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"How come you’re sitting alone?”
Henry ducked his head into his sandwich, uninterested in having to explain his knack again to one of the older years. Most of the other units had more greysleeves than whitesleeves, but Unit 912 had about half. They all expected this, for the rest of the greysleeves to have really impressive knacks like… he didn’t know, really. Dragonrider, or troll fighter. Not cartography. It had taken all of five minutes for his unit to baptise him map boy, and all his hopes for lifelong friendships, fraternity and so on, to be crushed.
“Mind if I sit?” the person asked, not waiting for a yes, apparently, since they pulled out the opposite seat, making a nasty sound against the stone floor, like nails on a blackboard.
He looked up, only to see the prettiest girl he had ever come across. Her skin was warm brown, her hair braided tightly against her scalp in concentric patterns, a little like gradient lines on a map. She was smiling at him like he wasn’t going to let her down. He liked her immediately. “Hi,” she said. “Marina Cheery. Unit 911.”
“Henry Mildmay,” he offered her his hand, cursing the bit of mustard that had made its way onto his thumb. “Unit 912.”
“How are you finding life at Wunsoc?” she asked, pulling a wrapped sandwich out of her bag, muttering, “Cheese and onion again? Mum!”
“I would swap you,” he said. “Except I’ve eaten all of mine.”
“Except the crusts,” she said.
He blushed and shoved them in his mouth, struggling to chew around them until he couldn’t breathe anymore. A couple of weeks in the society and he was already going to die. Death by sandwich? There couldn’t be anything more humiliating.
“Woah,” someone else said, slapping him on back until he was breathing again. “Marina, did you make the kid choke?”
“He’s only a year younger than us,” she said. “Are you feeling alright, Henry?”
“Fine,” he said, feeling his face heat up. “Sorry. Didn’t want to make a scene.”
“Don’t worry about it,” the other person said, smiling at him tightly. “I’m Roshni. Unit 911.”
“Henry,” he said, nodding at her. His hands were now covered in spit and he thought it was best not. “What’s your knack?”
“Memorisation,” she said. “I have an eidetic memory.”
“Wonderful,” he said. “So there’s no chance of you forgetting this?”
She snickered, “Not one.” Her hand found its way to Marina’s shoulder. “The first time I met Maz, she had just thrown up on herself. It could be worse.”
“It was the speech trial!” Marina threw her hands up, half-laughing. “And anyway, I passed.”
“Well,” she raised an eyebrow. “We all know that. And it’s not as bad as the Search Trial.”
“I didn’t think that was so bad,” she said.
“Only because you could climb over the maze,” she said. “For those of us poor sods that have to stay on the ground it was terrible.”
They nattered on in front of him, and by the end of lunch, when they left, arm in arm, he thought they might have forgotten him altogether.
Tim tried to hide his yawn behind his hands as he stepped out of the ward and into the little kitchenette, intent on finding himself a cuppa. It had been another day of attacks, and the locked ward now had another wunimal in occupancy, as unconscious as the rest.
It was visiting hour now, which meant the tea was necessary to cope with the barrage of questions from the loved ones of his patients. Maybe he would even sneak a biccie to help steel himself through the rest of this.
When he returned to the ward, wiping crumbs off the side of his mouth, still savouring the slightly weak, a little too cold, cup he had just gulped in one, the visitors had already made themselves at home. All the usual suspects, which was good to see, from his old patients, and he spotted a brightly dressed woman at the side of his most recent patient, the other injured party from Colin Feathers’ hollowpox culmination.
She was trying to sit up, which wasn’t good, so he bustled over there just in time, “Please lie back down, Ms Singh. You need to be on complete bed rest right now. Doctor doesn’t want you pulling at your stitches.”
She grumbled about it, but her visitor, whom Tim assumed must have been in the same Unit as her, or thereabouts, spotting the W pin on her collar, and the imprint just flashing up from her finger for a second, pushed her back down, not roughly. “Come on, Rosh,” she said. “Just rest up for a bit and you’ll be right as rain very soon.”
He didn’t miss the tremble in her voice, or the way her hands shook ever so slightly as she lifted them back up, taking the trouble to stroke Ms Singh’s hair back down.
He recognised the visitor from another patient. She was the Conductor for Morrigan Crow’s Unit, he thought. Another unfortunate incident of culmination. He had used to get coffee with Brutilus every Saturday. And their Unit met up at least once a month to get dinner and go bowling together. Or they had. They hadn’t had a chance to ever single Brutilus had been hospitalised. And Tim didn’t think he wanted to see their line up without him there. It wouldn’t feel right.
Ms Singh’s visitor seemed completely oblivious to the world around the hospital bed she was sitting at as she lifted the palm of her unbandaged hand and pressed a kiss into it. Ms Singh moved it ever so slightly so that it was cupping her face.
Tim turned away, making himself busy with the other patients and what they needed, and answering questions. Doing his job. Leaving them to their moment while the world passed along outside them.
When he chivvied the visitors away at the end of hours, he spotted Ms Singh’s visitor blinking rapidly as she left the ward. Without a word, he passed her a packet of tissues, kept especially for situations like this.
She nodded a thank you, and left. He went to check that everything was ready for dinner, and to complete the rest of the duties for his shift. He had a job to do.
“So what is it?” Hawthorne asked her as they walked up to Proudfoot House from the station.
She jumped, “What’s what?” Could he tell? Could he know what she had done last week? For some reason, the idea that becoming Squall’s apprentice had left her with some physical attribute would not leave her. To her it was so obvious. She thought she stood taller now. Walked more confidently. Did a thousand little things with more skill and panache because she knew the best way to do it now. Looked guilty.
“-being weird. Do you think she’s got a girlfriend?”
She blinked, “Who’s got a girlfriend?”
“Miss Cheery! Didn’t you see the way she couldn’t stop smiling this morning.”
She frowned, “Miss Cheery is always smiling.” It was literally her name.
“No,” he said. “Not like this. She was like… dopey. Like Helena talking about storms, or Homer when he’s working on that whole essay thing he won’t actually tell me about.”
“So you’re diagnosing her with being in a relationship?” Morrigan hadn’t been paying attention during hometrain. She hadn’t in quite a while, actually. Not for months. But there had been a moment she had seen in the hospital. One she didn’t think she was supposed to have seen.
“Do you have any theories?” he grinned. “I quite like that, actually. Dr Hawthorne. Slayer of disease.” He mock flexed and kissed his bicep.
Morrigan rolled her eyes at him. “Uh-huh. Very scary. The viruses will flee from you in hordes.”
“Exactly. But seriously, who do you think?”
“What about…” she pretended to think about it. “Her friend the librarian. I mean, she did say she was an old girlfriend.”
“I thought that was in the way my mum calls her school friends her old girlfriends.”
She shrugged, “I mean, maybe there’s more to your mum’s relationship with her old school friends than you think.”
“Morrigan!”
“Whit’re you two talking about?” Thaddea asked, dropping back, along with Francis and Lam.
“Nothing,” Morrigan said at the same time as Hawthorne said,
“Miss Cheery’s girlfriend and who it could be.”
Thaddea rolled her eyes, “It’s the librarian, obviously. Did you not see them flirting?” She mimed gagging, “Bha e sgreataidh. Bidh e sgreataidh.”
“None of us speak Highlander,” Lam said. “Except Mahir, I’m assuming.”
Mahir grinned, “Obviously.”
“Yeah, but I think we got the idea,” Francis skipped along the path, kicking up dirt onto Morrigan’s white shirt. “I think it’s sweet. Certainly better than her other suitor.”
“Suitor?” Hawthorne wrinkled up his nose. “Who do you- oh. Yeah. That fucker. True. Also,” he turned to Francis. “I do speak some Highlander.”
“You know three swear words,” she curled her lip.
Hawthorne recited off four, before translating them for the benefit of the others.
“How do you spell that?” Lam asked, completely genuinely.
“Do you guys think Miss Cheery’s girlfriend could help me get a job as a bookfighter?” Thaddea asked while Hawthorne struggled through the phrases he had just repeated. They were almost at Proudfoot House now, and Morrigan already knew that they were going to have to wait in an absolute queue to get downstairs. It was a good thing then that her first class was only on Sub-Three.
“I’m sure it’s worth asking,” she said, completely genuinely. “She seems quite nice.”
Unit 919’s conductor was whistling in the hall next to the Scholar Mistress’ office when Dearborn returned from Sub-Three, ready to endure office hours for the conductors of all the junior scholar units coming to bother her about this issue and that module, and wouldn’t this student do better if given a slower set of coursework or that student really thrive in full contact roller derby?
“Cease that cacophony,” she ordered.
The conductor turned to her, gulping a little, “Ms Dearborn. How are you today.”
“No pleasantries,” she snapped, shrill as a whistle. “No nonsense.”
Her door swung open as she approached, almost shaking at the hinges, desperate for her not to touch it. Good. “Well? Are you coming in?”
“Y-yes,” she said, patting down her clothes and tucking one of her braids behind her ear. “Thank you, scholar mistress.”
She sneered, but didn’t say anything until she had sat down at her desk, “Well?”
“Well,” she said, coughing a little. “It’s actually about the student-library program, for trainee bookfighters?”
“Are you asking me a question?”
“No,” she said, straightening a little further, drawing her whole body in. “No, I’m not. But, what I meant is, that’s what I’m here about today. I think Thaddea McLeod ought to be enrolled in it.”
She pulled out the sheet of student names and knacks earmarked as 919 and ran her finger down the page. Thaddea McLeod | Taddea Nic Leòid | Fighter, “Hm. Why?”
“It would increase her skill set, and would be a boon for the Society. It would mean that as soon as she graduates she could take a job at the Gobleian, if she wishes, and be a liaison, one day, between it and the Wundrous Society.”
“Hm,” she said. She didn’t hate the idea. The Elders did like it when they could get their fingers in as many pies as possible, “It would widen her prospects. She’s rather narrow in her academics.”
“Yes,” she said. “I thought it might be a good way to encourage her towards books also.”
“You would have to organise it, of course,” she said, stretching her lips this way and that, as far as they could go. “Do you have a contact at the library. Are you friendly with,” she glanced at the page of Librarian society members, “Roshni Singh?”
“She’s in my Unit,” she said, her face growing darker for a second. “Yes. I can handle that, if I have your approval.”
“And her patron?”
She slid a permission slip onto the desk. Dulcinea read it briefly, “Fine. As long as there’s no problems. If I end up with paperwork because of this, you and the girl are going to be filling it out all summer. In the dragon stables.”
The conductor gulped, “Yes, Scholar Mistress. Thank you.”
She didn’t flee the office, exactly, but Ms Dearborn took a little pleasure at the alacrity with which she left.
“They do look sweet, don’t they, Jove?” Dame Chanda tapped Captain North on the arm and he turned to look at what she was looking at.
“What is it?” Nan squinted against the sunlight. Midsummer garden parties were all fine and well, but the Wunsoc weather phenomenon meant that the light was ten times as bright as it would be outside, and her sunnies had just been gobbed up (and spat out, utterly destroyed) by a dragon youngling about two hours ago.
“Miss Cheery, and… well I’m assuming that that is her charming suitor.”
“Hm,” Captain North said. “Seems like it.”
“Am I remembering correctly, or was she injured in that incident in the Gob?” she asked, fluttering her fan against her face. “It’s a lovely day, I must say, but my wrist gets so dreadfully tired from all this waving about.”
“Would you like me to do that for you?” Nan pressed her hand out so that she could take it.
“Oh,” Dame Chanda fluttered her eyelids a bit. She knew that she was being played but she couldn’t begin to actually care. “Would you? That’s very kind, Nancy, dear.”
“My pleasure,” she took it, and got to work, standing just a little closer to her, so as to be effective. Her perfume was citrusy today, and just a little bit spicy, in a sweet way. “Is that orange perfume you’ve got on?”
“Orange blossom, with coriander and cardamom,” she said. “You have a good nose, Nan.”
She felt her face heat up, and it had nothing to do with the fact it was thirty degrees in the garden. Jupiter smirked at her.
“They’re not actually together,” he said.
“Are you saying that as a Witness, Captain North, or as a gossip?” she asked.
“Can’t it be both?”
“Well,” Dame Chanda said, pouting a little. “Do you know why not?”
He scratched his beard, “Hm. Something about planning? Life plans? I don’t know how the youth date these days.”
“You have two teenagers,” Nan said, remembering something Hawthorne had mentioned off-hand about Morrigan and… someone else in their unit. She couldn’t recall for some reason. They had disappeared in the garden. She hoped she would at least get a little bit more champagne down and nibbles, and gossip, before they released another barrel of toads. “You might have to learn.”
He clutched his chest dramatically, “Please don’t say that. That’s horrifying.”
“Really, Jove?” Dame Chanda said. “You knew what you signed up for.”
“No,” he groaned. “Never. They’re still five.”
“Add a ten onto that,” she said
While they were bickering, Nan looked back over at Marina and her not-girlfriend, the sun retreated behind the sun for a second to let her see her press a kiss to her cheek. Marina laughed, and leaned down to kiss her properly before Nan turned away. She didn’t think the youth’s dating scene was so difficult to understand.