Michel Rosenthal (michelrosenthal) wrote in lightning_war, @ 2009-01-20 15:17:00 |
|
|||
Current mood: | carefully avoiding panic |
Thursday afternoon, 17 September 1942, at the Royal Academy of Wizardry...
Juliana Leffoy was happy in a way that she hadn’t been for so long that she’d almost forgot how it felt. She was working quietly on one of her own equations, while Michel Rosenthal ordered the notes he’d made from the discussion they’d had about the lectures she was going to assist him with that evening, and every now and again when she paused she looked up at him, bent over his work, his curls hanging down round his face. Sometimes she wanted to reach out and touch him, but she didn’t, because he was thinking. She thought it was probably possible to touch him in a way that wouldn’t break his concentration, but she didn’t want to risk it. It was enough just to be there with him, the way it had been at Ker-Ys.
But then she heard a knock on the door.
“Michel,” she said, in a particularly low tone of voice she’d learnt would get his attention when she was a child. “There’s someone here. Maybe I was wrong and this classroom is actually meant to be used? Do you want me to let them in?”
“Hm?” Michel looked up, still trying to decide how much actual discussion of ciphers was appropriate for the first seminar, where there would be at least as many eleven-year-olds as had sneaked in to see him before. “Oh, yes,” he said, and smiled at her, craning his neck a bit to see what she’d been working on. She was never idle; her mind was always restless, moving from one thing to the next, and he loved that about her. “We can find somewhere else if we have to.”
Liane smiled at him. “Sure,” she said. “Is it all coming together now?” She walked to the door and opened it just a crack, peering out to see who it was. “Oh. Professor Goyle.” She opened the door. “Do come in.”
Will Goyle strode into the room and sat down in one of the student desks, which was rather comical, because he was a tall man with long legs. Liane couldn’t help giggling. She sat back down on the edge of the desk, pulling her skirt down firmly over her knees, and glanced back over at Michel.
“Hello. Is there anything I can help you with?” Michel asked, and frowned. There she went, sitting on the desk again. She wasn’t facing him this time, but the view from behind wasn’t much less distracting. She wasn’t eleven any more; she didn’t need to do it to put herself on the same level as everyone else during meetings. But of course you couldn’t tell her that.
“Professor Rosenthal,” said Goyle, and grinned at them. “I had originally intended to ask you if there was anything you required in the Great Hall for your lectures, but…now I have troubling news.”
Michel didn’t care for the sound of that much. “What’s wrong?”
Goyle glanced from Liane to Michel, and then from Michel to Liane again. “The students in the fifth-form Divination session had visions,” he finally said. “Miss Leffoy is not to be left alone.” He beckoned to the open door, and Moruith walked in. “Moruith can take her down to her dormitory to change clothes for the seminar tonight and pack her things; Hypatia told me she was assisting you, so we’ll get her back to you shortly. We’ll allow you both to stay here tonight, but you should leave first thing in the morning, if you can’t adjust the length of your lectures so you can be finished by curfew.”
Michel looked up at Liane in horror. “What kind of visions?” He’d just got Liane back! He couldn’t bear the thought of anything else happening to her.
“I’d like to know what to avoid,” said Liane, and reached for his hand just as he reached for hers, tangling her fingers with his and holding on tight. “I’ve been in much more dangerous places than this, but…”
Goyle took a deep breath. “Fire and lightning,” he said. “That’s what you should avoid. Some of the students who saw these things believed that you had brought them here; they aren’t yet well trained, and Professor Stuart was dismissive.”
Liane frowned. “Colette,” she said quietly.
“Yes,” said Goyle, and frowned.
“Lightning,” Michel said, covering his nerves by retreating into analysis. “The recent lightning rains have been targeting the Leffoys. The last one only just missed Yvon. How safe are we here?”
“Where else are you going to go? It’s safer than town,” said Goyle. “There are three Leffoys on this campus: Charis, Florian and Juliana. The keep can stand a direct hit. Don’t let Juliana go up into any of the towers. I’ll cancel the first-years’ astronomy lesson, and that’ll take care of Florian, and then I’ll make sure that Charis is not on tonight’s patrol roster.” He sighed. “You’re probably safer here than you are in Londinium. The Leffoy estate might be safer, though.” After a moment, he shrugged. “You should probably go home, Juliana. You’re a queen; you are too important to risk.”
Liane lifted her chin. She wasn’t about to go back to the Leffoy estate. Who knew what would happen if she did? She held fast to Michel’s hand. “That’s exactly what Fortune said we weren’t allowed to do.”
“You’re not a student anymore,” Michel reminded her. “You don’t have to stay.” He frowned and squeezed her hand hard; he didn’t want her to leave, but Goyle had a point: where could they go that was safer?
“I’m not leaving you,” said Liane, looking down at Michel. “And I’d rather not leave Charis and Florian. The last time there was a siege, Florian ended up in charge, and he told Yvon to stay in Londinium in order to separate the targets. Yvon was separated from the rest of us, and he was the one who had the closest call. I promise I won’t go up in any towers…we can count the stars in the sky some other time.” She smiled at him fondly, remembering the night she’d fallen asleep with him up in the observatory; they’d been counting meteors with de Valois and Callebaut and someone else, whose name she had forgotten. Everyone had teased her for falling asleep, except Michel, who had fallen asleep not long after himself.
Michel couldn’t bring himself to smile back at her. He was too worried, and it didn’t help that she turned to Goyle and calmly said, “What was I doing in these visions? Was I dying?” How could she be so calm about the idea of dying? He glanced anxiously at Goyle, hoping he would say something that would tip the probabilities in any other direction.
Goyle hesitated for a moment, thinking, and then shook his head. “No,” he said after a moment. “Nobody saw you dying. No-one even saw you injured. You were…well, Saint-Germain thought you were responsible for the attack, she said, because she saw you directing the lightning.”
“There,” said Liane firmly, squeezing Michel’s hand tightly. “See? Not dying, Michel. I don’t plan on dying any time soon. I have too much to live for, now that we’re working together again. I’ve done the suicide mission and I’m not going to do any more, but if nobody saw me get hurt, then it’s probably Florian the bad guys’re after.” At that she scowled. “Did anyone see him? And tell me more about this directing the lightning, because I’m not any kind of weather witch, I never have been.”
Michel frowned thoughtfully. “Vision interpretation is an inexact art. You were directing the lightning—it’s probably not meant to be taken literally, but it could mean anything.”
Liane nodded. “It probably doesn’t mean that I’m going to take a direct hit, though,” she pointed out. “Florian. Did anyone see Florian?”
Goyle scowled, a deeply-etched expression. “No,” he admitted. “I’m not even sure they all saw you. They talked about what they saw. Miss Trevelyan and Miss Abbott did not see you at all, nor any of your family. But Miss Saint-Germain, Mr Vieira, Miss Goulston and Miss Ducas all believed that they saw you, and were arguing about it.”
“Great,” said Liane. “Observer bias and observer effects.” She ran her other hand through her hair. “I’m no kind of weather witch, but I do work with ley-lines. I could, possibly, divert a direct hit into the surrounding leys, with the right kind of array. But I wouldn’t want to unless I had to; it would destabilise our gate and every gate around for miles, and if we needed emergency services, they wouldn’t be able to get here. It might cause an earthquake. Earth counters fire almost as well as water does, though, and…the lake.” She bit her lip. Goyle probably had readings of the local elemental signature weights. If she sent the lightning into the water there wouldn’t be an earthquake. Of course, that would be bad for anything living in the water…
Michel nodded. “It’s too bad Frank Abbott isn’t here. He’s had some worrying visions of lightning and fire, and he’d know how to help those students interpret what they saw.” It was frustrating; all the best people were needed desperately for the war, even though the students here needed help almost as badly.
“Miss Abbott is Frank Abbott’s daughter,” Goyle said, and then tried to imagine what a harmonic array that could do that would look like.
“We have a gate here, I used it to send you my letters, Michel,” Liane said cautiously, her consciousness split between the problem and the conversation. “We could send for him. If you think it will help. But Michel, what do you think? Do you think I could set up a harmonic to divert a direct hit? It would be different from the things I’ve done before…but then, I’m not trying to sabotage us.”
Michel frowned. “I’ll send him a letter, but by now their memories of what they saw will have been corrupted by the discussions they’ve had with each other.” He considered her question for a moment, then shook his head. “I don’t know. We don’t know what would happen even if it worked.”
Liane let go of his hand and got her bag, which she slung over her shoulder after she pulled out a pouch. “These aren’t toning crystals,” she said in a tone that was almost apologetic. “They’re Roman dice I swiped from the estate, because they’re polyhedral and I can lay out an array with them without actually creating a working circuit. I don’t always want to raise even a little energy when I’m working with some of the energies I’ve studied lately—at one point I was using broken ends of coloured chalk.” She grinned at Michel as she began to lay out a mock array on the desk before him. “And the occasional hairpin.”
Michel grinned at her. He still had two of her hairpins. For a moment, he watched her, setting the dice, which appeared to be made of some volcanic glass, into place with graceful precision. But then he saw what she was doing.
Goyle shuddered. “No,” he said. “No. Do you have any idea how much chaotic energy you’re talking about there? That’s too dangerous to do this close to a town, and with children running around all over the place.”
“Too much,” Michel agreed gently. “No. We don’t even know for certain that we’ll need it.”
“I thought not,” said Liane, unsurprised, and scooped the dice back up and into their pouch. “But that’s the only way I can think of that I could throw lightning around. You know I don’t want to start an earthquake, flood the town, disrupt the local leys—or prevent emergency services from reaching us if we’re likely to need them.” She sighed. “Damn, hell, and fire.”
“The odds are that it’s symbolic,” Michel said, wondering why she was so determined to take it literally. What had she done in Armorica? “They see you at the centre of things, directing lightning. That could be symbolic of the effect your research could have on the war.” He shrugged. “I agree we should take every precaution—there still could be actual lightning. Very probably, actually.” Unfortunately that was always a safe prediction.
“I’m sure there will be,” Liane said, frowning. She closed her eyes for a moment and let her awareness sink down into the ground.
Michel watched curiously, but didn’t move, afraid to interrupt whatever she was doing. He’d never seen her just fall into trance like that, and he could feel her energies sinking into the ground. It didn’t occur to him to wonder why he could feel them; Liane had always slipped into rapport with him easily, even during the small, safe workings he’d taught her to do as a lycée student.
Goyle moved behind her for a moment, wondering why Michel just stood there. How much of an idiot was he? “Not down,” he said, lightly touching her shoulder.
Liane flinched at his touch; it even startled Michel a little, and he frowned.
Goyle sighed. He’d only meant to entrain with the silly girl on the uppermost level, just to direct her attention…but it wouldn’t do to be too close to her. She smelled like Dracaena, too much like Dracaena—pure, and just ripening. Darker than Dracaena, though: her wings would be darker, iridescent greys and purples; oxidised silver, because she had flown through the fire. He could almost see them.
Goyle stopped himself cold and withdrew; she didn’t even notice him. He didn’t want to think about her wings. He didn’t want to see them. Sometimes he wished he had not seen Dracaena’s. Was it really better to have loved and lost? “Up,” he told the girl, and pointed toward the ceiling, though her eyes were closed. “Look up. It doesn’t just go down and under the hill. We still remember what we were…before. This is the place we have claimed for ourselves but we still remember the stars, Juliana.”
“I don’t remember anything.” Liane groaned, and shook her head; her concentration had been broken. Michel frowned, but then he could almost feel it slip back into place for her. He hoped Goyle would stay quiet now, just long enough for her to do…whatever it was she was doing, safely.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Liane said firmly; he felt her floating around, uncertain and uncomfortable. She liked to work with earth and water best. “But yes. There’s a storm rolling in on the antiveridical.”
Michel nodded. The antiveridical—the qliphotic analogue of the seventh sphere. Something fey, but twisted—not dark, just broken and wrong. Liane slipped into the antiveridical rather too easily, he thought; but that wasn’t surprising, given what she’d been through.
Goyle looked shrewdly at Michel. “You’re the one who should be helping her,” he said mildly. “Maybe. Let me check on something.” He stepped away from Liane, shaking his hands, as though they were wet.
Liane opened her eyes and shook her whole body, like a dog coming in from the rain, and Michel shivered a little himself. “Ugh,” she said. “Q7.”
Michel frowned. “Is there anything we can do?”
“I don’t know,” said Liane, frowning.
Moruith, who had stood there silent the whole time, finally spoke. “I think there is no-one else who can do anything,” she said calmly. “Do you still want to lecture tonight?” The tone of her voice was quite nearly disgusted.
Michel didn’t even have to think about it. “Yes. If we stopped doing things because of what we thought the enemy might be doing, we’d never get anything done.”
“We can come back,” Liane said softly, hesitantly. “I…Michel, you know I’d do anything to help you, but…” She swallowed. Michel wondered what she was thinking, but of course he couldn’t know that, not without truly entraining with her, and there was no call for that now. “I need to go and change clothes, one way or another,” she finally said, and glanced at Goyle. “What were you going to check on?”
“Something you might be able to use,” said Goyle. “I don’t know. Professor Stuart’s behaviour concerns me; I need to be sure the artifice hasn’t been sabotaged before I allow you near it.” He took a deep breath. “You should go ahead and plan for your lecture. Whatever your armswoman thinks, I have no intention of letting a queen take up a front-line position. You are the future of our people.”
“I’d rather you stayed safe behind the lines too,” Michel said, though it didn’t matter to him if she was a queen or not, whatever the hell that meant. He just wanted her safe. “Take care of things, I can finish up here.”
Liane frowned. “You I understand,” she told Michel, and put a hand on his shoulder. “You just want to protect me.”
“If I can. Hurry back,” Michel said, reaching up and squeezing her hand. “I’ll stay here and work on trying to figure out what this all means.” He looked hopefully at Goyle. “Did they say anything else? Are there any of them you think I should talk to?” He wasn’t Frank Abbott or Lavinia Scalara, but he knew enough to get started on working out just what those visions might symbolise.
Liane didn’t let go of him right away, even though Moruith was standing there looking at her impatiently. “Go on,” said Goyle to Liane.
“I’m not going to be left out of anything,” Liane said quietly, “queen or no queen. Not when my eleven-year-old cousin is here. That’s not the example that Vince and Séverine set for me.” She squared her shoulders, and reluctantly let go of Michel’s hand.
“I don’t know who those people are,” said Moruith, taking Liane’s arm. “But they are not the posterity of the tribe. If something happened to Lady Dracaena, you are the only queen we have left—in this whole country! And behind the mists, you don’t know…”
Goyle made a face at the girls, then deliberately turned his attention back to Michel. “Probably you should talk to Dylan Vieira and Arianwen Rosier. Vieira’s smarter than Goulston and Ducas, and less biased than Saint-Germain. And Rosier didn’t see anything, but after she talked to them all she asked me for permission to send a dispatch to Yvon Leffoy. In case we needed him, she said.”
Michel nodded, eager to do something productive. Anything but think about what would happen if he couldn’t solve this. “Good. Though I do hope that we won’t actually need Yvon here, still, it’s best to be prepared.”
“In that case,” said Liane from the door, “you’re coming with me. Arianwen and Dylan live in the same dorm that I stay in.”
Michel grinned at her. “You just don’t want to let me out of your sight,” he teased her.
Goyle cleared his throat, and Liane laughed softly, but then she looked right at Michel—right into his eyes. “Do you want to let me out of yours?” she asked, daringly.
“No,” Michel said, more softly than he’d intended. He looked sheepishly at Goyle, who probably did find their banter annoying, and continued a bit more firmly. “Just look at the trouble you get into when I do.” He hoped it sounded like teasing, because he didn’t want her to know how worried he was.
The soft tone of his voice made Liane blush a little. “Well,” she said, and held out her hand. “Goyle can come, too. It’s his school after all.”
Michel got up, but stopped just short of the door and turned back to look at Goyle. “Yes, of course.” He should have thought of that sooner; after all, Goyle was the expert on the Academy’s systems. “Is there anything else you can think of that we could do?”
“I told you,” said Goyle. “I need to make sure the artifice hasn’t been sabotaged. By all means go to her, I know how to find you.” He waved dismissively at both of them. How queens selected their mates, he would never understand. “Just tell me one thing, Rosenthal. Was she this imperious at Ker-Ys?”
“I was probably worse,” said Liane, still holding her hand out. “But I don’t think you minded it…much?” Her cheeks were still pink.
“Only when you thought you were right,” Michel said. He took her hand and smiled at the memory; he’d seen her defending her ideas on many occasions, both to her teachers and her peers, and her conviction had been adorable. It had also sometimes been funny, though he’d been careful never to let her see him laughing.
“You mean only when I was,” Liane teased back. “You never have liked being wrong about anything.” She laced her fingers through his. “I don’t either, though, so it’s never much fun when we disagree.”
Goyle shook his head at them. “You’ll have to let her out of your sight when she changes her dress,” he said to Michel. “As long as she stays in the dormitory, anyway. Which she need not—” He frowned, and didn’t finish, because Liane had begun to giggle helplessly.
Liane was even more frustrating than Dracaena had been at her age; he wasn’t seventeen any more himself. Queens didn’t normally come into their crowns when they were seventeen years old. She was brilliant at maths, but it was hard not to think of her as someone who ought to be playing with dolls and listening to her elders, and it was clear that Liane hadn’t thought of herself that way since she was five, if even then. And hard not to be attracted to her when she smelled the way she did.
Liane finally managed to speak: “Professor Goyle! I would never presume upon Charis like that!” At Ker-Ys, she might have insisted that she had no desire to take Michel into her room, but at Ker-Ys she wouldn’t have had to say it in front of him. And it might have even been true.
Michel ducked his head and blushed. “Ah. Um, yes, I’m sure Moruith will make sure she’s safe.”
“I promise,” said Moruith through her teeth. “Can we go now?”
Michel laughed at himself. “Yes. I am terribly sorry, but I’m afraid this—” he waved his free hand in the vague direction of the chalkboard “—is just something you’ll have to get used to. You should talk to my father, he has a lot to say on that subject. And Liane is a lot like me.” He smiled at her fondly and tugged her hand gently. Liane grinned at him and took his arm, walking out of the room with him.
“I know,” Moruith grumbled after they were out of Goyle’s earshot. “But if I have to listen to Goyle make any more comments like that one, I might just die of embarrassment. On my own behalf, since the two of you are impenetrable! I know he’s trying to be kind. He thinks that he lost his own queen by waiting too long, but—”
“Enough,” said Liane sharply, and glanced back at her. “It’s all right.”
“Lost his queen?” Michel said, frowning, not sure whether he should be worried or not.
Liane looked up at him. “Lady Dracaena,” she explained. “But she wouldn’t have married him, no matter what he thinks. If she was for him she’d have never left Britannia.” She swallowed, and glanced round the hall. “Queen,” she said. “I’m supposed to be a queen. In faerie-land. Don’t laugh?”
The tone of her voice was rueful, as though she could only wish she were joking. “I’m not laughing,” Michel reassured her. “Though I admit to being confused. I don’t know much about the sacred royalty, but I do know Britannia already has a king and queen. How does that work?”
“I wish I knew,” said Liane. “The mundane royals have nothing to do with it, the mundane king and queen. Lady Dracaena is queen of Kernow, and High Queen of Britannia because of the sacrifice she made, and I’m queen of…nothing. But somehow still queen! Sometimes it sounds like being the queen of a hive of bees, not a nation!”
“It is exactly like that, sometimes,” said Moruith softly. She didn’t like having this conversation in the hallway, but the few people who passed them were too interested in pointing at Liane and Michel and being scandalised to pay attention to what they were saying to each other.
“That just seems so…” Michel shook his head.
“Mad?” Liane supplied, leaning a little on his arm. “I know. To me, too. I just…want to be with you, and do my work, and win this war. I know you want to protect me because you care for me. But Goyle wants to protect me because there aren’t enough faeries. He’s more concerned about the children I’ll bear than he is about me, and he’ll do what I say because of the way I smell when I say it, but it doesn’t mean he respects my opinions.”
“It is important, Liane,” said Moruith patiently. She thought Goyle and Dracaena both gave Liane a lot more respect than they had received from her. She knew why—Liane was a queen, and could hardly submit to another of her kind—but it was still irritating sometimes, particularly when Liane thought she was being sensible and logical, which was almost always.
“I respect your opinions,” Michel said firmly, squeezing her hand again. “I always have.” Even when she was eleven. She’d given him a new appreciation for the trial he’d been to Giraud, but he wouldn’t have given it up for anything.
“I know,” said Liane, and smiled at him, shyly at first: “You’ll make sure people listen to me when I’m right.” Her smile quirked up a little wickedly. “Even when I’ve proven you wrong. You’ll never know how much that means to me.”
“Well, only when you have a proof,” Michel said teasingly. “Otherwise I’ll have to insist that I’m right.”
“As long as you give me the same respect I give you and give me the time to write it,” Liane teased back. “Sometimes…you just know.”
“Yes,” Michel said, looking at her and thinking about how much he’d missed her—something he hadn’t even realised until she’d come back. Sometimes you didn’t realise how painful something was until it was over. As much as he’d tried not to think of his old friends, he’d never completely succeeded. “Sometimes you do.”
“And,” Moruith said to herself, realising that her perfectly valid point had been completely ignored and the topic of why being a queen was important had been dropped in favour of the topic of who really respected Liane, “sometimes you don’t.” Or at least don’t admit it, she thought, and consoled herself with the notion that she and Addie Kyteler were going to have a good long laugh about this, later.
moruith, truthinartifice, standingwave and michelrosenthal