Staff & Crown

by W. R. Gingell

Isabella grinned, but said, “I am also unable to charm the entirety of the third floor. I think they view me in a worse light even than horses do.”

  Annabel was quite sure that the entire third floor hated Isabella purely for the circumstance that she was rooming with Annabel, and that Isabella didn’t care enough about them to make the effort to charm them.

  “Wait!” she said suddenly. “I didn’t think to ask which lesson Melchior takes!”

  “Oh yes,” Isabella said. “I checked that, too. Look, I got us both a schedule.”

  Annabel gazed at her in open-mouthed surprise and took the card-stock schedule. “When? When did you do all of this?”

  “When I was in the office earlier this morning. I was called in for something small and irrelevant; a button missing on my cuff, I believe. You were still sleeping.”

  “You had a button off your cuff?”

  “I needed a reason to get in the office,” Isabella said reasonably. “And it only cost me a single Disorderly Mark, too! I find that a real bargain, Nan.”

  Annabel frowned down at her teacup. If she remembered rightly, the main office on the first floor was mostly a single room with just a small dispensary accessed through a locked door. “Did you fix all that while the teacher was in the room?”

  “Of course not,” Isabella said. “I waited until she went into the dispensary to fetch thread and needle.”

  “You—Did you lock her into the dispensary?”

  “Who can say how these things happen? The hinges are quite loose, I believe; the door swung shut behind the teacher, and it took me quite some time to hear her calling.”

  “Thick door, is it?” Annabel said.

  “Very! Such a large room, too. And then when I did hear her, it took me such a long time to find where the spare key was kept! You wouldn’t believe it, Nan!”

  “I believe it,” said Annabel, giving up the attempt not to grin into her tea. “What is Melchior teaching, by the way?”

  “Elegant Elementaries of Ensorcellment.”

  “Good grief, what a mouthful.”

  “Very select, I believe.”

  “Probably because no one can say it,” opined Annabel. “Oh well, there’s a relief, anyway. We won’t be attending that class.”

  “Think again.”

  “Wait!” Annabel protested, searching her schedule with disbelieving eyes. There it was: Elegant Elementaries of Ensorcellment, fifth on her schedule for the day. “Neither of us can do ensorcellments, elegant or otherwise!”

  “I can,” said Isabella. “Not well, mind you, but I can do them. It’s the area in which I receive the lowest marks. I would have taken us both off his class schedule, but I’m fairly certain he’d notice straight away.”

  “He’s probably the one who put us there,” Annabel said. “What rubbish, putting me in an ensorcellment class!”

  “I thought,” said Isabella thoughtfully, “that he would find something less…well, confining to do. Like patrolling the halls or presiding over meals—something to keep him around if someone tried to kidnap you. I mean, really, the only effort he’s gone to in order to keep you in sight is making you take his class. I wonder why that is.”

  “If he’s only here because of threats against me, you mean?” Annabel thought about that, and nodded. “And it’s an odd class for him to take, besides. We’ve got any number of classes in here that he could have taken—” she shook her class schedule at Isabella “—and he picks the one he’s least qualified to teach.”

  “I thought Melchior was quite good with magic.”

  “He is,” said Annabel. “If you want tunnels forming in things, and if you want to turn into a cat. Actually, any animal, and he’s really very good; but you can’t really call either of those elegant. He knows all the theory, but he’s very specialised when it comes to practical.”

  “Then there are Things To Consider,” said Isabella impressively. “One: Why has Melchior taken the class he has taken? Two: Why are we both forced to take that particular class? Three: why have we been ejected from our rightful suite to—”

  “We weren’t ejected,” interrupted Annabel. “We were never there in the first place. Three: who was it that searched our room on the first night? Four—oh, there’s Melchior after all. It looks like he is presiding over meals. I thought there was a Matron for that.”

  “There is,” said Isabella. “But they like to have one of the teachers here at each main meal, too. They take it in turns. Well, then. I think we can surmise that there have at least been further threats. It still doesn’t answer the question of why he took that particular class, but it does bear out the fact that the attacks on you will probably increase.”

  “Maybe if we’re Advanced and Polite enough in our Conversation, we can converse our way out of danger,” suggested Annabel. After the ordeal in the castle that had turned her into the queen heir, none of the threats she had received over the last three years had been enough to do more than irritate her. It was difficult to be frightened of a group of old-fashioned and backward Old Parrasians when she had once been threatened by a wizard who had stripped enchanters and enchantresses of their power over the years and used it to sustain himself. Of course, she’d been lucky then; the same staff that declared her queen had saved her. If she’d been left to her own devices she would have been dead very quickly.

  “Anyway,” she added, “I’ve got the staff. I’d like to see ’em try and hurt me while I’ve got that.”

  “Does it stop you from being hit on the head from behind?”

  “Not really,” Annabel said reluctantly. In truth, the staff did very little in the way of passive protection—it was all active unmagic, that mysterious power that turned any magic around it to its own ends. The staff did nothing Annabel didn’t make it do, and of the things she did with it, all of those were concerned with drawing. That was the main problem with an unmagic staff that preferred to express itself as a pencil—it was beautifully portable, but it did tend to mean that a person did a lot of drawing. And while Annabel loved to draw, she felt that the staff could have been a little more impressive in the way it worked.

  “You’ll have to explain the staff to me one of these days,” Isabella said, unblinkingly sneaking the last muffin off the plate before Annabel could get to it. “Not here, of course; we might have got the only table that seats two, but you can depend on it that the ones who can lip read are trying to figure out the best angle to see us talk.”

  “Some of them can lip read?”

  “Of course,” nodded Isabella. “There was a class a few years ago. Very useful, of course, but one suspects that the pupils may have learned a little too well for comfort.”

  Annabel thought about it, and came to the conclusion that it was extremely unlikely Trenthams itself had ever countenanced such a class. “You ran it, didn’t you?” she said. “An underground class on lip reading.”

  Isabella gave a surprised chuckle. “Of course!” she said. “And some of the little horrors learned amazingly well! Better than I did, to be strictly honest.”

  “What other classes did you have?”

  “Amateur Fainting, Elementary Lockpicking, and a rather short lived course on Explosives,” said Isabella promptly. “Well, but Nan! If we’re expected to go out into society with only the classes that Trenthams teaches, we’ll be woefully unprepared!”

  “How does knowing about explosives help you in society?” protested Annabel.

  “I might once have asked that question,” Isabella said solemnly, “if it had not been for the circumstance—”

  “Someone probably tried to blow you up,” Annabel said. “I don’t blame them. You were probably poking your nose into their business.”

  “In my defence, it was a very boring party, and they were silly enough to try and pass as guests when not one of them knew how to tie a Bromian Ceremonial knot,” Isabella said. “At any rate, if I’d been well taught in explosives prior to that point in my life, a few people might have had fe
wer grey hairs. A class is absolutely essential.”

  “Don’t tell me you taught that one, too!”

  “Not at all,” said Isabella. “I smuggled in a teacher. It was a dreadful bore, because she was far too large to fit in my smuggling garters.”

  Annabel coughed into her toast.

  “As a matter of fact, she may still live in the village. Perhaps we should see about starting classes again.”

  “Only if we can have a class on lock picking again, too,” said Annabel. “And one on untying knots. I don’t care about the Amateur Fainting, but I would very much like to know how to pick locks and untie knots.”

  “Those aren’t skills you should need, are they?” Isabella sounded surprised. “Melchior can make tunnels through nearly everything, and if you’ve got the staff—”

  “Sometimes people are so focused on the magical defences that they don’t look at the ordinary ones,” said Annabel. As someone without even the slightest bit of magic to her, she was extremely conscious of it. “There have been a few times when Melchior and I were shut up somewhere we couldn’t get through with magic, but the lock was ordinary. They thought that so long as we couldn’t get out via magic, a normal lock was good enough for the door.”

  “Was it?” Isabella watched her, fascinated. “I can’t imagine it was, with how determined you are. Fancy! Melchior hasn’t told me any of this, and I highly resent that!”

  Annabel grinned. “One time, the hinge pins were on the inside. All we had to do was lever them out. We got back to the manor before the ransom message did.”

  “That strikes me as very unprofessional,” Isabella said disapprovingly. “Never mind—perhaps it was their first kidnapping attempt. They might well learn better as they go on.”

  “Anyway,” said Annabel. “I want to learn how to pick locks and untie knots. I can’t use the staff if my hands are tied up, can I?”

  “Very well. Do bear in mind that I’m only a beginner myself, Nan, and that I’ll only be able to teach the very basics. Lockpicking, I can also begin until a better teacher is found.”

  “That will do to go on with,” Annabel said, very well pleased with herself. “Maybe we can smuggle in a lock picking teacher later on.”

  “If the teacher is any good, we won’t have to,” Isabella pointed out.

  “If Melchior had thought to get a teacher in before now, we wouldn’t have to do it ourselves. What an annoyance he is!”

  “He seems to be winking at you, Nan.”

  “He’s been doing that for the last five minutes whenever he thinks no one is looking,” Annabel said crossly. “He’s probably been up to something; he looks awfully smug.”

  “It didn’t strike me as smug winking,” Isabella said. “As such. However, I dare say you’re right. That’s right. Look down at your class schedule and ignore him completely.”

  Annabel did so, annoyed by the faint gleam of mockery she could see in Melchior’s eyes. He had certainly been up to something, and whatever it was, it was obvious that it would annoy her as much as his walking them back to their room the other night had done.

  “Oh, what a bore, Nan!” Isabella said, likewise studying her schedule. “We’re stuck in Elegant Elementaries of Ensorcellment with Melchior while the class on Tea Crafting is going on. What a shame! It’s the only class that doesn’t have two sessions, and there are some really very useful people there.”

  “Do we need to know how to craft tea?”

  “Well, properly speaking, no! If you employ the right kind of people, your tea will always be perfectly crafted for you; and for myself, I’ve already attended the class. However, I am extremely fond of tea, and I find the different scents soothing. It would have been a balm to my soul.”

  “Why do you need a balm for your soul?”

  “Perhaps I should have said it’s a balm for everyone else’s soul,” said Isabella, grinning. “It’s the only class in which I happen to be entirely peaceful and disinclined to cause disruption. Although, if it comes to that, I should like to point out that I don’t set out to cause disruption—it finds me.”

  “Maybe a bit of disruption will come and find you during Advanced Polite Conversation,” Annabel said gloomily. She had already had as much Polite Conversation on the way to breakfast as she wanted for the day. “We can only hope!”

  Advanced Polite Conversation did not, as Annabel had secretly hoped it would, provide her with any of the skills Isabella had mentioned when they first met. Instead, it seemed to consist of talking a great deal without saying anything much, which didn’t interest her until she remembered that Isabella was also very good at saying quite a lot without giving away very much. When it occurred to her that the class could at least be useful, if not interesting, Annabel begrudgingly gave it her full attention, which pleased Miss Cornett very greatly. She didn’t say so, but Annabel saw her eyes brighten, and a few of the girls who had been practising their own conversation skills sotto voce at the back of the class, began to pay more attention. Isabella didn’t pay much attention, but she at least appeared to be doing so, despite the fact that she was busily doing something else below the desk. She knew how to comport herself when called upon to answer questions or give examples, too, Annabel noticed; though she also noticed that Miss Cornett didn’t often call upon Isabella. Was that because she didn’t expect Isabella to know the answers due to her two years’ absence, or because she did expect it?

  Annabel was still trying to decide that when the class ended. She would have stood up straight away, glad to be gone, but Isabella was still doing something with her hands beneath the desk, her back impossibly straight and her face impossibly innocent.

  Annabel sat back again and hissed, “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

  “You said that you’re always up to—”

  “Well, nothing anyone will be able to prove, anyway,” Isabella corrected herself. “Nan, if I were to affix something to the outside of the classroom door—hypothetically, of course—do you think you could loiter for a moment or two to hide that fact?”

  “Will I be hypothetically loitering, or do you want the real thing?”

  Isabella made a tiny choke of laughter and stood up. “I leave that entirely up to your good judgement.”

  “All right,” agreed Annabel, and followed her out. Miss Cornett was preparing for the next class, and they were the last two students to leave, so they wouldn’t have to worry about anyone else coming out while they were busy. That was probably why Isabella had taken a little longer, if it came to that.

  The hallway was busy outside, but Annabel wasn’t called upon to do as much loitering as she expected; Isabella was swift and unnoticeable, her back to the door as she greeted one of the younger girls who was walking past. Annabel had barely closed the door when Isabella turned with a smile and said, “Off we go, Nan! Carriage on Horseback!”

  In an undertone, Annabel protested, “I thought we weren’t going to that!”

  “Exactly so,” agreed Isabella, drawing her away from the door and the swelling tide of other girls who seemed to be torn between following the future queen and getting to their own next lesson. “We’re not going, so we’d best find somewhere useful to be instead.”

  “Does it have to be useful?” Annabel was aware that her voice sounded plaintive. “Can’t it just be nice?”

  “Of course! But think how pleasant it would be if it was both nice and useful.”

  “What is useful to us at the moment?”

  “I suppose it depends on what we want to find out,” Isabella said. “But I’m not really sure where we should start.”

  “That’s all right,” said Annabel. She had found that a bit of not-quite-aimless wandering produced good results. “We’ll have a stroll, shall we? There are girls with free periods now, aren’t there?”

  “Other than us? Of course—the entire third year will have their first free period in order to collect all their furbishments for their next c
lass. Hat making, I believe.”

  “They teach us how to make hats here?”

  “Not us, you understand,” said Isabella. “We’re superior young ladies. Well, you are, and I already took the class when I was here before. No, no; we’ll be learning things that the idle rich don’t learn.”

  “Just not Carriage on Horseback,” grinned Annabel.

  “Exactly so. Nan, where are you taking us?”

  “Don’t know,” said Annabel, tugging at Isabella’s arm just enough to turn them both down a staircase that was narrow enough to be somewhere interesting and potentially disallowed. “I haven’t been here before. This is a nice staircase, so I thought we’d go down here.”

  “Oh well, I suppose I’ve heard stupider reasons,” allowed Isabella. “I think this is one of the older stairways. Not a servants’ stairway, fortunately: I’ve nothing against the servants here, but if the security magic doesn’t catch one on the servants’ stairs, the servants give one away. Very bad, I think. If one can’t trust the servants, who can one trust?”

  “It’s probably because you call them the servants,” said Annabel. In her experience, people who referred to servants as the servants were drawing a very definite line between us and them.

  “Oh, that’s a good point,” Isabella said thoughtfully. “I forgot that you’d been a ser—hmm, it’s possibly a good idea to mind my tongue until we’re somewhere we can’t be overheard.”

  “Does Trenthams have trouble with people listening to other people’s conversations?” Annabel asked, much astonished. She’d already been surprised about the lipreading.

  “Trenthams is populated by the very rich, the very important, and the very clever,” Isabella said. “Of course it has trouble with secrets being kept and conversations remaining private. The young ones might be wonderfully clever at learning to lip read and improving their skills, but the older ones are usually very good at using that to their own advantage.”

  “That’s probably your fault,” Annabel said. “You turned half the school into regular little spies and now everyone can have their own without any trouble.”