Barrowby's School for Psychic Girls

Corpse Flower Circus, Scene 2

"I had Drake pick it out," Trina explained as Tal tugged on the deep blue jacket. "We thought it might be advantageous if you looked less like a student on cases."

Tal ran her fingers over the thick fabric and brass buttons, felt the slight resistance of her sleeves. The split coattails were a strange weight and the cinch above her hips was slightly uncomfortable, but there was something deeply pleasing about the official-looking jacket. She felt dapper.

Tal sighed. "I can't afford this."

"It's a work expense," Trina replied. "Fenwick approved it."

"Mmm." Tal ran her thumb over the outside lip of a pocket. "Wait. But I don't really work for him, do I?"

Trina stared at Tal, and Tal tasted something peppery and heavy behind the words that followed. "The paperwork has you down as a consultant."

"Ah." Tal rolled her shoulders back, appreciating the feel of fabric stretching. "What am I consulting on today? Where are we headed?"

Trina looked up as the aerobus reached the platform and people began to pour out. "There's been a few disappearances on the first tier. Maids, gardeners, cooks and the like."

"And how are spirits tied in?"

Trina frowned. "They might not be."

Tal followed Trina onto the aerobus and sat with her in the back row. "Then why are we involved?"

"Ms. Sageworth specifically requested that Fenwick be the one to look for her missing sommelier."

A pause.

"Oh." Tal's fingers stopped tapping on the aerobus's rail. "Are we going to the first tier?"

This time there was hint of frothy mirth in Trina's voice. "Yes."

Tal looked down at her jacket. "I see."

"I'm assuming you've never been?"

Tal laughed. "No, of course not. I've never even been up Viper Street."

"It's overrated," Trina confided. "Though I hear the meat pies are good."

"Meat pies tend to be." Tal responded, plucking at her tan breeches and wondering if they're too shabby for the first tier. On the cable above them, three silver skitterlings scrambled to lap up sparks.

"I don't eat meat," Trina said. "Haven't for a few years now."

"Catalin— a girl at school— doesn't either." Tal hummed. "Is it hard?"

"Sometimes. I didn't eat much of it as a child. It helps that my husband doesn't either."

Tal looked up from her lap. "You're married?"

Trina smiles, and Tal realized that the woman's face is actually quite soft when it's not held taut by focus and purpose. "Three years now."

"That's great!" Tal said, and the two sit in silence for a while, watching the skitterlings now fighting each other on the cable.

"What's the first tier like?" Tal asked without looking at Trina.

"Quieter. Wider streets, bigger buildings. I don't usually see much of it, just the area where my aunt lives."

Tal's eyes slid over to Trina. "You have family there?"

"My aunt was born in the Grays, as was I." Trina's eyebrows furrowed. "She worked her way up in the army."

Tal nodded. "That's one way to go about it. My brother, the youngest one, wants to be a military engineer. He's got the brains for it too. I just worry, well..."

"That he won't get the opportunity." Trina met Tal's eyes, a certain sadness in her grey eyes. She opened her mouth to speak, but was cut off by the blare of the aerobus horn. Tal tasted it as her intent turned from gunmetal to lavender. Trina shook her head. "Let's get off here. We'll walk up Viper Street."

The switchbacks of Viper Street connected the first and second tiers with lines of high-end artisan shops and restaurants. Tal knew Lilyanne's family had their jewelry store here, and there were a few younger girls whose parents also worked on the famous blue-stoned street. Tal had never had the money for the extravagant wares offered nor an interest in the so-called "little snakes" or "asps" who gathered on the street. Julia, Tal knew, wanted to visit one day, just to see the latest fashions parading around Callindra.

And there was fashion in excess— skirts with more layers than entirely plausible, vest nested upon vest, long boots dyed in many-colored rings that reached up mid-thigh. There were parasols and sun-cloaks and hats layered in veils, as well as a few K'thal men baring their chest in traditional garb.

And then there were the red-coated guards at the top of the slope with long swords at their hips and steely expressions. Tal's fingers were still a bit oily— from the remains of the perfectly seasoned meat pie she had splurged on— when they reached the guards, and she had to quash the urge to wipe them on her breeches as she fidgeted.

Surely she wouldn't be let in? She was Grayborn through and through, and even her time at Barrowby's couldn't hide that. She could throw back her shoulders and straighten her back all she liked— something in the way she moved through the world would still mark her as third tier, as of inferior birth, as less.

But Trina's police badge gained them entry and Tal was suddenly walking down too-broad avenues lined with gold- and grey-stoned buildings. She expected to be stared at, but the pale figures that meandered through the streets or went by in carriages— carriages! in this day and age!— paid no mind to them. Police-looking garb, Tal decided, made you as good as invisible to those who thought themselves above the law.

Trina paused at a wide intersection with a many-tiered fountain in the middle and summoned a blue needle to her hand. It spun rapidly a few times before slowing down and lazily twitching to the right.

"Fenwick's that way," Trina explained, and she and Tal followed the needle away from the building-lined boulevards towards streets more sparsely populated by sprawling estates. They passed a massive park on the left, a green expanse with a few dark thickets of trees, several stone benches, and an intricate iron gate with the words Kinverly Woods wrought into the top. Also to their left high up in the distance and impossible not to see were the King and Queen's Towers against the backdrop of mountains. One could catch a glimpse of them at Barrowby's— it was far enough edgeward for that— but from this neck-craning perspective one could almost see the art to them, the liquid twisting supposedly accomplished with dragon-flame.

"Here," Trina said, snapping Tal's attention back to the world in front of her— a strange world, but oddly familiar too. It was like someone had taken the sprawling estate of the old Ravani hospital that housed her school and dropped it down next to another and another. There were the iron fences— more fancily wrought, sure— and the vast lawns and the hulking buildings. Each was different, but in a sense they were all exactly the same: expensive, expansive, excessive.

By this one's gate, formed by two arching dragons with long necks and barbed tails, were two aerocycles, one conspicuously finer than the other. Spinning her fingers, Trina conjured a message sphere then flicked it towards the complex.

"Tal," Trina began, and the student could taste again the oddest fusing of gunmetal and lavender in her, "Fenwick may act a bit differently among the people here. Yvon too. It's where they grew up and that legacy still lingers. You might find them... slightly more distant or imperious."

"Oh. Thank you for telling me." Then, before she could stop herself, Tal added, "Wait. It's possible for them to act more arrogantly than they already do?"

Trina laughed, the sound like wind chimes in a breeze, and Tal felt her face swell into a smile in response. At least, in this alien world of aristocrats, she had a Grayborn ally by her side.