Nettleblack by Nat Reeve

Author:Nat Reeve
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: nettleblack;nat reeve;cipher press
Publisher: Cipher Press
Published: 2022-05-23T14:04:10+00:00

Septimus’s notebook (kept in a shorthand which she assures me is entirely of her own invention)

I’ve got to do it.

It ain’t for Mr. Adelstein. Short of me coming up against one of those letters in Henry’s handwriting, he’s not to know this ever happened. Yes. No? No. It’s for me. For my own – conclusion. I was about to say benefit, but what’s it to me if she turns out a traitor? I didn’t pick her. I just did the best I could with the orders I got given – and that’s as far as my responsibility goes. Yes?

Well! Why should I get invested?

Beyond protecting the Div, of course.

And – because it’s Henry.

And it’s just a precaution to actually search her things. She said it weren’t true. She said it, and then I thought I’d killed her just getting that confession. And Adelstein might be the detective, but he didn’t see her then. She was stiff as a corpse, and she couldn’t breathe, and all the colour’d gone out of her lips. You couldn’t feign that. You couldn’t.

So that’s all it is. Making sure.

The Div’s hushed as a church. Usually is at five-thirty in the morning – even the Director’s not in yet. Never even had to train myself to wake up at this hour. I caught the knack of it when I was about seven years old (seven-ish) – more or less six-and-twenty now and I ain’t lost it yet. If I could manage an early rise, it gave me a mort of time to sneak over to the boys’ block and pick my way to Lorrie for a chat, before any of the matrons woke to stop me.

I snatch for my uniform the moment I’m off the mattress. Easy enough when you sleep under your office desk. (Lorrie thinks I’ve got a room to live in at the Div – in a way, he ain’t wrong.) Only one taper lit this morning – Henry had the right of it keeping the lights dim last night. No point wasting resources. It’s fuel we’ll need now, not a glut of light. Everything’s cold, cold and getting colder. My papers’re stiff with chilly damp. Paperweighting on top of ’em, my notebook’s pages curl between their covers, like they’re huddling for warmth. The inkwell’s frozen solid, glossy and heavy as a pebble. There must be a way to stop it doing that. Just – maybe not this side of December.

Hair. There I’ve got to pause, though the urge to dash across reception and have done with it sets my fingers shaking on my jacket buttons. The whole Div’d notice if I let my chignon slip. Besides – why should I let it slip? There’s naught amiss with me. Out of the plait, down my back for one hundred strokes, up in the pins – clockwork. Penniless orphans don’t tend to get hair like a fashion-plate. Not that I own any fashion-plates – and I ain’t about to start wearing that sort of stuff either.

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