scott street

10: AGATHA

Over the next few weeks, Espada trained them to recognise Never assassins in crowds and defend themselves from attacks, and Tedros was forced to bad-temperedly relate the ten failed attempts on his life, and how he had avoided them. (The answers were either immunity, guards, luck, or incredible violence; apparently the last attempt had been just before he had gone to school, and he'd swung his entire school trunk at the assassin, who, reasonably, had not been expecting that.)

Anemone and Lukas took it in turns to lecture them madly about fabrics, court clothing styles and current formal fashions, hand in vague designs of what they might like to wear, and each and every one of them was subject to a rigorous measuring by an enchanted tape measure that even measured their armpits and nostril width. Uma revised polite small talk with the most common animal species, and Dovey coached them on goodwill gestures they might make towards important guests, along with a quick-fire route through Camelot history. Yuba advised them on safe travel methods through the Woods, and he and Espada teamed up to have them practise running, fighting and spell casting in formal attire, in case of attack. (Anemone bemoaned their appearances to her next lesson, in ruined hoop skirts and muddy breeches.)

For the most part, Tedros bore the attention as breezily as he always did, but Agatha noticed the mask slip several times; when he slept through Camelot history, when he made origami and muttered comments at the back of Fashion and Grooming, when she passed the bathroom after supper and caught a glimpse of him coughing over the sink with a glass phial clutched in his clammy hand, Chaddick patting his back grimly. He was fine in company, but when there were only a few people with him at meals, he became bad conversation, reading notes over his soup and grunting noncommittally when people asked him questions.

For her part, every night Agatha stumbled back to her room with a slamming headache, brain swimming with information about fabrics, parades, niceties in foreign languages, fork orders...

Of all of the lessons, Pollux's were the worst. Last year's dance lessons had been ramped up to be twenty times harder... and under twenty times more pressure.

It had been Millicent's slip-up, on one of the first days after the coronation ball was announced. Clustered around the lunch table, the Evers had once again bombarded Tedros with questions, which Agatha had happily ignored in favour of her noodles, until she'd heard;

"Is Agatha going to be the tenth damosel? The last dance?"

Agatha looked up, confused. "...what?"

Tedros's smile had gone very fixed. "It's a, um– it's a–"

"Oops!" giggled Millicent, hands over her mouth. "Did you not tell her?"

"It's been... I don't even know if–"

Tedros's fumbling was ignored; Millicent leant conspiratorially across the table to Agatha, almost putting her elbow in Tarquin's plate.

"It's a tradition, you see– the King has to dance with ten girls, and usually the last dance is saved for the girl he's courting–"

"MILLY," shouted Reena from the table behind. "WHAT HAPPENED TO OUR TOAST?"

Millicent jumped and scampered off with the plates she'd been holding, Agatha sending Reena a silent prayer of thanks. Still, she turned a dubious gaze on Tedros, who looked mortified. The other Evers, apparently sensing a domestic, started trundling away.

"Look, it's– she's pushing the definition of it." Tedros said desperately. "It's just a woman who's important. Sometimes it's sisters, or mothers, or–"

"You don't have a sister, or a mother." said Agatha, trying to crush the urge to get up and run for it. "Or even a grandmother."

"There's... there's Aunt Morgan–" Tedros said feebly–