13. Nada, Zilch, Nought #3
‘Jesus, okay. It’s Sunday, Jones, I should still be asleep.
’ She narrows her eyes and presses the pad of her thumb into the sharp edge of the can hole, lowering her voice.
‘You’re meant to go everywhere in pairs, at least. Ideally bigger groups.
It’s not official policy but the Dame’s pretty hardcore about it when you start.
You suss out the dangerous ones best you can, make sure everyone knows.
And . . . and then sometimes you just have to hope that you’re not hooking up with a prick. ’
‘But how can you know?’
‘Well, you can’t. But the only other choice is not to come to Temple.
I mean, that was my preferred option, but I was overruled.
It’s either . . . come here and put up with it, get a slice of power, or go hungry.
Everybody knows this is basically just a shitty gentlemen’s club.
They only let girls in at all so that Templetonians could pick out wives who can do the Work, keep the bloodlines strong. ’
‘Is that true?’
‘I don’t know. Some baroness kicked off, I think, about getting her daughter in. And people were always worried that the men would tell their ordinary wives too much, and the wives wouldn’t understand how important it is to keep the secret and would gossip, because that’s what women are for.’
Briar watches a girl of about twelve apply her lip gloss, using the black screen of her cherry-encased phone as a mirror. ‘So if they married women who weren’t scholars before, how do we know they weren’t . . . Working on them? ’
‘Guess we don’t.’
‘Fuck. Okay. So . . . what happens when people break the law, using the Work?’
‘There aren’t any laws that cover the Work.’
Briar blinks at her. She’s holding the can to her mouth, now tonguing absent-mindedly at the sharp edge of the hole.
‘Okay, well, the rules, then. What if someone takes something too far? Here, or after graduating?’
‘There aren’t really any rules, either.’
Briar doesn’t understand. ‘So who . . . enforces anything? What stops people from hurting each other?’
‘I’m running out of ways to say nothing.
Nada, zilch, nought. Fuck all.’ She relents slightly.
‘There’s one rule, and it’s to keep Temple’s secrets.
That’s as good as a law. If you break that, you’re fucked.
You can’t tell anyone, or draw too much attention to yourself.
If you hurt someone at school, you might end up having to sit in mediation to work it out.
They make you shake hands. But if you’re besties with the board of governors, they won’t even do that much. ’
What had Briar expected? Magically binding contracts to smite the wicked? An elite task force of occult police, bursting SWAT-style into the houses of malefactors?
Maybe not. But not nothing.
‘So what if you . . . kill someone?’ they ask slowly.
Hadley laughs hollowly. ‘If you kill someone, and you’re sloppy and the police investigate, you might be hauled in for murder.
But why would you get caught in the first place, if you can do the Work?
And even if you are caught - the Minister for Crime, half the High Court judges and the Chancellor of the Exchequer are all Old Templetonians.
If the board likes you, they’ll pull the right strings without even having to bother Working. ’
Hadley is speaking hypothetically. She must be. ‘You make it sound like the Illuminati.’
‘Did you ever think there might be a reason so many people believe in all that stuff?’
Briar shakes their head. ‘Because . . . I don’t know, because house paint used to have a lot of lead in it?’
‘Well, okay. That too.’
There’s a burst of laughter over by the door: three girls bent around a phone, peering at a picture, taking it in turns to yank it closer like gulls squabbling for half a bagel.
They look very fragile to Briar suddenly, not because they’re girls, but because they’re human - soft shoulders and narrow collarbones, thin skin, everything about them so breakable in the wrong hands.
Hadley is affecting nonchalance right now, but Briar knows that’s not how she really feels. They saw the fury in her eyes after Westby was shot. Briar’s probably been walking around with that same look on their face ever since Alistair asked them to kneel.
‘What are you planning to do?’
Hadley stretches indulgently. ‘Right now? Go back to bed.’
‘No, I mean to Mons. Buck and . . . the others.’
‘Voice down, please,’ Hadley hisses, even though Briar barely spoke above a mutter. ‘It wouldn’t be smart to tell you, would it? I’m not sloppy.’ Briar must twitch slightly, because she shrugs and says, ‘Well, not about this.’
‘I’m in,’ Briar says urgently.
Hadley rolls her eyes. ‘You don’t even know what you’re getting in on.’
‘I don’t care. I’ll help. With . . . with Sebastian Wolfe, too, if I can.’
Hadley’s eyebrows disappear entirely under her fringe. ‘I can’t promise you won’t get hurt.’
Briar’s already been hurt. When people tried to beat the strangeness out of them at secondary, it hadn’t made them any less queer - just more determined. Fists and fire might not be enough to strike back here at Temple, but if Hadley’s planning revenge, Briar is prepared to do the heavy lifting.
‘I don’t care.’
‘You will care,’ says Hadley. She gets up, chugs the rest of her Coke and then crumples the can in her hand and tosses it in the direction of a bin, which she misses by about a foot.
Briar itches to pick it up and put it in the recycling bin.
‘But I admire your pig-headedness, and your gumption, even if you’re doing it out of some misguided sense of heroism.
My people will call your people. Keep your head down a bit in the meantime, so you don’t get it knocked off before we’ve even begun.
You might think you’re keeping it all zipped-up, Jones, but you’re so loud.
I can read your thoughts without a lick of magic. Do not recycle my Coke can.’
Briar waits for ten seconds after she disappears into the hallway and then does recycle her Coke can.