This time Sophronia did not wear the chicken. She took it off and left it in the hallway outside the administrative room with the crossbow and Bumbersnoot and orders to guard. She armed herself with the water-projecting device filled with acid from Professor Lefoux’s laboratory. Then she took out her small hoard of nibbles from the kitchen and knocked on the door.
“Come!” called Deep Voice.
Sophronia entered, eyes down, looking at the Pickleman through her lashes, pleased to find he had not been joined by any others.
“Who the devil are you?” He was a rough-looking fellow, his jaw dark with a nascent beard.
Sophronia had never seen such a thing as a seedling beard before, no gardener having tended it to greatness nor pruned it into submission. It was positively oafish in its incivility. She actually felt unwell at the sight.
“Only the maid, sir. I’ve brought you food.” She proffered her own cheese, bread, and apple.
The man looked suspicious but also off balance—unable to decide whether to leave off what he was doing and approach or allow her to enter farther into the room.
Sophronia took his hesitation as an opportunity to assess the situation.
Mademoiselle Geraldine was sitting in a big chair in the far left corner, near the forward window, several large storage baskets pushed aside to make room. Before her was a low table set for tea. There was an empty seat across from her, shoved out of the way as if in haste. The headmistress looked so relaxed, Sophronia had the horrified thought that she was working with the Picklemen.
I have two enemies to disable, and only one ally to rescue, when I was prepared for the other way around! Sophronia cursed herself. It was a debut’s mistake.
Deep Voice was in the other corner of the room next to a cage shaped like a bird’s, only bigger. It hung from a hook in the ceiling and looked to be steel, woven through with a glass tubing filled with gas. This heated the metal red hot at multiple contact points.
Professor Braithwope was locked inside this cage, naked.
Sophronia quickly slid her eyes away, but not before she noticed welts on the vampire’s arms, burns on his hands, and open cuts across his face. His mustache looked to have fainted. He was silent, half curled, half crouched—trying to make himself as small as possible so as not to touch the burning bars. Vampires, of course, could survive most things, but they still felt pain. The cuts, no doubt, were made with sharpened wooden blades and would be slower to heal as a result.
Deep Voice, orchestrator of this torture, left off prodding the professor and walked over to Mademoiselle Geraldine and the tea table.
When Sophronia moved to take the food to that table, he snapped, “Halt! You stay there.”
Sophronia froze.
With a studied casualness, the Pickleman poured tea. Which made Sophronia realize that everything wasn’t right with the headmistress. Mademoiselle Geraldine would never let a visitor pour, even if that man was her superior. It was always the hostess’s responsibility to serve tea, evacuations and hijackings notwithstanding.
Sophronia lifted her lashes slightly to take in details she had missed earlier.
Mademoiselle Geraldine was strapped into her chair at the elbows and legs. She could raise up her hands to feed herself from a plate in her lap but was otherwise immobilized. The headmistress was behaving in a civilized manner, but she was not assisting the invaders. She was a hostage.
The headmistress looked at Sophronia with an expression of sublime indifference, showing absolutely no indication that they had ever met before.
Bravo, thought Sophronia.
All this time the students thought Mademoiselle Geraldine ignorant of the fact that her own school was an espionage academy. They had always acted to keep her immersed in that ignorance. In fact, it was a vital part of their training. Sophronia had wondered… but now she outright knew that Mademoiselle Geraldine had been in on it all along. She was too calm to be an ordinary headmistress tied to a chair. By rights, she ought to be in hysterics.
The Pickleman finished pouring the tea and handed a cup to Mademoiselle Geraldine, taking away her empty plate. Then he served himself and sat down, turning to face Sophronia. “I do not recall any maids being brought aboard, except mechanical ones. Who are you really, girl?”
“A forgotten student.” Sophronia dropped the act and pocketed the food. She was grateful that she didn’t have to use it. It was all she had to eat. At the same time, she palmed the acid emitter and let her other hand rest on her bladed fan, ready with either. She minimized any appearance of threat by hunching and keeping her eyes down timidly.