river_meimei | (no subject)

The kitchen: ruled by a plump and autocratic cook with a horde of scurrying servants.

The hallways: lit by gas and sunlight, wallpapered, lined with classrooms. (River's shoulders are tight and hunched every time she looks in one of these rooms. She looks in every one anyway. Every room; every corner.)

The cellar: damp, dim, full of shelves and barrels and glass jars. Pickles, blanched vegetables, potatoes and parsnips and onions. Coal and wood for fires.

The attic: dusty, dim as the cellar, and full of papers and stored paintings rather than root vegetables. A few servants' bedrooms, tiny and spare, with the kind of desperate cleanliness that's meant to make up for a lack of actual possessions.

Hardly anyone notices one more servant girl, especially one who keeps well out of the way of other servants. A few people -- a portly teacher with a bluff avuncular face, the cook, an imperious young teenager -- give her orders, barked or distractedly mumbled. River nods, tries not to flinch and not to glower, and scurries on with the proper cowed air. She ignores the orders once she's out of sight, of course.

Mostly, she keeps to the shadows. The corners, the back stairways, the closets; even fewer people look there.

She listens for whispers said and unsaid, for secrets and plans and screams. She looks at the walls: the cracks, the spaces, measuring dimensions with her eyes while her fingers tick and twist through mental calculations at her side.

(Whatever else may be said of the Academy, River learned there. Learned well.)

River watches, and River listens, and what River finds is: everything matches. Everything adds up.

There's a discreet back stairwell for servants' usage, but no hidden passages. There are trapdoors -- for laundry. There are rooms the students aren't allowed in -- for the faculty, or the servants.

But there's nothing sinister, in the building or lurking in anyone's thoughts. Nothing but the usual, petty human venalities.

It's an Edwardian girls' school.

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Mary has some sense of the requirements of subtlety.

If she were in Milliways, for example, she would respond to this, quite reasonably, that Mr. Wolfe does not care in the least if any of the young ladies are attractive. But she is not in Milliways, and so she snaps her mouth shut and glowers at Galadan instead - calling her a good student does not make up for creating imaginary missing work for her; he could surely have thought of a better excuse!

The discussion of this matter had better take a while.

Miss Stonewell hesitates a moment.

But Mr Wolfe seems to have the matter well in hand, and she has other business to attend to. Mary Lennox is not the only pupil who needs extra monitoring in this school, and now she has to make time to report to Hannah about the new servant girl's apparent inability to remember her place.

"Very well," she says to Galadan, the pinched irritation relaxing slightly. "Thank you."

"And you," she adds sternly to Mary, "shall see me later this evening. It seems you need some reminders of behavior proper to a young lady. Which, by the way, does not include screwing your face up in such a disagreeable manner."

"Good day, Mr Wolfe," she tells him, polite again, and sails off towards the back door (not the servants' one, of course) and her own work.

River, crouched over the lavender, watches the teacher depart, and her face is sober and hard to read.

Galadan remains silent until Miss Stonewell is out of earshot.

Then he flicks a quick glance at River, eyebrows raised.

It's not an entirely unexpected development, but it's hardly ideal, either.

"Subterfuge will, I fear, never be your forte, Mary."

Mary flushes dull red.

"I do not want to lie," she mutters, rather embarrassed.

"I can sneak and be quiet and so on. I can even pick locks. Anyways," she adds, more loudly, "I did not give River away. Miss Stonewell was cross with me, but she always is, so it hardly matters."

This is perhaps an exaggeration, but.

"My name is Becky," River tells Galadan soberly.

This isn't a correction; an explanation, perhaps.

"The walls," she adds, softer, "are walls."

To Mary, seriously, "She's cranky." Whether this refers to Mary or to Miss Stonewell is up for interpretation.

"And shall I send you on another errand, Becky?"

He can probably think of one, depending on where she needs to go.

"Everyone here," Mary says, glumly, "is either cranky or silly."

Which category Galadan falls into, NOBODY KNOWS.

River makes a slight face at Galadan.

It's at an angle such that no one looking from the school doors or windows could spot the expression, perhaps by design or perhaps merely fortunately.

"No," she says amiably. "I'll tell them you did."

Beat.

"I'm River," she adds. This is said helpfully; whether it's meant for Galadan or Mary isn't quite clear either.

One corner of his mouth twitches imperceptibly, then he inclines his head in a slight nod.

"It is somewhat unfortunate that I cannot gainsay Mary, at the moment."

More than somewhat, even.

"Still. Rest assured that it is bearable."

At least for him, for now. It's almost entertaining to thwart both the faculty's efforts at pinning him down and the girls' efforts to garner his attention.

Almost entertaining. His benevolence can only last so long.

And Galadan has been here less than a week. Mary would like to point out that she has been enduring for months.

"It is better now that Galadan is here," Mary allows. "I am learning more, anyways, but how I should rather be home!"

River's eyes drop to Mary's hands; she nods a little.

"Surveillance," she says after a moment, and softer than before.

"Watch the subjective chronology."

"Needs must."

Galadan's voice is very dry.

"And how long may we expect your company, Becky?"

His lip twitches again, even more faintly this time.

Edited 2008-03-29 07:06 (UTC)

"I do not think you should be a servant here very long," Mary says, frowning faintly. "As you are not one normally I do not think you should find it pleasant."

"I'm not," River says seriously. "Just a face."

"Doesn't mean what they think."

Beat.

"No one is," she adds, still serious, and glances over at Galadan.

"I'm not supposed to consort with the young misses," she says with a rather different sort of solemnity, and pushes herself to her feet.

"Well enough," Galadan says, any and all amusement kept well out of his voice.

"Mary and I have much to discuss, as well."

Mary turns to Galadan, and folds her arms, remembering her initial complaint.

"I do all the homework!"

"You don't dance," River says, with a fleeting half-smile.

Two steps towards them; she reaches out to brush gentle fingertips over Mary's sleeve, and slip a sprig of lavender between the younger girl's fingers.

And then she turns away.

Galadan, meanwhile, takes this time to address Mary's lax attitudes toward Greek and Latin.

At length.

Which unfortunately results in Mary missing the entirety of her dance lessons for the day.

Gideon Wolfe will apologize to the dancing master over dinner. It's only polite.