GC27 - more aftermaths
Lord Downey watched Sylvia Heald-Green make her confident but still quite unsteady way from one end of the parallel bars to the other, her lower legs encased in supporting material and a large leather brace encircling her back. Her gait still wasn't perfect – she lurched slightly, hence the need for the supporting bars to be there – but it was noticeable how much command she was asserting over the movement and normal functioning of her legs.
"Quite remarkable, my dear" he said, thoughtfully. "And – let me get this straight – four weeks ago, you not only broke your back, you shattered it?"
"Apparently so, sir" she said. "I was unconscious. A Watch patrol found me and I was taken to this hospital. Mr Igor" she nodded at one of the medical staff in the room, "and his associates apparently operated on my back for five hours."
Downey looked over at the Igor, a typical example of his family.
"Backth are tricky, my lord." the Igor said. "Definitely the most complex part of the human body. But nothing is beyond our understanding of modern healing and medithine. The difficult part, after rebuilding the spine, wath persuading her broken spinal chord to reconnect and make new links and assothiations. This ith still happening now and cannot be rushed. I ethtimate it will be another six to eight weeks, with physiotherapy, before she is walking and running as well as she did before her fall."
He said "physiotherapy" with no hint of a lisp, Downey thought. I've heard the lisp is an affectation and the younger Igors are learning to dispenthe – dispense – with it.
Then a memory struck him, and a pit of horror yawned in his gut. Downey went white, and swayed. The Igor stepped forward, and steered him to a chair.
"Sir? Are you feeling alright, sir?" the girl asked.
Downey smiled, weakly. He was feeling alternately hot and cold, his heart was pounding, and the memory of Martin Gower-Lacey, lying broken in an alley with his legs folded at un-natural angles, kept intruding on him. The young Assassin's honest face, trusting the Master to do what was right and correct. And Downey had, at the time and with genuine honesty and integrity, done what he considered to be absolutely the right thing. It was a mercy, after all. If the boy had lived, he would be crippled for life.
Now he wasn't sure at all.
"You can…repair…badly broken backs?"
"Oh, assuredly yeth, my Lord!"" the Igor beamed, offering him a glass of water.
Downey closed his eyes again. And a completely unfamiliar emotion, a new emotion, an unpleasant emotion, surged through him.
Guilt.
Tinged with a little shame. And regret.
Downey regained a measure of control. Maybe there was one thing he could do for the Gower-Lacey boy, even belatedly.
"Tell me, Mr Igor. If I wanted to employ members of your family, how would I go about doing it?"
The Lady Sybil's Igor coughed, discreetly.
"It hath already been done, my Lord. The clacks was sent to We-R-Igors in Bad Schuschein some days ago. There is an Igor and an Igorina on their way to the Assassinth' Guild even as we thpeak."
"Who ordered this?"
"I am not at liberty to divulge the identity of the aunt of the Patrician involved, my Lord. But Lord Vetinari may mention it to you at thome point, to clarify that you are now employing two members of my family."
Downey gave up.
"An Igorina?"
"A female Igor, my lord. She will be skilled in all the specific ailments and maladies conthequent upon being female. Your female pupils may prefer to take their private worrieth to such a… matron. And perhapth your lady memberth of staff."
Downey saw the point.
Maybe this was the best way forward for the Guild….
And, seven years prevously...
"Settle down, everyone". Grune di Nivor called from the high dais. The seventy or eighty accredited teaching members of the Assassins' Guild School both the full and part-time teachers, looked expectantly towards the dais.
"You will shortly receive your timetables and class allocations for the new teaching year. But first we need to resolve an outstanding item of business, which concerns the new houses of Study and the allocation of teaching staff to them as Housemasters. Ah, Housemistresses, I beg your pardon.
"It has been decided that a hundred and eighty female pupils will commence at the School this year. Rebuilding work in the main School and construction of new buildings on an adjacent site is now very well advanced and will be completed within the next month.
"There will be four boarding forms and two forms of day pupils.
"All the boarding forms, for obvious reasons, will be single-sex. One of the day-pupil forms will also be single sex. However, taking a leaf from the book of the Thieves' Guild School, to whom, by the way, we are indebted for practical help and advice in this project, the second and third day classes will be mixed-sex. This will allow us to monitor how male and female pupils interact in close proximity. According to the Thieves' Guild, fully mixed classes appear to work best of all. We will see.
"Names for the new Houses are as yet provisional. Several have been given place-holder names, after districts of the City, for instance the new male scholarship pupil Broken Moon House, and the female boarders' Tump House.
"The Guild Council have made the following staff allocations:
Madame les Deux-Ėpées – you will take charge of Black Widow House. Miss Smith-Rhodes: you are to go to Raven House. Miss Band – you will take Tump House. Lady T'Malia will take responsibility for Scorpion House. These will be houses of study and accommodation for female boarders. Miss Sanderson-Reeves: in deference to the fact that you also have outside business interests, we will not ask you to take a boarding house.
As your premises are, um, the last on the builders' schedule, I'm afraid they only have the working name of B1 and C2 Houses as yet…"1
Joan raised a hand and interrupted him.
"As these are for Scholarship day pupils, mr di Nivor, can I be surprised they're low on the Guild's list of priorities?"
"It isn't quite like that, Miss Sanderson-Reeves. But as discussed, we would still very much like you to take the senior position of Head of Scholarship Pupils, in deference to your longer experience and great personal ability with Scholarship, Bursary and Charity pupils."
"You may be assured I will vocally represent my pupils at every opportunity. Incidentally, if a chap or a young gel makes it here on merit and talent, it can scarcely be called charity, can it?"
Di Nivor smiled, weakly.
"Indeed, miss Sanderson-Reeves. Indeed. Moving swiftly on…"
The allocations of pupils to Houses were discussed. Last-minute changes were made and bargains struck among teachers, with several important principles in mind.
In the first year, it is vitally important not to have pupils from warring countries in the same House. Thus, Borogravian pupils must not go in the same form as Zlobenians.
The same principle apples to pupils from nations riven by civil war and internal dissent. Empire Loyalist Hergenians, for instance, are to be rigorously separated from Republican Hergenians.
Religious wars and micro-crusades are also to be avoided. Omnian pupils in particular are to be politely reminded that there is a time and a place for religion, and that while religious expression is a fine thing, sometimes it can be taken too far.
The school does not discriminate on the grounds of race, ethnicity or skin colour. We have always taken the point of view that everybody's hard currency is equally acceptable. Boor and Kwa'Zulu pupils are coming to us for the first time and may forcibly need to be reminded of this. We have employed a Boor teacher and a Kwa'Zulu chaplain, also on the teaching staff, to ease their transition. (Memo: Miss Smith-Rhodes may at times require further guidance on this point. Lady T'malia, can you monitor?)
Other schools, in other planes of reality, rely on the wisdom of a quasi-magical "sorting hat" to direct the Pupil to the appropriate House.
On Filigree Street, it is done the hard way, with a lot of trial and error and room for last-minute changes.
1 All House names and most teacher allocations are taken from the list in the New Discworld Companion. Actually, in Terry Pratchett's notes to Josh Kidby's artwork in The Art of The Discworld, he gives Alice Band's house the alternative title of Mantis House. While this is entirely fitting (a predatory insect where the female kills and devours the male after sex) and fits better than Tump House, this is the only menion of Mantis House anywhere in the Canon. Everywhere else, Alice runs Tump House.