Staff & Crown

by W. R. Gingell

  “Oh, that’s odd,” Annabel said, perusing her note. “Jess says it’d be a good idea if we were to wander up to the fourth floor after dinner tonight. She says there’s something I should see.”

  “Someone, belike,” remarked Isabella. “Yes, but we already know about her, don’t we?”

  “Perhaps we’ll know more if we go to the fourth floor,” Annabel suggested. She looked at the cup of tea Isabella had given her and wondered if it was really wise, after all, to drink it when she was already so warm. “Ooof! Isn’t it hot today? Why is it so hot?”

  Isabella, quite cool and unbothered despite being significantly more dressed than Annabel, told her, “Croquet season began this week. It’s always hotter after croquet season starts. Nan, since I’m forwarder than you in dressing, I’ll start off now, shall I?”

  “Up to something, are you?” asked Annabel, unsurprised. This time, she didn’t think it had anything to do with whatever side project Isabella was working on apart from Annabel, but she was quite certain that Isabella was still up to something. “There’s something going on in the school and you don’t know what it is, so you want to find out from pure spite.”

  Isabella grinned. “Well, perhaps so. Besides, I told you; it’s going to be a trying day for us both, and I’d rather find out how best to mitigate the annoyance if at all possible.”

  “All right,” agreed Annabel. She had to try and sneak into Melchior’s room before it occurred to him to run away, anyway. She would like to know more about the two Old Parrasians they had caught yesterday. “Shall we meet at breakfast?”

  “I believe so. If I’ve not found what I need before then, I doubt I will.”

  11

  There were very few girls in the hall when Annabel finished dressing. She was glad for it; she was still feeling too hot, and she had the dreadful suspicion that her face was already pink and slightly glossy from the exertion of dressing. She preferred not to face people when she was pink and glossy if she could avoid it. The maid who came in to help her with her corset must have been in league with the Deportment Master, because her corset was laced far too tightly, and by the time she slipped into Melchior’s room, Annabel was feeling pinched, cross, and hard done by.

  Fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately—Melchior was still in his room when she got there, so Annabel was left with no reason to remain cross, although she felt that she would have liked to do so. He was in the process of tying a tidy black cravat when she slipped through the door, and if he hadn’t seen her in the mirror, Annabel thought she might have taken him by surprise. Melchior as a cat had been very hard to startle, but it had always been amusing to catch him by surprise; human Melchior was just as enjoyable to startle.

  “Disappointed, Nan?” he asked, raising one brow at her in the mirror.

  “Yes,” Annabel said, deciding on absolute honesty. “I haven’t made you really leap in at least a year.”

  “If I recall correctly—”

  “That time doesn’t count,” she objected. “That time it was a runaway bull, not me.”

  “I remember doing a lot of leaping,” murmured Melchior, going back to his cravat. “And spending a lot of time in an apple tree, if it comes to that. Are you here to bid me good morning, Nan, or are there other forces at work?”

  Annabel watched him tie the ends of his cravat and tuck them neatly away with an air of gloomy interest. “Other forces, actually. You don’t usually tie it like that, do you? It looks different.”

  “It is different,” Melchior agreed. He turned his head to look directly at her, and his lips were curled curiously. “It’s a variation upon my usual theme; and I have to say, Nan, I’m surprised that you noticed.”

  “Of course I noticed. You’ve been wearing it the same way for the last three years, and today it’s different.” Annabel sat down on one of the fat red couches. Melchior would put on his cufflinks now, two plain silver squares that glittered just a little too much to be just silver, and then he would make himself a cup of tea that he would drink in his vest and shirt sleeves before he put on his coat to go out. She had exactly that long to find out what the two men from yesterday had said. She said, “My prisoners from yesterday—”

  A gleam of amusement came to Melchior’s eyes, though to his credit, he didn’t smile. He pinched his left cuff together and slid the cufflink through, and said, “Yes, Nan; your two prisoners?”

  “What did they say?”

  “You’ll have to be more specific. They said a great deal, but not much of it was useful, and less of it was polite.”

  “What did they say about their employers, then?”

  “They insist that they were single movers, and were trying to kidnap you for ransom.”

  Annabel was surprised into hissing a laugh. “They expected you to believe that?”

  “In these cases, it’s not so much a matter of whether or not we believe, but whether or not we can prove our suspicions,” Melchior said mildly. “New Civet might be currently queenless, but she is not lawless. If we want to find out who is behind this attack, and what else they plan, we’ll have to question them further. They know they’re in a bad spot, but they’re finding it hard to betray their cause. And then, there’s the fact that kidnap for ransom carries a lesser sentence than treason, of course.”

  “I’ll change that when I’m queen,” Annabel said darkly. “You said they didn’t say much about their employers.”

  Melchior smiled faintly as he turned a teacup upright on its saucer. “Still unsatisfied, Nan? Very well; they’re Old Parrasians. They didn’t necessarily come outright and say so, but they were full of all the usual sentiments and complaints.”

  Annabel looked at him disapprovingly. “We already know that, Melchior! Belle recognised both of them! I meant did they say exactly who their employers were? And what about the girl who arrived last night? What do they know about her?”

  “The girl from last night?” Melchior poured a dark stream of tea into his teacup, and then the milk. “Why would you assume them to be connected, Nan?”

  “That’s not an answer,” Annabel said. “Oh, don’t start dodging again, Melchior!”

  “It merely seems unlikely that a kidnapping attempt is related to a new student, no matter how secretly she arrived,” said Melchior. “I find it insulting that you immediately assume I’m not telling you everything.”

  Annabel eyed him shrewdly. “I’d bet my breakfast you’re not telling me everything,” she said. “It’s not much, but still!”

  “It is not always the case, Nan, that I’m keeping things from you in order to spite you—”

  Annabel couldn’t help grinning. “Not always! Just every now and then!”

  “Exactly so,” agreed Melchior. “Has it ever entered your mind to trust me a little?”

  “That’s—” Annabel stopped, bewildered. “Oh, that’s not fair! I’ve always trusted you!”

  “I’m one who can admit my failings,” pursued Melchior, without giving her a chance to catch her breath, “so I’ll acknowledge that it was perhaps my fault that you first came not to trust me.”

  “Perhaps—!”

  “I lied to you and didn’t tell you everything in the castle. You were justifiably annoyed with me over that. But have I ever lied to you since then, Nan?”

  “Not until just recently,” Annabel said bluntly. “And I do trust you!”

  Melchior looked directly back at her, and she found that it was difficult to hold his eyes. “Is that so, Nan? Then perhaps you would be good enough to trust me to tell you exactly everything you need to know? And perhaps it would occur to you that I don’t tell you everything because not everything is important?”

  Annabel blinked a little. “Yes, but then why would you be so secretive about so many things all this time!” she protested. “If they’re nothing important, why are you acting like it is important and dodging questions!”

  “I would also like to remind you,” Melchior said, after the briefest pause, “
that I have not, in fact, lied to you since the castle. I have simply not told you quite everything. It’s an important distinction which I would like to have preserved.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Shall I tell you exactly what I had for breakfast this morning? Perhaps you’d like to know what the Awesome Aunts were about yesterday while playing badminton? Ah! I have it! Were you aware that one of the maids is following Dannick around the school like a particularly lovesick puppy?”

  Annabel had been inclined to become resentful, but at this she stifled a giggle and demanded, “What maid? There’s a maid following Dannick around?” If that was true, Dannick’s face was currently likely to be a permanent shade of red.

  “Ah,” sighed Melchior. “Thus the reward for sharing all that I know!”

  He refused to tell her anything else, either significant or insignificant, and Annabel left his room rather more hot and annoyed than she had entered it. She would have gone right back to her suite in the hopes of finding Isabella there, but she had already seen Isabella flitting down a far corridor as she entered Melchior’s room. Isabella too, was still up to something. That particular fact left her far less inclined to resentment than the same conclusion had in Melchior’s case, and that made Annabel stop and think. Isabella, like Melchior, was almost entirely certain to be up to something. Why, then, didn’t it matter as much to Annabel? Isabella hadn’t so much as mentioned to her that she had something going on; nor was she likely to explain to Annabel unless Annabel directly asked her about it.

  A little earlier, it wouldn’t have occurred to Annabel to mark the difference. Now, fresh from Melchior’s accusation that she didn’t trust him, it struck her that she had been looking at both Melchior and Isabella very differently.

  “Then whose fault is it that I do?” she muttered. Melchior had adopted a mysterious attitude with his lack of communication that was annoying enough to leave her in a permanent state of irritation. Someone as clever as Melchior should be aware that he was only making her angry.

  Unless, of course, he was trying to make her angry.

  Annabel stopped dead in the hall and thought about that. It was possible. But if Melchior really had been trying deliberately to make her angry, why? Each time she had lost her temper, she had also lost her chance to ask more about the things she was interested in knowing, and that was telling. But if, as Melchior suggested, not all of those things were important, was that really why he had been trying to make her lose her temper?

  She was still thinking about it when she found Isabella in the dining hall. She was too caught up in her musings, in fact, to entertain any more thoughts of her sparse breakfast than the feeling that her head felt just a little bit too light.

  Isabella passed her a few slices of egg under cover of a passing horde of giggling juniors, and when those juniors had gone, said darkly, “There was nothing, Nan!”

  “Nothing?” Annabel asked vaguely, hiding the egg slices in her very small breakfast roll.

  “Nothing for me to find, anyway,” sighed Isabella. “It’s dreadfully frustrating, Nan! I know something is happening in the school, and I know Lady Caro knows something I don’t, and that it has something to do with the visitor from last night, but it’s beginning to feel as though everyone at Trenthams is aware of something I’m not! Absolutely unacceptable!”

  “It must be very hard for you,” Annabel agreed, listlessly. It could have been the effect of just a little egg, or not enough egg, but she was feeling decidedly lacking in energy.

  “Never mind,” said Isabella, turning her mood in a moment. “I’m sure we’ll find out very soon; the whole school is poised to blow at any minute. Ah! And speaking of which—!”

  “Speaking of what?”

  “Explosives, of course! Well, explosives and lock picking. Now is the time.”

  “We weren’t talking about explosives and lock picking,” objected Annabel. “And what time is it?”

  “Now is the time, Nan,” continued Isabella, with far more glee than Annabel considered to be reasonable, “Now is the time where we find out if I’ve been successful in weeding out all of the pretenders!”

  “I thought you’d already had more classes!” protested Annabel, catching up to the other girl at last. “There was the one at the start of the week—”

  “Explosives,” Isabella agreed, nodding.

  “And the one in the middle of the week—”

  “Secondary Explosives, for those girls who have experience.”

  “Oh, so that was why one of the second story windows shattered.”

  “Exactly so. The point at hand, Nan, being that I have now successfully cleared the beginners Explosives classes of any spies—I do assure you that none of those girls who weren’t seriously there will dare to come again. The Secondary class was already clear because it consists entirely of girls who were in the first class three years ago. Delysia was overjoyed, if you can believe it. I rather fancy that’s why we had a little excitement.”

  Annabel blinked, for a moment distracted from her original protest. “Delysia? Really?”

  “Isn’t it surprising? She looks so ladylike and delicate.”

  “Ladylike, anyway,” Annabel said, remembering the slight gleam of steel she’d seen in Delysia’s eyes the first time she’d met her. “She has a bit more backbone to her than people think. It props up all the giggling and silliness.”

  “I really shouldn’t be surprised at the things you see, by now,” Isabella said musingly. “And yet, I always am. You remind me of another monarch I know; although I have to say you’re nothing like as terrifyingly ruthless as he is.”

  “Perhaps I will be when I’ve reigned for a few years,” remarked Annabel. “Perhaps the power will go to my head. Belle—”

  “I know exactly what you want to ask. You want to know how I can know for certain that we’ve cleared the pretenders from the Explosives Class.”

  “Actually,” said Annabel, “I want to know when the Lockpicking class is going to start. You’ve all been having fun with explosive, and what I want to do is learn how to pick a lock.”

  “In that case, you’re in luck,” Isabella remarked, “because that’s the class we’re going to start today. Immediately, as it happens.”

  “Have you managed to get rid of all the pretenders from this class?”

  “That’s the delightful bit,” said Isabella, with sparkling eyes. “I’m not sure! Come along, Nan! No time to waste!”

  The class, thought Annabel some little time later, was awfully quiet. They were in one of the smaller sitting rooms with the curtains drawn against the stifling heat of the sun, and the muffled feeling could have come from that, but Annabel didn’t think so. The silence may also have been because each of the girls was busy looking over an open half lock in varying degrees of dismay, or because any noise was drowned out by the faint buzzing that seemed to cling around her ears. Annabel was more inclined to think, suspiciously, that each of the girls was waiting for Something To Drop. They had a distinctly flighty look to them, as if each girl was calculating her odds of being able to leap out the window, swarm up the chimney, or dodge through the door under an unwary teacher’s arm. If they’d been taught anything very much from Isabella, they probably were. Even Isabella was watchful, her eyes bright and light grey, enjoying the suspense—or perhaps a joke that only she knew. That comforted Annabel a little. If Isabella was laughing at her own private joke, it was unlikely that a visit from the Awesome Aunts would achieve anything but expulsion for the student who had informed them of the meeting.

  And if the class looked flighty, they also looked a little…uncomfortable. Annabel hadn’t heard any of the same carefully loud rudeness from any of these girls that she had heard from the general Trenthams population, but it struck her some time after Isabella encouraged them to observe the workings of the locks and see if they couldn’t figure out how they worked, that none of the girls were particularly friendly, either. They were merely confused.
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  It wasn’t until one of the girls, a bold-eyed thing with a bright red ribbon through her curls, wandered casually through the other sitting girls and said in a low voice to Isabella, “Are you sure she should be here?” that Annabel knew it really was about her. More than that, she knew she was meant to hear the question, because she could see the questioner watching her from the corner of her eye. More amused than annoyed, Annabel didn’t rise to the bait and look up properly.

  She studied her lock, and heard Isabella say, “Miss Ammett? Why ever not?”

  Anyone who knew Isabella well would have caught the distinct chill to her voice. Annabel, her head bent over the lock, grinned into its exposed mechanics.

  “Well…” the girl hesitated, then said, “I’d heard something about her not being exactly who she—well, who she claims to be, if you get my meaning.”

  “Miss Ammett is not Miss Ammett?” asked Isabella, all innocent confusion.

  “Well, that is—”

  “Miss Ammett has only ever claimed to be Miss Ammett,” Isabella said, very sweetly. “I’m certain that no one has heard her claiming to be anything else.”

  “Ah,” said the bold-eyed girl. “Well, that’s true enough, if it comes to that.”

  Isabella’s voice was distinctly warning this time. “That is not to say she won’t ever claim to be something else, if you perfectly understand me.”

  “Are you really standing behind her?”

  “Nan, am I standing behind you?”

  “I hope so!” Annabel said frankly, wiping sweat from her brow. It was disgustingly hot in the sitting room. “We can’t forget about your little Papa, after all. Belle, is this really the only way to learn how to pick locks? I thought there might be more teaching involved.”

  “There will certainly be more teaching involved,” agreed Isabella. “There, Fern; does that answer your question?”

  Fern’s dark eyes flitted from Isabella to Annabel. “Yes,” she said slowly. “I think it really does. You might want to have a few words with Lady Caro, in that case.”