Orphans of Chaos tcc-1

by John C. Wright

  Not only had he kidnapped Quentin, maybe killed him, but Dr. Fell had doped up Vanity so that she could not concentrate when I tried to tell her the news I was bursting to tell her. What is the point of news if you cannot tell your friends? My favorite thing in life was to find out how people would react to things. Now there was no reaction.

  Down the corridors we marched, down three flights. We passed the Entrance Hall. Someone (maybe me?) had left the front door open, and snow had blown in to stain the front carpet. The dirt Vanity and I had spilled from the potted plant in the alcove the night before last had not been cleaned up yet.

  Both these little signs of decay made me wonder. The corridors were also unwontedly silent. The grandfather clock showed that we were being brought to breakfast somewhat later than was our wont. Where was everybody?

  Vanity was looking a little more chipper and bright-eyed after our march through cold halls. Maybe the exercise woke her up a bit. By the time we were escorted up to where the three boys were waiting in their blue blazers, ties crooked, and yawning, Vanity was alert enough to whisper to me, “I thought you said he was missing!”

  There was Quentin, looking sadder and more introspective than usual. There was something dark and grim in his features, an expression I usually associate with Colin. But it was an unrelieved sort of darkness, without the sarcastic smile and savage humor, which Colin struck like sparks in his dark.

  I was so relieved that I broke ranks (as much rank as two people can be in) and ran across the hall to him. He looked so astonished when I threw my arms around him, and he looked so young that, for a moment, I thought he was the five-year-old Quentin I used to push around in Mr. Glum’s wheelbarrow.

  “Quentin!” I exclaimed. “I thought you were dead! What happened last night?”

  His expression was lost, hopeless. “I don’t remember. It’s gone. The last thing I remember was palming his foul medicine. I woke up in the infirmary. Dr. Fell was… he…”

  Sister Twitchett came up behind me. “Miss Windrose! No talking! This is blatant insubordination. Get back in line this instant, or I shall have to bring your name to the attention of the Headmaster!”

  I turned on her, blazing eyed. “And what is he going to do, kill me? Kill us all? Throw us down into Hell? I will remember you, Twitchett. Do you want to be my enemy? I will not be a child forever.” And I realized that, by saying that as I did, I was, as of that moment, no longer a child.

  For a moment, I no longer feared them.

  But the moment passed. I shrank back as the Sister advanced on me.

  “Miss Windrose! This is unprecedented. You shall certainly be placed on report. You will behave yourself this instant! Apologize and take your place in line!”

  I opened my mouth, but Victor coughed. His glance at me told me this was not the most opportune time, from a tactical point of view, for this scene.

  So I merely apologized and took my place in line.

  Twitchett knocked on the door of the kitchen. Mr. Glum’s voice answered. We all marched in and took our seats.

  No one was there except for Mr. Glum, and he had bags under his eyes and looked even more foul-tempered than usual. Sister Twitchett turned us over to him.

  Our usual breakfast with china plates and centerpieces, folded napkins, and so on, was not there. There was nothing on the table except cold cereal. There was not even milk. Cook and Cook’s assistant were not present.

  Victor said, “What’s going on? Where’s our breakfast?”

  Mr. Glum said sourly, “No talkin’. Rule o’ silence and all that.” He was seated at his usual place in the window box, not at the main table with us.

  Colin said, “I need a proper breakfast with bacon and eggs. Otherwise I might have another fit of epilepsy.”

  “Shut up,” said Glum.

  “It’s a medical condition! Dr. Fell said so! You can ask him, if you like. Where is he?”

  Glum squinted angrily at him. “You shut up, or I’ll give you a lip so fat ’twill stop up that hole in your face like a cork!”

  I had seen Mrs. Wren at breakfast too often not to know the signs. Mr. Glum had a hangover.

  It was Quentin who spoke up next. “If you please, Mr. Glum, can’t we cook ourselves some breakfast? The cooking staff seems to be absent. The kitchen is only just through that door. You want something better than toasted wheat, don’t you? I will make you a fine pot of hot coffee.”

  That Quentin was talking, and talking calmly, drove a cold fury over Mr. Glum.

  “Will not be quiet, eh? Will defy me, eh?”

  Mr. Glum stood up, a bald, wiry, stocky man. He was not muscular, but his body was toughened by many years of work in the gardens and grounds around this house. His tool belt was in a heap on the floor beside where he sat, and he stooped, took a hammer in his hand, and straightened up again. From the look in his eye, he was ready to do murder.

  Vanity jumped up to her feet. “Grendel! I mean, Mr. Glum! There’s no need for you to get up! I’ll get the food! You want me to serve you, don’t you?”

  He squinted at her, dumbstruck. “Serve me?”

  “Serve your breakfast, silly! I can cook, really I can. You can sit at my place, and I’ll go make you coffee and eggs and stuff. Every man wants a woman to cook for him, doesn’t he?”

  “Oh,” said Glum. “Oh, aye, that he does.”

  “Well, then!” she smiled brightly. She patted the seat cushion of her chair. “Just sit down here where I was sitting. I got the seat all warm for you. I’ll go put the kettle on. No one will know.”

  Almost like a sleepwalker, Mr. Glum walked around the table. I could smell the soil and grease in his work clothes as he walked past my chair. He was not a tall man, but Vanity is rather short, and he loomed over her. He stepped very close indeed to her. From the way he bent his head I thought he was going to kiss her. Vanity, never flinching, kept her smile firmly fixed in place.

  But Mr. Glum just sighed, and threw himself down in her seat, and put his hammer (clangk!) on the table next to his plate. He leaned back and put his boots up on the table. Tiny flakes of soil fell onto the polish.

  “Aye,” he said, tucking his hands behind his head. “Who is to know? Eh? Who is to know?”

  We sat in silence, staring at Mr. Glum, while he whistled and stared at the ceiling. After a little bit, there came a noise or two of drawers rattling, a crash of crockery, and a sad little, “Oh no!” from the kitchen.

  Then: “Um…? Mr. Glum? I may need some help in here. Could you send in Quentin?”

  Suspicion flickered in his eyes. “No, I think not. Quentin, is it? I will let Miss Amelia in there to help.”

  “But she doesn’t know how to cook! She’s a tomboy!”

  Mr. Glum gave me the most unpleasant stare. “I am sure she will shape up into a woman, right enough, if’n she just had a man to train her to it. G’wan, Goldilocks. Go help in the kitchen.”

  Without arguing, I went to the kitchen.

  “What are you doing?” I whispered to her.

  “Quentin is up to something. He wants Mr. Glum to drink coffee. I’m making coffee.”

  “I know all that. I mean, what are you doing putting the coffee grounds into the coffeepot? This isn’t instant coffee, you ninny!”

  I found the filter and the brass percolator, spooned in the amount specified on the bag, and waited. The brass cylinder of the coffee percolator was very highly polished (Cook kept his kitchen as neat and bright as a Man-o-War) and I could see my reflection, distorted and thin, in it.

  After a moment, I felt heat on my face and my nose felt heavy and there was a stinging in my eyes.

  Vanity said in frightened wonder, “Why are you crying?”

  “Quentin kissed me last night.”

  Vanity looked stone-faced. “What? Are you and he…”

  “Don’t be a ninny! He did it to shut me up! We were floating and the wind spirits were going to drop us. I slapped him. And he treated me horribly after that, ordering m
e around and everything!”

  Her expression softened. “So what was the…”

  “It was my first kiss. Dr. Fell erased his memory. And now, to Quentin, it never happened. Can you think of anything more horrible? Reaching into someone’s skull and taking away their most precious memories? It’s worse than death.”

  I wiped my eyes with my palm impatiently.

  When the coffee was ready Vanity insisted on making us both put on the little lace caps the maids sometimes wore. She had found them in a cupboard.

  Vanity also found some white aprons. She tied one so tightly around my waist that I could not breathe. I paid her back by tying hers even tighter.

  She forced me to unbutton the top three buttons of my blouse and tuck my collar under, to make an impromptu décolletage. She did the same, and also stuffed some napkins into her brassiere, to push up her breasts like a showgirl’s. (Not that she needed it to begin with.) She tried to do the same to me, but I put my foot down.

  As a compromise, I hiked up my skirts till the waistband sat above my ribcage. With my blouse tails and the apron to cover it, it merely looked as if I were wearing a miniskirt. Vanity liked the look and copied me, and we spent another moment tying and untying the apron bows again, to see which one of us could force the other into the more wasp-waisted figure without fainting from lack of air.

  We got a silver tray, a slim vase (but there was no flower to put in it), sugar bowl, creamer, and a pitcher of orange juice we found waiting in the refrigerator. Little china cups and some glasses, and we were ready. We arranged this all on the tray, and walked out into the breakfast room, swaying our hips.

  Vanity threw her hand up in a gesture like a game show hostess, saying, “Ta-Da!”

  I leaned over to put the tray down next to Quentin. Vanity curtsied toward Mr. Glum. Victor and Colin were staring.

  To me, it looked like a contest to see whether Mr. Glum’s eyes would pop out of his skull before Vanity’s breasts popped out of her bra. Then I noticed, bent over as I was, I was just as much on display as she was, and they were all staring at my cleavage, too.

  Quentin took the lid off the coffeepot, laid it carefully to one side, and said to Vanity, “Why don’t you pour?”

  She picked up a coffee cup and saucer, stepped over to Mr. Glum’s chair—I noticed she stepped to the far side of the chair, so that Mr. Glum had to turn his head away from Quentin to keep his eyes on her—and curtsied again.

  Quentin stood and passed her the coffeepot.

  Mr. Glum darted a suspicious glance at Quentin. Quentin smiled, and sat, but picked up the sugar bowl and proffered it to me. “Perhaps Mr. Glum would like some sugar, Miss Windrose.”

  I took the sugar bowl and walked over to Mr. Glum. I curtsied again (Glum took the opportunity to make sure he hadn’t forgotten what my breasts looked like) and said, “One lump or two?” I tried to impersonate the Lady Cyprian’s tone, and make my voice coo.

  It must have worked, or something did.

  He was smiling at me. I cannot imagine how I could have been inspiring lust in any male creature at that moment. I had been crying; my eyes were red, as well as baggy from lack of sleep. I felt like a gym shoe. Messy, rumpled, and ill-used.

  But Mr. Glum was looking at me like I was the Queen of Sheba. He was already drawing up filthy plans in his mind on how he would use me once he was done with Vanity. I was dessert.

  And he hadn’t looked at his coffee cup yet. There was a blue ice cube in it. The same little blue ice cube I had seen on the windowsill in the snow last night. It was melting, but it hadn’t melted yet.

  “I take my coffee bitter, black, and hot,” Mr. Glum announced. He raised the cup, and started to take his eyes off me…

  I snatched up a thin spoon from the tray. Glum looked up, puzzled. I kissed the spoon slowly. Glum stared at my lips.

  I said in a husky whisper, “At least, let me stir it.”

  He held his cup toward me, his expression like a hypnotized man, but a smile beginning to tug at his lips.

  I stirred the coffee, smiling down at him. Whatever he was. A sea creature of some sort. A mad thing. Maybe a killer.

  But he looked so happy, just looking at me.

  Vanity now moved around the table, putting down tumblers and filling them with orange juice for the boys. It amazed me how much leaning over was involved in pouring three cups of juice.

  Colin held up his glass to me. “You there! Servant Girl! I need someone to stir my juice. Use that same spoon, will you?”

  I blushed furiously. I am sure my ears turned red. I stomped over to him, wondering whether or not I should spit in the spoon. Mr. Glum had taken his feet off the table and let them drop loudly to the floor.

  I decided that making a fuss might remind Mr. Glum of his duty to be watching us. So I merely curtsied to Colin and stirred his juice with the spoon I had kissed.

  I touched his glass to steady it. The ice cubes were trembling in the glass. His hand was unsteady. Standing as close to him as I was, I could hear that his breathing was unsteady as well.

  Because I wasn’t actually stirring anything into his cup, I wasn’t sure when to quit. Colin reached up and touched my hand with his, and said hoarsely, “Thank you.”

  It did not even sound like Colin, not the irredeemable, unflappable, mocking Colin I knew.

  Boys are so odd. All I was doing was stirring juice.

  Mr. Glum stood up suddenly, and threw his coffee cup across the room. It splashed and made a brown stain on the wall.

  He turned to Quentin. “You done sommat to me, witch-boy. You witched me. Now I am going to break in your skull bones with this hammer.” And he picked up the hammer.

  Quentin stood up. “Mr. Glum, you underestimate me. Do you think I poisoned you? Look.” He poured himself a cup of coffee from the coffeepot, and sipped it.

  Glum stared at him, licking his lips.

  Quentin said, “Come, sir. We drank from the same pot. What makes you think I have done anything? Are you sleepy? That is only because you had a late night last night. Don’t you expect to be tired when you’ve had a long night?”

  Glum said, “No. You’re trying to trick me. It won’t work if I don’t listen.”

  “Do you believe in magic, Mr. Glum?”

  “Course I do. Who don’t?”

  “Do you believe I am a magician? I have Power?”

  Glum nodded. “Up until I break your skull bones.”

  “You think unseen spirits wait on my command. Creatures in the air, made of subtle essences?”

  “I seen you feeding them blood from your arm. In the woods. You’re a spawn of The Gray Sisters. I know your kind.”

  “Then you believe I can make your hammer too heavy to lift, don’t you?” He pointed his finger at the hammer. “It is getting heavy. Too heavy. Iron and wood, things of the earth, long to return to the earth, their home, and they pull downward. Downward. You should not have raised it against me in anger.”

  Glum dropped the hammer.

  Quentin pointed his finger at Mr. Glum’s knees. “You put your feet on the table, where you know they should not go. That was impertinent. That was rude. Now your feet are going numb. Your legs will no longer support you. Sit.”

  Glum sat in the chair, flopping down like a puppet with its strings cut.

  Quentin pointed at Glum’s face. “You stared with covetous lust at a girl young enough to be your daughter. That was worse than rude. Worse than a crime. Your eyes are filled with low thoughts, low and heavy thoughts, and now they will shut. Close your eyes. Fall. Sleep.”

  Mr. Glum sagged down, and his head fell onto the table with a thunk.

  We all sat staring in silence for a moment, awed.

  Colin stood up and clapped his hands, like a man at a concert applauding a maestro. “Brilliant! Bravo! You magicking him! Sucked the energy right out of him!”

  Quentin sat down, looking pale and weak. “Don’t be an ass. There is no such thing as magic.”

&n
bsp; Colin pointed at the snoring bulk of Mr. Glum. “Then what’s that?”

  “Dr. Fell’s medicine. I didn’t drink it last night.”

  I laughed and clapped. “The blue ice cube!”

  Victor said, “Ice cube?”

  Quentin said, “I spit Dr. Fell’s medicine into a little wax cup I keep hidden about my person for just such occasions. I thought it might be easier to carry up my sleeve if it were frozen—the potion, I mean—and left it on the windowsill last night. I had an idea for an experiment I wanted to try. I lowered myself by a rope, and started walking North…”

  He spread his hands and looked up, woebegone. “And that’s it. That’s about all I recall. I don’t remember what the experiment was or what my idea was. I don’t remember Dr. Fell finding me. I woke up strapped to a table in his lab. Dr. Fell did something to me. Injected me with something, or did something to my brain. What did I do last night?”

  Vanity pointed at me and said happily, “You tied up Amelia and made her kiss you!”

  Everyone turned and looked at me.

  Quentin’s eyes slowly traveled up and down my body, examining my ankles and legs, lingering over my hips and my narrow waist, pausing at my cleavage, but coming to rest at my tear-stained eyes.

  “Well. Damn Dr. Fell to Hell,” he said softly. Brave words, but he looked like he wanted to cry, too.

  11

  Paradigms at Breakfast

  1.

  The first words out of my mouth were: “The Greek gods run the school. We’re hostages in a war. They’re afraid to kill us, because our families will attack. Quentin can fly. They’re going to send us to Hell for safekeeping. Except Vanity is being sent to Atlantis. Zeus is dead and Mars and Vulcan both want the throne. Mercury was in the Common Room last night, and he knew I was in the wall, and he said he’d give us anything we wanted. Taffy ap Cymru is actually a goddess. And a cross-dresser, I guess. Taffy works for Mercury. I fell into the Fourth Dimension, and Miss Daw, who is actually a fourth-dimensional siren shaped like a wheel, played music, which forced me back into normal time-space, except I landed in a pile of snow.”