The Iron Thorn - Caitlin Kittredge [7]
Cal looked at the dining hall, still lit, and sighed. “I guess it’s useless to try and pretend we’re just late.”
Mrs. Fortune proved him right by flying out the hall’s double doors, her long wool skirt and cape flapping behind her. “Aoife! Aoife Grayson, where on Galileo’s round earth have you been?”
Mr. Hesse was hard on her heels. “Daulton, front and center. You know you’re past curfew.” Mr. Hesse was as sharp as Mrs. Fortune was round, and they stood like an odd couple in the lights of the dining hall.
“Aoife, you’re filthy and you stink like a whore’s perfume,” Mrs. Fortune said. I was still chilled but I felt my cheeks heat in humiliation—and in relief that she hadn’t pried at me further. “Go to your room and wash up,” she continued. “You’ll get no supper as punishment.”
No supper might as well have been a warm embrace. If Mrs. Fortune found out I’d been in Old Town and had contact with a viral creature, I could be expelled.
Mr. Hesse cleared his throat loudly, and Fortune favored him with a raised eyebrow. Mrs. Fortune had climbed mountains and trekked Africa as a girl, before she’d landed here. Few crossed her. “What is it, Herbert?” she demanded. I waited. Hesse was notorious for handing out canings and detentions. He was also far more suspicious that we were all misbehaving at all times than Mrs. Fortune. I drew a breath, held it.
“Well?” Mrs. Fortune asked him.
“The girl was wandering the city after six bells, doing stone knows what, and you’re merely withholding a meal?” Hesse said. To punctuate his opinion of my punishment he snapped, “Daulton, the quadrangle. Now. Stand at attention until I come for you.” Standing in formation on the quad didn’t seem unpleasant, on the surface, until you’d be standing at attention, perfectly still, for hours in the cold. Marcos Langostrian had lost a small toe last year from frostbite after he’d been outside all night. He’d deserved it, the little worm, but I felt a pang for Cal as Mr. Hesse glared at him.
Cal heaved a sigh. “See you tomorrow, Aoife. And thank you for … er … before. You’re pretty great.” He set off at a jog for the quad. Hesse peered at me through his glasses. The thick Bakelite frames were too big for his face and made him look even mousier.
“What was he thanking you for, Grayson? Did you lift your skirt for him on the way home? I know you city wards and how you operate, especially the ones with mothers in a—”
“Mister Hesse,” Mrs. Fortune said in a voice that could have stripped gears. “Thank you for your assistance. Aoife, go on to your room. Don’t you and the unfortunate Mr. Daulton have an exam tomorrow?”
“Yes,” I said, glad it was mostly dark and Hesse couldn’t see that he’d made me turn colors. I’d learned a long time ago that shouting and fighting over my mother or my reputation just made things worse, and talking sass to a Head of House, well … it didn’t bear thinking about after the trouble I was already in.
It didn’t mean that the thought didn’t spring to mind, to wipe Mr. Hesse’s superior smirk from his mouth. He thought he knew me. The entire Academy thought they had the blueprint of Aoife Grayson, city ward and madwoman’s daughter.
They didn’t know a thing.
“Off you go, then. You’ve been dismissed.” Fortune made a shooing motion with her hands. I trudged to the girls’ dormitory, mounting the four flights of stairs to the second-year floor, tucked beneath the garrets of the old place. The Lovecraft Academy of Arts and Engines was built from several stately homes and their assorted outbuildings, and the girl’s dorm had been a stable. In the summer you could still smell hay and horses up under the eaves. It reminded me of a ghost, a tiny connection to a past that had no necrovirus, no madhouses and no Aoife Grayson, charity student.
My small desk, with its whirlwind of blueprint paper, engineering