The Giant's Almanac by Andrew Zurcher (black female authors .txt) 📕

me there even before they’d decided whether or not I could stay! Before I’d even unpacked!’

‘When was that?’ Fitz asked her. He realized with shock that he knew almost nothing about how the other Prents had ended up at the Heresy. ‘How did you end up here?’

Unpacked what?

‘I won a competition when I was little. Reciting the decimal places of pi. There are a lot of them. I could have gone on literally forever. The next day, the Registrar showed up at my house, and offered me a place at a school, fully funded. My parents sat down with me in the lounge, all of us in big chairs with tall backs, all at the table like we were having a very important meeting. They told me I would be a fool to turn down an offer like that. As if I had a choice.’

‘Didn’t you ever want to go home?’

‘Every day, for a while. But now I’m not so sure there’s a home left to go to. My parents wrote me a letter once – just news, you know – the dog, that kind of thing. But even that was a long time ago, and, to be honest, I’ve just told you pretty much everything I remember. I was only seven and a half when I left.’

‘And now you’re –’

‘Fifteen tomorrow,’ said Navy. She smiled, the kind of smile that pushes something away. ‘What about you? Do you want to go home?’

Fitz thought about the cottage – the last time he had seen it, just before they had run across the road and into the Bellman’s Wood, the smoke billowing in heavy clouds from the roof, then lifting lazily into the evening air. Surely there wouldn’t be much left now.

‘No,’ he said, without meaning to. The word came out too fast for him to catch it, and he could see Navy was surprised. ‘It burned down,’ he explained. He hadn’t convinced himself, much less Navy. This time her face didn’t push anything away.

‘I used to wish my house would burn down. I fantasized about it. But of course I didn’t want to lose it. I’m really sorry. You must have lost everything.’

‘I didn’t lose anything,’ Fitz said quickly. ‘Nothing at all.’

Navy was silent. They had been standing by the door to the tower, but now she began to kick the little stones at her feet, and then, slowly, to walk towards the end of the grey court. Fitz kept her company. When they reached the end, they turned left and followed the court round.

‘My house,’ said Navy. ‘My parents’ house: it was called Roseland. That’s a silly name, and it’s silly for a house to have a name, but anyway that’s what it was – full of roses. All kinds of roses – every colour, every size, some with endless pillows of petals, some with just a few, bushes, ramblers, big ones, little ones. Some of the stems seemed thick as my arm, with thorns like sharks’ teeth. Others were tiny, spiny things. I remember my parents seemed to spend all their time on them. The summer I left, they were all in bloom.’

Fitz kicked a stone, himself.

‘Clare used to paint me,’ said Fitz. ‘Paint pictures of me, I mean.’

‘Clare is your mother?’ Navy asked. ‘So she’s an artist?’

‘She was going to be,’ Fitz said. ‘But then her mother died, and she found me, and so we just lived together at the cottage.’ They had made a full circuit of the Master’s court, and had almost reached the tower door again. Dusk while they were walking had given way to night, and the lamp by the passage cast a raking light over their features, so that they seemed sharp to one another. ‘Our house didn’t have a name,’ he said. ‘Clare just called it Mother’s.’

Navy raised her hand, and Fitz thought for a second that she was going to touch his cheek. But she had seen something – a cord round his neck, caught for a moment on his shirt – and her precise fingers quickly set it right. She brightened.

‘Birthday tomorrow. Better get some sleep before my big day. Betcha the Commissar gives me extra stack. Don’t get too close to me at lunch,’ she said, her eyes goggling – ‘or I might fall hopelessly in love with you.’ She stuck out her tongue, and disappeared into the passage beneath the shining lamp in the corner of the court. When she wanted, she could be even faster, and stealthier, than Dina.

At the top of the circular stairs, Fitz opened the door on the tower room with new caution. He tried to imagine the Riddler living in this space that he had come to think of as his own – no, more – this space that he had come to recognize was his, had always been his. He had fitted so naturally into its clean, square shape, its emptiness, its two windows that looked out on the morning and the evening. Surely no one else – and least of all that queer, enigmatic form, inscrutable and incapable – could have made this place their home. Moreover, why would the Riddler, of all people, have made room for him? He had had nothing to do with the Riddler. Fitz ran his fingertip along the lines he had scratched on the wall by the window, one for every night he had slept in the Heresy. In the three weeks and more that Fitz had been there, he and the Riddler had hardly interacted, not even to share a glance, until tonight.

What if he wanted me to be here for a reason?

Fitz sat on his bed. If Dina hadn’t put her foot down, exercising all her authority as First Prent to keep him out of the Sensorium, he wouldn’t have thought twice about it. But she had.

And her lip twitched. She was angry.

A sudden thought came into Fitz’s head. He jumped up, took hold of his mattress, and dragged it off the