Blue Lily, Lily Blue
Everyone knew, but no one copped to it.
He clasped his hands behind his back and took a closer look. “Vocabulary’s impressive.” He tapped a knuckle against a few of the words. He was kinetic. “But what’s going on with the grammar in here? And here? You’d want a subjunctive here in this fear clause. ‘I fear that they may believe this’— there should be a vocative here. I know what’s being said here because I already know the joke, but a native speaker would’ve just stared at you. This is not usable Latin.”
Adam didn’t have to turn his head to feel Ronan simmering.
Their new Latin teacher turned, swift and compact and keen, and again Adam felt that rush of both intimidation and awe. “Good thing, too, or I’d be out of a job. Well, you little runts. Gentlemen. I’m your Latin teacher for the year. I’m not really a fan of languages for the sake of languages. I’m only interested in how we can use them. And I’m not really a Latin teacher. I’m a historian. That means I’m really only interested in Latin as a mechanism to — to — rifle through dead men’s papers. Any questions?”
The students eyed him. This was the first period of the first day of school and nothing could make Latin class less full of Latin. This man’s fervent energy sank uselessly into moss-covered stones.
Adam put up his hand.
The man pointed at him.
“Miserere nobis,” Adam said. “Timeo nos horrendi esse. Sir.”
Have mercy on us — I’m afraid we are terrible.
The man’s smile widened at sir. But he had to know that students were to address teachers as sir or madam to show respect.
“Nihil timeo,” he replied. “Solvitur ambulando.”
The nuances of his first statement — I fear nothing! — escaped most of the class, and the second statement — an idiom embracing the merit of practice, blew by the rest.
Ronan smiled lazily. Without raising his hand, he said, “Heh. Noli prohicere maccaritas ad porcos.”
Don’t throw pearls before swine.
He did not add sir.
“Are you pigs, then?” the man asked. “Or are you men?”
Adam wasn’t eager to watch either Ronan or their new Latin teacher run out to the end of their respective ropes. He asked quickly, “Quod nomen est tibi, sir?”
“My name” — the man swept out a big swath of Ronan’s bad grammar with the edge of an eraser and used the space to replace it with efficient letters of his own — “is Colin Greenmantle.”
10
Here we are, living among the provincials!” Colin Greenmantle leaned out the window. Down below, a herd of cows looked up at him. “Piper, come look at these cows. This one ass**le is looking right at me. ‘Colin,’ says this cow, ‘you are really living among the provincials now.’ ”
Piper said, “I’m in the bath.”
Her voice was coming from the kitchen, though. His wife (although he didn’t like to use that word, wife, because it made him think that he was now over thirty, which he was, but still, he didn’t need to be reminded, and anyway, he still had his boyish good looks; in fact, the cashier at the grocery store had flirted with him just last night, and even though it could have been the fact that he was overawingly overdressed for a cheese-cracker run, he thought it was probably his aquamarine eyes because she had been virtually swimming in them) was taking the move to Henrietta better than he had expected. So far, the only act of rebellion Piper had performed had been to wreck the rental car by driving it aggressively through a shopping center sign to demonstrate just how unsuited she was for living in a place where she couldn’t walk to shops. It was possible she hadn’t done it on purpose, but there was very little Piper did by accident.
“They are basically monsters,” Greenmantle said, although now he was thinking less of the cows and more of his new pupils. “Accepting handouts all day long, but they’d eat you in a second, if they had the right teeth for it.”
They’d only just moved into their “historic” rental on a cattle farm. Greenmantle, who had made plenty of history, doubted the farmhouse’s historic claim, but it was charming enough. He liked the idea of farming; in the most basic linguistic sense, he was now a farmer.
“They’ll be here for your blood on Friday,” Piper called.
The cows lowed curiously. Greenmantle experimentally flipped them off; their expressions didn’t change. “They’re here now.”
“Not the cows. I’m getting more life insurance for you and they need your blood. Friday. Be here.”
He ducked back inside and creaked down to the kitchen. Piper stood at the counter in a pink bra and underwear, chopping a mango. Her blond hair was a curtain around her head. She didn’t look up.
“I’m teaching Friday,” he said. “Think of the children. How much life insurance do we need?”
“I have certain standards of living I want to maintain if something terrible happens to you in the middle of the night.” She stabbed at him with the knife as he stole a piece of mango. He avoided a wound only because of his speed, not her lack of intention. “Just come right back after class. Don’t fritter around like you’ve been doing.”
“I’m not frittering,” Greenmantle said. “I am being quite purposeful.”
“Yes, I know, getting revenge, having testicles, whatnot.”
“You can help, if you want. You’re so much better with directions and things.”
She couldn’t quite hide that the appeal to her ego pleased her. “I can’t until Sunday. I have eyebrows on Wednesday. Bikini line on Thursday. Don’t come home on Saturday. Fritter on Saturday. I’m having people come sage the house.”
Greenmantle swiped another piece of mango; the knife came a little closer this time. “What does that mean?”
“I saw a flier. It’s getting rid of the bad energy in a place. This house is full of it.”
“That’s just you.”
She tossed the knife into the sink, where it would remain until it died. Piper was not much for housework. She had a very narrow skill set. She drifted toward the bedroom, on her way to have a bath or take a nap or start a war. “Don’t get us killed.”
“No one’s going to kill us,” Greenmantle said with certainty. “The Gray Man knows the rules. And the others …” He rinsed the knife and put it back in the knife block.