The Master's Voice

When—not if, but when—I get my hands on Tom Forrester, I am going to take his bloody badge myself and then I am going to let Aurélien know that my back is permanently turned to anything that happens between them as long as it doesn’t happen in public. Valeria Malaspina’s gone looking for him because she believes he’s in trouble somewhere. Charis Leffoy said to let her, she won’t get hurt. I suppose Leffoy would know, but I don’t like it. Valeria Malaspina is smaller than Delia was two years ago; I don’t care if she fought with the partisans in Toscana, falling masonry will still kill her.

Politely put I think Valeria is thinking with her clitoris, and Charis says she’s done it before. I believe the little shit is hidden up in the closed shelves of the library taking advantage of the chaos to make off with rare books that they won’t let him use without supervision, because he’s always in there, and he lets Florrie Leffoy do his work for him. Well, Florrie Leffoy may have been in command when Trevena was under siege, but he isn’t up to giving orders to people who aren’t used to taking them, and Kyteler was drafted by Dash and Popescu to be on a team with Dash’s old boyfriends from Transylvania, so once again I’ve got no fucking backup. I told Jeannot if he ever wants to be respected again that now is his chance to show Chattox he wasn’t so bad and I made Trelawney help with the firsties. Casaubon would have been my first choice, but Callista and Mercuria have been wrecks since their uncle died.

Charis and I have at least let it be known that the drinking is to be confined to those who have their own and there are not to be any sales of liquor or drugs in the bloody Great Hall, and what has the world come to when people in Avalon need to be told to keep Avalon’s business in Avalon, anyway? Chattox has let us get soft. I won’t be outdone by bloody St Hilda’s. We may not be having prayer meetings and singalongs, but we can fucking well play whist and make polite conversation.

The worst thing about all this was that I really rather did like Greenwood. Both of them, even. I won’t miss either of the Baddocks and their older sister scares me.

I am skiving off Compounding. And Cordélia doesn’t know it, yet, but she’s skiving off Hebrew. She got plenty of practise this weekend, and they’re not required to show up for languages if they know them well enough.

I have had to be responsible all bloody weekend and I am going to have to be responsible again starting at teatime. But I’m going to spend three hours this afternoon putting that little bitch through her paces until we both feel human again, and van Rensselaer will let me off, because he knows what kind of weekend I’ve had.

She’d better not be wearing anything under that skirt or there will be forfeits to pay. I think maybe I hope she is.

If Chattox, Blackwell and Goyle collectively ever agree to let Forrester, Dashwood-and-Kyteler and Charis Leffoy out of school for a wedding at the same time that they let Goldstein and Zeller out for holidays again, I’m going to mount an Inquisition of my own. It is also depressing to consider all the people who aren’t even Ducas’ friends who are attending this wedding, when I am not, both because I can’t get out of school to go, and also because my grandfather and Lord DeVries treated her abominably at the Hell-Fire Club.

There is no justice in this life. I hope Delia is having more fun than I am. If I were not prefect I could at least share the abysmal absinthe Thibault and Dee have managed to scrounge for Austin Parkinson’s birthday.

I wonder what my grandfather would think if I eloped with a half-caste Jewess. Perhaps if we were all lucky he’d die of an aneurism. I’m sure Celerity would think of something suitably caustic to say, I’d be disappointed in her if she didn’t. Not that she’s doing herself any favours by continuing to cling to the Greengrass girl. It is odd, how she seems to have managed to find in herself some emotion which at least resembles loyalty. And strange that she would have chosen that particular object to which to attach that emotion.

I never write twice in one day, I seldom write twice in a month, but if I don’t write this down I’ll never believe it.

Giselle killed herself.

I just found the letter from my parents. I’ve had it for a few days, but I’d been dreading it so I hadn’t opened it. We were going to be betrothed, and Giselle killed herself. Giselle killed herself. So she wouldn’t have to marry me. I didn’t like her either. But surely she has to have realised that since I didn’t like her, I’d have done whatever I could to help her fight this, that I’m of age and I don’t have to consent, that there are methods and recourses; does she think I’m some sort of brute who’d go along with being married to a girl I hate so I could hurt her?

Flint says she can’t tell me what happened but she swears it wasn’t suicide. But MacAlister talks like it was suicide and Moon was practically bawling all through the meeting. I don’t know what to think. But the way people are looking at me...Rasputin said, when I came back, “Ducas may not like me but at least women aren’t killing themselves to get away from me. Garnier must have been afraid she’d get some foul disease that lives in mud.” I challenged him. Leffoy said she’d be my second. But I can’t have this one in duelling club, which is a problem: if I kill him, I want there to be witnesses that it was a fair fight. As fair a fight as one can have with Rasputin.

Kyteler and Dashwood have already gone to bed. It’s getting late enough that people will notice if Delia comes up here. I suppose it’s just me and the claret. I wish I had absinthe. But I know better than to knock on Dashwood and Kyteler’s door.

Holy fuck, Chattox went and made me a prefect. They don’t write this kind of comedy for the stage in Londinium. Delia, little bitch that she is, can’t stop giggling. (And she most surely is a little bitch. But I’m the only one who gets to say so, because I know what I mean by it.) Unfortunately being a prefect means that I am actually now an authority figure, and over the likes of Chandra Lockhart, Yegor Kiryakov and Marcus Avery. Kiryakov was Rasputin’s pet, and he simpers at me like a girl. Rasputin is sulking about his badge and muttered something to me about muddy pricks, and I told him I heard he’d got crumbs stuck to his, and that I’m getting bored since I can’t duel Jeannot, given that his sister just died. So he slunk right off like the coward he is. If only I could get Kiryakov to see what a coward he is. Poor Nadezhda, to be stuck with that as a brother. I’d trade her for Claudia, though. At least I could beat Kiryakov.

It seems the last time I wrote in here Dash and Kyteler were still uncertain of each other. O tempora, o mores. I think they would be married now if the school rules would permit them to be married and remain here. They might as well be, certainly. Kyteler must have powers that the cat-eyed half-giant I saw Dash with on Nightshade knows not. (I said this to Dash, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him laugh so hard in all my life. Then he just said ‘quite the reverse, and we’re all better off for it’ and didn’t explain, and I told Goldstein that I didn’t think I wanted to know, and he said that that was because I do think. And that no, he doesn’t know either, and if I ever find out not to tell him.) And now Kyteler is a prefect and they are both on the Inquisitorial Squad. This means that they have a room of their own, for which their former roommates are entirely grateful.

Goyle plays the part of Inquisitor very well. I know that’s what they call the War Bureau’s agents, but really, he has a robe and a cassock and he isn’t afraid to use them. Tante Sophy is ten kinds of ecstatic; I think she had a crush on him when she was a girl. I hope she was less obvious than Mablin, although at least with her I wouldn’t have to listen to Vieira’s fits. (I have to be nice to Vieira no matter how idiotic he is, because he holds the power of life or death over Delia, and because I enjoy making Cynthia writhe.)

So now I get to chaperone Dash and Kyteler at the Alexander. Delia would laugh and say that I bring it all on myself. I wouldn’t mind except she’s right. Though I wonder, really, if Dash is ready to settle for a schoolboy after some of the people I’ve seen him with over the summer. I’m no judge of male flesh but I saw him with a man in the Nightshade district who was calling him foreign pet names, and you could have made two of Kyteler out of the bloke and had leftovers. And old Mrs Parkinson is sure he’s been one of Nicodemo Malaspina’s internal affairs. Ordinarily I’d laugh that off, but since there’s absolutely no proof and it’s Dash, not someone like Rohan Chakravarty or Edouard Thibault, perhaps it’s true.

Tante Sophy hasn’t written back to say when I can come for supper, and Claudia insists on boring me with her tales of how she charmed the Leffoy heir last night. I don’t know Florian Leffoy, so maybe he really is enough of an idiot to be charmed by Celerity Minor. At eleven I suppose anything’s possible, but I doubt that any son of Lord Leffoy, God rest her soul, and may she have a thousand virgins in the afterlife for making a fool of our grandfather, could be that stupid. Poor little brat. Mother is being her usual vicious self which inclines me to think there were too many children at Lady Leffoy’s house for her to be able to get what she wanted. Why she didn’t saddle Celerity with Claudia like she usually does I don’t know, because I wasn’t here.

I thought I saw Delia on Nightshade yesterday, but of course it wasn’t, it was some local girl who’d have let me do as I pleased for a couple of shillings, but if I wanted to get the pox, I know where to get it for free.

Ducas sent a note. She’s run off and eloped with Malaspina after all. If he says word one to her about her misadventures at the Club I’ll make him wish he only had to fight Macmillan. I wondered for a moment why she told me and not Grandfather, but then I’m the one who actually is her friend, whereas Grandfather got her in trouble at home and would try to get her turned out of school if he knew, just because she wouldn’t be his mistress. I wonder if Tante Sophy will mind if I invite them both for supper. I suppose I shall have to. Goldstein had the right of it: Malaspina doesn’t deserve her, and Kyteler doesn’t deserve Dash.

Grandfather took me to the club last night. He had Ducas with him and she was dreadfully embarrassed when she realised who I was. I swore myself to secrecy because really, it’s a crime what Malaspina did to her and if he thinks I won’t have anything to say to him about that the next time I see him, he’d best think again. She makes a lovely Little Sister, and there’s not any reason she can’t become a full-fledged Sister; her pedigree goes all the way back to the fucking Imperial court of bloody Byzantium. She doesn’t do a thing for me—she’s bloody Ducas—but she’s awfully fit in the habit.

She had more fun than anyone else there. I don’t think I want to know what she did in the back rooms but she didn’t look unhappy in the morning. Grandfather asked her if she wanted a flat of her own, so I suppose he’s pleased with her, which means she’ll like as not do anything. He can’t believe she’s going back to school after Malaspina jilted her. I told him she was going to be a constable. That upset him a bit; I think he thought he’d get another mistress out of this. But Ducas knows my grandfather’s mistresses don’t come out of it well. He told her she ought to become an Inquisitor, she’s got the connections; I don’t think she knew what to say to that. I know he must want her to spy on Kyteler, since she lives with his mistress, and I also know she’s smarter than that.

Delia wrote, but I can’t write back; she has parents, allegedly. I miss her. Claudia saw it and was awfully catty. This is the point where Goldstein, whom we tolerate because he’s kind to Dash, would make some idiot remark about the Pope’s religion.