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She should have known that any candidate Jove produced would be both interesting and difficult to deal with.
Case in point? Morrigan Crow.
“I think we should just remove her,” Alioth said, one of his hooves on the table. The table in the Elders’ Hall was over a thousand years old, subject to a hundred thousand bumps and scrapes, a million elbows and hands placed upon it. All, old, new, ancient blending together until they could no longer be recognised as anything other than the surface of the table. That being said, she suspected that a new indent had just appeared where he was sitting. “We don’t need grounds until the inauguration. It’ll be much better for all of us if we just tidy it up. Neat and quiet. We can just contact whomever was the tenth candidate, and have them take her place.”
Helix frowned but didn’t say anything.
She took a sip of water to refresh herself. “No.”
“Why not?” he asked coolly. “What on earth can she be taught at Wunsoc? What should she be taught?”
Gregoria frowned. “She could learn the errors of her ways. The errors of her predecessors’ ways.”
“So that she doesn’t make them?” Helix asked. “So that she does good?”
“No,” she said, already making a mental note to contact the Scholar Mistresses. To inform Mrs Murgatroyd that she would not be getting Miss Crow, and Ms Dearborn that she would, despite likely everyone’s expectations to the contrary. And Professor Onstald would do nicely. The book he had produced as part of their C&D project fifteen years ago would do the trick. “So that she doesn’t do anything.”
Morrigan Crow had done something. Gregoria felt the cold seep into her bones, and exhaustion take a hold of every limb, weighing her down.
“Sorry,” Helix frowned at Ms Dearborn. “Could you… repeat that. I’m not sure I understood.”
“Crow set fire to the canopy at Proudfoot Station,” she said. “At will. The girl is out of control! An absolute menace.” She still had those glacial tones that had frightened Gregoria so much as a junior scholar.
She cleared her throat, “Please describe the full incident.”
“I wasn’t there,” her lip curled, and she heard the crack of her spine that let her know Mrs Murgatroyd was on the way. “Maris was.”
“What do we do?” Alioth said. “How do we control this? Telling everyone to ignore her, and not to wonder about her knack was already difficult. Now that everyone has seen her breathe fire…” He trailed off. He didn’t need to explain to her of all people why that was a nightmare wrapped up in a horror show.
“Contain and distract,” she said grimly. “Our new mission.”
“So,” Helix said slowly. “You think that telling her to go home for the rest of term, and then the full summer, and possibly beyond, will let everyone forget that she set fire to the station?”
“It could do,” she said. “Do you have an alternative?”
He frowned, “I suppose not. But- I cannot say I like this. Using C&D tactics on the society itself does not sit well with me.”
“Then let it sit badly,” she snapped. “It has been decided.”
Her patron had never been an Elder. But her patron’s patron had, and they had once sat her down in the Elders’ hall to show her what they thought she needed to understand about the society.
She had been too angry back then. She hadn’t understood. When one was a child, the world seemed so simple. Black and white. Morality from children’s books, saying do not steal, do not lie. Everyone is good. One of the first lessons she’d taken as a second year was a lesson on pickpocketing. One of her trials had been based on her ability to lie. And she hadn’t lived over eight decades thinking that everyone in the world was good. She had barely lived one.
Her patron’s patron had told her what was true, as they had understood it. That she was a good girl, but a silly, stupid one too. That she lacked nuance, and she needed to think more critically. That if she wanted an omelet, she had to be willing to break a few eggs. Or legs.
She had been told that if she wanted to do anything good for the society now, she would keep her mouth shut about what she had learned about the Courage Square Massacre. Justice did not trump safety. The dead wundersmiths were not as important as the survival of the society, and if they had cared enough about the society and Nevermoor to die for it, then they wouldn’t mind so much about them tarnishing their reputation before they were even cold in the ground and for decades afterwards.
She had not liked this then. She had objected and shouted, and she had been sent outside with tears in her eyes. She had been exiled from the Elders’ Hall, with its beautiful statues, which had always frightened her as a child, and she had not been let back in until she had apologised. Until she had bled, once, twice, thrice for the sake of the society.
Her patron’s patron had died of a heart attack, two days after Morningtide of the age after their term as an Elder. It wasn’t uncommon, she had been told, sitting with the other scholars of their lineage, with her patron sobbing silently beside her, into her shoulder, which she had offered up so no one could see him making a scene. To do all that work for so long, for the relaxation and rest to kill you unawares. To take your eye off the ball only for it to crush you.
She had felt… nothing personally. She had thought it was a shame that they had put so much effort into improving the world as it was, only to die before they could see the fruits of their labour, their harvest left to fallow with no one there to reap it. She had wanted their advice, not specifically, but for her career, for her progression in the society. She had wanted patronage, in the way her patron had never quite been capable of.
But they were dead and that was that. Not much she could do about it.
She suspected that her end would come to her in the same way. She had not been joking when she had told Jove that his revelation about his candidate at the Show Trial had almost given her a heart attack. She suspected that it was fear and a soft spine that stopped her doctors from demanding that she retire now. Or the sense that her sacrifice would be for the greater good of the society.
It wasn’t anything she dreaded. It was her duty. Nothing more, nothing less.
She had to protect the members of the society so that they could continue their vital work. She had to guide them. Rule them.
There was a council of three elders so that no vote was ever tied, so that there was no risk of one getting more powerful than the others. She had heard legends that the original system had been born out of the “rule of three” from the nine wundersmiths. Three students. Three teachers. Three Elders. Eventually, as the society itself had grown and shifted, that had grown into her own office. She wasn’t sure if she believed it, but there was a nice symmetry to it all the same.
“Are we in concord?” she asked her fellows, sitting around the top of the table in the hall.
Alioth sighed, steam erupting from his nostrils. Helix hummed out of tune.
“Is that a yes? Do we use Miss Crow’s secret as her part of the loyalty trial?”
“… Yes.”
Alioth nodded, a little reluctantly. “I agree. It will be a good test of her strength.”
“She knows about Lamya Bethari Amati Ra’s secret,” Helix continued. “She knows, or thinks, perhaps, that the Blackmailer’s secret does not refer to her secret. What matters to her more? The secret of her friend and unit-mate? Her own secret, which protects her unit? If we confirm which secret to which we are referring…” he trailed off, eyebrows raised.
“Precisely,” Alioth said. “It may be convenient to us that Hemingway…”
She felt her lip curl but forced it to fall flat again, “He cannot do anything now. We cannot do anything for him.” Revulsion boiled in her stomach but she ignored it. Pushed it away. She always did. “There’s certainly a neatness to it. I will give you that.”
“To whom shall we give her?” Helix asked. “Another… version of Hemingway or-”
“No,” she said. “No, we cannot. We have chosen our side on Miss Crow. And… from what I have heard from the results of the Ghastly Market, and from Mrs Mugatroyd… it is better for us that she learns from us. From our own approved sources. I think what we have fundamentally found out about the girl is that she will learn from whatever source, if not satisfied by what she is taught here.” She met both of their sets of eyes meaningfully. “It is imperative that Morrigan Crow believe in the mission of the society, and that she adheres to our goals. With that in mind, here is my suggestion: give her to the Sub-Nine Academic Group.”
Helix’s face pinched up. She heard Alioth’s hoof scraping at the floorboards under the table.
“She can only learn so much from the Ghostly Hours,” she said. “Enough to keep her in check. Not too much that she will break away. And she will be grateful for the education. She has so much to be grateful for. From us.”
“Are we going to tell her that?” Alioth asked. “It might not be conducive to openly manipulate her as such.”
She snorted, “No. She will not know. Directly. As long as she is… subtly reminded, it will be enough.”
“You hope,” Helix said. “No guarantees in life.”
“No guarantees and no warranty,” she said. “But we will ensure it. For the sake of the mission.”
Jupiter had always worn his heart on his sleeve. She didn’t need to be a telepath or Witness to tell that he was furious.
“Elder Quinn,” he said, his fists clenching and unclenching, the skin around his knuckles growing white and fading as he did so. “If I may have a word.”
Her fingers twitched at the idea of missing her planned cigarette break, but she sighed and opened the door to the Elders’ Hall further instead, “Come on in, Jove. What do you want to talk about?”
She didn’t really need to ask. She knew, of course. She had seen the fear in his eyes when Morrigan Crow had revealed herself that morning to be a wundersmith in front of… well, not the whole society, but a significant part of it.
“The Loyalty Trial,” he said shortly.
“They passed,” she said. “I am pleased for her.”
“You emotionally manipulated her unit against her,” his lips thinned out. “You isolated her from her peers and allowed Dearborn to put her in a class alone with…” he paused, apparently struggling to not speak ill of the dead. “A man who was determined to stop her at every turn.”
“I did,” she said. “And they passed. Aren’t you proud, Jove? Are you not pleased with your scholar’s progress? She’s with Murgatroyd. She will receive an educated in the Arts.”
He raised an eyebrow at her, his face darkening, brows like gathering storms, “With all due respect, Elder Quinn, I’ll believe it when I see it.”
He flounced out of the hall before she could respond, coat billowing behind him. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. That boy had always had a flair for the dramatic, whether it was appropriate or not.
Her eye caught the statue of Inferno, the forever-melting candles carved in exquisite detail. The first of the arts to manifest in the society’s only wundersmith. Heat. Destruction. Decimation. She was not sure whether that boded well or not for them.