For a moment Zephyrin failed to recognize the child, and for a longer one still he sought to identify the cause. The reason, he concluded at last, as Foudris stepped into his dorm as noiselessly as possible, was the absence of his sempiternal smirk. Though its phantom still lingered on his face because of the natural upward curve of his lips, not a trace of it remained in his eyes, which now were neither narrow with mockery nor doeishly wide in false innocence. Instead, they regarded Zephyrin with remarkable clarity of purpose, clouded only by his turbulent trepidation. “Thank you for accepting to hear me out, dy Valensis,” he whispered.

Zephyrin conjured up a faintly glowing sphere of mana in his palm to serve as a light source. “I pray I won’t have cause to regret my decision. Tell me what your business is coming at this hour, d’Érazh, and then leave quickly,” he said, his voice slightly more audible in warning.

Foudris nodded quickly, as if to assure Zephyrin of his intention to not wake Viristin or get them both in trouble. He then spoke slowly, almost tripping over his tongue in his nervousness. “I have something to confess… but, before that, there’s something I need to know. Are… are you returning home for the winter holidays?”

Zephyrin stared at his nocturnal visitor uncomprehendingly, the mana sphere creating a curious effect as it seemed to heighten the intensity of Foudris’s gaze. What kind of question was that, and at this hour, no less? And perhaps even more inexplicable than his query was Foudris’s look of nervous expectation; he seemed to be bracing himself for Zephyrin’s response, as if his words would run through him like an electric current.

Though baffled, Zephyrin answered all the same. “No. I’m boarding here at the lyceum.” Covering his initial train-ride and school expenses cost the diocese a tidy sum; additional trips back and forth were simply out of the question. Now that he was in the capital, he would be staying put until his graduation.

Relief flooded Foudris’s face. “If that’s the case… then can you stay at my home instead? I live in the capital—” he hastened to add, as if that detail would in any way lessen Zephyrin’s confusion. “—in the 11th district. It’s not far at all.”

Zephyrin gave his classmate a look laden in hard skepticism. “There are jests in bad taste, and then there are incomprehensible ones; and though one is worse than the other, I have no time to waste on either. Now, d’Érazh, if you’re quite finished…”

“Please!” The delinquent’s face became anguished. “You don’t understand… dy Valensis, I know I’ve done nothing to earn your trust, or your sympathy. But if you let me explain, I promise what I’m asking will make sense.”

Zephyrin folded his arms. “Let’s have it then, in order.” While he believed he knew what Foudris would say, this would settle the matter once and for all.

Foudris drew a ragged breath. “Thank you,” he murmured almost inaudibly, before continuing in a subdued whisper, “I’m the one who wrote those verses and slipped them in Roger’s homebound parcel.”

“Yes, I know.”

Proceeding as if Zephyrin hadn’t spoken, Foudris pursued his avowal of guilt. “After Roger hit him in the scriptorium, Loris d’Arx sought me out. He told me that if I’d set up Roger, he’d speak favorably of me to dy Sanct-Aura and convince him to let me join the Friends of Truth…”

Zephyrin drummed his fingers on his arm. Just as expected. For a noble hailing from a minor family, as Foudris presumably did, a proposition of that nature would be highly tantalizing. “Go on.”

Foudris released a shuddering breath, his eyes making a circumnavigation of the room before arresting on Zephyrin pleadingly. He had to admit, the boy’s tormented air had all the marks of realism. It was almost eerie how convincing he was. “I thought that would be the end of it, but Loris told me to do something else. He told me to sneak into your and Roger’s dorm... and… to steal something, anything.”

Viristin coughed, then rolled over in his sleep. Zephyrin let a half dozen seconds elapse, then motioned for Foudris to resume.

“It was easy,” he continued shakily. “You were gone—I didn’t know why—and Roger was in the infirmary half the time. I took Roger’s key while he was sleeping and slipped in your dorm during one of the liturgies, when the corridors were practically empty. Once I got in, I took the book on his nightstand, about the peasant girl of Vex… here it is…” Foudris reached into his black cloak for the volume and offered it with downcast eyes to Zephyrin, who accepted it wordlessly, electing not to make mention of the fact that Roger had borrowed it from him in the first place.

This was a surprising sequence of events, he had to admit. Zephyrin felt the first crack form in his conviction that this was merely another tasteless prank. Could it be possible that this act of heart-wrenching repentance was, in fact, founded upon genuine contrition?

Meanwhile, Foudris swallowed hard, before confessing in a tone so hushed that Zephyrin had trouble hearing him, “I didn’t stop there. Next, I went to your desk and… took your journal as well.” He closed his eyes and bowed his head, as if fearing Zephyrin’s reaction.

Zephyrin considered the boy with a meditative expression. Aggrieved party though he was, he had trouble mustering up more than a momentary annoyance, especially with Foudris seemingly on the verge of tears. He had foreseen such a possibility: it was precisely for the purpose of foiling prying eyes that he had encoded his writings. Since the journal had been right where he left it, Zephyrin reasoned that Foudris had stolen it, failed to make heads nor tails of it, then gave up and put it back where he had found it. Zephyrin silently congratulated himself on his foresight…

…until hearing the next words that came out of Foudris’s mouth.

“Your journal’s second to last page…” the other boy began again in a low voice, before raising his eyes from the floor and locking gazes with Zephyrin. “How do you know about the Transition?”