Captive Magics

15 - Employment

There was a hammering on his door the following morning. He stretched and blinked blearily as the assaulted door burst open, his curtains then wrenched open with a dazzle of light.

"Ow! Too bright!" he said, pressing his palms to his eyes.

"Good morning!" Lissy trilled.

"What time is it?" he asked, pulling his hands away from his face. She was still in her nightgown, but he was too tired to pretend to be mortified.

"Just before six o'clock," she told him cheerfully.

"That's a little too early," he said, sinking back into bed and pulling the corner of his pillow over his face. He felt her weight sink the mattress as she sat by his ankles. "I don't suppose you'd give me another hour to sleep, would you?" he asked, knowing full well it was a lost cause. He uncovered his face to look at her.

"I don't believe you could get to sleep again now you're awake," she suggested.

"Try me."

"Look here, you are still my captive. Do be quiet." His eyes met her challenging gaze and he raised his eyes heavenwards. With a resigned sigh he shifted until he was sitting up properly, and she grinned and folded her legs up on the bed. "Do you think it will aggravate them if I bring my servant to do my job for me?"

"Yes," he said flatly, not needing to ask who they were.

"Oh good!"

"I'm not at all sure this is a good idea."

"I think it is," she said with extreme confidence, beaming earnestly at him.

"Of course you do," he replied with a yawn. "And I can't say no to you. Well I'm awake now, let's have breakfast."

The Home Office was a squat, ugly pile of dark stone slabs with a few small windows thrown in for good measure. Lissy spent several seconds staring in dismay.

"This will probably be very amusing," Leander said gloomily, drawing a laugh from her. The pair of them trudged side-by-side towards the sorry-looking entrance.

It was too early still for most people to be in work but they managed to find someone to interrogate and navigated their way with newly acquired directions to a hall with row upon row of desks which reminded Leander of a schoolroom.

"Yuck," said Lissy, pulling a face. "I preferred the chaos I was putting up with last week." It couldn't have been less similar to the war office. The only matching features were portraits of the King and Queen, but even these were stingily small, barely the size of postcards, positioned near a door at the end as if considered too embarrassingly decorative to be prominent. Next to them a larger notice demanded silence. It was bathed, along with everything else in the room, in a greyish light from a row of windows too high in the wall to see through, and somehow even Lissy's flaming hair looked muted.

"There is only one empty desk, the rest are obviously in use," Leander said, peering keenly around the miserable room. "Should we take it?"

"Yes, I think we should."

"They've already put your name on a pigeonhole." He pointed to the letter boxes on the wall. "Do you think that's your first work assignment in there?" Grabbing the sheaf of paper, he took it to the empty desk and began to flick through.

"Marvellous, you do that," she said.

"What?"

"Just read through things. Maybe make notes." She pulled her hat off and put it on the desk with a saccharine smile. Leander groaned.