This is where he has placed the chair. Julius. The boys of the lower school call him “Caesar,” pronouncing the C as a K like the Latin teacher taught them: Key-sar. It means emperor-designate. The one who will rule next. He alone is dressed in all the room: wears pressed trousers, his half boots polished to a shine. A waistcoat, but no jacket, to draw attention to the shirt: the sleeves so lily-white it startles the eye. When he moves his arms, the starched linen makes a sound, something between a rustle and a sort of clapping, depending on how quickly he moves. You can even hear how clean it is. And, by extension, he. No evil has touched him. Julius is the closest the school has to a saint.

He places both hands on the back of the chair and watches the ripple of fear spread through the boys. Thomas feels it, too. It’s not a matter of courage, he thinks, but a physical force. Like feeling the wind on your face on a stormy day. You cannot opt out.

“We shall have a lottery,” says Julius, not loudly, dispensing with a greeting, and one of his cronies, eighteen and bulky in the shoulders, steps forward with pencil stubs, a stack of paper squares, and a large gunny sack. The type you might use to carry potatoes in; to fashion a scarecrow’s face. The kind you slip over someone’s head when you lead them to their hanging. But that’s just being fanciful, Thomas tells himself, as he accepts a piece of paper and a pencil, and marks down his name. Thomas Argyle. He omits his title. The papers go back in the sack.

Thomas does not know how Julius cheats, but cheat he must. Perhaps he has marked the papers somehow, or perhaps he simply pretends to read off the name he has picked out of the sack and substitutes it for one of his choice. The only person to vouch for the proceedings is that same loyal crony who passed out the papers. Julius has turned up his shirt sleeve to rummage in the sack, as though he were digging for sin at the bottom of a murky pond. As though it were important not to get soiled.

The first name is a surprise. Collingwood. One of his own, a “guardian,” as they like to call themselves, a fellow prefect, who holds the keys to the dorm and the trust of the teachers. For a moment his choice confuses Thomas. Then he understands. It demonstrates justice, brings home the fact that nobody is above the rules. That there is no one who has nothing to fear.

“Collingwood,” Julius calls a second time, just that, no first name. That’s what they are to one another here. Your first name is for friends, to be used only in private. And for Julius, who is everybody’s friend.