(no subject)
Mar. 27th, 2008 12:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
river_meimeiThe 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.
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.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-29 07:02 am (UTC)"Surveillance," she says after a moment, and softer than before.
"Watch the subjective chronology."
no subject
Date: 2008-03-29 07:04 am (UTC)Galadan's voice is very dry.
"And how long may we expect your company, Becky?"
His lip twitches again, even more faintly this time.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-29 07:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-29 07:30 am (UTC)"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.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-29 07:35 am (UTC)"Mary and I have much to discuss, as well."
no subject
Date: 2008-03-29 07:37 am (UTC)"I do all the homework!"
no subject
Date: 2008-03-29 07:54 am (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-29 08:02 am (UTC)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.