by Laure Eve
She sighed and lay down on the bed. Would anyone care about her here? Not that it mattered. It never had. She cared for herself and that should be enough. Perhaps she would think about her favourite collection of dreams, though, and see if she couldn’t revisit one of them tonight, and comfort herself.
When she woke, it was to the sound of furious knocking.
‘Rue! Rue!’ blared a shrill little voice outside her door.
She looked around. The curtains were fastened shut, but the crack of light on the floor told her it was morning. She sat up, horrified.
‘Rue! Rue! Get up!’
‘Wait!’ she called, her voice crackling with sleep. ‘Wait a minute! I’m not … I’m just getting dressed!’
‘I thought country folk were used to getting up early,’ said Lea through the door. ‘My nanny was from Rochelette and she always woke up at half past five, even if she’d gone to bed two hours previously. She said it was ingrained in her.’
Rue hopped about frantically to the background stream of words from the corridor. Lea’s voice was actually quite musical, if you ignored what she was saying and listened to the rhythm of it. Rue hadn’t washed, hadn’t even undressed! It didn’t matter. She needed Lea and would have to make do. She ran the tap and splashed her face with cold water, then peered at herself in the mirror and fluffed her hair.
‘Come on, come on, I’m hungry,’ Lea wheedled. ‘It’s eggs today and if we’re late they’ll all be gone. The boys are pigs.’
Boys! And me looking like a truffler’s backside!
Rue sighed, stepped back, and opened the door.
‘Did you even get undressed last night?’ said Lea in delight. She was looking smart in wide pants with a perfect crease and a crossed blouse in the style that all the women in Capital seemed to be wearing, from what Rue had seen yesterday.
‘I fell asleep,’ said Rue crossly.
‘Well, you look terrible, but that never matters when you’re pretty. Come on.’
She bounced off and Rue followed. The entire way there Lea didn’t stop talking, even though she was in front of Rue and half her words were lost. Rue looked around as they traipsed along, trying to memorise their route.
It turned out that they had to leave through a back door and cross the vegetable garden to get to the dining room. The garden was hemmed in by walls on all four sides, and looked lovely. She wondered if they grew medicine herbs here. Lea wouldn’t pause for anything, though, saying in a determined fashion that she was a ‘real demon’ if she didn’t get to eat in the mornings.
The dining room was small but quite grand, big enough to seat a hundred people at least. The tables were solid, varnished trewsey wood, from what she could tell, and the light was bright and pleasing. It was odd to see so much space and realise almost no one would be using it that year. Three of her fellow students were huddled together on the table nearest what she presumed to be the kitchen door, and there was one dark-haired girl who sat on her own at another table, her hands wrapped around a steaming bowl and her eyes focused on a book.
‘That’s Freya, sat by herself like a friendless prawn,’ said Lea, not bothering to lower her voice. If the dark-haired girl heard her, she gave no sign of it. ‘And the blonde one is Lufe. The fat one is Marches, and the thin bendy one is Tulsent.’
Rue stared at the three boys as they approached. She was resolved not to put out the impression that she was shy and nervous. They gave as good as they got.
The boy named Lufe had thick blonde hair that curled and flopped all over his head. He was the most aggressive of the three, openly looking Rue up and down with a lazy kind of smile she instantly disliked. Marches was hardly fat, though a good deal bigger than the other two. He seemed unconcerned about her arrival, as if he wished to give off an apathetic air. Tulsent she could barely read, as his glasses were so thick they obscured half his face. He did appear to be looking at her, but she couldn’t be completely sure. One of his legs was drawn up to his chest in a most uncomfortable-looking position.
The thing that astonished her the most about them, though, was their age differences. Lufe looked almost like a man. Marches was perhaps her age or a little younger. Tulsent seemed barely out of his childhood. The dark-haired girl named Freya was harder to place, but she looked at least nineteen or twenty.
‘This is Rue,’ Lea told the others. ‘Vela Rue. She got here last night.’
‘Where do you come from, then?’ drawled Lufe. He was definitely aristocratic. He and Lea could be brother and sister.
‘From Kernow,’ said Rue coolly.
‘Never heard of it. Is that in the country?’
‘Yes.’
‘A country lass. You must be a polytheist.’
‘Well, don’t you know all the big words,’ said the apparently fat one, Marches.
Lufe waved a hand airily. ‘Just because you’re thick as pig shit.’ He swept his gaze back to Rue. ‘So, are you?’
‘No,’ said Rue firmly, without a clue what the word meant.
‘Yes you are. Grad and Buc and Threya and all that. All those made-up gods.’
‘My family are polytheists, Lufe,’ said Lea. ‘Your point?’
‘I think you just made it.’
Lea drew in a shocked breath. ‘I’ll have you know my family is one of the oldest in Capital, you ignorant prigger!’
‘Come come, let’s not fight,’ said Marches, with a grin that meant exactly the opposite. ‘At least none of you are atheists.’
‘Atheists are freaks,’ Lea snapped.
Rue gave up trying to follow the conversation, and noticed Marches staring at her.
‘So how Talented are you, then?’ he said.
Lea sighed. ‘Let’s get some food.’ She walked away without waiting for a response from Rue, who hesitated for a moment, and then followed her into the kitchen.
It was a homely place. The three stoves were familiar-looking cast-iron affairs, and a fire burned cheerfully in the enormous grate dominating the end wall. It was empty of people, but large dishes of food were set out on the counter tops in the middle of the room. Lea walked straight up to them and took a plate from a stack. She started ladling various spoonfuls of food onto it as she talked.
‘Plates there, help yourself. There’s a lot of choice today – sometimes they’ve only one or two things, I’ve no notion why that might be.’
‘Must depend what they can get in the markets each morning,’ said Rue.
Lea looked surprised. ‘I never thought of it like that. I suppose you’re right.’ She gave Rue a sidelong look. ‘Don’t pay attention to Marches. He asks everyone that question, as if the Talent can be quantified so quickly. Actually he asks you as a test, not because he thinks you’ll know the answer. To see what sort of person you are, you see. If you say you’re very Talented, he knows you’re cocksure. If you say not very, he knows you’re meek. If you say you don’t know, he knows you’re uncertain of yourself.’
‘There’s no good answer, then,’ said Rue, grabbing two warm eggs. They rocked gently around her plate as she moved.
‘Quite. He just wants to make you feel stupid. He’s like that. Tulsent is sweet, a bit young for all this. Lufe is just Lufe. Freya ignores everyone completely, and so everyone ignores her.’
Lea had somehow managed to fit three eggs, a huge hunk of broche bread, a slice of ham and a small pile of scones onto her plate. As Rue watched on in amazement, she picked up a spoon and ladled a torrent of jam onto the scones.
‘So how did you know about the Talent?’ said Lea. ‘Do you have someone else in your family with it?’
Rue shrugged. ‘Don’t know. Never knew my parents. They put me on a farm when I was a baby. The farm owners never even saw who put me there. They were glad to raise me – they needed every hand they could get and only had two children of their own.’ She picked up a scone and squeezed it before setting it on her plate. It had a firm crust but the middle was soft, springy sponge. She thought about dewberry jam b
ut decided on apricot. As she ladled the jam onto her scone, she became aware that Lea had stopped talking, and was staring at her.
‘What?’ she said.
‘You were an orphan?’
‘Right.’
‘I’ve never met one before.’
‘Chances are you have,’ said Rue, offhand. ‘They’re never talked about, but there’s a few. Especially in cities, I’ll bet. Not so many in the country, where big families are likely to adopt an unwanted kiddie and say nothing more of it.’
‘How do you know all this?’ said Lea. For once, she was in thrall to Rue, who walked back to the dining room not knowing if they should sit with the boys – it seemed wrong, somehow, to assume she would be included on her first day. So she chose a table next to them. Lea sat opposite her.
‘Why are you sitting there?’ said Lufe to Lea.
‘Hush, I’m listening to something more interesting than you.’ Lea focused her gaze on Rue.
‘Don’t know how I know, I just thought about it a lot, and I reckon that’s the way it goes,’ said Rue, starting to enjoy the rapt attention the higher born girl was giving her.
‘So did they put you to work? Did you have to … harvest fields, or something?’
Rue laughed, rolling her egg to crack the shell. ‘Gods, no! I’m not big or strong enough. Girls usually look after the animals, and the garden, vegetables and herbs. And the household chores. They hired men for the fieldwork. I wouldn’t even be able to operate any of them field machines they used.’
‘Animals, how lovely! That must have been a wonderful job to have,’ said Lea, and proceeded to rattle off the names and types of all the pets she had had as a child. Rue didn’t want to disavow Lea of the pretty picture in her head. Animals, in Rue’s experience, were hard work, messy, demanding and disloyal. And only occasionally sweet enough to make it nice to keep them. She wondered where the egg had come from as she ate it. They must have chickens kept somewhere in the university. She wouldn’t mind tending to them, if they needed the help. Chickens were silly but uncomplicated little creatures, and Rue had always enjoyed moving amongst them, feeding them their grain, feeling in their nest boxes for eggs, watching their fat bodies hop clumsily out of the way as she went past.
It wouldn’t be so bad here, she thought. Lea was nice, and her room was nice.
It was a good start.
Rue had a dream that night.
She was walking along the corridor outside her bedroom, trying to remember where the kitchen was. The light was too dark for her to see properly, or perhaps it was that she couldn’t open her eyes wide enough. She shuffled along, desperately hungry, feeling the walls with her fingers.
There was a glimmer of light up ahead, and when she got to it she was relieved to find that it spilled out from underneath the kitchen door. Someone had left the lamps lit, and the place was warm and bright.
Rue crept to the massive ovens, opening one of the doors and flinching as it creaked. There were the few scones left over from that morning’s breakfast. She took out two and crossed to the enormous table squatting in the middle of the tiled floor, placing them on the top while she looked for the jams.
‘Hello,’ said a voice behind her.
Her heart stopped. Please don’t let it be one of the boys, she begged silently. How would it look, grubbing for food in the middle of the night? Lufe especially would enjoy that so much he probably wouldn’t ever forget it.
At first the owner of the voice seemed hidden to her, a disembodied sound. Then she noticed something moving forwards from a shadowed corner, over by the pantry doors.
It was a boy, maybe a couple of years older than her – maybe even her age, though it was hard to tell. The light must have been a little funny in here, because his eyes shone like knife blades catching the light. But the more she stared at him, the more she realised that they were coloured that way. Like twin silver mirrors.
Her mouth fell open.
He was slim and willowy. His face was a little odd, something in the way the features were arranged deeply unfamiliar. As he moved past the kitchen lamps, his eyes reflected the light.
‘Don’t be alarmed,’ he intoned as Rue stared at him. ‘I come in peace.’ Then issued from his mouth a series of wild choking sounds that she finally began to understand was laughter.
‘Who by all the gods are you?’ she said in glowing astonishment.
‘By no gods,’ he said. ‘Just myself, and all the fun that comes with that.’ His voice was ordinary, and strangely jarring coming from such a body.
He made his way slowly towards her as he talked, moving quite abnormally. She later realised that it was how a cat walked, picking up its paws and placing them down with fastidious care. It looked bizarre when it was done on two legs.
‘You don’t make much sense,’ said Rue, still too shocked to process anything much.
‘Maybe I will in the future,’ he commented, then collapsed onto a chair by the kitchen table with an oily gesture. He stretched out a hand and picked up one of the scones she had put on the table, tearing it apart with his slender fingers and throwing small pieces into his mouth. He did it with an air of intimacy, as if the two of them had done this countless times, sat up late together in the kitchen eating scones. Rue had no clue on how she was supposed to act.
‘Who are you?’ she asked again, instead.
‘Patience, girl,’ he replied. He didn’t spare her a glance.
They sank into silence. Rue tried to pull upwards out of her confusion, but the more she fought, the easier it seemed to give up.
She watched him eat the last of the scone. He turned his head and his mouth filled her vision, curled at one end in a faint smile. She watched his lips open and words fall out.
‘I come back for the food,’ he said. ‘Sometimes it just doesn’t compare.’
‘Are you a new student?’ Rue managed.
‘No, not new,’ he said, his tone careful and amused. ‘But I do know this place. And I wanted to tell you something. I wanted to tell you that they’ll kill you, you know.’
‘What?’ Rue managed, unsure if she had heard him right.
‘If they can’t use you, they’ll kill you, to make sure no one else can have you.’
He looked at her. His strange silver eyes gleamed.
‘Be very careful,’ he said.
She woke.
CHAPTER 17
ANGLE TAR
Rue
‘Mussyer White is the only Talented tutor in all of Angle Tar, did I tell you that before? I’ve got your lesson plan here, look, but I had to basically pry it from Penafers Mouse, as if she can ever rouse herself to care one centime for any of us. Are you listening?’
Rue fiddled with the hem of her dress, trying to look like she was listening. She was used to hours alone, in relative silence, with time to think about whatever she liked. She was used to moving around all day, not sitting still in a classroom and having knowledge pushed into her head for hours on end. She was definitely not used to someone like Lea.
Dam Penafers, their absentee house mistress, was supposed to make sure they didn’t wander off into the city at night, keep them on a tight rein, and chaperone them if they wanted to go shopping, but she was often nowhere to be seen, and the other Talented tended to come and go as they pleased. Rue was too nervous to do this much, but Lea had coaxed her out more than once during the day, when they had no lessons to fill the long hours. They spent their time trailing around clothes boutiques, Lea spending money freely on clothes that draped over her thin frame with artful grace. More than once she had offered to buy Rue something, but that was an offer Rue felt uncomfortable about taking up. She knew the girl was rich and wouldn’t care, but that was almost the reason Rue didn’t want Lea to spend money on her. It seemed obscene that you could do that without even noticing the difference to yourself. Rue’s pocket money was coming from the university’s own coffers, something she was acutely aware of. So she refused Lea’s generosity, eve
n though it was joyless going on a shopping trip with someone when there was no end result for yourself.
‘… He’ll be teaching you personally, you know,’ continued Lea, apparently mildly put out at her lacklustre response. They were sat together on Rue’s narrow bed. ‘You’re incredibly lucky. We all are. Mussyer White only teaches Talented, and he teaches us one on one, not in a class together.’
This got her attention. ‘Why’s that?’
‘It works better, so he says, if you and he are alone. He can focus his energies into one person at a time only.’
This sounded a little bit nerve-wracking. Alone with a tutor that she had heard all sorts of strange things about. A tutor that would tell her what this thing was inside of her. This hunger.
‘What’s he like?’ said Rue.
Lea touched her mouth with a finger, a smile curling upwards like smoke. ‘Weird.’
That meant weird in a good way. She felt her curiosity unfurl a little more.
It was usually impossible for Lea to stop talking. Sure enough, she giggled, shook her head, and continued.
‘I don’t know. You think he’s horrible at first, but he’s so different. And powerful, you can feel it. I heard he’s the most powerful Talented in the whole world.’
Powerful. He’d be imposing, then. Commanding. Or maybe wise, like a wizard. Long beard and startling eyes and magic spilling like water from his fingertips.
‘What’s he doing here?’ said Rue.
Lea’s voice dropped to a dramatic murmur. ‘I heard he had to flee his country on account of his Talent. He hasn’t even been in Angle Tar that long. A year or two, at most.’
As a rule, Rue had learned to believe exactly a tenth of what Lea came out with, and disregard the rest. But this Mussyer White certainly had an effect on his students – even Lufe spoke of him with a noticeable degree of awe. She wanted to impress this impressive man.
And then she yawned, suddenly.