by Lev AC Rosen
“Sounds like an initiation,” Jack said, grinning widely at Violet. “We’d better prepare.” The other first-years all seemed frightened, except Fairfax, who didn’t seem to be paying attention to anything.
“I’m sure it won’t be that bad,” Violet said, “but it probably wouldn’t hurt to sleep in our pants and have some tricks in our pockets.”
“I didn’t bring any tricks,” Lane said.
“Then we’ll make some,” Jack said. “The entire college is open for exploration today. I’m sure we can nick some stuff from the labs.”
Violet nodded. The others looked scared, but Jack and Violet didn’t. They were excited for an adventure, and eager to prove themselves. They happily finished their meal and waited for the duke to dismiss them.
* * *
THE duke, meanwhile, was talking with his godmother and the other professors. “I think it will be a good year,” the duke said to Ada. Cecily also leaned forward, which made him flinch slightly. He wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to discuss the virtues of the young men, even in the abstract, in her presence.
“It’s certainly a promising-looking group,” Ada said, “though none of them seem to have much range.”
“Is it so bad to be an expert in one’s field?” the duke asked.
“Your father was a master in every field,” Ada said, “and so are you, though you’re oddly loath to admit it.”
“Your eyes are clouded with the affection you bear me.”
“In any case, master of one area is a fine thing, a great thing, more than most men will achieve. But this is Illyria, the place for scientific greatness. You should be breeding geniuses of every craft.”
“We only take the best.”
“Perhaps if you took students who seemed to do well in all fields instead of mastering one of them, you could make that student a master of all the sciences. Think what such a genius could accomplish.”
“I quite agree with Auntie Ada,” Cecily said. “A student who shows great skill in all fields is one worthy of Illyria, if not its ideal.” The duke nodded into his food but didn’t look up. He didn’t like Cecily disagreeing with him on matters scientific, particularly in front of the professors, who he could feel were all grinning.
“I’ll take it under consideration,” he said. “I think that mealtime has gone on long enough, though, hasn’t it?” He stood and clapped his hands to get the attention of the students. He looked out over their faces, young, clever, full of ambition. This was a good group, he thought.
“Go. Unpack, get your books, settle in to your rooms, explore the college. Tomorrow, your classes begin. Today is your last day of holiday. Spend it wisely.”
The students all stood and filed out quietly, the air around the first-years trembling visibly with exhilaration. After a moment, the professors left, too, for their lounge on the second floor, or for their offices, or to prepare for their first lectures tomorrow. Only Ada and Cecily stayed with the duke as the servants came in to clear away the dirty dishes.
“I’m going to go lie down for a while,” Ada said. “Cecily, would you escort me to the lounge in your apartments?”
“Of course, Auntie Ada.”
“I’ll see you at supper, Ernest,” Ada said, walking with Cecily toward the stairs to their private apartments. He would suggest she use the lift out in the hall, but he knew Ada would be insulted by any insinuation that she was frail. Instead, he watched Cecily support her as they slowly climbed the twisted marble stairs and headed out through the archway, toward home. The servants danced around the dining hall, cleaning and scrubbing the floors till they gleamed.
The duke sighed and rested his head in his hands. It wasn’t sadness that caused this gesture, for he was a man content with the luxuries life had afforded him. If one were to ask what caused him to sigh, he would have no answer, for he was not conscious of the malaise that troubled him. All he knew was that he had felt as though he had had something in his grasp, and that it was now slipping away again. But he had work to do, and would not let himself indulge in his emotions. Instead he would head for the labs to inspect everything, then look in on the dormitory and demonstrate to the new students that he could drop by at any moment to make sure they were behaving.
And then there was the first lecture he would be giving on Saturday, for which he had to prepare. It would be on the possibilities of space travel, the duke had decided. The idea had stuck with him since he’d read Ashton Adams’s essay. There were strong ideas there, which warranted exploration for the entire student body. The Adams twins were a striking pair. Even young Ashton, with his gentle face, struck the duke as a handsome lad, filled with promise. In fact, the duke had thought of both the Adamses a lot in the past month, though only in passing. He thought he would like to meet their father. They were a remarkable family, clearly.
The duke looked up at the clock on the wall. It was time to visit the labs.
* * *
VIOLET was herself visiting the labs. It hadn’t taken long for her and Jack to settle into their room, though they’d had a small argument about whether or not to hang a sheet across the room for modesty’s sake, so Jack couldn’t see Violet sleeping. Violet had insisted that it was quite unnecessary, and suspicious to boot. Besides, she wasn’t the sort of girl who was modest. She could change in the water closet—each of the rooms had one—and her nightshirt wasn’t revealing in any way. On the other hand, Jack wanted it because he was afraid of Violet seeing his naked legs and making judgments. Violet promised not to make any judgments whatsoever, and so no sheet was hung.
The rooms were pleasant, if small, with green rugs and wood floors. They all opened onto a hall, at the end of which was the student lounge, with its constantly moving wall of gears, and several tables to work on. Many of the returning students were already hard at work in the lounge, catching up on their work or chatting with friends while showing off various inventions they had perfected over the summer. Violet saw a clockwork automaton in the shape of a large insect that seemed able to sense walls and avoid them, and odd potions that put people to sleep right away—the latter demonstrated on Merriman, who seemed eager to get on well with the older students. But as exciting as these were, what she and Jack wanted to see most were the labs.
The chemical laboratory smelled of strange toxins and smoke, and the once-golden walls had rusted into a deep brown in places, giving them a mottled look. Professor Curio walked around the room, sometimes mumbling to himself as he rearranged the potions on the cabinets, then placing them back in their original order, then rearranging them again. The microscopes that lay at one end of the room were large and shone expectantly, as though they had missed being used all summer. When Curio spotted the students, he stared at them silently until they left.
The reckoning laboratory was tall and contained six huge analytical engines, looming towers twice as tall as Violet. They had huge slots in the middle for the reckoning programs, and another slot where the parchment printed with results came out. They hummed silently in the dark, ominous. In the center of the room were a group of tables for punching out the reckoning programs. Violet and Jack walked through the room silently, Violet pausing to touch the machines, gently caressing the long levers, but after a little while, the quiet humming under the cranking of the gears became a bit disarming, and they left.
The astronomy lab at the top of the college seemed to Violet less sophisticated, if rather larger, than her father’s lab back at the manor. But the two clock towers outside the glass dome were of particular fascination to them both. The door out to the landing was locked, but through the glass they could see life-sized statues that danced at the striking of each hour.
“I think we should pick the lock and go ride the statue of the lion,” Jack said, pointing. “You still have that lock-picking tool you made?”
“It’s down in our room,” Violet said, “but I’d rather not get into trouble before classes have started. Besides, the lion already has Leonardo da
Vinci riding it. I don’t know that there’d be room for you.”
“I’m sure Leo wouldn’t mind,” Jack said. They both stared at the clocks awhile longer, and then descended back into the college.
The biology and natural science lab smelled like embalming fluid, but Jack was soon clearly quite enamored with it. Despite Violet’s objections, he started going through the cabinets, picking up pickled mice and various bottles of strange glowing fluids and cooing excitedly over each one: “These are liquefied jellyfish!” “Strips of preserved hog hide!” “An empty armadillo shell!” And so on. After a few minutes of this, Violet said she was going to continue with the tour. Jack waved her on, barely looking up as he said he would catch up with her later. Violet headed down to the basement, where the mechanical lab was located.
She tried to restrain herself at first, images of Jack going wild in the empty biology lab still fresh in her mind, but she couldn’t resist for long, and was soon at one of the large tables, hands sticky with oil and grease and the beginnings of a small invention lying in front of her. She was so taken by the endless supplies of gears and springs and the huge wall of clanking, forever-turning wheels that she didn’t notice how much time was passing.
“Getting started early?”
Violet looked up. Standing in the door was a shadowy figure of a man, looking as if he’d been there for a while. Violet raised her hand above her eyes, hoping to make out a face, though she had already begun to suspect who it was and started blushing.
“Don’t do that now,” the duke said, striding into the lab. “You’ll get grease on your face.” He reached Violet’s table and grabbed at her wrist to keep her hand from her face. “Too late!” he said. “Make sure you wash that before you go to bed.” He grinned down at her.
“Oh,” Violet said, standing. “Sorry, sir.”
“No need to apologize, Mr. Adams,” the duke said. “It’s admirable that you’re already working. May I ask what it is?”
“I don’t quite know yet, sir,” Violet confessed. “I was just so energized by the supplies and tools and space that I started toying about. I can take it apart and put all the pieces back.”
“Don’t be silly. There are cubbies over on that wall that you can keep your small inventions in. Larger things, you can just push to the side. This place gets crowded by the end of the year. Now, let’s see what you’ve got.”
The duke leaned over Violet, placing his hand on her shoulder with a feeling of camaraderie. But Violet couldn’t help but notice that the duke’s breath on her neck was far warmer than the flames of her own lab, back home.
“Well, at home, I designed a device that could pick locks,” Violet said, trying to focus on the gears and knobs in front of her. “I used it to terrorize my bro—sister. Jack was just talking about it earlier. And some of the elder students said at lunch that we might have some sort of initiation tonight. So I guess I was thinking I could make some sort of attachment to the lock-picking—”
“You brought it here?”
“What?”
“The lockpick? You thought you’d need a lockpick?”
Violet pursed her lips, and the duke couldn’t help but notice that young Mr. Adams’s lips were remarkably smooth, and how long and attractive his neck was. Still, he had brought a lockpick to school. That implied a mischievous streak. Although, truthfully, the duke was torn—he also wanted to see the lockpick. It sounded clever.
“I brought most of my small inventions. I didn’t really know what I’d need.”
“Well, don’t go breaking into my apartments with it.”
“Oh, of course not, sir!” Violet said, blushing.
“So, what were you thinking this attachment could do to assist you in your initiation this evening?”
“You know about the initiation?” Violet asked.
“It’s the same every year,” the duke said, “but that’s all I’ll tell you.”
“Well, I don’t know what it could be, but the basic mechanism of the lockpick is adaptable, so I thought that I could create an attachment that could make it multipurpose … a few different tools, a small electrical torch, maybe—that’s what this part is. I used Volta’s theories and some ideas from a young scientist named Tesla. It generates a constant electrically generated light if I keep squeezing this trigger, here…”
“May I see?” the duke asked, placing his hand over Violet’s on the trigger and squeezing. The device whirred slightly and then projected a beam of light, before the whirring slowed down and the beam faded. The laboratory was dark, and Violet and the duke were both suddenly aware, in the darkness, of the touching of their hands.
“Impressive,” the duke said, taking his hand off the device.
“It’ll be easier to use attached to the lockpick,” Violet said. “The lockpick generates more energy with a pull, so the beam will stay on longer.”
“Very impressive, Mr. Adams,” the duke said, “and I’m sure it will come in quite handy tonight. Mind that you sleep with it in your pockets, though. Won’t do any good in your room.”
“Thanks,” Violet said, smiling.
“You look quite like your sister, when you smile,” the duke said. Then he turned around and walked out of the lab, leaving Violet biting her lip in the dark.
The duke walked down the corridor and up the stairs, stopping by the students’ lounge and walking the dormitory hall, where the students all went quiet as he nodded at them. It was nearly supper time. He and the other professors and Ada would be eating in the professors’ lounge tonight, and gambling, and drinking, and—as Ada was there—smoking cigars. He had left the lab quickly because socializing too much with any one student could be seen as favoritism, and also because he had found himself oddly drawn to Ashton Adams, not just intellectually, but physically. This was a new feeling for him: he was a man of learning, and felt that to judge a man on his actions in the bedroom was a ridiculous standard, but he had never considered himself to have inverted tendencies. Yet, he also found Ashton Adams’s skin to be of a lovely hue. That thought, creeping into his mind, seemed out of place and confusing. Perhaps it was a side effect of seeing the boy’s inventions. Or perhaps it was just that Ashton bore a remarkable resemblance to his sister, Violet, whom the duke remembered fondly. That must be it. Perhaps it was Violet who had drawn out these feelings in him, and Ashton was merely a memory of them walking the halls. In any case, the duke decided, it would be best to avoid any undue intimacy with Ashton, and not to think on the matter any longer. To dwell on the desires of one’s heart was to spend time in a world of fantasy, when he belonged in a world of reason.
“Ah-ha!” Ada said as the duke came into the lounge. “I knew you’d show up once I lit the first cigar. Say what you will about bad habits, but I don’t believe a word of it. Sometimes I suspect you have me over just as an excuse to inhale the smoke of the cigars I light.”
The duke coughed. The smell of cigar smoke and freshly lit matches was spiraling around the lounge. A bottle of brandy was open as well, and everyone had a full glass. “Am I that late?” the duke asked.
“Not too terribly late,” Valentine said, “but we’re all rather impatient where brandy and cigars are involved.”
The professors’ lounge was a cozy place that the duke’s father had designed with his scientific collegues at the time. It had a deep brown and gold rug on the floor and a large golden fireplace. Ada sat at the far end of the table, with the professors—save for Bracknell, who was, the duke noted with some relief, absent—gathered around her, craning their necks toward her like daises to the sun—except for Professor Bunburry, who, given the large metal funnel around his neck, could not crane it, so he merely listed slightly in her direction. The duke smiled and sat down in his armchair at the head of the table. Across from him, Ada reclined in her chair, her cigar smoke haloing around her.
“They’re sending Welsh rarebit for supper tonight,” the duke said. “Pass me the brandy.”
Valentine grinne
d and slid the bottle of brandy down the table to the duke.
“We were just dis-dis-dis-cussing the new students,” Curio said.
“The countess has asked us which of the students we think will prove most surprising in this coming year,” Valentine said.
“And what do you mean by ‘surprising’?” the duke asked his godmother.
“That’s just what we were asking,” Prism said.
“I just mean,” Ada said, blowing smoke into the air, “the student most likely to do things that are … unexpected.”
“That’s very vague, madam,” Valentine said, leering.
“I feel quite sure, though, that by the end of the year, you’ll all agree on one student.”
“That sounds like a ch-ch-challenge,” Curio said.
“Take it as you will.”
“You’re challenging us to a wager, it seems,” Valentine said. Ada’s love of gambling was well known among the professors. “But we have yet to hear whom you’ll place your money on.”
“I’d bet a hundred pounds at least on Mr. Adams,” Ada said.
The duke frowned. He didn’t like gambling that involved the students. “I hope you’re not asking my professors to engage in a bet where punishing a student could work to their advantage,” he said.
“Of course not, Ernest. That’s why the terms are vague. ‘Surprising’ could mean any number of things.”
“I still feel uncomfortable with this,” the duke said. The bell beside the dumbwaiter rang and he rose to open it. Inside, several steaming platters rested on a silver tray. He removed them and placed them on the table before the professors. Normally, a servant would do this, but the duke didn’t like having servants in the lounge. He felt it made some of the professors ill at ease, as though they needed to constantly impress the servants with their great skill. And besides, he liked placing the food in front of the professors himself, so as to remind them where it came from.