House War 03 - House Name

by Michelle West

Finch grimaced. “No. She was born in the holdings, same as us. Her mother and grandmother died one winter—she almost followed them. But that left her with her father, until the accident in the shipping ports. After that . . .” Finch shrugged.

  Lucille nodded. It wasn’t an unfamiliar story, after all.

  “So your Jay?”

  “She’s doing some work for The Terafin. While she’s working, The Terafin is letting us stay in the manse.”

  “Where?”

  “Where?”

  “Where in the manse?”

  “Oh.” Ellerson hadn’t warned her about this. “Umm, I think in the West Wing.”

  “Let me get this straight. Your den leader—don’t look so surprised; I may be old, but I’m not stupid—is working for The Terafin, and The Terafin opened the West Wing and deposited the rest of you in it?”

  “More or less.”

  “When?”

  “The twenty-second of Scaral.”

  Lucille whistled. “What have you been doing?”

  Finch cringed. “Nothing. A whole lot of nothing.”

  “They probably forgot you were there until now; it’s the type of thing they could overlook.” Lucille slid off the desk surface. “But that nothing is about to change. No one who works in this office does nothing all day long, is that clear?”

  Finch nodded.

  “I’ll see about your reading and your writing. The math is deplorable, but that can be corrected; if you’ve the brains and attention to pick up reading and writing, you can handle numbers. But the thing that will probably make you most useful here is that Torra. Is it street Torra?”

  Finch nodded.

  “Can’t be helped. Follow me.”

  “Wait.”

  Lucille, who had somehow already reached the door while Finch sat feeling buffeted by the sudden change in direction her life had taken, paused. “What?”

  “What did they tell you about me?”

  For the first time that morning, Lucille smiled. The smile was almost shocking; it softened her face so much. There was no edge in it, no malice, none of the condescending glee that smiles often showed. “You’ll do, dear,” she told Finch. “You’ll do.

  “Come, let me show you the office. I can introduce you,” she added, “to my boss.”

  The idea that Lucille could have a boss—could, in fact, answer to anyone—would never have occurred to Finch. The confusion must have shown, because Lucille laughed. The laugh, like the smile, was compelling; it made you want to stand closer, just to hear it better. “He’s a good man,” Lucille told Finch, “but a little on the old side, these days. He served House Terafin for all of his youth and all of his prime, and he increased efficiency and revenue in brilliant ways during that period; they wouldn’t reward that service by removing him; it would be a humiliation and poor repayment for his accomplishments.

  “But he has no edge now, and that’s needed. I came to work for him fifteen years ago. I was older than you are now,” she added, “And I was never a slip of a girl. But things needed sorting out, and badly. I sorted.”

  That, Finch could imagine.

  “It’s not my office,” Lucille told her quietly. “I want you to remember that. Jarven is worth respect, and as long as I’m working here, he is going to get it.”

  Barston didn’t stand over Teller’s shoulder for more than an hour—but that hour was broken into distinct five-minute intervals. He had, after all, work to do, and that work would not wait. Teller knew this because he’d said it about a hundred times. He had also asked Teller, repeatedly, if there was anything he needed help with, and anything that required explanation. Given Teller’s background, some flexibility in the testing was required, after all.

  Teller found it bemusing. He had never, in his life, seen a grown man fuss so much. Not that he had that much experience with grown men, but still.

  It wasn’t that he thought Barston wanted him to fail, although it did occur to him sometime during his second hour seated at a small, plain desk in clear sight of the secretary, his stack of letters not appreciably smaller, that he would not be Barston’s ideal of an aide. It wasn’t even that Barston expected him to fail—although it was clear that he did. Barston, Teller thought, would expect everyone to fail. Even the right-kin.

  But looking at these letters, Teller didn’t think he would be much of an aide either, and that worried him. Some of the writing was almost impossible to read, although some was very, very clear. Some of what was written was so hostile, so obviously angry, it was a wonder that they’d kept it at all.

  Still, he attempted to sort the letters, stacking them in three piles. He was hampered and frustrated by his complete lack of understanding of what Gabriel ATerafin did. Right-kin was his House title, and it clearly had some meaning for the House members, but that meaning was elusive and ultimately beyond his grasp.

  He did what he could.

  If Gabriel was the first point of contact in the House, all of the letters sent would come straight to his office. Given the stack, Teller understood—perhaps for the first time—that The Terafin could not possibly read and respond to everything it contained.

  But neither, he thought, could Gabriel. No single person could. What, then, required Gabriel’s attention, and what could be safely handled by someone else?

  Barston hovered in the background until Teller was done. The moment the last of the letters left his hand—and the moment Bartson had finished speaking with another of Gabriel’s appointments—he made his way to the small desk.

  “You’ve finished?” he asked.

  Teller looked dubiously at the three piles in front of him. “No,” he told Barston, looking up and holding the older man’s gaze. “But this is as close as I’m going to get. It’s all complicated,” he added.

  For some reason, this didn’t bother Barston. “Of course it is,” the older man replied. “People often feel that the office of Secretary is really a glorified letter opener and obstacle. They don’t appreciate either the subtleties or the initiative it requires.”

  As Teller was only barely aware that there was such an office, he made no comment. Not about that, at any rate. “Look,” he said, taking a deep breath and holding it for a moment, “I don’t think I’m the right person for this job.”

  To his surprise, Barston actually smiled. It was only a slight creasing of lip, but it was definitely there. “In my experience,” Barston told him, reaching for the piles, “the less one feels up to this job, the better, in the end, one performs. If you are willing to admit you have limitations, it is much easier to mitigate them.” After a moment, he added, “That is, if you’re willing to admit you have something to learn, someone can teach you.

  “Now, let’s see how you’ve done.”

  “Can I ask a question?”

  “You can, as I have said several times in the last few hours, ask a question any time you like. There are some sensitive House matters that I am not at liberty to discuss, but if I am unable to answer, I will make that clear.”

  “Why have you kept all these letters? They’re all old, now; I think the most recent one was written thirty years ago.”

  Barston smiled. “Very good,” he told Teller. “You can at least read and recognize dates. We keep these letters because there is very little that is currently sensitive in them. But when they were relevant, they required some discretion. Not all of them,” he added, “but a fair number.

  “Were you to view the letters that arrived this morning, for instance, they would be much less . . . incendiary. Like any other job, this one presents a fair amount of tedium. This pile is?”

  “The one that Gabriel doesn’t need to see.”

  “Good. It is fairly simple to determine whether or not an applicant for this position has rudimentary reading and comprehension skills. It is much less easy to determine whether or not they have the necessary instinct or discretion to handle the daily tasks of the right-kin’s office.” Barston began to sort through the letters.
>
  Teller watched his expression as he did. He noted the frown, the slightly raised, graying eyebrows, and the brief, curt nods. It was the latter he wanted, but he saw few of those, and Barston did take five letters from the pile and set them aside. He did not, however, comment; instead, he reached for the second pile. Teller identified it, when asked, as the correspondence that would require the right-kin’s eventual attention.

  At one point, he paused and looked at Teller. “Are you familiar with the names of The Ten Houses?”

  Teller nodded.

  “And the names of the notable Houses among the patriciate?”

  Silence.

  “I see. To be expected, I suppose. It is a deficiency which you would be expected to correct at your earliest possible convenience.” He set three letters aside. “This last would be those items that require immediate attention?” He leafed through these at speed, as if he knew them by heart, and removed only one letter. But this last caused a frown.

  Teller kept his expression composed, and he folded his hands in his lap because otherwise he’d probably be signing to himself, which was always a bad thing.

  “The others,” he told Teller, waving at the letters he’d removed and placed into their own pile, “are misfiled. I will explain why at a later time. But this one,” he told the boy, “is correctly filed. It is very seldom filed correctly. On the surface of things, it is an entirely harmless, even convivial piece of writing. Why did you place it in the pile that required immediate attention?”

  He handed the letter itself to Teller.

  “It’s from one of The Ten,” Teller said quietly. “It looks harmless, but almost none of the other letters are from one of The Ten. If you look—”

  Barston raised a hand. “I know the letters quite well; I have been at this job, and evaluating hopeful applicants, for longer than you have been alive. Are you saying you chose to place this in the emergency pile simply because it was from one of The Ten? I note that you did not place the other two letters from similar Houses in that pile.”

  Teller swallowed. He had never been a person who liked tests; of the den, only Carver seemed to relish them. “No.”

  “Why this one?”

  Teller hesitated. “I don’t know. It just seemed strange. It was from the office of The Berrilya—”

  “It was from The Berrilya himself. Continue.”

  This much grief over the right choice seemed unfair. “It was from The Berrilya,” Teller said, obeying. “But it spoke about—about the right-kin’s mother, and about The Berrilya’s dogs, cats, and difficulty in garden arrangements.”

  “And his son, I believe, and the grandchild.”

  Teller nodded. “It’s just that there was nothing in it that required any attention at all. The right-kin said he doesn’t get personal letters through this office, but this one clearly came here. Whoever wrote it meant it to be read here.”

  “And?”

  “I can’t imagine The Terafin writing a letter like that and sending it as official correspondence by accident. I didn’t think The Berrilya would either. So I thought it must be important.”

  “You didn’t think it had been placed with the rest of the correspondence by accident? I assure you, it does happen.”

  “No.”

  Barston nodded. “You were correct, and for reasons I will not go into at this time. These others,” he added, waving a hand over them, “were not correctly sorted. But as I said, I consider the sorting problem more a difficulty with your lack of education than with your lack of comprehension. Very well, Teller. For the moment, you are dismissed.”

  Teller rose and tendered Barston a perfect bow. When he rose, Barston nodded. “I will have to speak to the right-kin about a uniform more suited to this office. I will expect you tomorrow morning, after early breakfast. Punctuality,” he added, in a more severe tone of voice, “is prized.”

  After the boy had left, Barston gathered the letters and knocked at Gabriel’s door. It was a courtesy; he knew the schedule of appointments better than anyone, and he knew Gabriel was now alone. The right-kin preferred to deal with business in the earlier part of the day, when possible. Still, he waited to hear the muffled word that was almost certainly the command to enter before he opened the closed door.

  “Well?” Gabriel asked, noting what Barston carried.

  “He can obviously read,” Barston replied. “That part, at least, was not an idle boast.”

  “His writing?”

  “I did not have time to test that fully, but that is a matter of a few moment’s work.” He came and set the letters, in the piles that Teller had made, across the surface of the right-kin’s desk. Gabriel took them and glanced through them briefly; he raised one brow. “Not terrible,” he said at last. “His mistakes?”

  Barston handed him the eight letters.

  “I see.”

  Last, he handed him the one.

  Gabriel chuckled. “They always get this one wrong.”

  “The boy did not.”

  “Pardon?”

  “He sorted it into the pile demanding your immediate attention.”

  One gray brow rose. “He did, did he?”

  “Yes. His reasoning was sound.”

  “Barston, I’m shocked. I think you liked him.”

  Barston frowned. “That is rather personal, Gabriel. I have spoken with the boy for a handful of minutes.”

  Rolling his eyes, Gabriel said, “Your pardon, Barston. Give me your impressions, then.”

  “He is too young to convey the proper authority of your office, of course. He is also—and perhaps this is more significant—severely undereducated; his experiences have not brought him into contact with the type of people who are prone to correspond with your office.”

  “And?”

  Barston’s frown deepened. Gabriel, face straight, appeared to be enjoying himself.

  “Were his background to be known, I feel there are correspondents and visitors who would attempt to take advantage of that fact; they would feel that he would be more easily intimidated.”

  Gabriel nodded.

  “However, he is polite enough, given his background. He is clearly honest, and while he was intimidated by the test itself, he was direct in his answers.”

  “You’ve been demanding an assistant for some time,” Gabriel told his secretary, as he leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms over his head. “And gods know, I’ve tried to find you a suitable candidate. How many people have you walked through this office?”

  “Seven. In two years,” the secretary replied severely.

  “None of the seven met with your approval. Does this boy?”

  “I rather think that beside the point, ATerafin.”

  “How so?”

  “The Terafin herself has requested that we find suitable employ for the child.”

  Gabriel laughed out loud, which further soured Barston’s expression. “Oh no you don’t, old friend. You are not allowed to hide behind The Terafin in this case. I am, in case it’s escaped your attention, the right-kin. If I deem her request either unsuitable or detrimental to my duties—which depend upon the smooth functioning of this office—she won’t blink.”

  Barston did not look overjoyed. “I trust you are enjoying this?”

  “Immeasurably,” Gabriel replied. “You haven’t answered the question.”

  “The office requires a certain degree of care,” Barston said. “I cannot fully answer your question without a trial period of some sort.” He folded his arms across his chest.

  “You have it, of course.”

  “But I feel, in spite of his mean birth, that the boy has potential. I also feel that because of that birth, he is far less likely to make demands of me, or the office, that are unreasonable or difficult. Very well, Gabriel, since it amuses you so much. Yes. I would like to take the boy on.”

  “I’ll talk to The Terafin about his clothing.”

  It was Barston’s turn to roll his eyes. “I’ll bring you
the letter to sign, shall I?”

  “Lucille is,” Jarven said, “a good girl.”

  Finch blinked. What she had expected, given Lucille’s description, she couldn’t remember. What she faced without those expectations was a man who was older than most of the people she saw in the inner holdings. His was a crisp and dignified age, to be sure, but it was evident in the lines and folds across his face, in the slender fragility of his hands, in the pale cast of his skin.

  His hair was white, his beard thin, and his eyes a warm brown; his nose was slender and also slightly curved with age.

  “Oh, I know she presents a very fierce front,” he continued, his hands folded across his chest, as he leaned back into his chair. “And she can be quite ferocious.” He said this last with a fond smile. It was almost as if he were talking about a child. “She says you’ve come to apprentice with her?”

  Finch nodded, not caring to disagree with anything Lucille ATerafin had said.

  “Well, you’ll find the office interesting. It is certainly busy,” he added. “Can you make a decent cup of tea?”

  Tea was not a habitual drink of the den. Finch hesitated.

  He may have been old, but he read it correctly. “I suppose it can’t be helped; tea often seems out of fashion with young people, who are always in a hurry. But when Lucille makes tea,” he added, for she had gone to do exactly that, “it can take thirty minutes.”

  Ellerson’s tea took a good deal less time.

  “It’s not the tea itself, you understand,” he confided. “It’s the office business. She can’t walk across the room without someone asking a question. Or ten.”

  “I don’t think I’d dare.”

  “You’d be surprised,” he told her. “There’s always some fire that needs putting out, and Lucille, where such fires are concerned, is a walking bucket. She does have a bit of a temper, and she speaks her mind; usually, where there’s been trouble, there’s a good deal of mind to speak.

  “But she appreciates hard work and effort. Give her both, and you’ll do well here.”

  He didn’t ask Finch about her qualifications; he didn’t ask her about very much at all.