Orphans of Chaos tcc-1

by John C. Wright

  Everyone was just staring at me.

  “Mercury made it destined for me to find a hypersphere that awakened my powers, which is locked in a safe in the Great Hall, where I was hiding because Dr. Fell caught him, because Boggin (whose real name is Boreas) was waiting for me, and he shined a blue beam of light on him and Quentin had this look on his face but I couldn’t tell what he was looking at that looked so horrible and I wanted to ask him but now he can’t remember. Someone in a dream told me how to break the spell. Vanity has to help. Her real name is Nausicaa.”

  Everyone continued to stare.

  I said, “You believe me, don’t you? Would I make up something like this?”

  Colin said, “Did Quentin really tie you up? And make you kiss him?” Without waiting for an answer, he turned and pointed at Quentin, “Big Q!” then he gave him the thumbs-up, “You the man!”

  I said in exasperation, “It wasn’t like that! I was only blindfolded.”

  Vanity stamped her foot. “You said he kidnapped you and threw you out the window!”

  I said, “No, I said he picked me up and carried me out the window. We were flying, or levitating, or something.”

  Quentin looked both pleased and sad. “It worked, then. It actually worked! I’m a genius!” Then he muttered: “The best night of my life, and I can’t remember it.”

  Colin said to Quentin, “I am so jealous of you it is going to make me barf. How come you get the blonde? Dibs on the redhead.”

  Vanity stamped her foot again. “Shut up your horrible face, Colin, or I’ll have Quentin turn you into a toad! Amelia is trying to tell us the most important thing we ever found out about what is going on here, and all you can do is jabber!”

  Victor said, “Amelia, did you mean that the dream told you how to break the so-called spell on Quentin?”

  “Yes. No. It was ambiguous.”

  “We should hear your story out, but also try to get Quentin repaired as soon as possible. Two witnesses see things one witness misses.”

  I said, “It’s a long story. I am not sure how long we will have the house and grounds to ourselves. There was some sort of party last night after the Board meeting, and Venus was running it. I think everyone is sleeping it off.”

  Victor said, “Are you saying we should try to undo Quentin, first?”

  “And maybe break into that safe I found. It’s on the way. The table in the Great Hall is the thing the dream said could break the spell.”

  Quentin jumped to his feet. “Let’s hurry. Actually, let’s run.”

  “Good idea. Race you.” Victor leaped to his feet and was out the dining room door, followed closely by Quentin. Their footfalls echoed in the corridor.

  Vanity hesitated. “Are we just going to leave Mr. Glum laying here?”

  Colin rose to his feet and was sauntering toward the door, in no great hurry. “You’re right. Let’s slit his throat now. Save us the trouble of doing it later.”

  “You’re sick!” she said, and ran out the door.

  Meanwhile, I was not relishing the prospect of an early morning run through the snow, so I was not moving any faster than Colin. I tried to tug my skirt back down into place, but the apron strings were tied so tightly behind my back that my skirt (which was hiked up high and trapped under it) was pinned in place. I was trying to undo the knot when Colin stepped up behind me.

  “Allow me,” he said. “Thank you. It will be a relief to breathe again.”

  “Here, suck in. I need some slack.”

  I blew out my breath and then tried to make my waist even smaller, and Colin tucked and tugged at my back where I couldn’t see. He hummed happily to himself.

  I should have been more suspicious, more quickly. I tried to turn, but he yanked, and the apron sash cinched even more tightly.

  “You bastard!” I clawed at the small of my back, but the knot seemed to have somehow grown into a super knot.

  He grabbed both my hands by the wrist just a moment before I was about to swing on him. He watched me struggling a moment, smiling darkly.

  “I’m stronger than you,” I said, feeling foolish. “I can move huge iron doors you can’t lift.”

  “Show me,” he said.

  Because he was standing behind me, he simply twisted both my arms up behind my back. My possible options at that point consisted of arching my shoulders back as far as possible and standing on tiptoe.

  Somehow, somewhere, Colin had turned from a little annoying boy into a dangerous young animal. I could not even really struggle in his grip; he had grasped me too cunningly.

  I noticed that he smelled nice. And tall. When did he get to be taller than me? I hadn’t noticed. Had that happened this year?

  And strong. And ruthless and confident.

  I suddenly began to feel silly and out of breath. I told myself it was because Colin was holding me in an awkward position that I could not catch my breath. I tell myself a lot of things. I lie to myself a lot.

  It was because Colin was holding me.

  I had been trying to toy with Victor, and so I let Vanity, harebrained Vanity, talk me into one of her flirtatious schemes. I had hiked up my skirt and pulled down my blouse, thinking a little nectar would attract the bee I wanted. I had gotten a wasp instead. There was something dangerous and reckless about Colin that Victor did not have.

  I do not believe a man can hold a girl, squirming and helpless, and not know the effect it has on her. I wanted him to do something. I wanted him to kiss me. But he just stood there, his grip getting tighter, his eyes like two blue embers glinting like the eyes of a devil.

  I was blushing with furious embarrassment by this point. I told myself I was blushing with fury. Like I said, I tell myself a lot of things.

  “Let go of me.” My voice came out in a husky whisper. That surprised me. He had only had his hands on me for a moment, no longer. I was in love with Victor. Wasn’t I?

  “Why?” Little mocking sparks seemed to glitter in those blue devil-embers of his eyes.

  “Because, from this position, I cannot kick you in the crotch, break your nose on my knee when you double up, and step on your neck when you fall over.”

  Colin whispered in my ear, “Don’t make me jealous of Quentin. He’s my best friend.” I felt his lips brush my earlobe.

  Victor and Vanity reappeared in the doorway at that moment, with Quentin looking downcast behind them.

  Victor said, “What are you doing, Colin?”

  There was a sharp snap in his voice I had never heard before. Jealousy…?

  Victor’s eyes drank in the sight of me. I felt as if he were looking into my soul, reading my mind. He saw the rose blush to my skin. Unlike Colin, Victor knew what it meant. I could not hide the blush on my skin, the shortness of my breath, the dilation of my pupil, or the helpless quiver deep inside me. I could not even move my hands to cover my face because Colin was still holding me, helpless as some prize doe caught by a hunter, exposed to the penetrating gaze of Victor Triumph.

  Victor looked in my eyes and he saw that I wanted Colin’s strong hands on me. I wanted to be helpless in his arms. He saw how pleased, how flustered I was by the sensation. He saw everything.

  But that wasn’t the message I wanted him to see. It was your hands, Victor, I wanted; your strength I want to triumph over me.

  Victor turned away, his face cold. My heart reached a nadir. If I could have died by a sheer critical mass of misery, I would have ignited into a ball of darkness, then and there, and taken most of the school with me.

  Colin was oblivious to all this. He spoke in a tone of lilting mockery.

  He said, “I was telling the serving wench what I wanted for breakfast.”

  Victor said, “Well, if you two are done with your mating ritual, we have serious business.”

  Colin let go of me and jumped back.

  It felt strange, for a moment, to have my hands loose and free. The misery in my heart changed shape suddenly. It was as if it said in my ear: don’t blow yours
elf up in a ball of darkness! Just get Colin!

  Good idea.

  I carefully stepped over and picked up Mr. Glum’s hammer from the table.

  “Tut! Tut!” said Colin, scampering back out of range. “Serious business to discuss!” To Victor he said, “She wants to hurt me!”

  Victor threw himself down in his chair and put his feet on the table. “Probably serves you right. Amelia, make sure you get Mr. Glum’s fingerprints on his hammer after you do the deed.”

  Colin backed up, pointing a finger at me. “You’re not going to kill me on an empty stomach, are you? None of us has eaten yet. This may be the only day we will ever have the run of the kitchen!”

  Quentin smiled, and then laughed. He said, “That is true, Victor. Food first. Death later.”

  Victor looked at Quentin, looked at his own feet on the table, frowned a little nervously, and sat up, putting his feet back on the floor. “True enough. Amelia, no skull bashing till later. Colin, stop acting like a jerk. Quentin, decide what you want us to make you for breaky. It’s the least we can do since we can’t undo your memory block yet.”

  Well, I was not going to disobey a direct order from Victor. Besides, their lightheartedness was contagious. I reluctantly put the hammer back down on the table.

  2.

  “What happened?” I asked. “You were gone for only a moment.”

  Victor said, “We could see from the front door that there were workingmen swarming all over the Great Hall. They’re pulling the roof apart to lift the table out. The table you say we need. If they pull it out the way they put it in, it should be kept under a tarp in the Blacksmith’s Shed until they can find a lorry big enough to haul it.”

  Vanity said, “The good news is, no one else is up yet, though.”

  Quentin said, “Maybe we should run, and run now. Just pick a direction and keep moving. Between Dr. Fell’s drugs and Mr. Glum’s hammer, and what little Amelia already said, we may be in a lot more danger than we know.”

  Victor said, “Amelia? How dangerous is it? More dangerous than heading out along the highway without money? So dangerous that we can’t wait for you to tell us your story?”

  I said, “The War God will kill anyone who kills us. And it would cause a war. And I don’t want to run without at least breaking into that safe. I can’t see into the new directions without the hyperlight it gives off. And I am not walking anywhere until someone helps me take this damn thing off!”

  Colin said loudly, “I object! The serving girl is trying to get out of uniform!”

  Colin was staring at my cleavage again. I made an angry noise and started to reach for my buttons to do them up.

  Quentin said, “Wait a moment.” He looked at Vanity, who was also beginning to tug at her skirt, and to reach for her buttons. Vanity and I stopped.

  Quentin looked at Victor. “I think we should have a ruling on this, Victor.”

  Victor nodded, trying not to smile. “Quentin’s right. He has been viciously attacked, I dare say, wounded, by Dr. Fell. We all need to do our part to keep Quentin in good spirits, don’t you agree, girls?”

  Vanity put her hands on her hips. “What are you saying? I only did this to distract Mr. Glum!”

  Victor rose to his feet. “Very good. Commendable. Now stay like that until I say otherwise. You too, Amelia.”

  Vanity and I looked at each other. She squinted at me, a little impish smirk begging to appear on her lips. She was waiting to see what I would do. I was waiting to see what she would do.

  Colin stepped up behind me and swatted me across the bottom. “Go to, wench! Go to! Your kitchen awaits!”

  He did not duck quickly enough to avoid my counter swing. Victor put his arms around Mr. Glum and unceremoniously dumped him on the carpet. He straightened and said, “You’re going into the kitchen, too, Colin. Only Quentin is excused.”

  Colin was holding his mouth. “Of course. Wouldn’t miss it. Kitchen is where the girls are.”

  Quentin stood and picked up his chair. “Since this seems to be sort of an impromptu birthday for me, I will come and watch. Whichever girl isn’t involved in some part of the cooking process will dote on me. Agreed?”

  Victor said, “Agreed.”

  Colin said, “And the other girl will be…”

  “…Kicking you in the balls, over and over again,” I said. “Agreed?”

  “Agreed!” said Vanity.

  She took Quentin’s arm and I took the other one. We both pressed up against him, wiggling our bottoms and batting our eyelashes, as we escorted him to the kitchen.

  Colin muttered, “Fie. And he says he’s not a magician.”

  3.

  How long does it take for happiness to be complete? I do not know how long we were in the kitchen. I suppose, objectively, it might have been as little as an hour, or even less. But it seemed to last all day. Like an endless vacation.

  The kitchen was huge. All the brightwork gleamed, all the pots and pans and kettles and knives were ranked and racked and arranged by size. There were two little refrigerators and a big walk-in, and a stovetop the size of Scotland and Wales combined.

  And we could have anything we wanted. For the first time in our lives, we made what we fancied in whatever way suited us. An omelette of a dozen eggs; beef that we fried in grease instead of boiling; slabs of bacon as thick as your hand; cooking sherry poured into measuring cups and drunk as toasts. Mostly, we made a mess.

  Colin drank coffee for the first time in his life, the grownups’ drink. He made a face and pronounced it an abomination. But he drank a second cup, just because it had been forbidden him for so long.

  Vanity had always wanted to taste a hamburger; she ground up several types of meat in the blender, and used toast for buns, and cucumber because we found no pickles. She put catsup mixed with horseradish on the resulting mass, calling it “secret sauce,” and claimed she had made a Big Mac. It looked like ground meat on toast to me, but when she gave me a bite, it was delicious. No matter what it tasted like, it was delicious, because she had made it with her own hands.

  Quentin was juggling eggs with one hand, six, seven, and eight, while ordering me hither and thither for the various things he wanted in his giant omelette.

  And, to my astonishment, Victor could cook. He took one cookbook off the shelf of ninety or so that Cook had, and flipped the pages as fast as his thumb would move. Then he measured and chopped and set timers and mixed with the precision of a machine, or a mad scientist. He was good at it. We ended up eating almost all what he made, because what we started turned out somewhat burnt, or raw.

  We sat on the spotless floor in a big circle, plates and bowls and saucers spread about us in Roman luxury, eating everything with our fingers.

  We had dessert before, during, and after the meal. Colin had discovered where the dessert pantry was—that famous pantry we had never been able to find as kids. It was locked, but Victor ran his hand over the jamb, and the lock clicked open of its own accord.

  They had gathered all sorts of treats, meatballs, and cheeses, and little snacks in folds of sugar-fried bread. There was tray after silver tray of it, all gathered for some after-the-meeting reception, which, because Venus had shut down the meeting, the Visitors and Governors never got to. There were éclairs and pastries and a cake of seven layers. The things I remember best were these cupcakes made of chocolate foam, topped with froth of a different kind of chocolate, where the cups were not paper, but yet a third kind of chocolate, hard and crunchy, yet melting like a snowflake on the tongue. I had never seen anything like it before. Edible dishes! Like something out of a Roald Dahl book!

  And there was a bottle of champagne.

  Things became quite merry after that. Part of the reason why the boys were merry, I am sure, was seeing Vanity and me in our absurd impromptu maid outfits, waiting on them. Part of the reason was that we were lightheaded from sipping champagne.

  But we were drunk on information. I had unearthed a treasure trove of se
crets, secrets which had been kept from us our whole lives.

  And I was merry because I was the center of attention during the first half of the meal. I talked and talked and not even Colin interrupted me. Quentin had found Cook’s account books and was writing notes on what I was saying on the back of pink receipt slips.

  What a funny feeling. No one had ever thought what I had to say was important enough to write down before.

  4.

  Then came questions.

  Colin asked: “Her name is Nausicaa or Nausea or something. Your dream called you Phaethusa. Did you find out my name? You didn’t, did you?” And he threw an olive at me, using his fork as a catapult.

  Quentin asked: “Those creatures were Hecatonchire, weren’t they? The hundred-handed giants from Greek myth. They looked like humans, I am supposing, because something in the human world makes them. But they said the table gave them the ability to use their powers nonetheless. Notice this is the same table mentioned in Amelia’s dream.”

  Victor asked: “Why did you fail to mention that the staff here thinks we will get sick and die if we get too far from the boundaries of the estate? That might be a good thing to test before we make our escape.”

  Vanity asked: “Why did you keep slapping Quentin? It’s not like he wanted to kiss you!”

  Colin asked: “Why was Mavors or Mars or whatever his name is carrying both a spear and a pistol? What the hell is the point of that? Are they magic items? Are there different laws of nature in different worlds?”

  Quentin asked: “You said that when you were in the Fourth Dimension, you saw behind you both a wheel surrounded by a lesser wheel, and two cone-shaped things. What were those things—?”

  Victor said, “I don’t understand this whole idea that they are mythical gods and goddesses. I mean, how is it supposed to happen? Homer sits down to write the Iliad, and some real god becomes immediately aware of it, and sends telepathic particles into the poet’s brain to make him write down what the facts are? If so, why didn’t these gods just publish newspapers? Of course, I am making the assumption that there was a man named Homer, and he did write a book called the Iliad. They might have made up that whole poem, just before they opened the school, just to teach us. Greek could be a made-up language, which they forced us to study just to annoy us.”