The Consolidated School
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“Are you all right?” Syl Vor asked, as she slipped onto the bench next to him at the long table. He had his lunch tray before him. Kezzi, uncharacteristically, had walked past the food lines, neglecting to fetch a tray entirely. Her stomach was, maybe, a little upset, and she was cold. Syl Vor would be warm: that was her thought, when she saw him across the room.
Which was…actually true. Syl Vor had a warm nature and a bright soul. That he would warm her was a fact of the universe, very simple, as all such facts tended to be. That she sought him particularly for this special warmth meant it wasn’t just her hands that were cold, but her spirit, too.
“Why are you late?” Syl Vor asked, breaking his roll and putting half by her hand.
Had he been any of the others seated at the table with them—gadje all—she would not have answered that question…or she would have answered with a lie. Syl Vor was her brother, and a brother’s part was the truth, but there were all those others seated near them, some with very sharp ears indeed.
“There was a meeting called,” she said. “I needed to help my sister.”
Those statements were both true, she congratulated herself, and neither one put Bedel truth in gadje ears.
Syl Vor frowned, sensing that she had not quite given him a brother’s full portion of the truth, but he only pointed at the half roll she had crushed in her hand.
“Eat your bread,” he said, and returned to the tray, cutting the meat in half.
“Anna is a little under the weather,” he said to those nearby, using the local idiom which meant either that someone had a queasy stomach, had had too little sleep, or ached from a discipline delivered with too much enthusiasm. “Can someone give her a spoon or a fork?”
“Here, Anna,” said Benet, from across the table and two seats down. She slid a spoon down the table toward Kezzi. “I picked up two by accident.”
“Thank you,” said Kezzi, which was easy and even…correct. Benet was no sister of hers, who would be insulted by the phrase; and she had, after all, been kind, and useful to Kezzi. Gadje supposed that those things earned them a thank you. It was not a position that Kezzi cared to debate.
“Here,” said Syl Vor, cutting her half of the meat into pieces with his knife. He also pushed half of the stewed carrots toward her side of the plate.
Kezzi sighed. She was not an admirer of stewed carrots in general. But today, cold and just barely not shivering as she was, she made no protest.
“Anna?” he said.
“It is well,” she said, bringing her spoon into play with the carrots. “Did I miss anything important in history class?”
“I’ll repeat it for you, when we get home,” he said, which she knew very well he could do, since he had a very good memory indeed. “Also, there’s reading.”
She sighed. Of course, there was reading. Mr. Beerdriki, the history teacher, was mad for reading.
She extended her spoon again, again for the carrots.
Around them, the gadje children grew loud again, so that she dared to lean close and murmur, in Bedel, for his ear alone.
“I will tell you, when we are home together.”