I raised my eyebrows. “Can I quote you on that?”
Juliet’s face reddened. She knew I’d been spying on them. Did she know — or guess — how much I’d overheard? It wasn’t as if she’d had a chance to interrogate me… for all she knew, I could have crawled into the air vent a few seconds before the rat landed on me. I might not have overheard anything… I hoped she thought so, although I doubted it. Juliet wouldn’t have become Captain-General of Sports if she was a complete idiot.
Surprisingly, she kept her voice calm. “We do not discuss our decisions with the players,” she said. A hint of condescension entered her tone. “It would cause offense. So would a misleading report written by a second-year brat who has barely reached her majority, one without the experience to understand that some decisions are better made out of the public eye. You can no more explain our decisions than you could explain how healing magic works or how best to apply it to save lives.”
The scorn in her voice made my blood boil. I’d always hated people talking down to me, as if I were some kind of idiot. I might be young, and I might lack specialised knowledge and experience, but that didn’t mean I was stupid. Besides, Dad had always insisted the mark of a true expert was the talent of explaining himself to the layman. Juliet didn’t seem capable of explaining anything, let alone the reasoning behind her decisions.
I met her eyes. “You could try to explain them to me,” I said. If Juliet had to justify putting one player ahead of another, it would level the playing field. Secrecy, Dad had always said, was the keystone of tyranny. “And then I could break them down so the common folk could understand.”
Juliet snorted. “I have no interest in explaining my decisions to commoners,” she said, loading the word with as much contempt as possible. “Anyone who really cared about sports would understand both the secrecy and the reasoning behind it and let the matter rest.”
“How convenient,” I said, sardonically.
Juliet drew back her hand, as if she was about to slap me, then thought better of it. “Let me make a few things clear,” she said, instead. “I am your new supervisor. I am your boss. I have the final say on what does, and what doesn’t, get printed in the broadsheet. You will take direction from me. You will follow orders to the letter. You will write the stories I tell you to write, then show them to me and wait for my approval before you print them. Do you understand me?”
“I created the broadsheet,” I protested. “Whitehall Times is mine!”
“You convinced the school to fund it,” Juliet said, snidely. “Didn’t the Grandmaster tell you? The school funds it, and so the school has the final say in everything.”
Her lips twisted into a nasty smile. “You can quit, of course,” she added. “You don’t have to stay on the staff. Perhaps it would be better if you didn’t.”
She leaned forward, pushing her way into my personal space. “And do you know what’ll happen, the moment you disobey me? Or publish something without my permission? You’ll be kicked out and that will be that.”
I clenched my fists. The urge to hit her was almost overpowering. Juliet was fit and healthy — and years on the playing fields had given her remarkable strength and endurance — but if I hit her hard enough, the first time, she’d go down. Dad had shown me a few tricks… I gritted my teeth, forcing my fists to unclench. Juliet was deliberately provoking me. If I hit her, I’d be expected so fast I’d be out the school before her body hit the ground. And then, what would I do? Dad had been lucky to get me into the school. He wouldn’t be able to get me into another.
“Fine,” I said. It wasn’t fine and she knew it. “I hope you understand the importance of keeping the public informed.”
Juliet stepped back and straightened. “I hope you understand the importance of sports,” she said. “The Grandmaster — the old Grandmaster — was never keen on participating in international contests, for fear it would divert attention from the necromancers on the far side of the mountains. He didn’t even want a duelling club. Grandmaster Gordian, on the other hand, wants to reverse that policy. Whitehall — he says — will start sending teams to contests as quickly as possible, which means the coming championship is of vital importance. The winning team will go to the international games.”
“Great,” I said, sarcastically. There were a few people who made a living through sports — or jousting — but it wasn’t really an option unless your family was very rich. You had to spend money in order to make money — or, in this case, buy the supplies — and there was no guarantee of any prize money. Dad had reported on a joust — more of a war game, he’d said — where the winner was ordered to give up his booty to his superiors, without even a hint of compensation. He’d had no recourse. I hoped he’d found a way to ensure his social superiors looked like idiots in the next joust. “Do we get to go with them?”
“This is important,” Juliet snarled. “Do you understand me?”
“It’s important to you,” I said. “I…”
Juliet reached out — lightning-fast — and grabbed my collar. “The broadsheet will report on each and every one of the games, from now until the final contest that determines who goes to the international arena,” she snapped, pulling me forward. “You will write those reports personally, instead of sneaking around and poking your nose in matters that are none of your business. Or else!”
I couldn’t resist. “Or else what?”
She shoved me. I fell back on the bed. I bit my lip to keep from yelping in pain.
“Or else you’ll be kicked out of the broadsheet and probably out of the school,” Juliet snapped. She loomed over me, hands resting on her hips. “Get one thing straight! You were caught spying on other students. Older students! Do you think anyone will take your broadsheet seriously, if everyone hears what you did? Or trust you with anything?”
She met my eyes. “Do you really want a reputation for prying into someone’s private business?”
“I wasn’t prying into your bedroom,” I muttered. “The office is fair game…”
I cut that thought off before it could go any further. There was very little privacy at boarding school, not until you became a senior and got a private room of your own. My roommates and I had few barriers between us, so we guarded what little privacy we had tightly and did what we could to ensure the others had some of their own. To turn someone into a frog was a mild prank, but to go poking into someone’s trunk was an unforgiveable offense deserving permanent shunning, if not a curse that would haunt the victim for the rest of their lives. If someone thought I’d done something so vile…
Juliet smirked. She had me.
“I’ll be speaking to the rest of your” — Juliet held her hands up to make quote marks — “staff later in the day. They’ll be under the same rules as you. Nothing, and I mean nothing, gets printed without my permission. The broadsheet will focus on matters of interest to the school, from new lectures and tutors to sports and exams, not dig up controversy. You can do that later, when you graduate from school and go into… whatever you want to do, when you’re not annoying me.”
I snorted. That wasn’t remotely fair. I’d barely had any contact with her, even when she’d been a mentor to my class, until now. This was the closest we’d ever been. I told myself it would only be for a year or so. Juliet would graduate, unless she had to repeat her final year, and go on into the wider world. Hell, after the championship, her exams would start to loom. She would have no more time to supervise us. If I kept my head down and bided my time, I could retake control. And then, who knew? The sky was the limit.