I need to be prepared to deal with the consequences of my unwanted fame, or infamy. And like it or not, Electra is my best option to learn what I’ll need. She’s never been famous herself, but understanding of human nature is a skill that can be useful in almost any situation.
“Have you ever studied acting?” she asks.
I shake my head. I would have liked to, but my junior school didn’t offer it and trying at Genford didn’t end well.
“Pity. That’s the easy way to learn what you’ll need here, and I’m not going to put you through the hard way.”
I shouldn’t ask. But I’m too curious. “What’s the hard way?”
“Staking everything you care about on a perfect performance.” Something in the way she says it makes me think that’s the way she learnt. I agree with her: it’s not the way I’d prefer to learn if I have a better option. “Let’s see…" she continues, "how would you have liked to deal with that?”
“I should have persuaded them that I wasn’t – what they thought – that the Blackthorns – “
She shakes her head. “First mistake. Changing people’s minds is hard. Not impossible, but that many people at once, that quickly? It’s not going to happen unless you have superhuman powers of persuasion. And whatever abilities you do have, I’d be surprised if that was one of them.”
I can’t help laughing at that. The amusement is swiftly replaced by frustration, though: I have these extraordinary abilities, but I don’t understand them and it’s too dangerous to experiment with them. And I certainly can't use them to deal with my extraordinary problems.
“Okay,” I say. “So that’s not realistic. What is?”
“That depends on what you want. You care about not being seen as a villain, don’t you?”
Obviously. Except that I’m talking to Electra, who very much doesn’t care about that – or perhaps she cares in the opposite way. “Yes.”
“That does make things more complicated. It rules out, say, the approach I demonstrated. Caring about being seen as a reasonable, good person reduces your options a great deal.”
“It’s not something I’m going to compromise on.”
Electra sighs. “I didn’t think so. Then – “
Someone knocks at the door. I tense for a second.
“Good,” Electra says. “He came back.” She waves a hand and the door opens.
He is Edward, it turns out. “Morning,” he says, sauntering in and shutting the door behind him. He looks annoyingly unruffled.
“Morning,” I reply, trying to ignore the resentment I can’t help feeling.
“Ah, you’ve decided to show yourself, have you?” Electra asks. “How… delightful.”
Right. He did completely fail to return to her lesson yesterday or inform her of his intention not to return. Even if he has an understandable reason, Electra can’t just ignore that.
“I’m sorry about yesterday,” Edward says. “My dad – “
“Your dad is allowed certain lapses in common decency, because even I know how to pick my battles. You, however, are not.”
Edward flinches and hesitates for a second. Only a second, though, then he says crisply “I was acting to prevent a likely Malaina episode.”
I pray that Electra will stop now rather than digging further. She has some idea of what’s happened and what it did to him; surely she understands that needling Edward about it won’t accomplish anything.
“Ensure it doesn’t happen again,” is all she says.
“I don’t think I can guarantee that, considering it was caused by factors outside my control.”
Electra shakes her head sharply. “Events may be outside your control, but the same is not true of your response to them.”
“Are you saying we can control whether or not we have Malaina episodes?” he asks. “Because that would have been really useful to know before now.”
“Of course not. I think you know I’m not. But the actions you take and the choices you make can influence that. You did do the right thing in avoiding something you thought would trigger an episode, but it would have been better if you had no need to do that.”
“I don’t think you’re being fair,” I say. “We can’t…”
“You’re right. I’m not being fair. Because life isn’t fair, and because the two of you in particular are going to experience many situations you struggle to cope with. And because if you show signs of so-called weakness in many of those situations, you will suffer for it.”
Politics, she means. Court. Enemies and rivals who won’t hesitate to exploit a weakness such as Malaina in any way they can.
Edward’s face is fixed in a grimace. “And let me guess. You’re the only one who can help us overcome that.”
He still hasn’t fully recovered from yesterday, I realise. That kind of instinctive mistrust is a strong reaction even for him. What I told him about Electra can’t have helped either.
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“Oh, please. I like to think I have a little more subtlety than that.”
I choke back a laugh. Every time I think I’m used to Electra, she comes out with something like this.
Edward remains more serious. “So your defence is that if you were trying to manipulate me – which you definitely are, by the way – you would be more subtle about it?”
“Yes.” Electra smiles.
“Stars help me.”
“As I was saying,” continues Electra as if that little interaction didn’t just happen, “while I can help to some extent, in the end it is something that you will have to overcome on your own, supported by those you trust. And I am aware that I am not included in that category, and I don’t ask to be. One of your holiday homework assignments, then, will be to think about this problem and how you will go about solving it.”
It is something I need to think about. But how… it seems impossible. Knowing Electra, that’s probably the point.
“In the meantime… I have been working on alternative lesson plans. I believe my holiday homework will be finding a way to either safely experiment with your powers or teach you practical magic, particularly combat magic, in a way that is not influenced by them. But it seems a pity to waste these few days, so… I have devised more theoretical work for the two of you to complete. Edward, have you heard of An Outline of a New Theory of Spellcraft?”
He nods. “My dad says it’s a load of nonsense.” As tactful as ever.
“Even if that is true, it does not mean it has nothing to teach you. There is a copy of it in the Academy library, freely available to all students. Read it and understand it; we will discuss it tomorrow. I suggest you begin at once.”
“The library doesn’t open to students until nine after midnight.”
“Is that the sort of rule that applies to you?” Electra asks.
“I – are you – very well. If the cafeteria has returned to normal by lunchtime I will see you then, Tallulah.” He leaves without another word.
I let the silence linger for a few seconds before asking “What are you encouraging him to do?”
“I expect he will take the sensible approach and simply ask his cousin Rosalind to fetch the book for him.”
I didn’t realise that Rosie was short for Rosalind. It had to be a nickname of some sort, though. That would indeed be a much more sensible approach than what I thought Electra was implying.
“Giving us separate assignments was deliberate, wasn’t it?”
“As we discussed yesterday, what the two of you need to learn is different, and thus it is only logical. But that’s not what you mean, is it?”
I shake my head.
“May I ask what has happened between the two of you since we last met?”
I hesitate. Nothing we discussed is that secret, but –
“No? Understandable. I have the general sense, anyway. You are friends again – but not, I think, quite in the sense that you once were.”
I nod. No use denying it.
“Perhaps it will heal naturally in time, or perhaps – “
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” Electra asks, as innocently as Electra can ask anything.
“Don’t try to – to engineer a situation that fixes it. You shouldn’t do things like that.”
“Oh? Would you rather I had never interfered with the two of you in the first place, and you were casual acquaintances at the best?”
I grimace. That isn’t the sort of question that has an easy answer. “Just because something good came of it doesn’t mean it was right,” I try.
“But I did it specifically to make that good thing happen.”
“Okay. Maybe it worked out in the way I care about most. But it’s also made my life a lot harder in a lot of ways. Stars, you must know I nearly died in the riot. If I had died then, it would have been your fault.”
I want to take back the words as soon as I’ve said them, but… that doesn’t mean they’re wrong.
“True, that would not have happened if I had not made that choice. It also would not have happened if Lord Cavendish had not committed treason. If Mildred had not tried to use you to save him. If Edward had not wanted to go to the execution. If Lord Blackthorn had spared Cavendish, or if he had a less monstrous reputation. If the instigators of the riot had not begun it. Everything has a thousand causes, Tallulah. Every good historian should know that.”
I flinch at that last line. But it’s not important, not really; it’s a rhetorical trick, a distraction from what’s important. “Maybe that’s true. It is true. But arguing that no one cause matters because there are many causes can’t be any better. And even if you weren’t able to predict the riot, you must have known the likely consequences of being friends with Edward Blackthorn.”
Stars. I started off just angry at her for thinking it’s okay to manipulate people casually like that. But I don’t think the Electra who genuinely has the best interests of all her students at heart would make a decision like that knowing its consequences.
Which means that this could be a hint at what she really wants.
And I can’t let her know I’ve realised, because then she can spin it however she likes to make sure I reach the answer she wants me to reach rather than the true one. It might already be too late for that, though.
“I did, but I expected that it would do more good than otherwise regardless.”
And how is Electra defining more good? That’s the essence of the problem, I think. “And just because you were right doesn’t mean that what you did was good,” I say, echoing my own words from earlier.
“I think the real problem is that your definitions of good and right are very different from mine.”
That is quite the understatement. I’m glad of it. If my moral code is ever similar to Electra’s, something will have gone very wrong.
“And I am teaching you, not debating morality with you.”
And this conversation is over. I’m a little disappointed, but I don’t think it would have gone anywhere useful. Electra has done an excellent job of proving her own point about how hard it is to change someone’s mind. I’m not going to persuade her that the way she sees the world is wrong over the course of a single conversation.
Part of me wishes I could, though. Part of me wishes the world could be that simple.
Maybe I shouldn’t be letting that part make the decisions.
“All right,” I say slowly. “If I’m not going to research this theory of spellcraft… what do you want me to do?”
“There are a few different options. For many of them, I am not a suitable teacher, but given your… unique circumstances… it may be harder for you to find one. And perhaps the most important question is: what do you want to learn?”
I’m silent. It seems like a question I should have the answer to, but I don’t. Because really, it’s asking: what do I want to do? Who do I want to become? And while I’ve figured out a lot over the last couple of months, I still don’t have the answers to those questions. Life was so much easier when I thought I knew.
“I want to not have a Malaina episode every time someone recognises me on the street. I want to be able to turn things like this morning into something positive. I want to be able to deal with whatever being friends with Edward is going to throw at me.”
“That’s what you need to survive, yes. It won’t be easy, but I think you’re already making excellent progress there to the extent that it’s possible. But… what you need to survive and what you want are not the same thing. And I don’t want to see you reduced to the former.”
She’s right. I know she’s right. But it doesn’t give me the answers.
I close my eyes and think. To my surprise, it’s Elizabeth who comes to mind. The other day at dinner. Complaining about the prejudiced landlords making it harder for her to find somewhere to live, because she’s Malaina. All the people who’ve reacted with fear and suspicion when they found out I was Malaina. Everyone who’s ever accused Edward of being mala sia.
What Electra said just now, about Malaina being used as a weapon against us.
None of that is right. None of that is how things should be.
I want to change that.
“I want to change the way people see Malaina.”