make it look as if her ghost had gone to play all the things she never had time to learn…'
I stopped because Annah was nodding. 'There is such a girl. Who cares deeply. Who has a gift. When she arrived at the school, she already played a number of instruments, so I set her to learning the harp. It's such a lovely instrument; I wanted to hear it played by someone who wouldn't just go by rote. Rosalind's still just starting, but you can tell—'
'Rosalind?' I interrupted. 'Rosalind Tzekich?'
'Yes. You know her?'
'She's in my Math C.'
Rosalind Tzekich. Sixteen years old, very quiet, very intense. Perhaps the same sort of girl Musicmaster Annah had been at that age, except that Rosalind had black hair cut in bangs, a Mediterranean complexion, and a plumpish body she hid under shapeless frayed-hem dresses. Compared to the stylish fashion-plates who populated our school, Rosalind stood out like a sack of onions… though she could probably buy and sell the entire families of many of our students.
Rosalind's mother, Elizabeth Tzekich — known also as Elsbeth the Bloody, Our Lady of Shadows, or Knife-Hand Liz — was the outlaw terror of Southern Europe… or at least one of the terrors, since Hispania, Romana, Hellene, and the Balkans all seemed to cultivate criminal organizations as profusely as olives. (The Black Hand. The Hidden Cry. The Circle of Friends. Each specializing in some form of ugliness, from extortion to smuggling to kidnap.)
Mother Tzekich ran a band of thugs called the Ring of Knives. They made their money through sleazy mod-and-aug operations in back alleys from Gibraltar to Jerusalem. Did you want a poison gland implanted in your tongue so you could murder someone with a single kiss? Did you want a winning smile and a constant halo of pheromones? Or maybe you just fantasized about looking younger, more svelte, better endowed. Your dreams could come true for a price: through surgery, through sorcery, through OldTech procedures that rewrote your genes. A number of patients died on the operating table, a number came out disfigured or blighted, and plenty emptied their purses for no results whatsoever; but a sufficient tally of customers got enough of what they wanted that the Ring of Knives grew and prospered.
Ambitious Mother Tzekich didn't rest on her laurels. After making a name in the slice'n'dice trade, the Ring branched into other realms of business: forcibly seizing enterprises run by other criminal clans. The resulting gang war shook the Mediterranean. Soon it escalated farther afield, as the Ring fought to expand east into Asia and west to the Americas. In skirmish after skirmish, the Ring never suffered a significant defeat — partly because Tzekich had a genius for choosing the right targets, and partly because the Ring decked out its people with subcutaneous armor, enhanced reflexes, and even (so the rumors went) genes spliced from nonhuman sources. Animals and aliens, plants and ETs.
So the Ring of Knives gashed its way around the planet. Rival gangs fought back without mercy: dons and capos and czars would stop at nothing to see Elizabeth Tzekich dead. All this time, Rosalind stayed with her mother; but after a close call with a bomb spraying OldTech neurotoxins, the girl had been sent away for her own protection, to a boarding school in Nankeen.
Then to Alice Springs.
Then Quito.
Then Brazzaville.
Then Port-au-Prince.
Now it was Feliss. Where the girl was expected to last another month or two before being hustled off in the dead of night, moved to another school on another continent to keep ahead of her mother's enemies. Rosalind's clothes were worn and threadbare because she'd been living out of suitcases since she was thirteen; her soul was worn and threadbare for the same reason.
As far as I knew, Rosalind had never tried to make friends at our school — why bother when she might be dragged away at any moment? She did her homework as a way to keep busy, but mostly she passed her time staring out the window. In the middle of class I'd glance in Rosalind's direction and she'd be gazing out at bare trees against the winter sky. Perhaps she was wondering if she'd stay long enough to see leaves on those trees; or perhaps she didn't ask such questions anymore: she just disengaged her mind and let minutes or hours roll by. I was glad to hear she had a passion for music… glad she cared about anything. Rosalind had struck me as a girl who might do nothing but stare out the window her entire life.
'We should check on her,' I told Annah. 'To see if she's all right. Do you know which dorm she's in?'
'Mine,' Annah answered. 'I asked for her especially. Because she was so good in music. She's just down the hall.'
Annah stood, reaching down the front of her nightgown and pulling out a thin silver necklace. On the end was a pass key, similar to the one in my pocket. (Similar, but not identical — for the sake of propriety, my pass key didn't work on girls' rooms and Annah's didn't work on boys'.) I had to smile at the notion a pass key was so valuable one had to wear it on a chain close to one's heart… but that was just like Annah, going the extra distance to imbue tiny things with dramatic import.
She ducked her head and lifted off the necklace, squeezing the chain in her fist as she stepped to the door. I rose to follow. Annah turned… and for a moment there was something in the air, something she was going to say or do; I could see it pass through her mind, though I couldn't tell what it was. Maybe she was just going to say she wanted to check on Rosalind alone — to avoid embarrassment if the girl came to the door in her underwear. Or maybe Annah was thinking something quite different. In the end, she simply picked up the rose-glassed lamp and said, 'Let's go.'
By the time we knocked on Rosalind's door, tousle-haired heads had appeared up and down the hall. I suppose they'd been wakened a few minutes earlier, by my babbling in Annah's doorway… or perhaps they possessed some instinct for sensing trouble. Whatever the explanation, all the girls on the floor had got up to see what was happening. Now they peered out of their rooms, holding their nighties closed and squinting blearily as if they needed glasses. Most of them did.
Without looking at anyone in particular, Annah announced, 'Well-bred ladies do not pry into another lady's affairs.' Her voice had a stern edge I'd never heard before; I hadn't suspected her capable of it. Full of surprises, our Annah — I mentally kicked myself and resolved to stop underestimating her. She was, after all, an experienced teacher… and a teacher needs many different ways to speak to students.
This particular way was effective. All along the corridor, doors closed immediately.
Rosalind didn't answer our first knock. Annah knocked again, more sharply. 'Rosalind dear, it's Professor Khan. Sorry to wake you, but could we see you a moment?'
Not a sound from inside. No light through the peephole.
'Of course,' Annah murmured, 'the poor girl might be afraid to open the door. It's the middle of the night; how does she know we aren't enemies trying to kidnap her?'
'In that case,' I said, 'she may try to shoot us through the door.'
Annah met my gaze. Firearms were technically forbidden in the dorms, but parents often went to great lengths to make sure their children had an ample supply of concealed weapons. Especially parents like Elizabeth Tzekich.
Quietly, Annah and I moved to either side of the doorway, out of the line of fire.
Seconds passed. Annah knocked a third time. 'Rosalind, please, we're worried about you. If you don't answer, we'll have to come in.'
Still no response. Annah clutched her pass key and gave me a look; I nodded. Staying off to one side, Annah slipped the key into the lock. The dead-bolt slid back with a solid thunk. Annah took a deep breath, then gave the door a light shove.
Neither she nor I tried to peek around the door frame — just in case Rosalind really
I hadn't seen death all that often — I wasn't a surgeon, soldier, or in any other profession that regularly produced cadavers — but I came from a family where generations lived and died together in the same house.
When I was very young, I clutched my mother's leg as she and my great-grandfather washed the wrinkled skin of his just-dead wife, carefully preparing the old woman for burial. Several years later, that same great-grandfather died right in front of me; he was withering away from a cancerous mass in his belly, and toward the end, everyone in the house took turns reading him the Koran, around the clock, twenty-four hours a day. (For some, it was the first time we'd read the Book: Great- Granddad was the only genuine Believer in our family. The generation after his had all become adamant atheists for reasons they never discussed, and those of us born later were brought up in bland secularity… idly curious about the old ways, but never to the point where we considered prostrating ourselves when the muezzin called.) I was waiting my turn to take over the reading from Aunt Rahel when the breath slipped out of the old man and the smell of his loosened bowels filled the room. (My aunt immediately turned to the Opening, Al-Fatiha, and read, 'In the name of Most Merciful Compassionate God: Praise be to God, the Lord of all Being; All-Merciful, All-Compassionate, the Master of the day of judgment. Thee only do we worship and of thee do we beg assistance. Guide us in the straight path, the way of the blessed — not of those who have earned Your wrath or those who have wandered astray.' Only then did she look up and say, 'He's gone.') And there were other deaths through the years, great-uncles and elderly cousins, a maid who drank poison (no one knew why), a gateman stabbed by a thief, the thief himself brought down by guard dogs and shot in cold blood by my grandma Khadija, a peasant boy who'd climbed our wall and was found floating in the fish pond (probably chased there by the dogs)… perhaps two or three dozen dead in all. Not a lot of corpses by many people's standards, but enough that I recognized the smell of a room where life had vanished.
Rosalind's room had that smell.
I glanced across at Annah. Her expression showed that she too recognized the odor of death. Even the oil lamp in her hands seemed aware of the smell — the lamp's flame burned brighter, fed by the gases of putrefaction. Or perhaps I just imagined that.
It's hard to describe how I felt at that moment — not calm, certainly, but neither was I falling apart. I'd already had my breakdown. And the smell from Rosalind's room wasn't a surprise… just the confirmation of something I'd suspected ever since I heard that harp.
If I was worried about anything, it was Annah. Her hand had begun to tremble; the lamp rattled in her grip, enough to send our shadows veering across the wall. I reached out and took the light from her. 'Do you need to sit down?'
She didn't answer. Her other hand clutched the pass key so tightly, the metal must have dug into her palm. I took a step forward, opened my arms — intending to hold her the way she held me. But she shrank away. 'No,' Annah said. 'No. Just… could you… you look. I'll be along. In a second.'
'Are you sure?'
'Yes. I'll be all right. Please go.'
I stared at her a moment longer — stupidly affronted she wouldn't let me wrap her in my arms. But her body was clenched so tightly she looked like she might
