Page 10 of The Winter Princess
“When do we have enough visitors to use them?” Lynda counters. “It’s practically the Cave of Solitude down there.”
Rik, our facilities manager who can perform miracles with a pallet jack and a cargo elevator, bangs his fist on the table. “Did you know I’ve been laundering cleaning rags at home for over a year? If I see one more burned-out lightbulb—”
“We have to make a plan. The prime minister isn’t kidding around.” Agnes again.
Marie interjects, a calm and steady influence, “Before anything’s decided, we have to wait for everyone to arrive.”
“Dominanstid,just start the meeting,” Rik bellows, leaning back in his chair. The tiniest shove and he’d fall out. “If thatPavi–”
“Out of line,” Marie cuts in, sudden authority hardening her tone.
Pavi. Blood retreats from my face, my hands, and my feet. The word fills the room, making people shift and send me sidelong glances. As a child, I heard my father call himself “a bit of Pavi flotsam” washed ashore in Sondmark. Mama would laugh and correct him, “Pavi treasure.”
My family uses it as a term of endearment, but that’s too much nuance for Rik. Too often I’ve seen comments on the internet venting frustrations about the royal family and the quickest, rawest descriptor of Père is Pavi—the word an obvious slur.
Rik hand-waves away the insult. “We tried calling him. If he wanted to be here, he would be here.”
“There’s a process laid out in the museum bylaws,” Lynda insists.
Lynda runs Human Resources and delights in burying volunteer docents under so much red tape that they’re mummified when they finally lead their first tour groups. I am not surprised she knows about bylaws.
I slip nearer Marie.
“What’s holding us up?”
She lowers her voice. “When a director is removed, a temporary governing committee is formed to choose the next director. The governing committee must be formed from every department head.” She gestures around the table.
Lynda breaks in. “Last I checked, the Head of Restoration is a departmenthead.” She points to her own head to drive the point home.
“Who, in turn, reports to Roland in Curation,” shouts Agnes, the Education and Outreach chief, but her comment only sets everyone off again, demanding management flow charts. Roland looks vaguely confused.
“To move forward, you need the Head of Restoration?” I ask Marie quietly.
She nods. “You know Oskar’s not fond of staff meetings.”
Not fond. Lava ignites my skin.
My worry for the museum shifts, turning outward and distorting. I’m furious, forgetting the jacket landing across my shoulders last night and his hands bracing my arms. I remember only three years’ worth of cold words and hard eyes.
“Are his legs broken?” I spit.
Marie lifts a shoulder. “Oskar’s not much of a joiner.”
Not a joiner? Her mild assessment rips the pin out of my emotional grenade. The fate of my exhibit is hanging in the balance, and some egotisticalvailyshas the nerve to blow off a simple meeting? No.
“I’ll get him.”
“He’s—” Marie starts but I’m already moving out the door and down the hall.
Restoration. Restoration. It’s in the basement level somewhere, and I’m already rethinking the decision to blow past the lanyard lady and her helpful directions. I race through the main gallery and shove through an “Authorized Personnel Only” door, skipping down another long flight of stairs.
After running into a few dead ends, my anger is like a heavy metal band trying to find the stage. Let’s rock and roll, already. Finally, when I feel hopelessly lost, I see a set of double doors helpfully labeled in large black letters. Restoration.
I bang through them, stopping short.
It’s dangerous to allow Oskar to occupy any corner of my mind at all, but when I’ve allowed him to do so, I’ve imagined his basement as a dungeon with suspicious liquids boiling on trivets and instruments to summon his associates from the underworld within easy reach. This isn’t even a proper basement. The land slopes away at this corner of the museum and two large windows set into a north-facing wall admit a large quantity of natural, indirect light into the room. They frame an expanse of rolling parkland, the trees beyond already turning orange and red. Broad tables are arranged in the center of the space and empty frames hang on simple metal brackets affixed to the walls. In one corner, there’s a bank of white cupboards and a sink. Cotton balls—not the severed tongues of his enemies—fill a glass apothecary jar, and flat file cabinets with wide, shallow drawers line another wall.
No wonder he doesn’t want to share a measly office with me when he’s got the best place in the whole museum.
