He went over to take one end of the desk, more or less forcing Lan to take the other, and between them, they muscled it up and on top of her book-fort. Then he went to the shelves for more bricks and Lan was left to stare after him, trying to make sense of his last words.
“What sort of lessons?” she asked finally, because all she could think was that she hadn’t done her dollying right and this was some sort of sexual thing, all ‘lick this’ and ‘wiggle that’, and she wasn’t sure whether to be insulted yet or grateful.
“Well, that’s to be determined. Our first step will be to assess your present level of education and then we’ll work out a curriculum, but I’m very open, as a rule. Have you some interest or area of study on which you’d like to focus?”
“No. What? No.”
“You needn’t feel embarrassed to ask. Lord Azrael encourages his companions to develop hobbies. Architecture, perhaps?”
“What’s that?”
“Building design.” He gestured at the fort that had somehow become a team effort and began to lay in a row of books around the base of the second story. “It’s one of my own interests, as a matter of fact, and I consider myself quite the amateur authority.”
It had never occurred to her that the dead might have interests, amateur or otherwise. Lan watched him build walls around the desk, alternating fat books with skinny ones and occasionally setting one of the really big ones in with the cover facing out, like a window. He even knocked up a dormer in front where the desk was open. Last of all, he set a lamp on the very top in the corner for a chimney.
“Right,” he said, stepping back to admire the end result before gesturing toward the table where he’d left his case. “Shall we have at it?”
Lan sat and watched curiously as he opened his case and brought out two more books, blank ones. Well, hers was blank. His had handwriting in it, but he flipped through until he came to the blank part. Then he brought out a pen and bottle of ink for himself and a pencil for her, already sharpened. He dipped his nib, wrote a few lines in comfortable silence, then gave her a pleasant smile and said, “Your name?”
“Lan. Lanachee,” she amended, because this felt very formal. “I don’t have a last name. Bit of a bastard.”
“Quite all right, I don’t have a first name,” he replied. “Bit of dead. Spell it out for me, please?”
She did nothing. There was nothing she knew to do.
After a moment, he looked up from his book and tapped at hers. “Please,” he said again.
Slowly, Lan picked up her pencil. She touched it to the page, near the top. When he merely sat there smiling at her, she bent her neck and stared at the paper. After a while, she made a few lines and looked at him. His smile was unchanged. She made a few more. Added a loop. Put a full stop at the end. And put her pencil down.
“All right,” he said gently and wrote another line or two in his own book. “How are you at sums?”
“Some of what?”
“If I have two pencils and you give me three more, how many pencils do I have?”
“Five,” replied Lan. “But I don’t know what you think I’d be doing with so many bloody pencils lying about.”
“The wall of a certain greenhouse is made from glass panels—”
“They all are, mate.”
“I believe you’ve mispronounced ‘Master Wickham’ there, but that’s all right. Our lord has arranged for someone else to help you with your elocution. Now. This particular wall is four panels tall and twelve panels long. How many panels are needed to create an entire wall?”
“Vents or doors?”
“Not in this case.”
“Forty-eight.”
“The greenhouse can hold six rows of ten plots each. You can plant four beans on each plot or one marrow. If you plant sixteen marrows, how many beans do you plant?”
Lan peered at him. “You don’t know much about farming, do you? You plant them both together with a sprout of corn. The beans climb the corn and the marrow grows on the bottom.”
“Tomatoes and marrow, then.”
Lan did the figuring. “A hundred and…say fifty to be sure. They won’t all take.”
He wrote in his book. “What are clouds made of?”
Lan shrugged. “Weather?”
“What is the surface of the moon like?”
“Snowy, I reckon. Looks snowy.”
“Name a component of the circulatory system.”
“I don’t know. Circles?”
“Sheep are to wool as hens are to what?”
“Eggs and feathers.”
“Explain?”
“Sheep are covered in wool and hens are covered in feathers. Sheep give wool and hens give eggs.”
He wrote and then closed his book and smiled at her. “That’s enough for now. I’ll need a few days to design a lesson plan and then I’ll be back.”
“For what?”
“To begin with, I’ll be teaching you to read.”
“What in the hell for?” Lan sputtered. “I don’t need to know reading!”
“No? Why not?”
She didn’t know how to answer, but only because the reason seemed so self-evident. It wasn’t that reading itself was pointless. She could see the sense of it, but only in the same way she could see the sense of glazing or smithing; it was a useful skill for a community to possess, not an individual, much less many individuals in the same community. The very fact that there was someone whose sole function was to teach reading made it completely unnecessary for anyone else to learn.
But although these thoughts were clear enough in her head, Lan couldn’t find the words and had to settle for the profoundly inadequate: “Because.”
“I see. Once you learn to read,” he went on, repacking his case, “we can begin a proper course of studies. We’ll be meeting here every morning after breakfast, concluding at six o’clock on full days, one o’clock on half days. You may address me as Master Wickham or as Sir, but you needn’t apply honorifics every time you speak. I’m not overly strict about such things. Shall I call you Lan or Lanachee?”
“Why do I have to have lessons at all? You know I’m just his dolly, right?”
His polite smile softened. “You’re alive, Lan,” he said. “You’re not ‘his’ anything.” And as she stared at him, he rose and put out his hand for her to shake again.
Again, she shook it.
“It was a pleasure meeting you,” he said and left. “All yours,” she heard him say and in through the door came a dead woman pushing a trolley. On the trolley was a coffee service and no sooner did Lan clap eyes to it than the smell hit.
She hopped up eagerly, in spite of that nagging twinge that tried to tell her it might be poison, and the dead woman snapped, “Sit down.”
Lan sat.
“Don’t plop. Do it again.”
“Do what again?”
“Stand up. Keep your back straight.”
Slowly, Lan stood.
“Now sit.”
“Lady, make up your mind.”
“Sit!”
Lan sat.
“No slouching! Keep your back straight. Do it again!”
Lan eyed the coffee and the assortment of covered dishes accompanying it and heaved herself grudgingly to her feet. She opened her arms in a broad happy now? gesture and sat for the third bloody time.
The dead woman sniffed and began to set things out on the table. There was a lot of silverware. Since it looked like she’d be at it for a while, Lan reached for the coffee and immediately got her hand slapped. She had to watch as the trolley was entirely unpacked onto the table and all she could do about it was stand up and sit down a half-dozen times more because she kept fidgeting.
“Now,” the dead woman began, taking the last item off the trolley—a long, thin switch—and holding it ominously over Lan. “I will be instructing you in etiquette—”