecture hall, and it did not shake.

"My name is Dante Rossi. I am twenty-six.

I am the head of the Rossi family of Green Gold City, and for months I lied to you about it."

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