“The beguiling way your mouth forms S and O gives away your island home.”
I raise an eyebrow at his attempt to be clever. “It wasn’t my dark skin and black hair?”
He laughs. “Well, those were rather large clues as well. As for the school, see—” He reaches across the table and takes my right hand in his. I try to pull it back, but his long fingers are insistent. “Look at your callus.” He points to the raised bump on the top knuckle of my middle finger. “And see how it is stained black? If you were a secretary, no doubt they’d have you on one of those horrible new typewriters. You don’t have the pinched look of someone who keeps ledgers, either. And, much like your skin, your school uniform is a bit of a giveaway.”
I stifle a snort of laughter, not wanting to give him that point. Then, realizing he still has my hand in his, I pull it back and take a sip of tea. When did the tea get here? Have I been so distracted by his hair? I am not that shallow, surely. But I use the tea to buy myself a moment to look at him. “And what am I studying?”
He taps his chin thoughtfully. “In your final year of preparatory, yes? So you’d have to be in your focus. You have the soulful eyes of a writer and the heavy bag of a reader. Literature, certainly.”
“History.”
He narrows his eyes. “But that is not your first choice.”
“Alas, apparently the feminine mind is not suited to the mathematical arts, all my test scores to the contrary. Now you, sir. Or is it ‘lord’?”
“You may address me as anything you wish.”
“Well then. You have all the grace and manners of nobility, not to mention clothes that cost more than our server’s yearly wages. Your quick smile indicates an arrogance born and bred into you through generations of never having to answer to anyone, so I’m guessing lord, or perhaps earl, but lord suits your savior complex better. In your spare time, because being wealthy and privileged is a full-time occupation, you like mingling with those too far beneath you for notice. Chambermaids, waitresses,” I glance meaningfully at where our serving girl is leaning against the counter gazing moons at him, “and even the occasional student. Unfortunately, sometimes you miscalculate your appeal and try to use your charms on girls who grew up on an island spotted with bastard children who were fathered by visiting Albens. I am therefore immune to being overwhelmed by your exceptional ancestry. You will, however, be able to console yourself with your vast lands and holdings and never again have to consider the student who paid for her own tea and then begged leave.”
I dig out my purse and drop a few coins on the table, expecting him to sneer or curse, but instead I look up to find his first genuinely delighted smile. It makes him look younger and I realize he’s probably not much older than me. Eighteen, perhaps.
“Oh, please stay and eat, won’t you?” he asks. “I haven’t had someone be so honest with me in ages, and I cannot tell you how refreshing it is.”
Something in the open happiness of his face, the almost childlike hope there, whisks away my resolve to be cold.
“Very well.” I sit back and consider my strange companion. “Though you haven’t told me whether or not I’m right, my lord.”
“I’ve no doubt you’re right with startling frequency, and while I’d very much like to be yours, I am not a lord. Sandwiches to start?”
The meal is the best I’ve had since I left Melei. Halfway through, I’m struck with sudden fear for the cost of such a meal, but in one of those odd, sliding moments where I seem to be entranced by the light playing on his hair, the plates are gone and the bill is paid.
“Thank you,” I stutter, unsure what else to say. I am out of sorts; I know we’ve spoken of many things, but I cannot grasp the particulars of any of it.
“Thank you, my dear Jessamin. Are you quite sure I can’t walk you back to the dormitories?”
I stop midway to standing. “I told you my name?”
His sly smile is back, all innocence gone. “I plucked it from the air around your lips. And for the privilege of knowing it, I’ll tell you that mine is Finn.”
“Well then, Finn, I wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors, whatever they may be. I do not live in the dormitories, nor do I care to tell you any other details.” I scamper from the restaurant. He follows, slower, and I turn to see him over my shoulder, watching me. When I round a corner toward the hotel, I check again to see if he is following, unsure if the thought makes me feel safer or scared.
A large black bird caws over my head, nearly startling me out of my boots. Frowning at it, I unlock the servants’ entrance to the Grande Sylvie. Checking over my shoulder one last time, I notice a movement and jump backward.
I shake my head at my nerves. Only my shadow cast by the dim gas lamp.
But for the oddest moment it looked as though I had two.
Two
“AND WHO CAN TELL ME THE TOP IMPROVEMENTS made during colonization?”
The professor teaching our Advanced Alben History course has every degree available, and is teaching for one year here as a special guest of the school. His owlish eyes peer out between round spectacles. Wisps of hair make a last desperate attempt to cover his shiny bald pate, and he is thin everywhere except a small paunch pushing out the buttons of his vest.
And yet, beneath the gradual wearing-down of age, it’s obvious he was once handsome. No matter how hard I look, I can see nothing of myself in him. And he has never, not once, so much as looked me in the eyes to try and find himself.
Oh, Mama, why?
A mousy girl shoots her hand into the air. “Improved infrastructure. Eradication of pagan superstitions and beliefs. Education. Increased safety with Alben police forces and state protection. Introduction of advanced medical discipline.”
“Very good.”
She beams, either besotted or trying to get a better grade. Please let it be the latter. “Anyone who follows your column on the theoretical benefits of Alben policies on Iverian continental countries would be able to say the same. The colonization case studies are perfect examples.”
I cannot stop myself and raise my hand.
Professor Miller does not call on me.
I talk anyway. “What about the steep rise in infant mortality for the period of twenty years after colonization? Taking Melei as an example, death rates among infants went from one in ten to one in five and have only recently begun to taper off.”
Professor Miller clears his throat, and the sound does not cover a blond girl on the end of my row sighing, “Island rat.”
“Why is she even here?” the mousy girl whispers over her shoulder.
“My father has complained to the superintendent about the decline in quality of students.” The blond girl does not look at me as she says it. None of them ever do.
Professor Miller, having finally cleared his throat but not his ears, which remain deaf to my comments, lists the chapters we are to study for our next class and then leaves without dismissing us.
I feel utterly dismissed nonetheless.
Leaving in a cocoon of silence amidst the chattering of my classmates, I find a bench outside and begin writing my calculations with fierce strokes. I’m not in a mathematics course, and barely have time to balance my actual studies with work at the hotel, but I don’t care. I will learn everything I can. I wish I were like the other students and that studying was my only task.