An Academy? That's Insane — 10
The day after I began staying with the Vett family, I woke, tidied the room, and stepped out to find Beatrice asleep with her face planted on the table. It was still dawn, early enough that the air beyond the window hung a deep blue. A tall stack of papers, the ones she seemed to have finished, rose on the right; only a few sheets remained on the left. I went over to her.
"Wake up. You still have work to finish."
"You've got a vicious mouth on you."
Beatrice spoke in a voice pressed flat. She was awake. From the sound of it, my words hadn't been what roused her. Had she stirred when I came down?
"You're nearly done, aren't you?"
"Yeah. Nearly."
Beatrice rose from her seat. There was nothing half-asleep in the way she looked, so she must be a light sleeper—or else she hadn't been able to sleep at all, because of me. She stretched, left me where I was, and walked into the kitchen, where she opened something like a refrigerator and peered inside.
The only difference from a refrigerator was the lack of a freezer. Going by what Victoria knows, refrigeration alone can keep food as fresh as freezing would. The trouble was that the inside stood utterly empty. In the end Beatrice shut the door, filled a kettle, and set the water to boil.
While she did, her gaze made several passes around the room, and once it caught on the gun near the table her eyes went back to it a couple of times. I'll generously count that as a cute little habit. Anyone would be on guard with a guest of uncertain identity in the house.
It's a curious thing, tea existing in every world. Some places steep leaves, of course, some steep stems, and some steep beans and the like. This world has coffee too. Victoria can't stand it—she says it comes out sour—so I don't really know the stuff. Beatrice brewed some and brought it over.
"Here. Drink."
"Thank you."
She handed me a cup, set her own down on the table, and in the same easy motion took up the gun. I'll count that as a cute little habit as well. Then she perched on the edge of the table.
She seemed to have something to say, so I waited. A long while after the coffee, she finally spoke. The drowsiness must not have fully left her.
"Why did you come to my daughter?"
In other words, she was clear-headed now.
"Victoria Vett. The girl was simply unlucky. She happened to be kidnapped, happened to be injected with something that turns people into monsters, and when she woke she happened to succeed at resisting. She thrashed and struggled, not knowing it was already over."
She may have killed a number of sahuagin, but that only meant a kinsman just as strong had come into being, and so they paid no mind to the deaths of their own.
"If she hadn't met me, she would probably have died there with the monsters, or become entirely one of their kind."
Victoria had hidden a very small part of what she had been through. Everything had worked out in the end, so she had told it as if it were only a somewhat dangerous adventure.
"But she truly was unfortunate. She met me, and so she didn't die; she gained the ability to survive. And because of that, in the end, she survived."
Beatrice tapped the cup a few times with her finger, then asked me with a look that said something was strange.
"Why do you call that unfortunate?"
So I answered her this way.
"I don't lie."
Which meant I had no intention of answering.
From the shadows of the room, still dark, Beatrice stared straight at me with her pupils drawn thin and leveled the small revolver in her hand.
"If anything happens to my daughter, there will be nothing easy about the way you die."
I thought of sneering back, If you can kill me—but that didn't seem as though it would threaten her in the slightest, so I decided to torment her another way.
"If you're going to talk like that, then on the day your child comes home, keep that larder stocked. I saw it standing empty. Shops that open this early in the dawn aren't far, are they?"
Beatrice flinched and gave a small shudder, as if I had pressed on a bruise, and carefully lowered the muzzle.
"No—I didn't know the work would run this late either. I'd meant to have it all finished yesterday evening."
She made her excuses while avoiding my eyes. I knew, of course, that she had spent a great deal of yesterday listening to Victoria's story. Common sense said I ought to let it pass, but I kept pressing, so her attention would turn from how dangerous I am.
"Feed your child. Isn't that why you work?"
She seemed to have thoughts of her own on the matter; her head sank low. I tipped every drop of the sour liquid in the cup into my mouth and pointed at the remaining papers.
"I'm sure a child feels perfectly at ease, waking in the morning to the sight of her mother still working after a night of it. Finish quickly."
Beatrice nodded with a sour look, climbed down off the table, and sat meekly in her chair. Tapping at something that looked like a calculator, she checked the documents. They were papers I could stare at all day and still not understand.
Leaving hardworking Beatrice to it, I matched the surroundings against Victoria's memories. Nothing had changed very much. I walked out into the living room, and there was a video receiver set inside a cabinet. It was far too old-fashioned to call a television. I briefly considered opening it and switching it on, but someone was working, so I left it be. When I had time later, I would have Victoria turn it on for me.
I simply sat on the sofa in the middle of the living room. Outside, the light grew brighter and brighter. Dawn went, and morning came.
I had passed hours like this before. What had I done with them? Nothing, except fretting with Soo over what to make for breakfast. Beyond that, there was only watching through a Harvester's eyes.
Perhaps because this is an age when the strength of a group outweighs the strength of any one person, those five do not give their desires free rein.
The man I first made into a Harvester: Risen Brutal. He led the other four and disembarked at the port after the one where we had landed. He had been a laborer on a construction site, and after an accident left him injured he had meant simply to sail home—but an opportunity had come, and he led them on the claim that he would not throw it away.
For the moment, the world can look kind. While that lasts, he might even be able to do some good for other people. All five of them, though, are the sort who can trample someone else with ease. Let them work as diligently as they like—how long can it last? One walked out of his house with no plan at all, because he wouldn't even take day labor. Another has nowhere to return; monsters smashed flat the village where he lived. Another fled outright because his household was buried in debt. And another gets by picking pockets.
Body and mind both improved, they will soon decide that living like this is a waste of them.
The five, united in high spirits, had gone and founded a strange organization called the Purple Twilight Society, as if a collective fit of adolescent grandeur had suddenly come over them.
Mm.
I look forward to seeing whether they crack apart and each go their own way, or rot into a violent gang and start shaking people down. If it comes to that, someone will inevitably die in a fight. The trouble is that in this world, murder is a strictly punished crime. On the outskirts of the city it is simply a thing that happens, but inside the city, at least, that is the rule.
Whether they will live long and give a great deal of warmth, or offer one brief spark of it and vanish, I couldn't say. If the chance arises, it might be amusing to go and increase the number of Harvesters.
Laying out work for myself ahead of time, I waited for Victoria. The sun climbed all the way up, and the day grew hot.
At last Beatrice came over to me where I sat unmoving.
"My girl shows no sign of getting up. Want to come to the market with me?"
"I'd like that."
I nodded and stood. Then I happened to look down at what I was wearing, realized there was a problem, and asked her.
"These clothes. Will they do?"
The night before, Victoria had dressed me in a thin pink outfit she called sleepwear. Thinking no one would go outside in such a thing, I put the question to Beatrice. She looked me over from head to toe, told me to wait, and left.
A short while later she came back, a large box carried lightly in her arms, and set it down in front of me. Victoria's name was written on it. In short, a box of the clothes she had worn as a child.
"There are plenty of clothes."
"Then I can wear something suitable and go."
Most of them were things Victoria remembered wearing. I have no objection to putting on clothes that belonged to someone else, so I lifted out a suitable one.
"First, let's try a few."
That was when Beatrice said it, and I nodded, thinking it would be poor manners to throw something on too carelessly.
I shouldn't have.
Well past lunchtime, I was still changing clothes—right up until Victoria came down yawning, announcing that she was hungry.
You haven't forgotten I'm a monster, have you?
"Mom, what are you doing?"
"You're up? I'm picking out clothes for Bell."
"Those are my clothes, aren't they, Mom?"
"Is there a problem?"
Ah. Come to think of it, I had forgotten that the one giving the clothes away might object. If that became a problem, I could always take what I had been wearing and twist it into shape. After trying on dozens of outfits, I had more or less grasped how the clothes were cut. They were probably a little old-fashioned for the times, but I was an outsider anyway, so it ought to be fine.
"Something this fun was going on, and you didn't call me, Mom!"
"And whose idea was it to sleep in?"
"Ehehe, I'm on break, so go a little easy on me. So, what did you dress her in?"
Victoria went over to Beatrice as if it were the most natural thing and held up a few of the outfits.
"Oh, I used to love this one, but I couldn't wear it once my chest came in. Let's put this on her, Mom."
"The whole look fell apart the moment you put it on……. True. Bell could wear it well."
A little longer, and I was going to be a dress-up doll right where I stood.
The order of my personhood runs like this: a monster mad for warmth, then the man in the faded memories, and only after that a consciousness imitating human beings. As a person, then, I am closer to a man. I had thought the discomfort would run on and on, but when I looked at myself through Victoria's eyes, that feeling wasn't there.
In the end I kept changing clothes until the hour stood halfway between noon and supper.