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The headmaster will see you both.
“Oh, Cat, what have we done now?” Our hands clasped as we shivered in a sudden cold wind coursing like a presentiment of disaster down from the high windows.
Bee and Cat, together forever. No matter what trouble we got into, we would, as always, face it as one.
4
When the lecture ended, we all dutifully snapped fingers and thumbs to show approval. Afterward, some students stood to offer praise, one male pupil raising a song while a chorus, scattered through the hall and balcony, clapped a rhythm and sang the response:
To the maestra of learning, heavy with wisdom.
On this day we greet you.
Our ears like maize grow ripe with knowledge.
On this day we greet you.
Bee hummed and tapped along, offbeat and out of tune. The academy’s head of natural history offered a mercifully brief speech thanking the eminent visitor for gracing us with her presence and illuminating insights, and afterward reminded the gathered pupils of the academy-sponsored trip to the Rail Yard to view the airship, coming up next week, and the public lecture to be offered on this very evening by the very same visiting scholar on the very same subject.
Bee sighed as she returned my pencil. “Father will make us go. It’s hopeless. We’re doomed to the dreary gray of Sheol for another evening of hearing the same lecture all over again.”
“I thought you’d given up believing in the afterlife after last year’s lecture series on natural philosophy.”
“Reason is the measure of all things. It’s perfectly reasonable to assume I will die of boredom if I have to sit through the same lecture all over again.”
“You just said that.”
“Exactly my point. I won’t even be allowed to draw.”
“Say you have a headache.”
“That was my excuse last week when the eminent scholar from the academy in Havery was speaking on the origin, nature, range, function, and persistence of ice sheets.”
“That one was actually interesting. Did you know that glacial ice covers all land north of fifty-five degrees latitude and once covered the land as far south as Adurnam—”
“Quiet!” She dropped her head into her hands, strands of black hair curling around her fingers. Her elegant silver blessing bracelet, given to her by her mother seven years ago when she made twelve, glimmered like a dido’s precious keepsake in the amber light. “I’m devising a desperate scheme.”
I slipped my schoolbook into my bag beside the essay and buttoned the pencil into its pocket, from which Bee could not easily steal it. We waited for the balcony to clear: The back-row students always descended last. When our turn came, we rose in order and filed out past Maestra Madrahat. The proctor still clutched Bee’s sketchbook, and I wondered if Bee would snatch it out of her hands, but the fateful moment passed as we pushed into the narrow stairwell, following the other whispering girls down the steep steps while the last of the row clipped at our heels. The gaslight’s flame murmured.
The young woman ahead of us turned her head to address Bee, who was in front of me. “Was that the book with the naughty drawings?” she asked.
“Yes.” Bee’s whisper hissed up and down the stairwell, and other girls fell silent to listen. “Ten pages drawn after the lecture on the wicked rites of sacred prostitution practiced in the ancient Phoenician city of Tyre according to the worship of the goddess Astarte.”
More giggling. I rolled my eyes.
“Those are just lies the Romans told,” said our interlocutor, who, like us, was the daughter of an old and impoverished Kena’ani lineage. Unlike us, Maestressa Asilita had been given a place at the academy college because of her genuine scholarly attainments. In addition, she had a remarkable gift for coaxing Bee off the cliff. “Like the ones about child sacrifice. Do you have drawings of that, too?”
“Bee,” I warned.
“Grieving parents wailing as they scratch their own faces and arms to draw blood? Priests cutting the throats of helpless infants and lopping off their tiny heads? And then casting their plump little bodies into the fire burning within the arms of the Lord of Ba’al Hammon? Of course!”
Girls shrieked while others, sad to say, giggled even more.
“What is that you said, Maestressa Hassi Barahal?” demanded the proctor’s voice from on high.
“I said nothing, maestra,” I called back as I ground a fist into Bee’s back. “I spoke my cousin’s name only because I was tripping on her hem and I wanted her to move faster.”
The light at the end of the stairs beckoned. We surged out and down the wide corridor in a chattering mass of young women soon joined by a chattering mass of young men. The actual children, the pupils under sixteen, were herded away to the school building in the back of the academy, but we college pupils spilled into the high entrance hall to await the summons to luncheon.
