The Muckracker's Tale

Chapter 2

2

It was a relief, when I got back to my room, to discover my roommates were elsewhere.

I lay on the bed, gritting my teeth against the pain. The Warden had laid the cane on as hard as always, and I knew I’d be in agony for days, no matter how much soothing ointment or lotion I rubbed onto my buttocks. It was nothing to be ashamed of, but… I knew everyone was going to know, by the end of the day, what happened. Unless Juliet kept it quiet… she might, I told myself. She wouldn’t want anyone to know a mere second-year student had managed to spy on her, or everyone else would start trying to spy on her too.

Bitch, I thought. It was hard to be charitable when my rear was on fire. If she hadn’t tattled to the grandmaster …

I thrust that thought out of my head. Dad had always taught me to count my blessings and I’d been lucky, very lucky, the grandmaster had come along in time to keep them from trying to wipe my memories. Or something. Juliet and Blair were too well connected for anyone’s peace of mind. They might have gotten away with accidentally wiping my mind completely or something worse, far worse. The caning was small beer, compared to what they could have done and then sworn blind it was a terrible accident. I’d live.

My thoughts ran in circles. Who would be the new supervisor? Would it be someone who understood the importance of a free press, or someone who thought I had to be kept under control for my own good? It would be an older student, I was sure. The tutors didn’t have time to spare, not when everyone was adapting to a new grandmaster and everything he brought with him. Anyone who showed they had free time by offering to supervise the broadsheet would rapidly discover they had something else to do, if they weren’t fired by a new boss who wanted to cut headcount. Dad had run a long story on a sawmill that had sacked half its workforce after the new manager had discovered half the workers didn’t do much of anything. Personally, I suspected the old manager had been a fool or blatantly corrupt.

I won’t give up, I told myself. I’ll keep writing even if they shut me down.

It wasn’t a pleasant thought. Dad had worked hard to send me to Whitehall. He wouldn’t be pleased if I got in trouble, even if I escaped expulsion. He’d understand the urge to write the truth — and do whatever it took to get the story — but he’d always been reluctant to let me anywhere near the less savoury aspects of his business. There had been times when he’d been late, and I’d feared he’d never come home again. How much worse would it be for a father who watched his daughter go into danger, knowing she might not come home either?

There was a sharp knock on the door. It opened a moment later. I tensed. My roommates would have just walked in, and everyone else knew to wait until they were called before opening the door. The hexes we’d put on the doorknob should have been enough to deter any of our peers or stop them in their tracks if they tried to break through the warning spells. Was it the housemother? Or… I swore under my breath as Juliet waltzed into the bedroom as though she owned the place. She was an older student. She’d probably dismantled the protections — or simply walked through them — with a flick of her wrist.

A flash of alarm shot though me as I sat up, wincing at the pain. Why was she here? The tradition was absolute. Senior students were not allowed to enter junior bedrooms without a very good excuse. She was no longer my mentor… did she want revenge? Or…

Juliet smiled at me, so sweetly I knew something was up. “I wouldn’t sit on your buttocks like that,” she commented. “It’ll just make them sorer.”

I stood, folding my hands under my breasts. Technically, I should probably curtsey to her or something, but she was the guest in my bedroom. Besides, no amount of grovelling would make up for the fact she’d caught me spying on her. Sure, she wasn’t allowed to do anything to me directly — at least not without a lot of provocation — but there were plenty of ways for her to make my life miserable if she wanted. I had rivals amongst my peers. She could give them a little extra training, then send them out to hex me. Or worse.

It was hard to keep my voice calm. “What can I do for you?”

Juliet smirked. “You can do exactly as I say,” she said. I knew what she was going to say next before the words crossed her lips. “I’m your new boss.”

I tried not to wince. Again. “You?”

“The Grandmaster felt a young and immature student such as yourself, eighteen going on eight, would benefit from the supervision of an older and wiser student,” Juliet said, not bothering to hide her glee. “Your broadsheet has potential, or so I am told, but it won’t survive the year without some supervision. I mean, really. What were you thinking when you spied on my meeting?”

I ignored the question. “What makes you think you’re qualified to supervise the broadsheet?”

Juliet shrugged. “What makes you think you’re qualified to write the broadsheet?”

“I’ve been writing since I was old enough to hold a chalk,” I said, sharply. It was true. Dad had taught me how to read and write Old Script, before Lady Emily had introduced a newer and better alphabet anyone could master. No wonder the Scribes hated her. She’d rendered them useless in the blink of an eye. “I wrote my very first story when I was a little girl and kept going, to the point I was trusted to write the annual address for my class last year. What about you?”

“I have common sense,” Juliet said, snidely. “Really, what were you thinking?”

I looked her in the eye. “I was thinking everyone needs to know how the sports captains make their decisions,” I told her, bluntly. “Why do you think they shouldn’t?”

“Everyone loves sausage,” Juliet countered. “But they don’t want to know how sausage is made.”

It was hard not to roll my eyes. I’d grown up in a small town. I might not have been a farmer or a butcher, but I’d done my fair share of cooking; and I knew how raw meat was turned into sausage. Proof, if I’d needed it, that Juliet had an aristocratic background. A commoner girl, even a wealthy one, would have basic skills drilled into her from birth by her mother. Juliet would have been taught a great deal, but cooking wouldn’t have been on the list.

My lips quirked. It was funny how many boys insisted alchemy wasn’t really cooking. How could it? Cooking was women’s work. Never mind that alchemy used the same skills as cooking, and a person with a solid understanding of cooking could produce wonders in an alchemy cauldron. They weren’t the same because if they were it would mean the men were doing women’s work…

Juliet glowered. “What’s so funny?”

“My mind was wandering,” I said. I’d have shared the joke with my roommates — it was always funny to laugh at how men would argue desperately to prove they weren’t doing women’s work — but Juliet wouldn’t see the joke. I wondered, idly, if she’d had the sense to ask for cooking lessons when she went home, after a year of alchemy. “I think…”

I took a breath. “Maybe people don’t like to think of how sausage is made” — I doubted it; slaughtering animals and preparing meat for consumption wasn’t for the faint-hearted — “but that doesn’t mean they don’t need to know.”

“And if they did, what would they do with it?” Juliet looked around the room, her lips thinning in distaste. She probably thought she was slumming by gracing our bedroom with her presence. Bitch. It wasn’t as if the room was a mess. It was just a little untidy. “The players have to be assigned to teams, and traded, in as cold and calculating a manner as possible. They cannot be allowed to influence the captains…”

I raised my eyebrows. “Can I quote you on that?”

Juliet’s face reddened. She knew I’d been spying on them. Did she know — or guess — how much I’d overheard? It wasn’t as if she’d had a chance to interrogate me… for all she knew, I could have crawled into the air vent a few seconds before the rat landed on me. I might not have overheard anything… I hoped she thought so, although I doubted it. Juliet wouldn’t have become Captain-General of Sports if she was a complete idiot.

Surprisingly, she kept her voice calm. “We do not discuss our decisions with the players,” she said. A hint of condescension entered her tone. “It would cause offense. So would a misleading report written by a second-year brat who has barely reached her majority, one without the experience to understand that some decisions are better made out of the public eye. You can no more explain our decisions than you could explain how healing magic works or how best to apply it to save lives.”

The scorn in her voice made my blood boil. I’d always hated people talking down to me, as if I were some kind of idiot. I might be young, and I might lack specialised knowledge and experience, but that didn’t mean I was stupid. Besides, Dad had always insisted the mark of a true expert was the talent of explaining himself to the layman. Juliet didn’t seem capable of explaining anything, let alone the reasoning behind her decisions.

I met her eyes. “You could try to explain them to me,” I said. If Juliet had to justify putting one player ahead of another, it would level the playing field. Secrecy, Dad had always said, was the keystone of tyranny. “And then I could break them down so the common folk could understand.”

Juliet snorted. “I have no interest in explaining my decisions to commoners,” she said, loading the word with as much contempt as possible. “Anyone who really cared about sports would understand both the secrecy and the reasoning behind it and let the matter rest.”

“How convenient,” I said, sardonically.

Juliet drew back her hand, as if she was about to slap me, then thought better of it. “Let me make a few things clear,” she said, instead. “I am your new supervisor. I am your boss. I have the final say on what does, and what doesn’t, get printed in the broadsheet. You will take direction from me. You will follow orders to the letter. You will write the stories I tell you to write, then show them to me and wait for my approval before you print them. Do you understand me?”

“I created the broadsheet,” I protested. “Whitehall Times is mine!”

“You convinced the school to fund it,” Juliet said, snidely. “Didn’t the Grandmaster tell you? The school funds it, and so the school has the final say in everything.”

Her lips twisted into a nasty smile. “You can quit, of course,” she added. “You don’t have to stay on the staff. Perhaps it would be better if you didn’t.”

She leaned forward, pushing her way into my personal space. “And do you know what’ll happen, the moment you disobey me? Or publish something without my permission? You’ll be kicked out and that will be that.”

I clenched my fists. The urge to hit her was almost overpowering. Juliet was fit and healthy — and years on the playing fields had given her remarkable strength and endurance — but if I hit her hard enough, the first time, she’d go down. Dad had shown me a few tricks… I gritted my teeth, forcing my fists to unclench. Juliet was deliberately provoking me. If I hit her, I’d be expected so fast I’d be out the school before her body hit the ground. And then, what would I do? Dad had been lucky to get me into the school. He wouldn’t be able to get me into another.

“Fine,” I said. It wasn’t fine and she knew it. “I hope you understand the importance of keeping the public informed.”

Juliet stepped back and straightened. “I hope you understand the importance of sports,” she said. “The Grandmaster — the old Grandmaster — was never keen on participating in international contests, for fear it would divert attention from the necromancers on the far side of the mountains. He didn’t even want a duelling club. Grandmaster Gordian, on the other hand, wants to reverse that policy. Whitehall — he says — will start sending teams to contests as quickly as possible, which means the coming championship is of vital importance. The winning team will go to the international games.”

“Great,” I said, sarcastically. There were a few people who made a living through sports — or jousting — but it wasn’t really an option unless your family was very rich. You had to spend money in order to make money — or, in this case, buy the supplies — and there was no guarantee of any prize money. Dad had reported on a joust — more of a war game, he’d said — where the winner was ordered to give up his booty to his superiors, without even a hint of compensation. He’d had no recourse. I hoped he’d found a way to ensure his social superiors looked like idiots in the next joust. “Do we get to go with them?”

“This is important,” Juliet snarled. “Do you understand me?”

“It’s important to you,” I said. “I…”

Juliet reached out — lightning-fast — and grabbed my collar. “The broadsheet will report on each and every one of the games, from now until the final contest that determines who goes to the international arena,” she snapped, pulling me forward. “You will write those reports personally, instead of sneaking around and poking your nose in matters that are none of your business. Or else!”

I couldn’t resist. “Or else what?”

She shoved me. I fell back on the bed. I bit my lip to keep from yelping in pain.

“Or else you’ll be kicked out of the broadsheet and probably out of the school,” Juliet snapped. She loomed over me, hands resting on her hips. “Get one thing straight! You were caught spying on other students. Older students! Do you think anyone will take your broadsheet seriously, if everyone hears what you did? Or trust you with anything?”

She met my eyes. “Do you really want a reputation for prying into someone’s private business?”

“I wasn’t prying into your bedroom,” I muttered. “The office is fair game…”

I cut that thought off before it could go any further. There was very little privacy at boarding school, not until you became a senior and got a private room of your own. My roommates and I had few barriers between us, so we guarded what little privacy we had tightly and did what we could to ensure the others had some of their own. To turn someone into a frog was a mild prank, but to go poking into someone’s trunk was an unforgiveable offense deserving permanent shunning, if not a curse that would haunt the victim for the rest of their lives. If someone thought I’d done something so vile…

Juliet smirked. She had me.

“I’ll be speaking to the rest of your” — Juliet held her hands up to make quote marks — “staff later in the day. They’ll be under the same rules as you. Nothing, and I mean nothing, gets printed without my permission. The broadsheet will focus on matters of interest to the school, from new lectures and tutors to sports and exams, not dig up controversy. You can do that later, when you graduate from school and go into… whatever you want to do, when you’re not annoying me.”

I snorted. That wasn’t remotely fair. I’d barely had any contact with her, even when she’d been a mentor to my class, until now. This was the closest we’d ever been. I told myself it would only be for a year or so. Juliet would graduate, unless she had to repeat her final year, and go on into the wider world. Hell, after the championship, her exams would start to loom. She would have no more time to supervise us. If I kept my head down and bided my time, I could retake control. And then, who knew? The sky was the limit.

“You will report on the next game, the day after tomorrow,” Juliet said. “I want a good story, one that will get more talent on the fields. Do you understand me?”

I stood and made a long slow curtsey, keeping the movements so slow it was clearly sarcastic. “Yes, My Lady.”

Juliet pretended not to notice. “Good.” Her lips curved into a sneer. “Behave yourself.”

She turned and marched out. I made a rude gesture at her back as the door closed behind her, then turned back to the bed. It was hard not to give into despair. Juliet… Juliet was the supervisor? I didn’t know the older students very well, but I was sure there were dozens — perhaps hundreds — who would be better. Juliet hated me… I wondered, grimly, why she hadn’t fired me on the spot, then realised she couldn’t if she wanted to keep me under her thumb. As long as I wanted to work on Whitehall Times, I’d have to bend the knee to her.

It won’t last, I told myself. Juliet would have to organise her time carefully, when the exams came round, and I doubted she’d put the broadsheet at the top of her priority list. She’ll lose interest in bossing us around, and we’ll be able to go our own way. Again.

But I knew, as I sat gingerly on the bed, that it would feel like a very long time indeed.