“You will report on the next game, the day after tomorrow,” Juliet said. “I want a good story, one that will get more talent on the fields. Do you understand me?”
I stood and made a long slow curtsey, keeping the movements so slow it was clearly sarcastic. “Yes, My Lady.”
Juliet pretended not to notice. “Good.” Her lips curved into a sneer. “Behave yourself.”
She turned and marched out. I made a rude gesture at her back as the door closed behind her, then turned back to the bed. It was hard not to give into despair. Juliet… Juliet was the supervisor? I didn’t know the older students very well, but I was sure there were dozens — perhaps hundreds — who would be better. Juliet hated me… I wondered, grimly, why she hadn’t fired me on the spot, then realised she couldn’t if she wanted to keep me under her thumb. As long as I wanted to work on Whitehall Times, I’d have to bend the knee to her.
It won’t last, I told myself. Juliet would have to organise her time carefully, when the exams came round, and I doubted she’d put the broadsheet at the top of her priority list. She’ll lose interest in bossing us around, and we’ll be able to go our own way. Again.
But I knew, as I sat gingerly on the bed, that it would feel like a very long time indeed.
Chapter 3
“This sucks!”
Aniseed glowered at me. My roommate — and fellow reporter — was a short dark girl, with long black hair and a pretty face that lit up when she smiled, but she wasn’t smiling now. I understood, all too well. Aniseed might not have been caught spying on older students, or caned to within an inch of her life, but she was still in trouble. Juliet had made it clear, over the past two days, that nothing was to be written and printed without her permission. It was deeply, deeply, frustrating to all of us.
I tried not to wince at the anger in her voice. She had every right to be mad. She’d been putting together a story on what our fellow students had been doing, over the summer holidays, and now it had been cancelled. Juliet hadn’t liked the idea, for some reason she hadn’t bothered to share, and so it hadn’t gotten off the ground. I didn’t understand why she’d cancelled the story. It wasn’t as if we’d been spying on our friends over the holidays. Aniseed had asked them what they’d done, then turned it into a story…
“I’m sorry,” I said, again.
“Sorry isn’t good enough,” Aniseed snapped. “What were you thinking?”
I sighed inwardly. Juliet had laid down the law in no uncertain terms. She’d worked hard to ensure that every single story idea was run past her first, no matter how much work my fellow reporters and I had put into them already. The proposal to write something about new opportunities for students in Dragon’s Den had been killed, after Stuart had carried out a dozen interviews and written over a thousand words on the topic. I didn’t blame him for quitting, not really. He’d told his contacts that they’d be able to put adverts in the broadsheet and now he looked like a liar, something no true magician could tolerate. There was nothing he could do about it either. Juliet had squashed ideas, from ones of no real interest to anyone to stories that would rock the school, just to make it clear she was in charge.
And the only thing she wanted to go through without hesitation was a piece of ego-stroking crap about the sports captains and their teams, I thought, sourly. She didn’t try to stop us from doing that.
It was hard not to clench my teeth in frustration. Kings and aristos had a never-ending appetite for praise and demanded it from everyone, particularly those who had nothing better to do than kissing their master’s feet. I’d be ashamed if someone called me the ‘light of the world’ or the ‘bringer of perpetual peace’ or even ‘father to the kingdom,’ particularly if I ruled a tiny princedom that was only independent because my neighbours couldn’t be bothered to seize it, but the aristos didn’t seem to care. Dad had told me, once, that forcing people to crawl in front of their master was an unsubtle attempt to remind them who was really in charge. I suspected it worked very well. If I’d been forced to prostrate myself, and stay prostrated, as long as I was in the aristocratic presence, it would have very definitely kept me in my place.
“She’s probably doing the same to us,” I muttered. “Keeping us firmly under her thumb.”
Aniseed gave me a cross look. “She didn’t like my story on betting rings either,” she said. “She said it would distract from the beauty of the sport.”
I rolled my eyes. Betting — and gambling — was heavily discouraged, but nothing short of mass mind-control spells would be enough to completely stop it. People with money to spare had been gambling since time out of mind, placing their bets on who would win everything from simple jousts to skirmishes and wars. The playing card craze had only made it easier for anyone to get in on the game. Grandmaster Hasdrubal had done his best to limit the betting — and forbidding anyone to bet anything they couldn’t really afford to lose — but it had been an uphill struggle. The betting shops in Dragon’s Den were happy to take the bets students weren’t allowed to place at school.
Idiots, I thought, remembering one of my father’s sharper observations on aristo society. A fool and his money are soon parted.
“You’d think she’d want to get more people involved,” I said, thoughtfully. I’d yet to meet a sports captain who discouraged gambling. I’d been told they saw it as a sign of confidence in their players. Personally, I saw it as a sign the sports captains had too much time on their hands. “If someone was placing bets on the game, surely they’d be invested in the outcome.”
Aniseed scowled. “We have to put up with her,” she muttered. “And it is all because of you.”
I kept my mouth shut — my father had taught me well — as we stepped into the arena and found our seats. The two teams were already on opposing sides of the fields, making rude gestures and shouting insults whenever the referee was looking in the other direction. I saw a pair of boys striking ridiculous poses as they swanned around the field, drawing a mixture of cheers and boos from the gathering crowd. Their captains pretended not to notice, but — even at a distance — I could see their irritation. They wouldn’t have become sports captains if they didn’t think sports were serious business. They saw grandstanding as just another stunt that distracted from the sport itself.
Unless the grandstander does something that wins the match, I thought, cynically. I’d never seen the point of sports myself — it wasn’t as if I’d ever been any good at playing the game — and I found it hard to understand why anyone did. They can get away with anything as long as it wins the game.
“Tell me,” I said, dryly. “Does anyone actually enjoy this sort of thing?”
Aniseed waved a hand at the stands. They were jam-packed with students, parents and scouts — spies — from the sporting leagues. The Grandmaster had gone out of his way to invite everyone he could to watch the games, so keen was he to show that Whitehall was capable of fielding players who could actually win. I suspected he’d forgotten what lurked behind the Craggy Mountains, only a few short miles away. Lady Emily had killed Shadye six years ago, but the rest of his foul kin were still out there. It was just a matter of time before another necromancer moved into his territory and started pressing against the school’s defences again.