The matron smiled. Cora exhaled, struggling to keep it from turning into anything that could be interpreted as a huff or a sigh or any number of other forbidden sounds.
“I don’t think cricket would be good for your progress, dear,” said the matron. “Too many of the rules depend on chance. But I’ll talk to the headmaster about finding something more suitable for you to play. Croquet, perhaps. Finish your breakfasts, girls, it’s almost time for class.” She turned and walked away, leaving the table staring silently after her.
“All games have an element of chance,” said Stephanie. “All games. That’s what makes them games and not, I don’t know. Arts and crafts.”
“Dance classes don’t have an element of chance,” said Emily wistfully. “I wouldn’t care about sports if they’d let us have a dance class. I’d take anything. Ballroom, tap, anything.”
“Did you go to a dancing world?” asked Sumi.
Emily and Stephanie shushed her in unison. It was like being scolded by a choir of very large snakes. Sumi cocked her head and considered them more closely.
Emily was a beautiful girl: anyone with eyes could have seen that. She would have been even lovelier if she’d been allowed to choose her own clothes, dressing in colors that were more flattering to the darkness of her skin, and hair, and eyes than the drab Whitethorn uniforms. She carried herself like a dancer.
Stephanie was an almost perfect contrast, so pale Sumi could see the veins moving beneath her skin like serpentine bruises, dark and harsh and somehow delicate. They all kept their blood under the surface like that, but most of them hid it a little better. Stephanie’s hair was swan’s-down white, cropped close to her head and lying flat as a cap of feathers, like she might peel it off and toss it away at any moment. Even her eyes were pale, gray-blue trending into white, until it seemed they might bleach entirely into nondescription at any moment.
She didn’t move like a dancer. She was frail, fragile, but she moved like a bruiser, like she was constantly challenging the world to a fight, and had no doubt that she’d be the winner when it finally agreed to throw down.
“Don’t stare,” snapped the girl without a name. Sumi glared at her.
“Who do you think you are, the headmaster?” she asked, in a jeering tone.
The headmaster didn’t usually come to breakfast. He was content to leave their daily care to the matrons and instructors and each other; someone must have shown him a bucket of crabs at some point early in his academic career, pointing to the way they would police themselves, pulling down any individual who looked too close to breaking free and escaping. “Leave the crabs in the bucket and they’ll take care of the rest” seemed to be his philosophy where the student body was concerned.
The girl without a name smiled a small, mean smile and leaned a little closer to Rowena, whispering something in her companion’s ear. Rowena giggled, hiding it behind her hand like that would somehow make it less obvious. Cora bristled, and didn’t say anything. None of the matrons were approaching. They seemed to have a sixth sense for the difference between camaraderie and bullying. The first, they squelched as quickly as possible. The second, they all but encouraged. A student body preoccupied with eating itself alive was a student body that wasn’t making trouble for the administration.
“It’s not polite to whisper about people,” said Cora.
“I’m closer to graduation than you are,” said the girl.
“That just makes you a better liar. You still can’t lie and say something’s your name when it’s not,” snapped Cora, and immediately felt bad about it as the girl paled and shrank away. She was a hero. Everyone in the Trenches knew it, even if the people here treated her like a juvenile delinquent who couldn’t be trusted with a pair of safety scissors. Heroes weren’t supposed to be bullies.
But then, she supposed she wasn’t the only hero at the Whitethorn Institute. Most of the children she’d met from the other side of the doors were heroes, in their own specific ways. Maybe heroes could be bullies, if they were scared enough. If they were trapped enough. If the sides weren’t clear.
How could you choose good over evil when no one was really sure what evil was? Under enough pressure, the only good that counted was saving yourself.
Rowena clutched the nameless girl’s shoulder with one hand and glared at Cora, imperious and cold as a queen. “At least she’s trying,” she snapped. “At least she wants to be better. You say you do, but you keep dyeing your hair. You’re going to flunk, and then we’re never going to have to look at your stupid face ever again. Come on,” and her lips moved in soundless static, unreadable. A brief look of despair washed across her face. Whatever private name she’d been using for the girl she now tugged off the cafeteria bench had clearly reached the end of its usefulness: the strange magic surrounding the nameless girl had recognized it, and so it, like everything else, had been washed away.
Cora watched them go before glancing back to Emily and Stephanie, a frown on her face and a question in her eyes. “What happens if you flunk? Regan sabotaged her own graduation, and she’s still here.” Maybe flunking meant the same thing as expulsion. Maybe she could be thrown back to the Drowned Gods if she didn’t try harder.
“We don’t know,” said Stephanie. “No one does.”
Sumi frowned. “Oh,” she said. “That probably means it isn’t good.”
Emily nodded, expression grave. Then she leaned forward, opened her mouth, and said, “But I heard—”
Whatever she’d heard was cut off by the bell ringing to signal the end of breakfast. Cora rose with the others, automatically gathering the detritus of both her meal and Sumi’s, stacking the trays neatly and efficiently. The Logic girls left their dishes strewn willy-nilly across their tables, some of them looking back at the mess with clear agony in their eyes, like leaving things out of place was causing them active pain. The oatmeal girls put their own trays on the busing station, then moved to clean up after the waffle girls, Nonsense children making order out of the chaos left behind by the Logicians.
Sumi twitched like she was going to start scavenging the abandoned waffles. Cora reacted without thinking, clamping her hand around Sumi’s wrist.
“No,” she hissed. “A matron will see you.”
“But—”
“No,” echoed Stephanie. “We’re your dormmates. We’ll teach you the rules.”
Emily was waiting at the door. Sumi only glanced back once as Cora dragged her to the other member of their sudden alliance, and then they were moving into the hall, merging smoothly with the tide of students. By the time the bell rang again, the hallway was empty, and the Whitethorn Institute was at peace.
9?MICE IN THE WALLS
THE CLASSROOM MIGHT AS well have been a medical exam room, or a cardboard box exaggerated beyond all reason. The walls were devoid of anything, even educational posters or homework charts; the fluorescent lights had no covers, and hummed quietly to themselves as they illuminated the barren, institutional desks and their solemn, empty-handed occupants. No one drew on the desktops or used their protractors to etch initials into the wood: no one even breathed without permission from the matron at the front of the room, who was droning on about the history of the world, pausing occasionally to remind them that this was the only history that mattered, this was the only history that could be believed in.