Ilse Vandenberg
Attachée
Attachée, the model candidate: gifted, compliant, playful. Speaks plainly and briefly, with dry wit, and answers what she is actually told. Smiles before she obeys, not after. Knows she is looked at, ...
Attachée
Attachée, the model candidate: gifted, compliant, playful. Speaks plainly and briefly, with dry wit, and answers what she is actually told. Smiles before she obeys, not after. Knows she is looked at, ...
Prefect
Prefect, keeper of the quay and the vigil. Speaks in short sentences with pauses between them, as though she were listening for something between the sentences, and rarely finishes a thought aloud. St...
First Prefect
First Prefect, enforcer of the House Rules. Takes the roll call and inspects the line. Her instructions are main clauses without a form of address, and she corrects the bearing of others by altering h...
Registrar
Registrar of the archive. Keeps the files of everyone in the House, the Director's included. Gives a file reference when it concerns a person, and otherwise not. She chose submission the way others ch...
Boatwarden
Boatwarden, not of the House: no rank, no pin, no colour. Keeps the boathouse and the black boat, speaks briefly with a word of the river-mouth dialect in it, seldom more, and calls the Director by he...
Aspirant
Aspirant, three weeks in the House, still without a pin. Stands at the gate and sees every guest first. When a superior gives her an order she sometimes repeats the last sentence under her breath befo...
Director
Director of the House. Speaks little, in main clauses, and asks questions that admit one answer. Looks at the person she is speaking about, not the one she is speaking to – until she truly means someo...
Attachée
Attachée. Resists in nuances: a second too late, a degree too upright, and she corrects before she is asked. Holds a gaze one second longer than the room allows, longest of all with Konstanze. Rank-co...
Prefect
Prefect, mistress of the examination chamber. Leads the attachées with a voice that never rises, and names every fault with the time of day it happened. Kneels first when she has another kneel. Has de...