“Okay then,” said Batham, his blue eyes blinking in surprise.
Meanwhile, Lewis was shifting from foot to foot. Now he muttered, “I’m not good at cooking.”
Penny rolled her eyes. “Everybody this way,” she said, turning to lead us to our work stations.
Nobody batted as an eyelash. I wondered if, and how, all of these cooks and chefs had been vetted. Given that we were now with a high-value target of whoever this crazed murderer was, I wondered if Prince Reidar felt at all nervous.
He didn’t appear to, although his bodyguards did make a point of walking on either side of him. I watched their heads swivel back and forth, both of them keeping a close eye out for any dangers. It must get exhausting, I thought, being on high alert all the time.
Penny reached a workstation at the far end of a row of them, where five bowls were already set up along with a mountain of eggs. She showed us how to crack an egg properly, a task that involved not letting any bits of shell fall into our bowls as we cracked the eggs. To make a mistake even less likely, we had to crack the eggs first into a small separate bowl, then, if we had done it right, we could pour the egg into a bigger bowl.
Lewis had the most trouble with this seemingly simple task. So much trouble, in fact, that I thought Penny was considering giving him back.
“How did you get so clumsy?” she demanded, only making him more nervous. “You’re a noble fae. You’re supposed to be better than this.”
“I don’t know what to tell you,” said Lewis. He kept trying again, and failing again, getting increasingly frustrated as he went along.
Finally Penny put him out of his misery by giving him something else to do. Placing an already sliced loaf of bread and several large slabs of butter in front of him, she ordered him to put a slab of butter on each slice of bread. He started to work at that, but this time he managed to crush the bread in his large hands. Meanwhile, the rest of us went on cracking eggs.
“Should bodyguards have to crack eggs?” Batham asked.
“You definitely should,” said the prince. “In fact, do some of my work for me, will you?”
“So you two are primarily here to guard the prince, but you’re also students?” I asked.
“She speaks!” Batham looked delighted.
Penny had wandered away, utterly disgusted by Lewis’s inability to accomplish simple tasks in the kitchen. At least the rest of us weren’t entirely screwing up, she muttered as she went.
She obviously needed the comfort of some time with chefs who actually knew what they were doing.
“I can talk,” I said, my hands continuing to work efficiently.
“Good news,” murmured Batham. “Yeah, we’re students here. There’s plenty of staff and guards. We come from the same province that the prince is from. We volunteered for the task, but then we were ordered to do it anyway. We would have been coming here as students anyhow, so we’ve just thrown in the bodyguard role as an extra.”
I shook my head. “What could students do against a trained killer?” I asked.
“I’m still alive, am I not? Much to the chagrin of various mercenaries,” said Prince Reidar. He didn’t look worried. It seemed that he was more than used to living a life at risk.
“Yeah, but you just got here. Give him time,” said Lewis.
“You’re about as comforting as a rock slide,” said the prince.
For the rest of the hour we worked in silence. The only interruptions were when Lewis screwed something up, which happened often. Even so, he continued to chat the time away. He talked about breakfast, lunch, and dinner. When he wasn’t talking about meals, he was talking about athletic pursuits. He was looking forward to joining some of the sports teams. He seemed to think we were all interested in learning everything about him, and since no one seemed to mind, he kept right on talking.
I listened intently, mostly because it had been so long since I had heard anyone else speak at length. I had thought that working down in the kitchen would be miserable, but in fact I kind of liked it. I enjoyed having a purpose.
I was almost disappointed when the hour ended.
“You’ll eat over here,” said Penny, who had reappeared to indicate another nearby table, set off in a smaller room.
There was a larger room where the professional cooks and chefs were eating, but our table was set for just the five of us. Penny encouraged us to grab food from the mounds laid out for everyone, so I happily filled my plate.
I didn’t want to comment on it, but the food looked better than the lunch we’d been offered yesterday. My four workmates had noticed this as well. Lewis was practically crying with happiness.
Our table was like the stairs, marked with age and years of use, but smooth. Once the five of us were seated, it was clear that the others deferred to Prince Reidar. He got his food first, Batham found him a fork, and Lewis didn’t start eating until the prince did. He didn’t appear to notice, but I did.
“Why don’t you tell me about yourself?” he asked me.
I nearly choked on the roll I was chewing on. “No,” I said.
“You can’t deny a prince,” said Lewis, as if that were obvious.
“Why not? He’s not my prince,” I grumbled.
“We’re from Jade Crown. So you aren’t from our province. I didn’t think so. Which one are you from?”
Lewis nodded and the prince turned back to me.
“I assumed we’d have heard about you if you were from our little province,” said the prince, who would have his little joke, Jade Crown being the biggest and richest of the provinces.
“There aren’t a lot of girls in our province, or in the entire kingdom, for that matter, who would run at murderer,” Lewis said, chomping down on a long strip of meat.
“There are trained female warriors. Look at Clouda,” I said. She had seen battle, of that I was sure.
Prince Reidar shrugged and gave me a disarming smile. “I suppose. But we would have heard about you. What you did yesterday was a level of either brave or stupid that I haven’t seen in a long time. Since we hadn’t heard about you, I knew you were from somewhere else. Where?”
Batham was watching me. When I didn’t answer immediately, he said, “She’s from prison. They don’t know her heritage. And her magic is bound. They’re going to have to deal with that soon, right?” He said the last bit with an intense look right into my face.
“That’s none of your business,” I said.
“The cuffs are obvious,” said Batham. “We can see them. You’ve been working here for the past hour with your sleeves rolled up, so we all know that your magic is locked. From the intricacy of the cuffs, we can tell that it was done well and carefully.”
I glared at him. A strange echo of the principal’s words scuttled through my mind.
Batham just gave me a bright grin. “What can I say? We’re trained bodyguards. Course we’d notice that.”
I thought about throwing a roll at him but decided against it. No need to waste the soft dough. He was able to tell what I was thinking, though, and he grinned at me yet again.
“What were you in prison for?” Prince Reidar asked.
“A long string of unforgivable crimes. All of which I did not do, of course,” I said.
“Of course you did them,” said Batham. From his tone I couldn’t tell if he’d heard of me before or not. Probably not.
Colly had stayed silent throughout this exchange, but I could tell he was listening intently, because his expression kept changing along with the conversation. He seemed to have no desire to talk himself. I found myself watching him from under my lashes. Sometimes it was what you didn’t say that was the most interesting.
I was so preoccupied with the conversation that at one point I dribbled a bit of milk down my mouth. I hoped no one would notice, but Lewis pointed to me and blurted out, “You’re spilling.”
I glared at him. All the others looked at me as I frantically tried to wipe my mouth.
Batham cove
red his own mouth to hide his amusement. Colly’s eyes locked on me, but his face remained impassive. I glared back at him as he stared.
“If you’re not going to say anything, then don’t look at me like you’re thinking something,” I told him. He picked up a couple more forkfuls of food, but his eyes never left mine.
“I can see there’s going to be some drama here,” drawled Batham. Colly gave him a look that would have terrified a lesser fae.
Batham raised his eyebrows and said, “And now I will mind my own business.”
Chapter Thirteen
As I peeled a piece of crusty bread into bite-size mouthfuls, a wonderful thought struck me: This was my life now, a life where I got to eat delicious food that I didn’t have to steal. Nor did I have to keep looking over my shoulder as I ate it in case anyone tried to steal it from me. Even better, I didn’t even have to pay for it.
The thought made me sit up a little bit straighter. It was the first truly good thought I’d had since arriving at the academy, or for that matter a long time before that.
I glanced around at the others, who were clearly not as excited as I was. Whatever was flitting through their minds right now, it wasn’t that. Nobility wouldn’t exactly have spent their lives wanting for food.
As we sat there and ate, Prince Reidar kept glancing at me. The twinkle in his eyes made me nervous, but when he spoke he sounded serious.
“You eat like you haven’t had good food in a long time,” he commented.
I glared at him over the dwindling soup in my bowl. The last dregs of the deliciously thick stew were as good a meal as I’d ever tasted.
If Penny hated us, she sure didn’t take it out on us in her cooking.
“It’s been awhile. Prison will do that to you.”
“Yes. You came from prison. Okay, so I’ll ask again. What were you locked up for?” His voice was soft, methodical, like the voices of the interrogators who had tried to get me to confess to crimes. My problem now was that the prince wanted more specific answers than I was willing to give him.
“Killing fae who talk too much,” I said.
Batham leaned forward. His eyes sparked. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist that you don’t threaten my prince. Understood?”
None of the others acted concerned; Colly wasn’t even bristling. He continued to shovel food into his mouth that would have choked lesser men. After eyeing him for a moment as he ignored us, I turned to Batham and said, “Sorry. That’s just how I talk to rude creatures.”
“Creatures who aren’t princes,” he gritted out. “I’m not going to ask you to apologize this time. But next time I might.”
“Lucky me,” I muttered into my food.
Unfazed, the prince just kept eating. “I just don’t get it. I don’t get what you’re doing here. I see that you’re cuffed, but that’s going to change. And then where is that going to leave us?” he asked.
My eyes flipped to Batham, pleading with him to let me say something sarcastic again. He gave me the tiniest shake of his head. Next to me, I felt Lewis smile.
“I don’t get it. Your heritage is unknown, but you got in here?” Lewis asked, as if trying to clarify something that confused him.
I nodded. “That’s about the size of it.”
They hadn’t figured out the sacrifice part.
“The surprising part will be if you survive here. But then again, it’s going to be surprising if any of us survive given that there’s a killer on the loose,” he added.
“In my line of work, I’m against anyone else dying,” said Batham.
“The only reason you’re in your line of work is because the king insisted on all of us being here,” said Colly, breaking his long silence.
“All of us what?” I asked.
Batham waved a lazy hand me. He didn’t want to answer the question.
But the prince chose to explain. “The king told me I had to attend the academy this year. He further insisted that I only take guards my own age. He knew there had been a rash of murders, but he insisted I come anyway. He said I could bring guards, but they had to blend in. His excuse was that we couldn’t live in fear, but he’s not the one whose head is now being served on a platter to a murderer.”
“He sent you to a death sentence,” I breathed.
Colly’s eyes flickered at me, but I looked away. I wanted to avoid those starburst eyes like the plague. In this light they looked bright violet.
“Where were you before?” I asked. Of course I shouldn’t have asked, but I was desperately curious. Why I should have been curious about any of them I couldn’t explain, I just was. But interaction always felt foreign to me, and my throat was already closing up. Then, unexpectedly, Batham answered for the prince.
“Like Lewis said earlier, another country since he was young. But then it was time for him to come here. There’s no learning like the learning you get at the academy,” said Batham.
“Yeah, you can fall asleep in philosophy class, then come and crack eggs for breakfast,” Lewis said dully.
We finished eating in silence. I had a lot of new information to chew on.
The morning had gone so uneventfully that it almost felt normal. Except that it didn’t, and wasn’t. This is not my life, I told myself. This was not my life. Do not get comfortable. Who cares how delicious the bread is?
After breakfast we headed outdoors, finding the other students already out there. Students were mingling everywhere, scattered behind several large shields that had been set up, pointing toward the mountains.
When Lewis caught me looking he said, “Shining bright lights at those mountains deters watchers. Anybody who’s trying to shoot us, like the Shadow, will think twice before trying to see around those lights.”
I shook my head. It was an impressive setup. “I guess they had this all planned out,” I said.
“Hey,” said Vayvin, strolling up to us with Esmeralda at her side. In the distance I could see Nerys looking at us, her expression sour. She was talking to another guy in our year, but I had already forgotten his name.
The other princes were also there. Prince Orlando was clad in armor, still looking nervous, but I only caught a glimpse of his face for a moment. He didn’t really want to be seen. He certainly didn’t want to be out on the grounds.
Then the students parted to allow an incredibly tall creature through, a guy with a light blue tint to his skin. He was followed by a girl I thought must be a third or fourth year student.
The tall guy hadn’t been in the meeting with the principal the day before, but his air of authority suggested that he was a teacher.
He glanced around at the students, roughly a hundred of us gathered and waiting, and cracked his hands together. Near me, several students flinched.
“I’m the instructor for the water class. Does anybody here not know how to swim?” His grin as he said it reminded me of a predator.
About a third of the students raised their hands. I saw the man’s jaw clench.
“My name is Curlo. I’ll be your instructor for this first class. You were supposed to come here knowing how to swim,” he said. “My student assistant Kayka will be helping me with the worst of you lot. Jinelle is another instructor. She’ll be taking the more advanced students down to the deep end this morning.”
The pretty girl behind him have a wave and a bright smile.
“Yes, Cuthbert?” said Curlo.
An older student stepped forward. He had a chiseled jaw and nose and curly black hair. “There was no water in the desert,” he offered.
I covered my mouth to hide a laugh. That certainly would be a good reason not to learn to swim.
I, on the other hand, did know how to swim. I had learned one cold night when the dogs were on my heels. I had jumped into the river to make them lose my scent and almost instantly lost my footing. The water had washed me away and nearly washed my life away at the same time.
Luckily, I had managed to survive long enough to drag myself out of
the river. When I recovered, I got right back in the water. That might sound crazy, but I was well aware that my survival depended on conquering anything I wasn’t good at. That included swimming.
So now, I could swim.
“If everyone could follow me over to the pool,” said Curlo.
Up to now I’d had no chance to look at the pool, but now I saw that it was breathtaking, more like a lake than a pool, with the magic waterfall cascading into it at one end.
“It’s a rite of passage to jump off the top of the waterfall,” said Curlo. “You can do whatever you want on the way down, as long as you land a perfect dive and swim back to us. This challenge will be one of final exams before graduation.”
Several heads nodded, mine among them. I liked that sort of test. It reminded me of my recent past as a criminal.
But I couldn’t think about that right now, because Curlo had instructions for us. “Those of you who know how to swim, head to the deep end by the waterfall. Those of you who don’t are with me today.”
“Every year some students can’t swim,” said Esmeralda.
We were still standing near the prince and his guards, and I watched as her eyes scanned them.
“You working with them?” she asked.
I nodded my head. “Yeah, we all have kitchen jobs,” I told her.
Her eyebrows rose. “You’re going to be working with one of the princes?” she gasped. “That’s crazy. What’s he like? Is he nice?”
“Yes,” I said. “I thought you were a lord’s daughter. How could this possibly shock you?”
“Royalty is royalty,” Esmeralda shot back. “Given the upheaval in the country, any one of these princes could wind up king. That’s crazy. To be in the presence of the king? He’s the most powerful man in the country. Obviously. One of the most powerful on the continent. My family was overjoyed to hear that the princes were attending the academy this year.”
“Is it weird that they’re all in this year?” I asked.
Her face clouded. “Well, no. Not given the assassinations. There was a prince who would have been in his last year, but he was killed over the summer. He was the only other one.”
Noble Fae Academy: Year One Page 9
