He spoke easily—as well he should, considering he’d been making that exact statement for years, whenever anyone in charge inquired about What the Hell Happened. Which was often. But look, he couldn’t help it if he possessed a dazzling genius that disdained ordinary rules of both society and science, and that consequently saw him being summoned to headmasters’ offices more times than he could count. It came as no surprise to find himself in one again now.
This office, inside Balliol College at the heart of Oxford University, looked the same as all the others—dark wood walls, dusty floor, a clutter of books, and a rather dingy portrait of Queen Victoria—as if there were only one head’s office in all of Britain and its various tenants jumped through space and time to occupy it. In fact, it was Ottersock’s personal office,forced into use as the Material History faculty headquarters since the previous one was wrecked by a poltergeist who escaped from an old textbook. As a consequence, Caleb could see through a half-open door the professor’s unmade bed, presided over by a battered toy giraffe.
His smile quirked. Beside him, without so much as a glance, Amelia swatted his thigh with the back of her hand. The woman possessed an uncanny awareness of whenever he was being inattentive. Caleb obediently focused on Ottersock across the man’s large, untidy desk and strove not to fidget, sigh, or outright leave the room while the professor gathered his thought.
Just one thought; Caleb was sure of it. Ottersock had never enjoyed great breadth of mind, especially when it came to them.
On the desk lay the Hereford teaspoon, unscathed by its eruption of magic, despite the damage it had done to the Minervaeum Club. Amelia was staring at it fixedly, as if the little old spoon were in fact a sword Ottersock would use to sever any hope she carried for tenure. Her eyes were narrowed, her posture even more scrupulous than usual, and the book she held was being hugged to within an inch of its life. (Mary Wollstonecraft’s life, to be precise, from what Caleb could see of the cover.) She appeared on the verge of an extreme reaction, such as chewing her thumbnail.
Personally, Caleb doubted Ottersock would fire her. After all, last year at a Windsor Castle garden party for lady academics, she’d identified a teapot as being enchanted mere seconds before a servant poured thaumaturgic magma from it into Queen Victoria’s cup. But then again, the faculty head truly had been furious back in April when he heard from Throckmorton about the two of them embracing, and not even the sight of Her Majesty’s thank-you card to Amelia, which hekept framed on his office wall, had calmed him. He might not have ousted her had it really come to it, but he could easily have demoted her, and Caleb knew that, belonging as she did to a family bristling with brilliant, ambitious academics, Amelia would have considered this just as awful.
There also existed a good chance that, were it not for swearing they’d become estranged, the two of them would right now be married. Which would be most disturbing indeed.
Wanting to offer Amelia reassurance without ruining their guise, Caleb knocked the side of his foot against hers. She frowned.
Sigh,Caleb thought with, indeed, a noiseless sigh. Lately, Amelia had seemed all too convincing when it came to feigning hatred. Could she have grown weary of their friendship? No, that was impossible—he was a delight. She must have secretly taken acting lessons. Mind you, it didn’t help that he’d been feeling a little off these days himself. Every time he looked at Amelia, an odd frazzlement possessed his body. Caleb didn’t understand what had befallen him (probably because his idea of self-reflection involved checking his hair in the mirror before he went out), but he suspected that he’d picked up a stomach ailment somewhere.
“Idiotic!”Ottersock exclaimed.
Amelia stiffened even further, but Caleb only shrugged his mouth and nodded. When a man escapes a childhood in the Bethnal Green slum through academic scholarships and goes on to earn a professorship before the age of twenty-six, he feels unmoved by being called an idiot. Besides, Ottersock wasn’t entirely wrong. The conversation with Amelia in the Minervaeum Club’s library had affected Caleb in much the same wayParliamentarians affected King Charles I—i.e., made him lose his head.
“A thaumaturgic explosion!” Ottersock went on, taking a jar of willow-bark headache powder from his desk drawer. “Professors engaging in physical violence! A symposium canceled! And don’t think I didn’t hear about what happened on the train you took back to Oxford yesterday!” He frowned at them as he sprinkled some of the willow bark into a glass of water with practiced efficiency.
“The train incident wasn’t our fault,” Caleb said, brushing a tiny speck of fluff from his suit jacket to illustrate how unconcerned he was. “If Madame Kharensky didn’t want to be exposed to robust language, she shouldn’t have entered a carriage with antiquarians. After all, it’s in our job description: we say it like it is.”
Amelia cleared her throat, which Caleb understood to be the polite-lady version of muttering viciously under her breath. He knew she had Opinions about proper behavior on a train, but it had been an emergency situation. Madame Kharensky, Oxford’s premium source of private news, had appeared in the carriage just as Caleb was helping Amelia with her luggage. The only possible reaction had been for him to shout“Stop bloody dawdling, Tarrant!”and drop the suitcase. Amelia in turn had denounced him as a dratted miscreant—which had made him laugh, her blush, and Madame Kharensky call upon the conductor to evict them from the train forthwith. Altogether it had been embarrassing, but at least the madame wouldn’t spread nasty stories about Professor Sterling being solicitous toward Professor Tarrant—in other words, seducing her via luggage.
“I apologized at the time,” Amelia told Ottersock, “and evaluated the lady’s Rundell garnet brooch for her, after which she was mollified.”
“Hm,” Ottersock said meaningfully, eyeing her from beneath arched eyebrows that were almost as bushy as his sideburns and mustache. Really, the man’s face was a veritable thicket of whiskers, as if all the hair on his head had shed onto it, then stuck, leaving an entirely bald dome. When his eyebrows arched, it was like a Pomeranian dog pricking up its fluffy ears. Amelia stared into the middle distance, but she grew so rigid that Caleb feared they might have to place her on a trolley and wheel her out once the meeting was over.
And yet, she didn’t havecompletecontrol of herself. One fine dark brown strand of hair had escaped her tight bun, defying half a dozen pins. It slipped down her bodice, stroking her breast, and Caleb…
“…shattered!”
Blinking, he realized Ottersock was mid-complaint about the Minervaeum’s library ceiling. “It was onlyslightlyshattered,” he assured the man. “Only two cherubs and half a cloud.”
Ottersock gave him a long, grim stare. For a moment, the air seemed taut with potential shouting. Lamps flickered, and on the cabinet behind the professor, a stack of unread essays began to rustle ominously. Caleb and Amelia glanced sidelong at each other, then at the teaspoon. But it had not moved.
Ottersock shook more willow-bark powder into the glass. “Do you not careat allthat they had to cancel the Two Hundred and Seventh Symposium of Historical Martial Enterprises Undertaken in the British Territories Including France?”
That he managed to say this all within one breath wasimpressive (and evidence of a lifetime of lecturing students whose attention span barely lasted five minutes). Caleb, however, was unfazed. “There’s always next year.”
“Which will make it the two hundred and seventh symposium in two hundred andeightyears!” Ottersock shouted. “Completely out of kilter! Oxford will never live this down!” He swallowed his powdered drink in one gulp, grimacing at the taste.
“There really was no need to cancel,” Caleb said.
“Professor Murkle’s mustache turned pink!” Water droplets spat from Ottersock’s lips, causing both Caleb and Amelia to take a step back. The essays behind the professor began to rise, page by page, from their stack. Ottersock continued on, oblivious. “Professor Taumalolo is under the delusion he’s a kangaroo and was last seen hopping down the Mall. And I’ve had Cambridge’s vice chancellor on the telephone, complaining that half his historians are speaking Middle English! Andnotjust to show off! That teaspoon has damned powerful psycho-conjunctive magic.”
“Uh-huh,” Caleb agreed, watching the essays fold themselves into darts and attack the portrait of Queen Victoria.
“Er, Professor…” Amelia began, reaching for the teaspoon.
“That’s enough!” Ottersock shouted, slamming down the empty glass, and Amelia snatched back her hand. “I’m at my wit’s end with you both!”
“But—” Caleb attempted, as a bust of King Henry VII suddenly breathed fire at a potted fern, thus putting it out of its miserable and withered existence.
“But—” Amelia also said, as several essays transformed into large moths that began flapping wildly, emitting blue sparks.
