CLASSROOM 14 — SOME TIME AFTER THE TEST BEGAN.
Armand was explaining.
Not asking, explaining. The difference mattered to him. Asking implied other people could say no. Explaining was merely a formality before a decision that had already been made.
There were eleven people in the room.
All first-years, all from families with names, all wearing that expression of people who had grown up being told they were special and had come to believe it with absolute conviction.
Armand stood in the center, not on a chair, not leaning against anything. In the center, standing, like an orator or a defendant. The difference depended on who was watching.
Eighteen years old, one year older than most freshmen because he had deliberately repeated the Eldrath admission process. "Not because I failed. Because I wanted to enter in the right year," he would say. Which meant he had one extra year of information about the academy that the others didn't.
