The Grandmaster's Tale

It bugged me. Boscha had a point about one thing, and that was that the world was changing. The old certainties of my childhood—and his—were gone. Whitehall had been part of the imperial establishment for so long that … what was the school’s role now, after the establishment had been swept away? The thought haunted me. There were no shortages of power-hungry men, and a handful of women, taking advantage of the chaos to seize power for themselves. Did Boscha want to do the same? Or … or what?

I reached my office and returned to the grading, feeling my head start to pound as I read through the essays. There’s always a handful of students who don’t pay any attention to the instructions and a couple whose answers go off on tangents so bizarre you honestly wonder what they think they’re studying. You might as well ask someone to add two and two and get donkey as the answer. And then there’s the students whose handwriting is so bad that unravelling their answers is an exercise in cryptography. I knew teachers who didn’t bother to try…

Bastards, I thought, as I reached for the kettle to brew myself something to drink. They could put in the effort, couldn’t they?

I rubbed my forehead. Reading and writing were complex skills and the students from lower social classes tended not to have any training until they reached school. It made it harder for them to catch up … Geraldine’s family might have paid for lessons for her, if they were progressive enough to educate young women, but it was interesting that Alan knew how to read and write. The orphanage must have hired tutors. I sighed as I poured steaming liquid into a cup, then sat down to work. If I was ever in a position to change the rules, ensuring everyone had a chance to learn the basics before going on to the advanced classes would be the first thing I’d do.

“He gave me the same speech,” Mistress Constance said, that evening. “The board is coming, and we have to be ready.”

“He’s making sure the board isn’t going to be exposed to the food,” Pepper cracked. “Wise of him.”

I nodded, although I suspected Boscha was wasting his time. The board members had all been to school. Surely, they recalled just how bad the food was … surely. There were occasional midnight feasts, which were quietly ignored if they didn’t become excessive, but most students had to eat in the dining hall. Maybe they’d forgotten. Most people don’t like to dwell on unpleasant memories and school meals were very unpleasant indeed. It was something else I intended to change. I had to eat those dinners, too!

“Yeah,” I agreed. “What is he doing?”

“Building an army,” Pepper said, flatly. “We know it. But who is the real mastermind?”

I frowned. Boscha had been at pains to remind me of his connection to Lord Pollux. I guessed he had ties to Lord Archibald too. I doubted Boscha was acting on his own, but …

“We need to unseat him,” I said. “I doubt the board will do it for us.”

“No,” Mistress Constance agreed. “He’ll just claim he was giving students some extra tuition. He might even get away with it.”

“Probably,” I agreed. It wasn’t uncommon for students to seek out extra tutoring. The precedent had been set long ago. But Boscha was doing it on an excessive scale … if he hadn’t been working so hard to hide it, and Walter hadn’t been more obnoxious than usual, I would have wondered if I’d made a terrible mistake. The grandmaster could come up with a decent cover story for doing it openly, if he’d tried. “Why do it in secret?”

“To avoid exciting jealousy,” Pepper said. “But why not offer the lessons to everyone?”

“We need to keep training our own students,” I said. I wasn’t sure what I had in mind, not yet, but Boscha couldn’t be allowed to have the only army or he’d win by default. And so would his backers. “And we need to come up with a plan.”

I finished my drink and left, leaving them alone.

The next two weeks went slowly. We carried on the private training—and kept an eye out for new recruits— as we studied Boscha as closely as we could, trying to determine what he was planning. I was sure we were missing a major piece of the puzzle, perhaps the piece that would show us what the remainder of the puzzle would look like, but we didn’t have any idea what it was. Boscha himself showed no inclination to give anything away, save for endless reminders about the board’s visit. It made me wonder if he was planning to kidnap the board members and hold them for ransom, an idea that only made sense if one assumed Boscha was a complete idiot. Even Walter would hesitate to kidnap his own father!