“I’ll appoint a new prefect tomorrow,” Boscha said. “Dismissed.”
Alan turned and hurried out of the room, Geraldine right behind him. The other four swaggered out, power-walking like knights who’d just won a joust and were now on their way to collect their winnings. I glowered at their backs, all too aware I’d made a mistake. No one would have said anything to me if I’d sent them to the Warden and told him to take the skin off their backs, or assigned a detention so horrible that even the janitor would have wanted to file official complaints, but I couldn’t overrule Boscha. He’d accepted Walter’s explanation, and there were no legal grounds to object, not now. I’d expected him to do the right thing …
And yet, he’d accepted an explanation that was about the least convincing explanation I’d heard in five years of teaching. Or at least pretended to accept it. Why? Was he afraid of their families? Or … was there something else going on?
I left the room myself, not bothering to say my goodbyes. An unsubtle rudeness, but one I suspected he’d let pass. Probably. Whatever he was thinking … I sighed, inwardly, as I made a private resolution. Whatever he was doing, I was going to find out.
And then, I promised myself, I was going to make him regret it.
Chapter 3
It shouldn’t have surprised me, the following morning, that Walter was announced as the new prefect. It really shouldn’t. The original prefects were nominated by the staff, and elected after several rounds of horse-trading, but the grandmaster had the right to name replacements for any prefect who left the post without consulting his staff. No one else had a say. The female members of staff insisted Geraldine should be replaced by another girl, on the grounds a male prefect wasn’t allowed into female-only places and would be hexed blind if he tried, but Boscha ignored them. He didn’t even try to insist there were no suitable replacements amongst the girls. I wasn’t surprised.
I wasn’t surprised, either, that it didn’t take more than a day for Walter to become the least popular prefect in the school. He threw his weight around with abandon, backed up by Adrian and his two toadies. They harassed every student they could, including the ones they hadn’t been previously able to touch, often for the silliest reasons. A boy was tormented for not wearing the proper robe, a girl for not wearing the right underwear … I ground my teeth in fury when I heard that one, because I knew what he’d done to find out. There was no point in complaining to Boscha. Mistress Constance did so, only to be told the girls needed to learn how to defend themselves. I didn’t pretend to understand it. It was one thing to turn a blind eye to newborns being bullied, with an absurd explanation providing a fig-leaf of respectability, but quite another to ignore well-connected students who were being tormented. Their families could cause real trouble for Boscha …
It was a deeply frustrating week. I did my best to keep Walter and the others under supervision, at least in my classroom, but my ability to patrol the rest of the school was limited. They seemed to be aware I was watching them and taking delight in crawling as close to the line as possible, without ever crossing it and giving me the excuse I needed to kick them out of my classroom. It was just a matter of time before someone got really hurt—or killed. I watched the four bullies, and their victims, and silently prayed I could handle it when something exploded. It was going to happen. I knew it.
And I had to watch, dying a little inside, as Alan and Geraldine lost the will to live.
I’d never been knocked down that far, not ever. My brothers and I had been tough enough to beat Walter and his cronies, tough enough to take on the rest of our year and make sure they remembered us even if they won by sheer weight of numbers. We had always been able to rely on each other. Alan and Geraldine had no one. They were alone in the midst of a crowd, isolated from everyone else ... no one, I reflected sourly, wanted to be associated with them when it might mean getting targeted themselves. Alan had always been a quiet little thing, but he withdrew even further into himself; Geraldine, by contrast, had been a fun-loving girl when she’d entered the school. Now …
I probably should have reported it, when I caught Alan reading forbidden textbooks. He was no coward, whatever his other flaws, and he was no weakling either. In his hands, the rites and rituals could be really dangerous. And yet … I confiscated the books, gave him a lecture on the dangers of embracing the darkness, and sent him on his way. Boscha wouldn’t hesitate to expel him, if he knew about the books. He didn’t have to play politics with a boy of no real family …
But he was playing politics with Walter.
It took me a while to notice, but he was. Boscha had never shown any real interest in any of the students before, yet now … he was doing more than just showing open favouritism to Walter and his cronies. The pattern seemed odd … Boscha would sometimes override his tutors, when they handed out punishments, or give Walter privileges denied to other students, such as the right to visit Dragon’s Den during weekdays. It puzzled me. I couldn’t imagine any reason for such favouritism, certainly nothing Boscha could get elsewhere. The more I thought about it, the more it gnawed at me. What was he doing? I kept a close eye on the bully, watching and waiting, and eventually I saw him going deep into the school, to the tunnel that connected Whitehall to Blackhall. I was surprised he knew about it. My brothers and I had searched the school from top to bottom, when we’d been students, and we’d missed the tunnel. It hadn’t been until I’d found myself working closely with Lady Pepper that I’d been told about it. And yet, Walter knew?
Odd, I thought. Walter had never struck me as the kind of student who spent his time uncovering the school’s secrets, not when he could be pulling wings off flies instead. Did the Grandmaster tell him?
I slipped after him, down to the tunnel, and discovered it wasn’t just Walter. Nine students, all very well connected, were making their way through a passageway they weren’t supposed to know existed, wearing drab clothes that would make them harder to spot in the darkness. I wrapped myself in invisibility spells and followed, wondering just what I’d stumbled across. Walter could have asked for a pass, if he’d wanted to leave the school, and Boscha would have granted it. If he hadn’t asked Boscha … was he doing something that even Boscha would find abhorrent? Walter wasn’t stupid enough to engage in dark rites and sacrifices, was he? Or demon summoning? Or … I wasn’t in the best place to throw stones, but still …
Perhaps it’s something harmless, I thought. I’d known girls who’d used to sneak out of the school to go dancing, something I wouldn’t have thought would cause any trouble. But then, the thrill of getting away with something was very seductive to young minds. Not that I’d ever done anything like that, when I’d been a student. Of course not. Perish the thought. But with Walter involved … how could it be harmless?
It wasn’t easy to remain hidden in the tunnel as we reached the far end and clambered into Blackhall. The problem with being invisible is that no one knows you’re there—obviously—and they try to shut doors in your face, without ever knowing what they’re doing. Or worse. I suspected I’d be in some trouble if anyone ever figured out what I’d done. Getting into the hall was tricky—I had to cast multiple spells to conceal my presence and the signs of my presence—and it galled me to resort to such tricks. I was a senior tutor! I should be able to walk through the corridors without being invisible. But … students don’t normally do things they know they shouldn’t when they know a tutor is watching. Even Walter had more sense.