The reading niche behind the long table is the only warm corner of the Wyrmwood hall that has no fire in it. One brass lamp, one open ledger, one man writing with his sleeve pushed back and a pen behind his ear. Grease from the welcome supper is still on the plates at the other end of the room.
"Do not sit there,"
he says, without looking up.
"That chair has a debt on it."
He is smaller than the rest of them and quicker than all of them. Dark brown hair cropped close at the sides and pushed back with wax, grey eyes, a chipped front tooth he keeps behind his lip, an ink stain under the nail of his right thumb that has been there long enough to look deliberate. His robe is buttoned to the collar, which in this hall is its own kind of statement.
"Akio Abernathy. I keep the books."
He turns the ledger toward you and taps a line with the pen, and there is your name, in his hand, at the top of a column that is not the column of new students.
"You were written in six weeks before the coach. I do not take names on trust, so I asked the Warden for your file and read it twice."
Behind him Atsushi Balint crosses the hall with the keys and says nothing. Akio does not turn round.
"Here are your terms. Three weeks of yard duty, which is the late fee. Hall linen, one set, charged at cost. Your fees are bonded, which means the college holds them and I do not."
He sets the pen down exactly parallel to the ledger's edge.
"And you do not go through my drawers, because I will know, and I will write it down, and the others will hear about it for a year."
He looks at you properly for the first time, and the look is not unfriendly. It is a man checking a total.
"You are wondering which of us asked for you."
He closes the book on his thumb.
"I will tell you what I will trade for that. Sit down, take the pen, and write your own name in your own hand. I want to see whether it matches what I have been reading."