R Is for Rebel Read online

  Novice Bluebell holds out her hand. I’m about to collapse and a hand is almost like a please, so I go where she points, through a long, dark hallway that slopes down and down and doesn’t seem to end.

  • • •

  My uniform is a gown. A gown! With my unbound hair, it’s a wonder a diaper isn’t part of this silly costume. In a little room lined with shelves of white clothing, Novice Bluebell explains how to put on the gown and tie a length of cord around my waist. When I ask why, she says it makes a girl look like a girl.

  A Wealdan girl, they mean. Sweet and prim and tidy, perfect for looking at. Not strong from cranking the cider press or clever enough to fix both kinds of plow.

  Novice Lilac gives me other clothes to wear with the gown. There’s an undershift, a set of stockings, and a pair of drawers, and everything is made of coarse, undyed wool straight off a sheep’s back. My hands start to itch just holding them. All of the clothing—even the underpants—has the empire’s ridiculous overwrought crest stamped on it. Both novices give me a hurry up look, so I sigh, strip down to my nothing, and pull the shift over my head. Right away I can feel a rash in the shape of the Embattled Crown digging into my skin. As I finish dressing, Novice Lilac uses a fireplace poker to pick up my comfortable old shirt and trousers and shove them into a rucksack.

  “My ribbons!” I grab for my trousers, where I shoved the strips of silk from my topknot, but Novice Lilac cinches the rucksack closed and pulls it out of reach.

  “Since you haven’t been told the rules yet, I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” Novice Bluebell says. “Tie your belt, all right?”

  “Please.” I’m begging and it turns my stomach, but I can’t lose one more thing today. “I won’t wear them. I just want to have them.”

  Novice Lilac smiles big and false. “We’ll make sure you get everything you need to be successful here. All you have to do is follow the rules.”

  “Your new clothes are in this trunk—uniforms, stockings, underwear, nightgowns—so keep them neatly folded in here.” Novice Bluebell nudges a wooden box with leather handles toward me. “There’s a complete outfit for each day of the week, so you’ll put on a clean uniform every morning. Everything’s numbered, see? 1076. That’s you.”

  First my plaits. Now my ribbons. My ancestors went through worse, so I have enough songs to know what to do. Chin up. Stand square. Blank your gaze. Whatever else, do not cry. This is how you resist. This is how you stay Milean.

  Novice Lilac steps into the corridor. “Now pick up your trunk and come along.”

  Bad enough I’ll have to wear this stuff. Now I have to haul it too. I heave the trunk up by the straps and lurch behind the novices out of the uniform alcove, down more stairs and ramps, till Novice Bluebell pulls a chunky iron key from her pocket and grates it into the biggest lock I’ve ever seen.

  “Holding,” she says. “In you go.”

  The holding area is a chilly, echoing chamber with a handful of narrow iron beds lined up like graycoats in formation, all empty but made up and waiting. Besides a balcony and a closed wooden door that must open to it, there’s nothing else in the room but sturdy, plain sconces on the walls, glowing with what must be gaslight, although I only know about gaslight from hedge school.

  “Am I the last one?” I don’t bother to hide a proud smirk. “The last Milean kid in the province to end up here?”

  “One of the last.” Novice Lilac says it accusingly, like I should feel ashamed that my parents sent me to hide in the greenwood when the Crown’s school wagons neared Trelawney Crossing.

  A Milean girl steps onto the balcony. She has a shining curtain of brown hair and she’s wearing a gown like mine, only with a red scarf around her neck that dangles almost to her waist. I’m so happy to see another Milean that I shout “Kyora!” before I remember not to.

  “Outlawed tongue.” Novice Lilac digs a pad of paper out of her pocket. “That’s a demerit. Better watch yourself. We count even while you’re in holding.”

  The girl on the balcony doesn’t look down, either at my greeting or my outburst. She stares straight ahead, even though there’s nothing but wall for her to talk to, and says in Wealdan, “I am Loe, appointed cantor of this session by Sister Gunnhild. It is springtide in the seventh year of the reign of our illustrious sovereign. Long and glorious may he rule.”

  She doesn’t trip over the words or mangle them. She sounds like she actually wishes him well. This is what they make of us here. This is what they want to make of me.

  Novice Bluebell glances up at the Milean girl, then nods to Novice Lilac and they head toward the big door.

  “What’s going on?” I put the trunk down. “Why am I here? When is supper, at least?”

  “These are the behavioral expectations while a girl takes part in a course of study at the Forswelt National School,” says the Milean girl, still talking to the wall.

  “There are no open fourth-rank beds right now,” Novice Lilac tells me. “You’ll stay in holding till that changes. Meals will be brought three times a day. While you’re here, you’re expected to listen to the cantor and learn what’s required.”

  “But—”

  The door slams behind the novices, and outside there’s the scrape of a key in a lock.

  “Forswelt’s operation is based on the chamber,” the Milean girl says. “There are four girls to a chamber, one of each rank. Girls of the fourth rank have no privileges and must earn them with compliance. Privileges escalate until a girl reaches the first rank, when she has the most prestige and freedom the school has to offer.”

  I swivel and peer up at the cantor, then move to the middle of the holding area to get a better view. She’s not squirming in her uniform like I am. Just wearing this dress stamped with the Embattled Crown makes it seem like I belong to the empire somehow. I want to hide under a bed already, even though there’s no one here to see me but this girl.

  “Hey!” I shout. “Down here!”

  “Students spend even days in the classroom,” the girl goes on, “and on odd days, they engage in the vocational training that will prepare them for a successful future.”

  “Will you please just listen for a minute?”

  But Cantor Loe just keeps reciting garbage about uniforms—girls will wear a complete set of Crown-issued clothing at all times, and any altering or defacing of these garments will result in disciplinary action—and peer monitoring—girls will receive rewards in various forms every time they report another student for behavior that violates our community standards or any school rule. When she gets to the part about decorum—students will refer to nuns with the title of honora and novices as honorata, like they’re inquisitors or factory bosses or collectors of the monthly tithes—I turn away and flop on the bed nearest the door.

  It’s like lying on fence rails. Nothing at all like the gentle sway of a hammock. My throat starts to close and I bite my lip hard, but it’s too late. Treacherous, unsongworthy things appear in my head one by one. I should have just turned myself in. Then I’d have been sent to the same school as my friends instead of this far-distant one. At least I wouldn’t be alone right now. It’s not compliance if it’s plain good sense.

  This is why the likes of Everard and Jasperine have songs about them and I never will. This is why my ma and da never once woke me on the cold mornings they’d disappear into the mist with their crowbars and cudgels and jugs of kerosene, even though I kept making them promise they would. This is why Milea fell in the first place and now we live somewhere called New Weald. In the old days, flying columns of rebels made guerrilla raids on Wealdan landlords and inquisitors. They fought back to back, outnumbered, surrounded, scythes against rifles. This is why I can’t fall apart at national school. I have to survive it as Malley and not end up this Kem person the Wealdans decided I should be.

  Magistrates were always telling mas and das in Trelawney Crossing how national school was a victory, how they should be grateful that the new sovereign was moder
n and progressive and chose to implement reforms that would improve the lives of New Wealdan children across the provinces. Only it didn’t sound like victory when the school wagons rolled up. Even deep in the greenwood where I was hiding, I could hear kids bawling. Grown-ups, too. Sharp and shrieking, like waterbirds when hunters come upon them, or deep and grinding like a dying bear. This would be the last time they’d see one another for a whole year, and only if kids behaved well enough to earn a visit. If parents came on school grounds for any reason, the whole family would be sent to the workhouse. The kids crying was bad enough, but that was nothing compared with how the grown-ups wept once the wagon creaking faded. It was days and days before the village was calm enough for me to risk coming back.

  Master Grenallan did what he could to prepare us. I knew to expect filling, regular meals and the company of only girls and women. I knew there’d be warm beds and medical treatment if I got sick and some kind of formal instruction. But I also knew about the locks and walls. I knew I’d be spending more hours inside than out, and the only sunlight I’d see would be whatever managed to trickle through window glass.

  “You won’t be there alone,” he’d say. “You’ll have one another.” Which would have been true if I’d let the Wealdans send me to the school nearest my village. Instead I have these girls who might not have had a schoolmaster like mine or a ma and da who were pushed into resisting. But chances are good these girls heard the same speeches from their magistrates. Sobbed as they climbed into school wagons. Felt only a handsbreadth tall when assigned a uniform like some sort of criminal and made to listen to rule after rule after rule, when at home they likely had the same three I did: have a decent attitude, don’t get in trouble with the law, and do chores to keep the homestead running.

  Above me, the cantor goes on about structure and order. Sister Gunnhild wouldn’t have complained about ungovernable girls if I was the only one. Maybe Master Grenallan was right and I’m not alone here after all. Maybe some of these girls feel their ancestors’ blessings on their heads too. Staying Milean in this place will be so much easier if I’m not the only one trying to hold on to everything that makes me who I am.

  DAY 8

  INSTEAD OF BRINGING BREAKFAST AS usual, Novice Bluebell turns up with a long scarf knitted from coarse orange yarn. “A fourth-rank bed opened up. Here, put this on and come with me.”

  Cantor Loe is still speaking up in her balcony. By now, I can recite the rules along with her. That’s probably the point. I wave, since it seems polite after all this time, but Novice Bluebell stands to like a graycoat.

  “The cantor is not here to be engaged,” she snaps. “278 didn’t interact with you, did she?”

  I shake my head.

  “You managed to get several demerits here in holding,” Novice Bluebell says. “If the cantor did try to speak with you directly and you were to tell me, some of those demerits would go away.”

  Girls advance through the four ranks by means of a merit system. Each day that a girl participates in class and vocational training incident free moves her closer to achieving a better rank. Demerits may be assigned for any infraction a girl commits, minor or serious, and they will slow her progression through the ranks. In some cases, amassing enough demerits may make her lose a rank, and it will have to be earned back.

  If a girl receives a total of thirty or more demerits, she will be assigned a correctional vocational opportunity to provide intensive instruction on the virtue of compliance. If she earns a second such opportunity, she will be sent to the workhouse, as it will be clear that the first one taught her nothing.

  I shake my head again. The inquisitors did this too. There were rewards aplenty for anyone who reported a neighbor with a shrine to her name-kin or gave evidence at morality court.

  Novice Bluebell hands me the scarf, and I loop it around my neck. It’s softer than it looks and an actual color, which cheers me up considerably. Then I pick up my trunk, and she leads me out of the holding area and down a hallway past a line of girls scrubbing a series of wooden doors with something that smells sharp and bleachy. Not one glances up from her work as we pass, and their flurries and curtains and frizzes of unbound hair hide their faces. They’re not wearing scarves, either, which is against the rules—girls must wear scarves in the color corresponding with their rank at all times during waking hours—which makes me grin outright. Maybe these girls are resisting. Maybe school won’t be as bad as I thought.

  “Good idea,” I murmur to the girl nearest to me as I reach for my scarf. “I’m going to ditch mine, too.” I try to catch her eye as I do it, but she just stoops to dunk her scrub brush in a bucket of murky water.

  “That’s a demerit,” Novice Bluebell says to me sternly. “Take off your scarf and you’ll find yourself with five.”

  The girl doesn’t have gloves. None of them do. Their hands are scabby and peeling from the cleaner.

  Something cold turns over in my belly.

  I leave my scarf alone and move away from the girls, falling into step behind Novice Bluebell. Before long, we get to the residence wing and the novice winds down corridors until we stand in front of a door labeled with a squiggle of Wealdan numerals. She pushes it open. The door’s not locked or even latched. The walls are whitewashed, and there’s a cat-size window near the ceiling, covered with a sturdy grate. There are four beds in a line, trunks at the foot of all but one, and enough room between everything for someone to walk. Three girls in uniforms like mine are tugging sheets and pulling up blankets, leaning across the narrow frames to make everything precise and even. Each wears a different scarf—red, green, and blue. The green-scarf girl looks to be the oldest, and her straw-straight black hair swishes in a sheet past her waist. The blue-scarf girl is strong and solid, like a dairymaid, and has hair the color of old honey. The red-scarf girl looks like my ma must have when she was young, round and curvy and chin-up fearless. When we walk in, they all stop making their beds and stand at attention in front of their trunks.

  “1076 is your new fourth,” Novice Bluebell tells them. “Three demerits.”

  The blue-scarf girl muffles a groan, but the red-scarf girl says, “Yes, honorata. Understood.”

  Once the novice leaves, the girls relax visibly and break from their poses, and so do I. When they’re not standing to like a row of foreign dolls, it’s easier to imagine them as girls from my village who I might have been friends with once upon a time.

  “Put away your things.” The green-scarf girl points to where my trunk should go, at the bottom of the bare pallet bed where there’s a neatly folded parcel that looks to be linens. “We’ll help you with the covers.”

  “It can’t matter that much, can it?” I drop my trunk where I’m standing. “I won’t even be sleeping in it till tonight.”

  The blue-scarf girl sighs long and loud. “Why do I always get stuck with the malcontents?”

  “Tal. No one wants to fail room inspection, right?” The green-scarf girl pulls apart the bed-linen parcel and flings the bottom sheet over the thin pallet while the red-scarf girl tucks it under. “I’m Sab. That’s Fee.”

  The red-scarf girl, Fee, nods at me as she and Sab whip the woolen blankets tight and plop down a pillow.

  “Do we really have to use these imperial names?” I roll my eyes. “Even when it’s just us?”

  Sab nods firmly. “Someone’s always listening. I can’t get any more demerits, especially for something stupid like a language violation.”

  My mouth falls open to list the martyrs who slid their heads through links of massive white-hot chains rather than utter so much as a syllable in the Wealdan tongue.

  Fee smiles wryly and gestures to the front of my gown. “Numbers are worse. Just tell us what we can call you.”

  She’s right. Wealdans think in numbers and maps and paper documents, posting them on chapel doors and pointing to them in land grabs and presenting them at morality court like their simple existence makes them binding and valid. I choke on the wor
d Sister Gunnhild chose for me, though. It’s not a name. It’s not me.

  They wait, but when I stare hard at the ground, Sab and Fee and Tal herd me out of the room and down the corridor, talking about breakfast. I let myself be herded. All the novices brought me to eat in the holding area were sandwiches made with heavy Wealdan bread, and I’m desperate for a salad.

  The dining hall is full of square tables, each with four wooden chairs, and when my chambermates sit together at one, I follow their lead. A dozen novices patrol the room, and this lot looks far more sullen than Bluebell or Lilac. There’s food somewhere nearby, lots of it, fried okra and sizzling asparagus and tofu and fresh rain-dappled lettuce tossed into a big colorful salad. Actual decent-smelling food that might almost be mistaken for something my da would make.

  Tal and Fee and Sab shift in their chairs. Already I wish I could take back how I acted in the chamber, how rude I was and how I didn’t even help make my own bed. They must think I’m some sort of prance-around ninny. I’m going to be stuck here for years. I’m not going to spend that time knuckling under, and I want these girls on my side.

  “Kem,” I tell them in a low voice. “You can call me Kem.”

  A woman in a gray gown taps a bell and calls, “First rank!”

  The only sound in the room is chairs scraping the floor as girls in red scarves rise and line up at a series of trestles at one end of the dining hall. Cantor Loe must have repeated fifty times how girls in the first rank have the most privileges, but it took me three repetitions to figure out what a privilege is—there’s no word like it in Milean—and another few to understand that I’m supposed to believe something earned with compliance is a good thing.

  Fee returns with a heaping pile of roasted cauliflower, a huge baked potato, a slab of vegetable scramble, and a bowl of sprouts and greens dappled with spices. I can’t take my eyes off that spread. So they do know what vegetables are at Forswelt. They know exactly what Milean food ought to look like. The second rank is called next, and Tal brings back a plate heaped with the dregs of the vegetable scramble, a wedge of cheese, and a bowl of meat broth with soggy-looking onion and carrot shreds. I’m more than a little worried when Sab returns with a plate of noodles in parsnip sauce, and by the time the fourth rank is called and I get to the head of the line, there’s nothing left but sandwiches.