Page 98 of The Black Table
And still…he’s wrong.
I sneak a look up to glower at him. It’s five minutes to midnight, we’ve already lost an entire day for this assignment because of his need to focus on this fencing match—which, at the risk of sounding cruel, does not seem to have mattered, in the end, for him, given that he got hurt—and now he’s just steamrolling over the fact that the text is literally not readable from where he’s sitting?
I would rather die than give him the satisfaction.Especially because he is wrong.
I sit up straighter.
“No, you’re right,” I say, forcing my voice to be calm and even. “We’ll both give it a shot, and eventually it’ll be clear which way is up.”
“Agreed,” Kingston says, without looking up.
“Fine,” I add, needlessly except for my crushing insistence on having the last word.
I pick up my pencil and write.
It’s miserably slow. Painstaking. Lots of stops and starts, checking against various reference sheets. But it’s also…kind of satisfying in its slowness, like cross-stitch or whittling or something else cozy and deliberate you’d do to relax.
And…it’s nice, being here. In the library. Working.
Even if it is with Kingston.
“Done.” I put down the pencil, push my paper a few inches away to actually read what I wrote now that I’m not just focused on finding letterforms and spacing.
“What is…beneath,” I murmur slowly, “is…just as…that which is above. And what is above is just as that which is beneath.”
Huh. A little tautological, but it’s grammatical—a real sentence. Triumphant, I look up to see Kingston’s reaction.
He straightens. Lowers his pen. And turns his own paper around to me.
Quod est inferius est sicut quod est superius, et quod est superius est sicut quod est inferius.
The same thing. The same exact text.
“What?” I pull his sheet closer. “How?”
It’s then that I notice his handwriting isn’t its usual perfect penmanship, but shakier, more labored…
He’s writing with his left hand. Because his right is in a sling. My heart squeezes a little at the realization, and I immediately feel like a jerk for gloating.
Of course you finished first, Gwenna. He literally can’t go any faster.
“I told you,” he says.
“AndItoldyou,” I retort. “I guess we’re…both right.”
He nods, frowning at the paper. Turning it one way, then the other.
“The same thing from either side,” he says—unnecessarily, I think. Then he pins his eyes on me. “What does it mean?”
“It means…it means what I just said,” I say, not following. “It’s not that complicated of a text.”
“But what’s thepoint?” Kingston says, a little sharper. “What is it telling us?”
I tilt my head at him. “It…means that what’s above is below, and vice versa?” I frown. “I don’t know what you’re asking me.”
Kingston curls back in his seat and blows out a breath, which, combined with the stony look on his face, makes him look like an overgrown, sulky little prince.
He mutters something I can’t quite catch.
