Vilém Zitek (vilem) wrote in lightning_war, @ 2009-03-24 11:38:00 |
|
|||
Current mood: | determined |
Early Thursday evening, 17 September 1942, at the Royal Academy...
“If you don’t mind,” said Emily Chattox, throwing open the door to her office without any warning, “I need to speak to the adults here for a moment.” She gave Yegor, Nadya, Jenica, Jonathan, Endymion and Hadrian rather sharp looks; she had not expected her office to be so long monopolised, nor for the children to be going in and out of it the way they had. “You lot need to pack up and check in with your prefects. Five minutes to get together a bag, if you’re not on the Squad—which not all of you are, especially not you, Jonathan.”
Endymion Dashwood groaned at her. “My head hurts,” he muttered under his breath. “Also, if you expect me to leave Jon with Forrester, he’d best have got over the thrill of having finally discovered girls at this very late date. If anything happens to my little brother, I’ll take it out of his hide. And Valeria’s.”
“In your dreams,” muttered Hadrian as he offered his arm to Endymion. “You’ll just make me do it.”
“As well you should,” Jonathan twitted him. “Vilém wouldn’t have to be told.”
“Go on, now.” Emily glared at the children. She’d suspected there to be some truth in the accusation, even though she was glad not to have to take Forrester’s badge away, which she supposed she should tell him about. When she got a chance. Once the children were gone, she turned to the Ziteks. “Finally.”
“Good to know we qualify as adults,” Vilém Zitek said, and grinned at both Chattox and his spouses. They never had at Transylvania, after all. His wife, Zsuzsanna, laughed. His brother Stepán, who was also her husband, just shook his head.
Emily sighed heavily. “There’s going to be trouble tonight. We’re evacuating everyone to the Great Hall before dark; Professor Goyle requests you three stay here, and help us with finding the inevitable stragglers. Some of the children will have wandered to places on campus where they won’t have heard the announcements, and we will have to go and find them, I’m afraid. Hopefully before the trouble finds them first.”
Vilém’s amusement faded at once. “That sounds encouraging,” he said, frowning.
“Encouraging? How?” Emily stared at him. She got on so well with Zsuzsanna; why wasn’t Zsuzsanna saying anything? “Don’t get me wrong, I’ll feel much better if you’re all here, but…”
“Generally, people only want us around when things are bound to get ugly. That’s all,” Vilém told her gently.
Emily shook her head. “I don’t feel that way. I quite like all of you, especially Mrs Zitek. I wish everyone here were as competent and honest as the lot of you.”
“Thank you,” Zsuzsanna said, her cheeks reddening. “We do try.”
“She has quite a fan club,” Vilém said with a little hint of a smile at his wife. The idea that they were being described as honest was internally cracking him up; Chattox clearly had no idea how they had made their living before they had been forced to take the King’s shilling from the War Bureau in return for the constabulary’s polite pretence of ignorance of the long lists of charges against them. “How bad do you really think this is going to be tonight? If we’re talking honesty here.”
Emily threw up her hands. “After the readings in today’s Divination III section, the professor cancelled lessons for the rest of the day and won’t come out of her office. Professor Mathers is with her now. Professor Magnusson has drawn runes: Thorn, Hagal and Isa, and Professor Rosenthal and his…girl,” she finally decided, “say every horary they draw is void of course. The Ministry has given the order to evacuate, but they can’t divert a train; they’re doing something with the kitchen delivery gates but they say they won’t be ready 'til midnight.”
“Lófasz a seggedbe,” Zsuzsanna said under her breath, her face pale. Stepán slid his arm around her shoulders and squeezed her a little.
Vilém just shook his head, holding his tongue ‘til he could speak without swearing, in English and everything. That all just sounded fantastic, didn’t it? Whoever thought keeping all the kids in the country hostage in one place made sense during war deserved to be shot. Damn schools. “Yeah, sounds like you’re going to need us,” he finally said with a grim nod, taking it all in. “You’ve got it.”
“Absolutely,” Stepán echoed.
Zsuzsanna nodded firmly. “We will absolutely help you. However,” she said, with a cautious glance at her husbands, “we have a lot of ground to cover. We could use Endymion and Jenica, and anyone else they feel is ready to join us.”
Emily frowned. “You know that this is all quite hard on Endymion,” she said, and wondered if they knew what he could do.
“We know it is. But it’s hard to take a vacation right now. Best spots are kind of occupied,” Vilém said, avoiding the topic of why, exactly, it was hard on Endymion.
“Do you really think he can handle this?” Emily said quietly.
“I think he could handle it better than he could handle knowing it was going on and doing nothing,” said Stepán. “I know he claims he’s no kind of hero and we all know how true that is.” He glanced at Vilém and Zsuzsanna.
“Stepán’s right,” Vilém said with a nod. “Besides, we could use his help. He’s good in a pinch.”
“You probably won’t be able to stop him,” said Zsuzsanna after a moment’s thought. “Better to know he’s with us, than to wonder?”
Emily sighed, and nodded. That was certainly true. “All right,” she agreed.
“Okay, then,” Vilém said, nodding again. “He’ll be all right, and we’ll make sure the stragglers are. Y’know, the easy stuff.” He doubted that would be all there was of it. But he could hope.
“Yes. Yes, thank you,” said Emily. “I’ll tell Jenica and Endymion to meet you here, with whomever they think appropriate, then.” She didn’t like the idea that children should have to defend themselves, but there were just too many people. “They’re on Goyle’s squad. They’ll have the authority.”
“Good. They’ll probably need it,” Vilém said. This was going to be one long night. Good thing they were used to those. “We’ll take care of things from there.”
divine_alchemy, fairlight, hadrian, jenica, pan_ili_propal, stepan, swallowsflight, voci_umbrarum (Emily Chattox), zsuzsanna, and vilem