“I am not from here, madame. I couldn’t have known . . . ”
Helen made a gesture of annoyance. Her fingers were so huge, the draft sent all the papers on the desk flying. “Of course you should have known. That is the whole difference between the amateur and the professional. Ignorance, when one possesses a power such as yours, is an unacceptable fault. So my role will be to remedy that.”
Ophelia, who was squeezing her hands ever tighter, suddenly relaxed her grip. “You are accepting me as a virtuoso?”
A mechanical arm opened a drawer, took out a piece of paper, and handed it to Ophelia. It was an official document of enrolment to the conservatoire. Helen’s lips curled into an ogress’s grin that revealed a horrifying number of teeth. “I am not welcoming you into the Good Family, young lady. I will do so in three weeks’ time, if you are still among us by then. You will have to do a great, great deal of catching up before even hoping to become a Forerunner.”
THE TRADITION
Ophelia was in such a hurry to tell Ambrose the good news that she slipped on the doorstep of the administration department. The tide of clouds had turned into a downpour, the steps into a cascade. The smell from the vegetation, already strong in the sun, had become heady in the rain.
“Where are you going, apprentice?”
She raised her glasses, streaked with water, toward the figure standing at the top of the entrance steps, under the glass canopy. It was the student who had accompanied her to Helen’s office. Squalls were making the panels of her frock coat flap like silver-embroidered standards. She pointed to the arcaded gallery adjoining the administrative building. “We’re going that way. All the conservatoire’s outbuildings are linked by covered walkways. We’ll be sheltered.”
“It’s just that I have to get back to town,” said Ophelia, whose toga was becoming more drenched by the second. “I wouldn’t want to miss the last birdtrain.”
“You’re coming with me. You’re to undergo an initial assessment. It’s the tradition.”
The rain fell even harder on the cobblestones, smothering the voice and silhouette of the student. Ophelia had to resign herself to trekking back up the stairs, against the flow of the water. “Now? But I’ve only just been accepted.”
“You’re starting your probationary period. You must not leave the conservatoire premises for the next three weeks, except with Lady Helen’s special permission. Without it, she will consider you to have given up, and you won’t be given a second chance. Having said that, if you want to go home,” the student said, turning on her heels, “no one here’s going to stop you.”
Ophelia followed her along the walkway. She’d barely had a chance to feel jubilant, and already she’d been brought back down to earth. So she’d have to remain three whole weeks on this little ark? Couldn’t she do her research at the Memorial’s Secretarium before this time limit?
And Ambrose, she suddenly thought, wringing out the soaked panels of her toga, wouldn’t he worry when she didn’t return? “It’s somewhat of a prison-like approach.”
“Hmm?” The student half-turned, as if surprised to find Ophelia behind her. “You signed an agreement, apprentice. Lady Helen is offering you board, lodgings, and a future. Tradition requires that, in exchange, you follow her instructions without asking questions.”
Ophelia reflected that she should have read the agreement more carefully before signing it. She wiped her glasses and looked at the student’s profile, emerging from her long, tawny hair. Livid complexion, half-closed eyelid, fixed eyebrow, nondescript nose, flat mouth: her face was like her voice, devoid of expression. This impassivity contrasted with the flamboyance of her freckles. She was on the tall side, very slender, and her fitted frock coat emphasized her lack of curves. The complete opposite of Ophelia.
“Are you an apprentice, too? You haven’t told me your name.”
“Hmm?” went the student, roused from her reverie. “I’m called Elizabeth. From today onwards, we’re rivals, you and I. Sworn enemies, one might say.”
During the silence that ensued, Ophelia had ample time to hear the rain beating down on the glass of the arcade.
“I’m joking,” Elizabeth finally added, a few steps later. “I’m an aspiring virtuoso, which places me, hierarchically, above the apprentices. We’ll be neither rivals nor enemies. I’m in charge of the second division of Forerunners. If you have any questions, it’s to me that you must address them. Congratulations, in fact.”
She was speaking in a distant voice, without a shadow of a smile. Even the melodious Babel accent fell flat from her mouth.
“And what is your family power, Elizabeth, if it’s not indiscreet to ask?”
“Hmm? I don’t have one.”
Ophelia’s eyebrows twitched. “I was told that the powerless were very rare here.”
“I’m currently their sole representative at the conservatoire. I had only two predecessors: Howard Harper and Lazarus.”
“Lazarus, as in the Lazarus of the automatons? I didn’t know he’d been a virtuoso.” Ambrose had neglected to tell her, which raised a new question. Why had he tried to discourage her from joining the Good Family when his own father had followed that path?
“Everyone should know that. Particularly a Forerunner. Let’s hurry up now, apprentice.”
Ophelia couldn’t have been keener to do so, but of the two of them, it was Elizabeth who walked slower. The aspiring virtuoso was forever slowing down to pull a notebook out from her frock coat and jot things down in it, which she always ended up crossing out, while muttering between her teeth. This young girl was certainly a queer fish.
Ophelia soon noticed that Elizabeth was far from an isolated case. A cohort of shaven-headed Cyclopeans was running along the ceiling of the galleries while loudly reciting physics formulae. A young Totemist girl was walking straight ahead, nose in a book, cloaked in a swarm of mosquitoes, buzzing around her but never biting her. There was even an old man conjuring up electric arcs between his fingers while sniggering in a rather senile way.
All of these people wore the same midnight-blue-and-silver uniform. Were they all, then, future virtuosos?
Elizabeth climbed a series of stairs leading to a particularly imposing residence. Built all on the vertical, it hugged the edge of the ark, and its ramparts, spreading like wings of stone, served as a frontier between land and sky. Gigantic sculpted elephant heads, incorporated in the building’s facade, looked so stern that they prompted not a smile.
“This is the Hall of Residence,” explained Elizabeth, scribbling something new in her notebook. “It’s where you will sleep, wash, take your meals, and do your chores. Don’t expect to find automatons to clean for you; there’s a whole load of them for the Sons of Pollux, but Lady Helen insists that, here, we do everything for ourselves.”