After the outburst in the presentation hall, work resumed as normal and despite my occasional eavesdropping, I never did find out what the Baron Sycronus wanted, or what could have been so urgent. The most frustrating thing about my new life was the lack of information; no one wanted to talk to me unless it was regarding work around the manse or the grounds. I was well aware that servants had their own information networks, but as the newly minted outcast, I did not have the privilege of that information and spent much of my time in isolation, other than Jen occasionally checking in on me. Three days had passed since that day in the hall, and now I found myself, as per always, on hands and knees scrubbing the grime from a copper waste basin. My arm throbbed with the back and forth motion and likewise, my legs were covered in blotchy purple and red bruises.

“What might it take,” I muttered. “to get a pair of pants!”

It occurred to me then that I hadn’t worn trousers since the first day I’d arrived, and I wasn’t likely to any time in the near future. It also occurred to me, however, that had I kept my mouth shut, I would now be dressed as a male while watching the female servants longingly from afar. It was a vicious cycle but I tried to convince myself that my decision had been right.

I stood and stepped away from the basin, dropping my rag on the cart and pushing it out of the latrine. Once in the hall I found myself assaulted by a blast of cold, manufactured air which was a welcome change from the hot stuffiness inside the restroom. I took a deep breath and stepped to the window, looking out over the campus. Finally, I walked a short distance down the hall and pressed the button to release the door to the call box. Inside, a gray metal handset was attached to a golden mesh speaker adorned with a row of switches, each one numbered. I took the handset and held it to my ear, then flipped the bottom-most switch four times. It took a moment, but the line crackled to life with a burst of static and then a faint voice on the other end spoke through the handset.

“Environmental dispatch, Sector Seven, proceed,” The voice on the other end said.

“This is…um…hello,” I said nervously into the speaker. I still hadn’t gotten the hang of using the thing.

“State your name,” The exasperated voice on the other end said.

“Hello, I’m Lyra,” I said.

“Lyra how many times are you going to do this?” The voice demanded. “When you pick use the talky, say your name, say the room you’re assigned to clean, and say finished, or issue.”

“Oh, I’m uh…I’m really sorry,” I said. “I’m just not used to-”

“Lyra!”

“Oh! I uh…room Six Eight Nine Three, Building Seven, west side! It’s a latrine!”

“Lyra we know it’s a latrine. Is it finished?”

“Yes!” I said triumphantly. “I did it!”

“You’re late, Lyra,” The voice said, clearly irritated. “First Girl Sheena requests your presence in the parcel room on level 4-8 by the beast, do not keep her waiting.”

The line went dead and I hung it up my fingers shaking. Talky boxes were a new invention and while they had been implemented at Axock palace, they often either never worked, or were simply broken. Now that I had the opportunity to use one, I always found myself terrified of whom I might find on the other end.

I closed the call box and stepped back to my cart, rolling it across the bridge.

“Do you remember me?” A voice called out from the shadows, causing me to freeze in place and search the nook at the end of the bridge, my head on a swivel until I spotted her. She was a girl slightly shorter than me with messy red hair, a gray service uniform. She stepped forward from the tiny nook, hands in a fist, knuckles white at her sides.

“I…I’m sorry,” I said, backing away a bit. “I don’t know you.”

“Don’t ye? Master Micah Lavoric? Heir to the Lavoric fortune? Don’t ye remember my face? Search your memory, ‘girl’.”

I bumped into my cart, nearly knocking it over. She knew who I was. She knew my name. I bit my lip, eyes darting back and forth as I tried to plan an escape.

“Don’t matter where you go,” She said. “This is a small place, I’ll find you, and you’ll pay for what you did.”

“I’m sorry…” I said, shaking. “What did I do? Where you the one who handed me the note?”

“That’s right,” She said. “And I’ll give you a lot more than that. You’ll mind your back, because I aim to kill you, Lavoric.”

Before I could respond, she stepped forward, placed both of her hands on me, and gave me a solid shove; I stumbled backward and collided with the wall as she stormed off, down the bridge, leaving me to wonder who she was, what she wanted, and what I’d done to her.

I collected myself and rolled the cart to the nearest utility closet. Leaving it, I made haste to the parcel room where I found Sheena standing at a long table, pouring over a stack of papers. The room was fairly large and filled with five long tables, each stacked with pieces of mail, from letters, to packages, and so on. At the rear-most tables, there were girls sorting through the packages, tossing them into bins and chatting amongst themselves. Along the walls, a line of open cubbies crafted from brass containing parcels, and at the very back of the room, banks of pneumatic tubes hummed and clanked, dropping packages into wire baskets just below their mouths.

“First girl, you asked to see me?” I was surprised at how easily the honorifics were rolling off my tongue. There was a slight terror at sitting at the back of my mind as I realized just how quickly and easily I was settling into this new role; almost as if I were born for it.

“Well aren’t you just a proper little thing?” She said without looking up. “They said you were late on the last three assignments. Work’s too hard for you, then?”

“No, First Girl,” I said, standing ramrod straight with my hands folded in front of me; the proper position of respect.

“Your legs,” She glanced over to me before returning her attention to the stack of papers. “You take to bruising easily.”

“Yes, First Girl.”

“Well, naught to do about it, I suppose,” She shrugged. “It is an unspoken agreement that you’ll do the work that’s worst before you see anything of ease, however, I do have a special assignment for you, this day.”

“Sheena!” Kayla appeared from the back, rushing past a table of unsorted parcels and shoving another stack of paper down onto the table. “The schedulers, they put four servants to the same task!”

“Unfortunate,” Sheena replied. “How long until they find us?”

“The schedulers, or the servants?”

“Either, I suppose,” Sheena shrugged. “In any case, Lyra, I find myself short on couriers this day. Do you now where to find the eastern power generator?”

“Yes First Girl,” I nodded. “Past the gullie and under the cog.”

“She calls it the gullie, you owe me a shilling,” Kaya piped up, her voice nearly devoid of emotion. Sheena groaned.

“Carry this parcel to the generator, ask for Parsifal,” Sheena plucked a brown string-wrapped package from the table and pushed it into my arms, I latched onto it before she managed to push me over.

“What is it?” I asked, she paused and looked over to me, her expression blank.

“Mind your own,” She said, returning her attention to the stack of papers in front of her.

“First girl-”

“Lyra, I am quite busy right now, if you need to talk then we can-”

“A servant girl wants to kill me, First girl,” I blurted out, cutting her off mid-sentence. She looked over to Kayla who shrugged and then peered at me inquisitively.

“Describe her,” Sheena demanded.

“Red of hair, freckled, pale, shorter than me,” I offered.

“Sage?” Kayla suggested.

“Seems most like,” Sheena agreed. “Deliver the parcel, mind you don’t get killed along the way.”

I went from the parcel room and walked through the hall, back toward the octagon, taking the right-most hallway and plunging down from the warm wood-paneled walls of the upper floors, to a cold green cinderblock nightmare that reeked of moisture and dampness. The staircase wound around one more time and ended in a riveted steel door that I pushed aside with some difficulty, and then I emerged into a long brick hallway lined with copper pipes overhead and along the left wall. The passage was large enough for me to pass through and for the first fifty feet or so, the space was pitch black with just the scent of mold and the dripping of water against the concrete floor to keep me company.

Both Jen and Sheena had warned me against coming down here; it was a shortcut from ‘The Vice’ to the eastern corridor, which was a stretch because the ‘corridor’ was a brick walkway flanked on either side by planters, ultimately leading to the far east where one could find the power plant, laundry, dry cleaning, and a plethora of other industries that ultimately served to support the palace. Though this was a suitable shortcut, Jen has expressed concerns that I might hit my head on the pipes, lose conciousness and starve to death before I were ever found. The idea was ludicrous, of course, but some of the pipes were low hanging.

After several minutes of walking, I rounded a corner and stepped through another steel door, onto a landing that dropped down into a greenhouse. I passed through the rows of plants and greenery until I finally exited through a glass door and took a set of steps down to the corridor. To my left, rows and rows of roses were planted, blue and white, arranged in the customary color scheme of House Jenwise. On my right, a hedge wall that was normally silent, but today I could hear the sounds of laughter behind along with the ‘thud’ of ParDar sticks thudding against a thick leather ball. ParDar was a game nobles played, and it finally occurred to me that the practice field must be on the other side of the hedge wall.

I walked along the wall, the sounds of the scrimmage game floating over the hedges as I tried to avoid thinking about the game. I had played it before; actually it was something I once enjoyed. Would I ever enjoy it again?

My thoughts continued to wander as I passed by a gap in the hedge and was hit squarely in the head with the leather ParDar ball. I let out a screech as my vision blacked and I lost my feet. When my vision cleared, I almost screamed again.

“Girl!” A blonde man in ParDar gear was kneeling next to me; he had a white complexion and sandy blonde hair tussled by the leather ParDar headgear he’d likely been wearing a moment ago. “Are you quite alright?”

My stifled scream came not from his presence, but the fact that I knew him. This was Lord Radon, or rather Duke Radon of Oniodale. He was younger than Lady Jenwise, twenty-one if I remembered correctly - and I did. He had ascended to the throne of Oniodale his father had been lost at the siege of Ineburn - a military action that some saw as unnecessary, but I’d always respected the show of force. Now he ruled Oniodale and its border had been moved just east of Ineburn to complete the annexation. His present location, however, was over top of me, staring down with his mesmerizing blue eyes that I’d found myself lost in more than once.

“I uh…I’m fine!” I said as quickly as possible, doing my best to speak in a high pitched tone of voice.

“Are you quite certain?” He asked me, shifting his wooden ParDar stick to the other hand. “You took quite a tumble there! Surely you’ll need your head tended to, as well as the rest of you I would say.”

By now, a crowd of nobles was gathering just beyond the gap, murmuring to themselves. I recognized many of them, but hopefully they didn’t recognize me.

I nodded and stood, immediately staggering from dizziness. Lord Radon stood and took me by the shoulders, steadying me before I fell backward, or forward.

“My name,” He said. “Is Lord Jared Radon, Duke of Oniodale; might I offer you the services of my personal physician?”

I shook my head violently; not only had I fallen completely into the role that I’d been assigned, I simply did not want him to recognize me. Then, he caught a glimpse of my face and in spite of the well-contoured makeup I’d applied myself this morning under Jen’s supervision, I saw a look of recognition form, and then a widening of his eyes. I froze, unable to look away as he stood there trying to work it out in his head. Finally, he turned about and faced the growing crowd of nobles.

“Return to your game,” He told them abruptly. “I will see to the servant girl.”

The crowd disbanded, leaving myself and Lord Radon to stand just before the hedge gap. He spoke first.

“I heard that your father had you sent off,” He said. “I did not think he would send you to Klocby.”

“I wanted to be as far away as possible,” I told him, speaking in a hushed tone but not attempting to alter my voice. He nodded.

“And are you happy?”

I nodded, swallowing as he continued to study me.

“It does suit you,” He said, almost approvingly. I blushed.

“Thank you my Lord,” I said. He cocked his head.

“You’ve never used honorifics with me before, and you stand in a position of respect. Tell me then, did the High Lady invoke the Bodgett clause?”

“Bodgett clause, My Lord?” I frowned. He gave me a look of pure exasperation.

“You know, what I am asking, Lord Lavoric,” He said sternly. “Answer the question.”

“Yes, My Lord,” I said. “I am as common as any of them from now to the end of my sentence.”

“I see,” He nodded. “Carry on with your duties then, girl, and do have your head examined; I know you cannot see my personal physician, for reasons beyond obvious.”

“Yes, My Lord,” I curtsied and began to walk, but the stopped and turned to him. “My Lord, you will not speak of this to my father?”

“Girl, no one wants to speak to your father, but tell me your name.”

“I…my name is Lyra.”

“Lyra,” He nodded. “A fitting name, I suppose. Be off with you then. Oh, and Lyra?”

“Yes, My Lord?”

“I should like to see you again.