Kai frowned at the charts in front of her: genealogies, descriptions, birth dates and years. You could follow patterns easily enough down any given genealogy, but that wasn’t what was making her frown.
Read on: http://www.addergoole.com/TOS/archives/1301
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1160607.html. You can comment here or there.
Part I – http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1082356.html
Part II – http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1082751.html
Part III – http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1091513.html
Part IV – http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1095923.html
Regine pulled up the computer program that kept all of her student data, glad once again that she had upgraded her machines just before the catastrophe. You could still buy computer parts in a few select enclaves, but their methods left something to be desired and they almost always included as much spyware as actual computer.
She performed a search on extant and incoming students into the school, and then performed the search two more times. “That…” She stared at the screen with a decidedly unpleasant feeling before finally raising her voice. “Hayley!”
“Yes, Director Regine?”
“Call in Luca Hunting Hawk and Michael VanderLinden. Now.”
~
Regine was gone, the door was closed, and her footsteps had faded away. Slowly, Cya let herself grin.
“That took her longer than I’d expected,” she admitted to Leo. She turned to look at him, a little concerned about his reaction. After all, they were his children too.
He was still watching the door, looking thoughtful and uncharacteristically somber. “This was the thing you told me about a while ago, isn’t it?”
“It is,” she agreed quietly. ”Twenty, thirty years ago would have been nice. But now… well…” Her grin had faded in the face of Leo’s solemnity. ”I wish we could do more, but I still haven’t found a way to break the oath.”
“It’ll help.” He looked over at her and smiled. “More than I could’ve managed.”
“There’s a bonus, too.” She felt her smile coming back. “As of five years ago… every student entering Addergoole is descended from Boom.”
Leo stared at her for a moment. Cya didn’t let the smile slip from her face, just watched him. She saw the surprise on his face slowly give way to amusement, and that give way to outright laughter.
“Of course they are.”
Cya let herself laugh when he laughed. ”It took a bit of doing and, uh, quite a bit of being pushy with some descendants,” she admitted. ”But Aunt Cya – grandma Cya – can always pay back favors.”
“Great Ancestor Doomsday.” He leaned over and kissed her cheek. She felt heat coming to her face. All these years, and she still felt a blush coming on every time he did that.
She grinned widely. She’d been a little worried he’d be angry… ”It was a long shot… but it worked. I wish I could be a fly on the wall when she finds out.” Which she would, and soon.
“Mm. I think I can come up with an excuse to go see my old Mentor.”
“…brilliant.” Cya’s grin grew even wider. ”Yes. I want to see how this falls out.”
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1097360.html. You can comment here or there.
Part I – http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1082356.html
Part II – http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1082751.html
Part III: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1091513.html
Cya was not smiling. It was very important for some reason that she was not smiling.
Regine had lived with Michael and Luke as her crew for quite some time, and she could predict with some accuracy what they might say in this situation.
“She’s not playing a game.” Luke had said that on more than one occasion. “Even when she is laughing, she is not playing, any more than you are. It’s important to remember that.”
Michael did not like to talk about Boom quite so much, although he seemed quite fond of Cloverleaf and several of their other projects. When he’d been advising Regine about this trip, he had said a few pertinent things, including “Remember you’re talking about her children and descendants. Remember how biased even you can be about your own blood.” and “If she smiles, she’s comfortable, confident. If she stops smiling, you might do well to be worried.”
The expression on Cya’s face right now was intense. She had leaned forward, she hand her hands on her lap, and she looked as if she would just as easily skin Regine as allow her access to her children.
Leofric’s expression, on the other hand, was carefully neutral. Regine was uncertain she had ever seen him looking quite that blank. It was more than a bit disturbing.
Regine was worried. Luke and Michael had both told her she should be worried and now — now she understood why. She cleared her throat.
“Your terms,” she repeated carefully. “You want a ‘get out of jail free’ pass for each one of your descendants?”
“Each one of the Addergoole descendants of Boom,” Cya clarified.
“Hrrmph.” Regine gave honest consideration to the data she wanted. Was she willing to give in this far to this particular woman, just for data?
Of course she was. The question truly was, could she do so in any sort of good grace? Regine cleared her throat. “And you’re looking for an agreed-upon staff intervention into any one situation that the student finds untenable?”
“Here.” Cya reached for a stack of paper and a pen on her side table. Regine noted that as Cya leaned over and began writing — with a fountain pen, no less — she kept in contact with Leofric, her side pressed against his leg. She wrote without hesitation, her handwriting crisp and legible even upside-down.
Regine took a moment to contemplate her crew’s responses. Luke would probably be glad. MIchael might be ambivalent — they were going through another cycle in which the Daeva’s Students were the most likely to cause problems for other students.
The others? Shira Pelletier would give Regine that tired, knowing look and say only the Boom children? How is that fair? and Regine would have to answer because Boom happened to hold on to a nasty negotiator who trained at the feet of Feu Drake, although the answer could be just as easily Because Boom is still a crew.
In her particularly self-aware moments, Regine wondered how much of what Boom had become, she had wrought. In morbidly thoughtful moments, she wondered if she had truly wrought her own destruction.
“There.” Cya glanced at Leo, waited for a nod, and then turned the paper around so that Regine could read it more easily. “As discussed.”
Regine read the paper twice. It was exactly as they had discussed, the language suitable for a lawyer.
This woman who had not gone to college had not only written the laws for three city-states, she’d founded a university, Regine remembered. She was not stupid. She read the paper a third time.
She found nothing she could argue with, nothing except the general premise of the agreement, which she was not, she believed, going to get Red Doomsday to budge from.
She signed.
Epilogue – http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1097360.html
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1095923.html. You can comment here or there.
Part I – http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1082356.html
Part II – http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1082751.html
Regine barely managed not to gape at Cya like a fish. But the fiend was still going. “In addition, I want access to all of the data you access in this manner.”
Regine could not help a supercilious eyebrow raise, no matter how many times Mike had told her Do not raise your eyebrows at her. Do not. “Do you think you can follow the genetic data?”
“Well, if I can’t, my house geneticist can.” Cya shrugged as if a lifetime of studying genetics was nothing.
Regine cleared her throat. “Well. Be that as it may, I’m not going to allow your descendants to skip out on the Addergoole school. That might be as much as half of my population by this point.”
“Skip out?” Cya laughed. “No, I can’t imagine you’d agree to that. No. Just an agreement that, while attending Addergoole, each and every one of Boom’s descendants gets a pass. One time, when they’re in over their heads — bad Keeper, bad promise, the current big-bad-wolf — you, the staff, will help them out of it. The Keepings aren’t real, the promises aren’t real, you’re not damaging the Law by doing so.”
“But what lesson do we teach them, if they can get out of trouble at the first drop of a hat?” Regine had conducted this argument several times over the decades. She didn’t flinch.
And neither did Cya. The smile grew, as a matter of fact, and got sharp. Her voice was edgy now. “You’d be teaching them that the adults who Mentor them are their backup, are there to protect and guide them. You’d be teaching them to have allies.”
“We teach them to have crews, to find help and allies in their cy’ree, to be friends with their former Keepers and Kept.”
“After their first year. You isolate them from other first-year students, do not push the idea of a Mentor until they are either already collared or soon to be, and sometimes allow the interference of the Keeper in Mentor choice. The staff generally frowns on the idea of first-year students finding crews, and, while you may pretend to like and encourage them, you discourage crews actively standing up for one another.” Cya was still lounging against her couch, but her words were anything but casual.
And they were accurate. “It’s proven beneficial to encouraging the Keeper-Kept relationship…”
“Which you encourage, I assume, to ‘encourage’ the production of more little babies for your project. A point which is pretty moot when you do not allow students to leave until they’ve provided you with those babies.”
“Students also need to understand the dangers of Keeping and the problems inherent in both sides of the relationship before they are out in the world,” Regine insisted. Now Cya was no longer smiling. Regine was not sure that was an improvement.
“I’m certain you’re aware that you and I will never agree on that point. Be that as it may, there are other ways to encourage Keeping, and by encouraging good Keepings and allowing the possibility that the ‘trapped’ Kept could ask for a reprieve, you allow students to understand what a healthy Keeping should look like, before they go out in the world and perpetuate bad habits.”
Regine opened her mouth and closed it again, her lips curling into a frown. “Surely you’re not insinuating that Addergoole is responsible for the actions of its students once they’ve graduated?”
“No. I’m saying that you and your choices are responsible for a great deal of misery in the world. However,” Cya plowed on blithely, “that doesn’t matter. You’ve done some awful things, and now you want a favor from me. Does that about sum it up?”
Regine bit her tongue and counted to ten. “I come asking a favor of you, yes,” she answered levelly.
“Therefore, your justifications really don’t matter. The question is: will you agree to my terms?”
Part IV: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1095923.html
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1091513.html. You can comment here or there.
Part I – http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1082356.html
Regine sat uncomfortably on Cya’s rather-comfortable couch. She had brought papers; she ignored them. Instead, she cleared her throat. “You two have had several children together over a large span of years. This makes you not quite unique but very rare, not only among Addergoole graduates but among Ellehemaei couples in general. There are some emerging genetic theories about children born to Ellehemai early in their life vs. after a century or more of life, and your children…” Luke had told her not to do it. Mike, on the other hand, had advised her. Do not say test subjects. “If I could study their DNA, I might be able to better pursue these theories.”
Cya coughed. “Most of our children are Adults. You’ll have to ask them yourself — which I’m sure you knew. So I imagine you’re coming to ask about Tama.”
“Ljótama, yes. Although,” Regine cleared her throat, “if you would be willing to put in a good word for me with Viðrou, and possibly with Kouveig, it might make them more willing to speak with me.”
It looked as if Cya was trying hard not to laugh. She coughed again instead and nodded, at least trying to look solemn. “If we can reach an accord, it can include me encouraging — those two in specific?”
“I don’t expect you’d be willing to encourage all your children to cooperate with me. I’ve met both Viðrou and Kouveig, and as your first and third of five, they make for convenient data points,” Regine explained. She noted that Cya had not at any point numbered her children. She wondered if she’d given away too much information by admitting she knew the number.
Or if she was wrong about the number. Cya might be another step ahead of her in this case. It seemed to happen when Regine least expected it, especially in the last fifty years.
Either way, Cya was smirking. “Those two specifically. It’s possible you’d find one of the others more cooperative, but we do not tend to raise compliant children.”
“I can’t imagine you would.” Regine ahem’ed. “Nor was that my experience when your children, or your grandchildren, were in school.”
“I can’t imagine it would have been,” Cya echoed back at her, smiling. “So. You want a genetic sample from — or a genetic study of — Ljótama, and help coordinating such from two of our sons, as well.”
Regine nodded slowly. “Yes. Having access to such would allow me to delve deeper into the study of Ellehemaei genetics..”
“Which, as we all know, is your great love. Of course.” Cya’s interruption was dismissive, but Regine did not allow herself to show any irritation or anger. This data would be more than a little bit useful to her. It was worth a bit of irritation. “All right.” Cya leaned forward. “I’m willing to agree to this, under a couple conditions.”
“Of course. What are your conditions?”
Cya leaned back in her seat. Regine noted that her hand settled on Leo’s back possessively. “I want a ‘get out of jail free’ card for every single one of our descendants to attend Addergoole, from now until the school closes its doors permanently.”
Part Three: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1091513.html
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1082751.html. You can comment here or there.
When Cya and Leofric’s fifth child together — their seventh in total — was a student at Doomsday, Regine finally swallowed her pride enough to visit and ask a favor.
The child — a daughter, Ljótama — was in her fourth year at Doomsday Academy, in a cy’ree Regine’s informant insisted on calling “cy’Goldie”, and proficient already in Hugr, Intinn, Jasfe, and Idu — her parents’ child, it seemed.
But weren’t they all? Regine had begun inserting informants in the school after Leo and Cya’s last child had graduated, when the pair left the academy in capable hands that were not their own, but she’d had informants in Cloverleaf for much longer, and everything said that their children were capable, a little bit wild, headstrong, and powerful: children of Boom all the way through.
Regine kept that in mind as she knocked on Cynara’s door. These were, as Luke had been pointing out to her for over half a century, not children anymore. Their children, the older ones, were powerful enough to be demigods in their own right — Viðrou in his forest, Yoshi and Sigruko wherever their travels took them.
As Mike liked to point out, both parents and children had been using their powers actively, in life-and-death situations, far more in recent decades than Regine had.
She did not want to anger these people.
She knocked politely.
Leofric answered the door, shirtless and apparently completely comfortable with it. His face did something interesting as he saw her, a twitch of the lips and a raised eyebrow, before he turned — partially, Regine noted, not turning his back on her. “Cya? Director Avonmorea is here.”
Regine did not miss the implied insult. She kept a polite smile on her face as Cya walked over. She might have caught them at a bad time — Cya was wearing what looked to be one of Leo’s kimono, casually belted, and apparently with no other clothing. And she was frowning.
“Lady of the Lake, if you mean me and mine no harm today and on this trip to Cloverleaf, please enter.”
Regine found her eyebrows going up, although she knew better. She stepped inside, not bothering with pleasantries. If Cya hadn’t wanted her to come in, she would have sent her away. “Red Doomsday. Lightning Blade… oro’Doomsday.” He was, after all, still wearing Cya’s collar. “I came…” Regine bowed carefully. “I came to ask a favor of you.”
Cya smirked. It was an unpleasant expression, but Regine did her best not to react to it. “You might as well come sit down, then. I imagine this will be interesting.”
Just as a general timeline: Mai (their 2nd child) was a child when Cloverleaf was built. Their next child, Kovi, was an adult by the time Cya Kept Leo. The next child came soonish after, and Tama about 30 years after that child.
Part II: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1082751.html
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1082356.html. You can comment here or there.
It had been sixteen years since the world began falling apart. Most of their students could barely remember the world before the end – if they had even been alive.
Luke had been doing quite a bit of yelling at Regine over the last decade and a half, so when it came time for this conversation, Reid and Laurel took point. They let themselves into their boss’s office and waited, patient but implacable, until she acknowledged them.
Laurel started. “Since the Gods’ War, we’ve been seeing more kids either staying in the Village after graduation or leaving their children there.”
“Yes.” Regine nodded. “That is what the Village and the creche are for.”
“The Village is an option, Director. Not the option.”
“It’s safe and comfortable.” They had not yet gotten her attention. Laurel raised an eyebrow at Reid.
“You either need to get rid of power and running water in the school and most of the Village, or you need to provide the students with the resources and aid to set those things up in settlements of their choice out in the world.” He had a good no-nonsense voice, Reid did. It made Regine raise an eyebrow.
“I am not interested in the world outside and neither is Addergoole as an institution.”
“Bullshit.” Laurel could be polite if she chose, but at the moment, being rude suited her better. “This school was built to save the world.”
“It was built to save fae. I do recall, I was there.”
“You’re splitting hairs, Regine.” Only Reid could pull off scolding like that. “As you yourself have told me, fae needed to be saved to save humanity.”
Regine sighed. “It puts them in danger. They are safe here.”
“They’re stagnant,” Laurel countered. “You’re raising an entire generation of children who will care not one bit for the outside world. They’ll be insular, and with each following generation, they’ll only get more so.”
“The Council was insular,” Reid followed. “And they have failed and fallen. You can’t take the children out of the world, Regine.”
“The world needs them.” Laurel folded her hands in front of her and waited.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1046141.html. You can comment here or there.
It was 2111, and Regine was using Powerpoint.
She found that amusing.
Certainly, computer programming was not a skill in high circulation at the moment – it seemed limited to a few sad enclaves still trying to hold on to the old world – and so there were few new options. But more than that, it was such a Grigori thing to do, to use antiquated technology decades past its prime.
Regine hoped there were Grigori in the audience young enough – or flexible enough – to appreciate the humor in this. She was going to need every advantage she could get today.
She did not clear her throat; it would considered an unnecessary and thus useless gesture by this crowd. Instead she stilled her posture and waited for silence.
“I am here today to state unequivocally that the terms ‘pure-blooded’, ‘half-breed’, and ‘Faded’ are outdated terms based on an archaic understanding and, as such, should immediately be dropped out of usage by Grigori.”
This was a Grigori meeting; there was no shouting. There were, however, murmurs and lifted eyebrows, shared glances and worried expressions. Regine catalogued them all. Michael would want to know about them.
She waited just long enough to allow the hubbub, such as it was, to die down, and then she began to present her proof.
She started with what Mike called her Jamian Point, because Jamian had been her first success. She brought up pictures – un-Masked pictures: “This is a Faded. This is a half-breed.” And then a picture of Jamian and the others. “This is their ‘full-blooded’ child.” Pictures of the next generation, both full-blooded and half-breed. “Their children with various other parents.” And the next generation, and the next. And then, because it was important, her ‘success children’s’ half-siblings. “These are other children from the same original parent groups, but in different combinations. The selection we call ‘full-blooded’ are merely a specific combination of genes which can be replicated with no recent ‘full-blooded’ ancestors.”
She raised her voice over the growing murmur. “Copies of all of my data are available for those who doubt my methods.”
She waited, as Michael and Ambrus had suggested, for silence to reign again before she began the next part of her speech.
“The ‘full-blooded’ Changes represent three combinations that occur commonly in bloodlines. They are not the only patterns to occur in bloodlines, although they may be the oldest. Putting weight on those above others handicaps us.
“Because of ‘half-blooded’ precognitives, we were able to correctly predict the return of the so-called gods and thus be better prepared to meet them. Because of ‘half-blooded’ space-shapers and time-movers, if you will pardon the casual term, we were able to face the ‘gods’ in manners and in places they were not expecting.”
Slide, slide, slide. Photographs of people who were very clearly half-breeds: Shira Pelletier. Porter, Shiva. Rohanna. Scenes of combat, some of those taken from mid-air in the middle of a teleport jump. Scenes of half-breeds beating down Hunters and Mara.
“They were older than us, on average. They were more powerful, on average, than we were. And yet we beat them. The world is bent but not broken, and it is still, after everything, ours.” She raised her chin and glared out at the perfect room of perfect people. “Will you tell me that any one of those who saved the world is worth less than you, because of a simple change in gene sequence?”
A pause. They wanted to say yes. They were so very comfortable with being on top.
“It’s a new world, honored Grigori. Let’s act like it.”
Open to more properly scientific terms for “The Jamian Point” and “space-shapers and time-movers”
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1005842.html. You can comment here or there.
I felt like writing this, so I did. Year four was pretty awful for everyone.
End of Year Four of the Addergoole School
The students had all walked across the stage, had all been given their names and released from one set of obligations and oaths into another. Various bonds and promises had broken. The students milled around now in the Village, waiting for parents to pick them up, waiting for Luke’s Jeep to take them to the airport.
Regine watched them from a distance, accompanied by Mike and Shira Pelletier. They bounced about, nervous energy making them louder than they normally would be. Students who had spent four years ignoring each other talked now, bonded by the feeling of “us against the world.”
There was a chance they’d need it. Mike cleared his throat. “Well, there goes the First Cohort.”
“Indeed.” Regine’s lip twitched. It wasn’t a smile, not as normal people smiled. Mike wasn’t even sure it counted as an expression for Regine.
“How do you think they’ll do?” He snuck a look at Shira, but she was ignoring him. “Do you think they’ll be okay, out in the world?”
“We gave them everything we could, every educational tool we had at our disposal.” Regine’s eyes tracked them coldly. Shadrach, who Mike had failed so badly. Dita, who had chosen her road and nailed herself to it with her stiletto heels. Isra. Lavanya. Linden had Named four Students as Adults today, and he wasn’t entirely certain he’d done well for any of them.
“We educated them.” Shira spoke slowly, thoughtfully. Her Students were all Third Cohort or younger. She had no horse in this race, as it were. “We taught them about being fae. We taught them about fighting, and we taught them history and science, literature and so on. But did we equip them for the end?”
Mike felt as if someone had dropped a truckload of rocks on his chest. The end. There were few scarier words than those, from a seer’s lips.
Regine cleared her throat. “We’ve followed the plan. If you believe the plan needs changing, Shira, then perhaps we should discuss it with the entire staff.”
If she expected the Skin-Taker to back down, she was barking up the wrong tree. Shira raised her perfect eyebrows and smirked.
“Why don’t we do that, then. Michel?” She made Mike’s name sound lovely in French. “What do you think?”
Mike watched Shadrach and Meshach hop into Luke’s Jeep. He cleared his throat and nodded.
“Yeah. Yeah, I think we ought to look at the plan again.”
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/981589.html. You can comment here or there.
After Inflicting Change, beginning of Year 20 of Addergoole
“Director Regine doesn’t ever take Students. My mother said she never has.“
Jack punctuated his words with lazy sneers and casual touches, patting Senka’s arm, shaking his head as if she was being foolish.
Senka pulled away. She had only been here for a week and a half, and she was already sick of Jack and the dozen others that were remarkably similar to Jack while looking nothing like him. “I did not say she had.”
“Your mother was wrong, anyway.” Perth was not like Jack. He was so completely not like Jack that Senka was unclear why he was friends with him, “crew” with the loud, obnoxious, self-satisfied, touching her again Jack. “She’s taken one Student. It was when my mom was here. Maybe your mom missed it.”
“Senka?” The Director’s secretary showed up just in time to forestall yet another fight between Jack and Perth. Senka wondered if Perth had seen the woman coming and timed it that way. “Director Regine would like to see you in her office after your magic classes today.”
“Thank you, Miss Hayley. I’ll see her there..” Senka barely resisted the urge to smirk at Jack.
She did, however, give in to the desire to gloat. “Perhaps,” she commented as they left the table for afternoon classes, “Director Regine will have one more student.”
~
Four students sat in the office, looking at each other. Two of the three, a boy named Mirek and a girl named Lianshi, were in advanced calculus with Senka. The third, a slender boy with lapis-blue eyes, she shared a Russian class with. Sumner.
They were alone in the room, despite having been called in by Director Regine. Senka, at least, was uncomfortable, and she could guess from the way that Sumner was shifting around that he was too. Lianshi was staring at the wall; Mirek was watching Lianshi – and Senka. Was every boy in this school prepared to be obnoxious?
“You’re all on time. Very good. That is a very good quality in a student.” Director Regine stepped into the office and closed the door behind her. “I am here to offer the four of you positions as my Students. I do not often take on new Students, but I have decided to make a change. You four would be my first Students in many years.”
“You want us to accept you as our Mentor?” Lianshi leaned forward. “Why us?”
“You are universally brilliant. You have at least one Grigori ancestor, which increases the chances that we will get along and be able to understand each other. And you have expressed in interest in one or more of my own areas of interest.”
“And why you?” Mirek was leaning back, looking like he was proud of himself. Senka rolled her eyes. “Why should you be our Mentor?”
“Well.” It struck Senka that the Director had not thought this through. “I am skilled and experienced in many things you have expressed interest in – the workings of Intinn, biology and genetics, mathematics and statistics.”
“No thanks.” Mirek stood up. “I think I’ll stick with Professor Fridmar. Thanks for the offer, though.”
He walked out, leaving Director Regine clearing her throat uncomfortably. “Well, ah, then. And the rest of you…?”
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