chapter sixteen THE LAKE

It drizzled all day Sunday, in fits and starts. The rain had the November quality of coming at you in sideways gusts, so that no umbrella could possibly keep you completely dry. Walden passed through the student lunch hall in the Old Refectory on the way to the staff dining room and saw the abandoned heaps of soggy coats and winter hats. Teenagers huddled together for warmth over their ham-and-cheese lunch paninis. Todd was lying on his side in the corner bleeding an ancient, uncooperative radiator. Like Walden, he seldom really stopped working.

Staff lunch was also paninis: ham and cheese, just cheese if you were vegetarian, no vegan option on a Sunday. Walden picked at the salad on the side, which was six sad unseasonable leaves and half a tasteless tomato. She did have a kitchen in her flat. She really ought to cook for herself sometimes. But cooking for one was depressing, and the school meals—one of the better staff perks, this—were free.

Todd joined her at the table halfway through the meal, still in his work overalls. He ate two paninis and a large bowl of tragic salad with every sign of enjoyment, which cheered Walden up, and he complained again about the state of the boilers. Walden inquired after his great-nieces and -nephews. Todd had never married, but everyone knew he kept meticulous track of his sister’s grandchildren. The oldest was in Year Five, and his parents were starting to think about secondary school. “And the Marshals had a look in at their school, and funny old thing, the lad’s got a bit of the fizz,” said Todd, doing an obscure hand gesture which Walden understood from context to mean ‘a knack for magic.’ There were degrees of innate magical ability. Sorcery, the wild uncontrollable talent which had to be trained or else—that was extremely rare. More common—but still not actually common—was ordinary talent: the fizz, the knack, the baseline potential which made doing magic feel easy and natural. Some children were natural athletes, and some children were natural magicians.

That one of Todd’s relatives should share his prodigious untrained talent did not surprise Walden in the least. These things often ran in families. But magic was not taught in state schools—too abstract, too impractical, too old-fashioned, and too bloody expensive. So unless Todd’s great-nephew turned out to be a full sorcerer after all—unlikely, if he’d reached Year Five without a manifestation—there was not going to be any state funding for his magical education. Without a place at Chetwood, or one of the handful of other private schools like it, his talent was unlikely to go anywhere.