3.38: Laying Plans

I’d never been in this part of the school before, but the map showed my where to go. I hadn’t even bothered to clean up before leaving, but the few students I passed didn’t spare me a second glance. Sometimes people had weird classes or hobbies; if that left some random acolyte covered in sand and sweat, how was that any of their business?

I let my thoughts run away with me as I walked. There wasn’t any immediate danger, Max was probably worried about nothing, but I let myself believe he wasn’t, let my mind spin complicated conspiracies and worst case scenarios. The more desperate and overwhelmed I looked, the better this would go, and I was no great actor so it was best to just let myself get desperate and overwhelmed. Somebody would talk me down later.

By the time I arrived at my destination, I was properly worked up. I took a moment to will a silent little apology to Alania Miratova, and knocked on the door with a shaking hand.

The Fiore was clearly on a different personal clock than Casey was, because it didn’t look like I’d woken him up. Judging by the half a sandwich in his hand, I’d interrupted his lunch. He blinked at me for a few seconds, then stood aside and waved me into his office. “Kayden. How can I help you?”

“You teach here now, right?”

“I do.”

“I want you to be my surveyanto.”

The Fiore looked confused. The kind of confused that someone might look if they unexpectedly found a couple of hundred dollars down the back of their couch and couldn’t figure out how it had gotten there. “Of course. Things not going well with Alania?”

I put on my most emotional teenagerish scowl. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Of cour – ”

“I just want to keep everyone out of trouble! Is that too much to ask?”

“Kayden, what happened?”

“It’s really complicated. I’m not in… I can’t explain it right now.”

“That’s fine. Here, let me get the forms… can you put your handprint here?” he asked, profferring his tablet with the surveyanto form up.

Here was the difference between Alania and the Fiore that had been obvious from the start. From the first time I’d met Alania, when she rescued Kylie and me from that lake monster and berated us for not knowing how to keep ourselves safe, she’d treated us like we should know what we were doing. She treated everyone as a colleague, or as someone she’d been hired to give professional advice to.

The first time I’d seen the Fiore had been in a class, where he’d gotten everyone’s attention by letting them pet his cat. He never acted straightforward; he acted concerned, spoke in roundabout ways, gave playful winks if he caught me spying. He never treated me, or any other student I’d seen him interact with bar his own nephew, like a colleague. He was one of the few people at the school who treated us like children. If Alania projected the image of a professional consultant, the Fiore projected the image of an indulgent uncle.

If I’d come to Alania all worked up and made an impulse decision, even one in her favour, she would’ve demand I sleep on the decision and gone through the implications with me once I’d calmed down. The Fiore, as I expected, saw an opportunity. He was going to use my emotions to manipulate me.

I was going to let him.

I pressed my hand to the screen and wondered, idly, what Alania would make of this. Would she be offended? Would she be too busy to care? Relieved, that I wasn’t her problem any more? She’d understand what I was doing, if she took a moment to think about it. Everything with Clara spying on Fionnrath, and then the familiarity thing, and then Kylie, and then this… it really did look like she was spearheading some kind of complicated political play, and that suspicion alone put her in too weak a position to defend us if the school decided to sell out Max, or sell out Kylie and me. And we weren’t her only responsibility; she had other students to look out for, too. Besides, even if we all took different surveyanti, I was confident that she’d fight for what was just, not politically expedient, so she’d still be in our corner. By letting the Fiore ‘break up’ her Definitely Sinister Group Of Students, making me his problem, he’d be in our corner, too – or at least in my corner. I was going to have to shit talk a teacher I respected quite a bit, but that was no price at all for a new ally.

I could see the curiosity eating the Fiore up, but he didn’t press me on what was going on. I didn’t offer any information. As soon as I left his office, he’d probably go and investigate; find out about Duniyasar, note that my change of allegiance happened immediately after it, draw his own conclusions on how Alania was involved, become invested in holding onto me to mess up whatever plan he thought she had. There was no reason for me to tell him anything, true or false; he’d come up with a better story than I would be able to.

“Thanks,” I said, rubbing at my temples. “It’s been a bit of a day.”

“I know how that is,” he said sympathetically. “Tea?”

“No, I… I think I need to get to bed, actually.” I stood up. Shook his hand. Thanked him again. Left.

I didn’t go to bed. I went to knock on another door.

Magistus opened the door in a dressing gown and frowned. “Kayden? Everything alright?”

“Is your sister in?”

“Uh, yes.” He stood aside. Magista and di Fiore stared at me from a little table in the center of the room, hands full of playing cards. Magista put her cards down and stood up in one smooth motion; she must have forgiven me for pissing her off last time, because there was nothing but open friendliness in her expression. Of course, with how good she was at diplomacy, it was hard to be sure.

I was too tired for diplomacy. “I might be wrong, but I think there’s about an eighty per cent chance that your boyfriend’s going to break up with you tomorrow,” I told her. “It’s because he’s an idiot. He’s gotten himself wrapped up in something very complicated and dangerous and he’ll think it’s not your problem, and he’s right, it’s not, but I figured that you should be forewarned so that you can make your own decision rather than watch him make it for you.”

She folded her arms. “I’m listening.”

I glanced at di Fiore and considered, for a brief moment, insisting on privacy. I decided against it. I wasn’t going to lie, and much as I couldn’t forgive di Fiore for his smarmy, arrogant anti-witch prejudice, I knew he was basically honest and wasn’t going to go on any campaigns to try to get us expelled or convicted or anything. The most dishonest thing I’d ever seen him do was try to protect himself when he’d thought I was framing him for murder.

Anyway, the story would probably be all over the school by tomorrow. Better to give people the accurate version.

After I explained the situation to the Americans, I hiked out to Phone Reception Mountain, and sent Chelsea and Melissa a long series of arduously typed texts. I didn’t think they’d be able to help, but I felt better keeping them updated, and they might think of something I hadn’t. There; I’d potentially pissed off Alania by going to her rival, Max by dobbing on him to his girlfriend before he could be all self-sacrificing about it, and probably myself after I got a good night’s sleep and regretted freaking my friends out over something they couldn’t affect. Had I forgotten to piss anyone off?

Oh yeah! Kylie!

Arranging to meet the coven on short notice wasn’t that hard. Hua was impeccably organised and able to make time for me, and Talbot, as I’d expected, was willing to drop everything as soon as I hinted at the possibility of someone being screwed over by powerful mages. I reminded myself to get Cheryl’s phone number the next time she visited the school, now that I could text people.

Then I told the coven everything that had happened. Talbot practically snarled when I described her mentor trying to kill her. He leapt to his feet, threatening to kill Lydia, and only sat down again when I explained that that was, in fact, already handled, and Lydia being dead was in fact the problem.

“How can we help?” Hua asked.

I told them.

Hua looked apprehensive. Talbot just laughed.

“If you don’t want to be involved,” I told Hua, “I unders – ”

“No,” she said, “I’ll help. This is necessary, I think. Even if we don’t need it right now, and we probably won’t, somebody will need it eventually. This is… yes. This is what we should do.”

“If we do need this, we’re going to piss a lot of people off,” I said.

“Who the fuck cares?” Talbot grinned. “We piss people off by existing. If they wanted us to play nice, they should’ve played nice first. They already treat us like an inconvenience, so why do we act like we owe it to anyone to be convenient?”

Should I be bothered by his enthusiasm? Eh. That was a problem for Later Kayden. It wouldn’t matter, anyway, if we didn’t need the backup plans. I hoped we wouldn’t need the backup plans.

I said goodbye. Took a long, hot shower. And finally, went to bed.

Tomorrow, I’d have to talk to Casey, and go over the whole story again. Tomorrow, I’d have to see how Kylie was doing, and go to classes like things were normal, and endure a bunch more rumours and attention because apparently everyone else in this school just had normal lives and the universe saved up everything weird for Dorm Australia. At some point I’d have to awkwardly explain things to Alania, and endure lectures from every teacher I knew when it came out that we’d been keeping the heiress prophecy to ourselves, and there’d be a trial and more stuff with Fionnrath and probably some new bullshit (because there was always some new bullshit) and we STILL hadn’t figured out the thing with the Hero and the Child, and…

But that was later. First, I would sleep.

I had the feeling that I was going to need it.