Nancy A Collins - 01 Vamps by Nancy A Collins

Author:Nancy A Collins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-12-09T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

Scrivening was Cally’s last class of the night. She eyed the double row of antique lift-top desks with builtin inkwells. She knew she’d miss her friends, but she didn’t expect to miss Varney’s modern feel. Bathory was so retro it was like walking into a time warp, right down to the sputtering gaslight fixtures that were the only light in the winding subterranean halls.

As Cally moved to take a seat at the front of the room, Carmen Duivel stepped around her and quickly sat down at the desk.

“This is my seat, newbie.” Carmen smirked. “I always sit here.”

Cally sighed and moved to the next desk over, only to have Melinda Mauvais block her attempt to sit down.

“Sorry,” Melinda said, trying not to look at Cally’s face as she spoke. “This seat’s taken.”

Cally had already experienced this childish strategy in both her beast mastery and mesmerism classes. She took a seat in the back of the class and hoped the instructor wouldn’t spend the entire period staring at her like she was some kind of repulsive bug.

“Young ladies, please open your desks and remove your scrivening kits,” Madame Geraint announced as she stepped in front of the blackboard. The scrivening instructor was a thin woman with exceptionally well-formed hands. Her fingers moved with an otherworldly grace, like seaweed floating in a gentle current.

Cally opened the top of her desk and found a black lacquer stationery box. Its lid was decorated with a mother-of-pearl inlay depicting the Bathory Academy seal: a capital Gothic script B framed by wolfsbane and deadly nightshade. Inside, the box held several sheets of vellum parchment, a flat stone paperweight, and a six-inch scrivener’s talon fashioned of ebony.

Madame Geraint used a wooden pointer and tapped a chart showing what looked like a cross between a Chinese ideogram and a line drawing by a drunken Picasso.

“Tonight you will be practicing how to properly write the chthonic word for blood. In the true tongue it would be called thusly.” She cleared her throat, then issued a rapid series of ultra-high-frequency clicks and chirps. “Note the accent on the last syllable. Depending on the context, the word for blood can be used to describe life, food, or family, making it the most important word in our vocabulary. Talons up, ladies! And—commence!”

Cally removed a sheet of vellum from the stationery box, carefully placing the paperweight at the bottom of the page. Luckily, she had taken scrivening at Varney, so she wasn’t completely lost. Still, mastering a scrivener’s talon was difficult even for an Old Blood, so she had to pay extra attention to what she was doing at all times.

She picked up the talon, using her thumb to hold it correctly against her right index finger, which she then bent to match the curvature of the instrument, and dipped the talon’s nib in the glass jar of ink set within the inkwell. Cally carefully tapped off the excess ink before placing the nib onto the parchment.

“No, no, no! This is utter

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