The Blanket
The Eastern Telegraph Office.
One of only two communications stations in all of Fraussen, and a modest little firm beside the Western Telegraph Office. The spirit of its people, however, did not seem to scale with the size of the company.
Unlike Lena, who was welcomed in and took up her work as advisor as if it had always been hers, the three of us newcomers were ringed by the existing staff and put through a kind of vetting. Whose way those looks were aimed hardly needs saying.
The new woman, steady and capable in her bearing, passed at once. The man who inspired no confidence whatsoever was waved through in a muddle. The initiation did not extend the same leniency as far as me.
"Hmm."
"Gray hair? Well, now..."
"The build's good. The build."
"Even so, the Eastern Telegraph Office hasn't fallen so low that we'll take a man on the spot just because he's well put together."
Six of them closed around me, each tossing out a remark of his own. Were the words meant to be overheard?
I had been hunted by soldiers before. I was confident I would not so much as blink under ordinary intimidation. Being surrounded by a full complement of hulking, muscle-bound clerks was not a pleasant experience, though, so I kept my face composed and hoped the hazing would end quickly.
It was then that Lena, hauling an armful from a mountain of paperwork, tossed off a single line.
"I brought him in myself, so you don't need to go quite that far."
The moment they heard it, their attitude reversed completely.
"Oh—!"
"So that's how it was!"
"What a blunder I've made!"
"You there, what's your name? Let's make a good go of it from here on!"
I stood dumbfounded and took six bone-crushing handshakes in a row. One thing, at least, I could now be sure of. The staff's trust in Lena ran very deep.
Freed from their circle, I watched her pass, a triumphant little smile slipping out of her. She must have decided the order of rank had been settled; the corner of her mouth was cocked unusually high. In truth, I had very nearly been cowed myself—had she not been groaning her way along under that pile of documents.
"Want a hand?"
She said nothing.
We split the stack in half.
Click—clack—click-click-clack.
A place where people gather is usually filled with voices, but the noise that packed the Eastern Telegraph Office was not human speech. It was a bright, metallic clatter. That the chaotic, random-sounding racket was the telegraph operators striking out their messages was plain enough. Turn my head, and there they were: four operators, arms flying without pause.
And yet a vast gap lay between accepting a thing as knowledge and truly understanding it.
This, I was told, was a code named for some inventor, and what it had sent were the letters A, B, and C. Memorizing every symbol that corresponded to the alphabet I could grant easily enough. What I could not help admiring was the operators' art itself—sending dozens of characters in a single minute with movements closer to instinct than to skill.
"The pride of our Eastern Telegraph Office, these operators. Well? What do you think?"
Whenever I found myself staring at them, lost, a passing clerk would tap my shoulder and launch into praise of his colleagues. My astonishment, though, was not aimed entirely at the operators.
The telegraph key. I had fallen into the workings of the thing. The machine itself could hardly have been simpler. Each time the switch opened and closed in time with the code, a pulse of mana ran along the wire, and the receiving end, I supposed, turned it back into symbols. What astonished me was that this simple arrangement stretched like a spider's web across the whole of the country. How much wire had gone into it? How delicate a craft of tuning mana? I found myself newly impressed by the Federation's magical engineering.
I threw myself into the work, picking up the clicking code by ear as a way to pass the time. Unlike the operators' post, which demanded a seasoned skill, what I had been given was closer to plain labor—a general errand boy, if one were to name it. I shifted stacks of documents, assisted the operators, and now and then saw to the customers. Set down in a list, the duties looked like nothing at all. The difficulty of odd jobs has always come from precisely that: the way those trifles gather and compound.
By the time the sun was sinking low, I thought I understood why Lena had struggled so to fill the vacancies.
Ding—ding—ding.
"Whew."
The bell that marked the end of the day had rung. Everyone sat down to rest at the tables laid out on the first floor, so I joined them. I did it on purpose. So long as I had gray hair, people of the Federation would keep their distance as a matter of course. If I meant to settle in Fraussen, I would have to learn how to step forward myself.
The staff talked loudly, shaking off the day's fatigue. I took a corner of the table, expecting a silence to fall among them.
It did not.
"Oh, the gray-hair Lena brought in. You worked hard."
"Quick about it, too."
"What's your relation to the advisor?"
To my surprise, they began speaking to me in an easy, unbothered way.
"Uh—uh."
"Hey. One question at a time. You're flustering the new man."
"Whoops!"
"What a blunder I've made!"
The cheerful mood carried on. How to put it—beneath everything at the Eastern Telegraph Office there seemed to lie a standing rule: do the work well and have a decent character, and you were welcome. Perhaps that was why. One of the new hires who had been shooting me sour looks between tasks had tried to slack off, been caught dead to rights by Lena, and had been thoroughly deflated ever since.
A wholesome sort of meritocracy. Whose influence had shaped this peculiar office culture was obvious.
I lifted my head and looked over the upper floor, still thick with the air of busyness. The second story of the telegraph office was open through the middle, so that even from below one could look up into it. There was Lena, hair tied back tight, sleeves rolled, directing the staff from the front.
"Working hard."
I had murmured it without thinking.
A hand came down solidly on my shoulder, and at the same time a thick smell of pipe tobacco drifted up from behind me. A slender voice, worn thin by the world. The moment I tipped my head back to see who it belonged to, a fall of blonde hair tickled my face.
"Oh. Sorry."
"...Who are you?"
I glanced around. The staff who had been laughing so warmly a moment ago had gone strangely stiff. Unease was just closing in when the blonde woman, dark circles heavy beneath her eyes, took a pull on her pipe and blew the smoke into my face as she answered.
"Director of the Eastern Telegraph Office. Lily Lovelace."
Some people smoke a pipe for the look of it. Others are genuine addicts, satisfied only when the leaf is harsh and bitter, and their number is by no means small. Director Lovelace appeared to be the latter.
The smoke was so acrid that the staff, even as they greeted her with smiling faces, began leaving the table one by one. Before long only the two of us remained along its length—myself and the director. I wanted to slip away as well, but I could not bring myself to. Her decadent gaze had bound me in place like a spell.
Director Lovelace took the pipe from her mouth.
"Eugene Oslo. That's right, isn't it?"
The weight had fallen not on the given name but on the surname. This was not a question meant merely to confirm that a name matched a face.
Sure enough.
"Lena's... older brother?"
"Something like that."
"A house of geniuses, living up to the name. And what kind of genius are you, Eugene?"
I shook my head.
"I'm no genius. I'm only preparing for the entrance examination at the Federal Magic University."
"Magic, is it. A shame to let a talent like that slip away. Don't go vanishing on us the moment you pass."
She wore a bewitching smile and let the smoke drift into the empty air.
"I'm a director who falls well short of the post and does nothing but lean on Lena—but I'll grow this company until it surpasses the Western Telegraph Office. You'll see."
"...I'd heard the company's circumstances weren't easy."
"Don't you want to know why?"
With a soft clack she set the pipe on the table and glanced up toward the second floor. A railing from which the whole of the office could be taken in. Nearby, Lena was dozing in a rocking chair.
"All I have as director is a distinguished family, and the capital I put up when this Eastern Telegraph Office was founded. Which is to say I'm badly short where ability is concerned. But that part was settled when I brought Lena in."
Which left a single problem.
"Trust from the outside. That's what's lacking. Who would want to invest in a director who's nothing but a title, and an advisor who isn't even of age?"
I said nothing.
"We listed the shares, but there's no trust, so no one buys them. And that's with Lena herself swearing to the returns. If there were even one precedent of a purchase, the trading might pick up a little... ah. I've gone and grumbled far longer than I ever meant to."
Lily Lovelace leaned forward until she was looking me in the face. The scent of burned tobacco leaf spread faintly, like perfume.
"Ability aside, Lena is still young. In body, and in mind."
I had taken her for a young figurehead, steeped in fatigue and tobacco. She was, unexpectedly, a solid person. Instead of answering, I offered a small smile.
Meanwhile, one line from the midst of Director Lovelace's complaining kept circling in my ear.
She had guaranteed the returns.
"The going average return on investment brokerage was fifteen percent, wasn't it."
The businessman inside me began to stir once more.
Morning. Susan was asleep, and the twins as well. In the storeroom, a candle burned with a soft light.
Lena Oslo, working through the paperwork of the investment brokerage as she always did, received a single anonymous letter.
Mr. Underbridge
Six hundred pounds enclosed. Please invest them in the Eastern Telegraph Office.