by Taki Drake
Corda whispered, “I didn’t know anything about that. I had no idea how I was supposed to pay for the books.”
Looking absolutely furious, Corda’s roommate continued, “The second account is for entertainment and extras. Most students that I know will have a quarterly payment into those accounts that allow them to do some form of extracurricular activity or special events like going to a play.”
When Corda just hunched her shoulders down more, Nona and Gerald put their hands together on top of hers and let Liz continue the explanation. The young girl's face was pointed toward where her hands were covered by her friends and family.
Sounding even angrier, Liz finished up, “The third account is an emergency fund that is designed to allow the student to learn how to manage long-term investments. It is a requirement from second-year on, although it is strongly recommended that funds be placed in it each year so that the student learns how to manage more significant wealth and can intelligently invest in equipment and components necessary to set up their long-term career. I know that there are recommendations for this because my parents went over those guidelines in detail with me. They asked me what my expected Discipline would be, and even asked me about my other choices so that they could arrive on an amount that would be useful for me.”
Comfortingly, Nona said, “I am pleased that we found this problem now, rather than having it hamper you later on.”
Corda cried, “Oh, Nona, I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize what a financial burden I was going to be to you. If it’s going to be too much, I would understand if I have to leave the Academy.”
Gerald opened his mouth, his face enraged, but before he could speak, Misha cut in, saying, “This is no financial burden for me. When you were born, I established a trust fund. It was designed to pay for any Academy fees or other studies that you wanted. If you chose not to go through more formal education, it was to provide you with a nest egg to start your own business or to just travel the galaxy.”
“I never knew that, did you do that for my brothers and sisters too, or just me?”
“I established the same sort of trust fund for each of the twins also, although I chose to not make the amounts all identical. When I set up the account for you, Ealtert tried to pressure me into allowing him to draw on the account, and I refused. That collision got worse as the twins were born. When I refused to allow him power over that money, he forbade my presence in the house.”
“But why wouldn’t my mother tell me?” asked Corda. “She has to have known.”
Misha sighed, and her shoulders sagged. Now it was Corda’s turn to touch the Seer's hands in comfort. Gerald’s hands joined hers, trying to be supportive as the three youngsters listened.
Speaking around a clogged throat, Misha acknowledged, “Aret is totally under the control of Ealtert. When Aret’s first husband was killed, I left a high-level negotiation to come home for the funeral and spent the next two weeks with her, trying to cushion her grief and help her find her footing.
“The Emperor got more emphatic about demanding my return, so when she appeared to be doing better, I left her in the care of two of her friends and went back to preventing a war.”
Gerald uttered a sharp, painful sounding laugh and said succinctly, “Arguing with the Emperor or even resisting him is very difficult. You should have no guilt about that.”
Smiling in sympathy, Misha took a deep breath and continued, “I was gone for about two months. When I came back, I found out that my poor broken daughter had been swept off of her feet by Ealtert Watern and married in a private ceremony. There was nothing I could do, even though I knew that I had effectively abandoned my daughter, and she had latched onto someone she saw as strong.”
Bertor’s deep rumbly voice sounded from the doorway, “I remember, Nona. Pharyl and I were lost without a mother, and Father would call us into his study and outline how he was going to use marriage as a way of assuring the power of Watern House. One day, the nursery maid insisted on getting us dressed in new garments, and we went down to the parlor and saw the marriage of our Father and Aret. I remember thinking how beautiful she was and how sad.”
Corda exclaimed, “I never knew that Mother had been married before. Why would no one tell us?”
Misha opened her mouth several times but couldn’t get a word out. Bertor exchanged a glance with the old Seer and said gently, “Aret changed my life. Even though she wasn’t my biological mother, she saw to my welfare, got loving caretakers for the nursery, and turned Watern House into something to be proud of. I had no way of knowing when I hugged her after the wedding ceremony, what a profound difference her presence in my life would make. All I could think of is how good it felt to be in someone’s embrace and how bright the emerging life forces in her body were.”
Liz and Corda gasped in unison as Gerald muffled a curse. Pleadingly, Corda asked, “Bertor, I don’t understand. What are you talking about?”
Misha was the one who answered, saying, “What your brother is trying to tell you is that Aret was already pregnant when she married Ealtert. The two babies that she carried were her first husband’s, not the man she’s married to today.”
Reeling from the shock, Corda gasped, “Was that me? And why were there two?”
His voice burdened with remembered pain, Bertor mumbled, “One of the babies died before it was born. You were the survivor.”
Hit by another emotional blow, Corda felt swirling black spots start to cloud her vision. Forcing words out through a throat jammed with years of emotion, “That means that Ealtert is not my father. Do you think he knows that?”
Tears in his voice, Corda’s brother said, “He knows. He ranted about it and how he was trapped into supporting children not his. He pushed Aret to miscarry you, to abort you, but she refused. It was a horrible fight, and then all of a sudden, she was taken to the Healers in the middle of a miscarriage.”
Misha added in a distant tone, “I heard about the problem and came as fast as I could, but Ealtert refused to allow me in to see my daughter. He forbade me from contacting her or you children. His actions prevented any options I had to investigate why the Healers were convinced that someone had actively tried to force the miscarriage.”
Overwhelmed by the new information she was trying to fit into the jagged pieces of her brain, Corda felt her grip on consciousness slipping again. Staring in agony at Gerald’s face, the young girl felt Liz fling her body onto the bed, holding her friend tightly and whispering into her ear, “It’s not your fault.”
Corda whispered, “But it explains a lot, doesn’t it?”
The room was silent as the secrets long past were exposed to the light of discovery. Each person trying to fit these puzzle pieces into the pattern of their knowledge. That confusion could have extended, but Bertor’s agonized question pulled Corda out of her thoughts when he asked, “Do you hate me?”
Startled, Corda responded, “Of course not. Why would I hate you?”
“Because I’m the son of a monster?”
Corda smiled such a sweet and loving grin that the whole room lit up as she said, “I love you. You are my brother, and nothing will ever change that.”
Liz, as usual, applied perfect timing when she said, “Look at the positive. It means that you don’t have to deal with his genetics too!”
There was a pause before an explosion of relieved laughter. As mirth echoed through the room, the tension and shadows of old pain and horror evaporated in the light of love and caring.
Chapter 16 – Catching Up
Corda finally got back into class the following week. Her efforts to do the work that her friends had brought her from each of her courses and the cooperation of the professors meant that she was not behind on any of her assignments. However, she had been unable to participate in the lab exercises while she had been injured. That translated into a totally frenzied two weeks of catch up.
One of the first things she needed to do was to open the container that had been given to
her when she first registered for courses. The assignment that Prof. Turner had assigned her students just before Corda had been attacked and injured was to successfully open the box and take an inventory of the contents. Each student also had to come up with an idea of what items from that collection would be used in their first lab.
Many of the students had worried that they would not be able to successfully open the container because they had not covered a lot of the ways such a feat would be accomplished. The professor had not been encouraging when asked what they could do if they were stymied.
The young girl remembered with skittering despair what the professor had said when asked what would happen if they could not unlock the box. The phrase, “I suggest you not let that happen,” frightened her even more than her brother had.
Shaking with tension, Corda picked up the box and held it closed her chest, letting her senses examine it. Closing her eyes, the young girl thought to herself, I need to get the box open an inventory the contents. How can I go about doing that?
There was a click in her hand, and Corda jumped back from the table, pulling the container away from her body and holding it up her face. Blinking repeatedly to clear what she thought was clouded vision, the young girl saw that the catch to the top of the box had released.
With trembling hands, she put the box down on the table and lifted the lid. Tears sprang to her eyes as she saw the contents that had been carefully packed on the inside. Scrabbling for pen and paper, Corda quickly took an inventory. There were not that many items, and Corda was completed with that step almost as promptly as had she conquered the first one.
A group of crystals, and shielding cloth holding candles and twelve vials of powder, were the most varied of the items. A leather sheath with an ancient design matched a pair of racers with similar decoration. Finally, there was another box inside at the bottom of the contents.
Corda’s fingers longed to explore the carvings that a long-ago Artisan had painstakingly cut into the swirling black and red wood from which it was constructed. The young girl realized that it was the approximate size and shape of the box that contained her Nona’s cards, and wondered with a bit of excitement if perhaps she would only learn to read the future also. That would be wonderful, but I don’t think it’s a Healer talent, Corda thought to herself.
Thinking about what was in the box, Corda tried to match what she expected to learn against the contents, deciding that she could see how the amethyst Crystal could be used for protection, and the powdery copper might be used to identify the nature of Magical things. Feeling like she had gotten a test question correctly answered, the young girl was about to mark that tests done when she thought of two aspects that needed to be considered any time someone was learning a spell. Nanny always said that you needed to protect others in case your spell got away from you. So maybe candles in the four primary directions and shielding cloth just in case something goes wrong.
Now feeling much more confident, the young girl wrote down the items she would expect to be used in their first lab assignment, even noting her logic for her selection. I think that’s everything they needed to be caught up in. I hope so I’m already feeling way behind everyone else.
Tidying everything away, the young girl went back to comparing the assigned assignments that had been given while she was in the infirmary with her completed work. Satisfied that the academic had been done, Corda turned her worry and nervousness to what she had possibly missed in the more physical class that was required.
Thankfully, Corda’s recovery had exempted her from the combat classes that she had dreaded since she first knew of them. The young girl had used the time when she usually would have been exercising to make up her lab work and prepare herself for participating fully in her enrolled classes.
<<<>>>
The first day back with a regular schedule, Corda felt her fear growing as the time for the physical education class approached. The young girl had overheard many of the other students talking about how scary the instructor was and how often he would leave bruises on his students. When the frightened student had asked her friends, they had reassured her that Warrior Robarn was both knowledgeable and fair. None of them had told her he was easy to please.
Dressed in the same workout clothes that she had used for her secret sessions with the Watern Armsmaster, Corda walked into the salle alone and feeling exposed. None of her other friends had this class at the same time, and her senses were alert to possible threats and dangers. Instead of pleasant anticipation, the young girl felt the dread of upcoming agony and humiliation, waiting to crash down on her without warning.
It did not help that Hera and her friend Hylla were in this class and seemed determined to weave the background of nasty little jabs and comments that Corda didn’t understand, but that made their surrounding students laugh. It is just another way that Hera can be a bully, Corda thought to herself. I know how to deal with bullies, and I just have to keep control.
Standing in ranks, Corda waited with the other students until a scarred, muscular man strode into the room trailed by two younger assistants. The man was massive, corded with muscle, and moving lightly across the ground. Corda instantly liked him but remained frightened because of her lack of knowledge in this area of expertise.
After greeting the students and hearing the return salutation from them, the instructor ordered his two assistants, Lead Liamy Enkill and Lead Cremy Marten, to take half of the class each and take them through warm-ups.
Corda found herself funneled into the group headed by Lead Enkill. The man immediately pushed the group onto a 3-mile route that took them up and down hills, while traveling through some challenging broken terrain. Corda soon found herself struggling for breath. As she dropped further to the back of the pack, the group leader ran back to the young girl and began to scream, “Move it, you poor excuse for a student. You are letting this group down, and you need to suck it up and move faster.”
Determinedly, the young girl pushed her body harder, but her struggle to breathe quickly turned into nausea. Intent and focused, she made it through nearly all of the course before her body betrayed her and she fell to the side of the path. Spasms ripped through her body, and she emptied the contents of her stomach onto the leaves. Even as she vomited into the bushes, Enkill stood behind her, screaming words of disparagement and abuse.
Her body spent, the 13-year-old struggled to her feet and focused on the finishing line. Enkill dogged her every step of the way, his litany of abuse like a hailstorm of insult and hurt. Corda did her best to block it out, but it added strain to her already overtaxed body.
Even after the young girl had crossed the finish line, her leg muscles continued to spasm, and spots floated over her vision. Walking around like she had been taught to cool down, at some point she realized that Enkill was still harassing her., Finally, the irate Lead demanded, “Are you listening to me? What is wrong with you?”
Stopping, Corda looked up at him and, drawing on all of her experience with bullies, replied, “No, I am not listening to you.”
Startled, the upperclassman came to a crashing halt and loomed over her demanding, “Why not?”
Calmly, Corda replied, “Because you’re not helping. If you really wanted me to succeed, you would find a different way of encouraging me.”
As the young man stood there in shock, Corda turned and walked away from him, going through her cooldown exercises. Behind her, she heard the approach of rapid footsteps and knew that she was about to be hit. If he is going to hit me, then that is what he’s going to do. I am not backing down, and if he strikes me, I am going to hit him back, she thought to herself.
Bracing herself, the young girl was surprised when the Armsmaster suddenly stood beside her and asked, “Corda Watern? Is that your name?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“I thought you were on limited activity, per Healer’s instructions. Why did you run the course?”
Eyes wide, Corda answered him bluntly, �
��Because the leader of our group told me to run it, and when I had problems, he yelled at me to work harder. If I wasn’t supposed to be there, I expected him to tell me.”
Looking beyond the young girl, the Armsmaster asked in an unemotional way, “Enkill, did you fail to read your status messages on the class group?”
“No, Sir, I read all my messages.”
“Did you fail to see the notice about first-year student Watern?”
“Sir, I saw the notice but was also informed that her excuse from the activity was false.”
“Interesting. By what method were you notified of this?”
There was a pause, and the Armsmaster waited patiently for a response. Eventually, Enkill answered, “Respectfully, Sir, I believe I should not tell you.”
“What you are telling me is that you took unofficial instructions to override documented Healer instructions as to one of the student's ability to participate in class. Additionally, you have just refused to tell me who apparently deliberately tried to get a student who had a skull fracture…” and then at a roar “LESS THAN 10 DAYS AGO, KILLED OR SIGNIFICANTLY HARMED!”
“But, Sir, she is sneaky. I have valid Intel that says that she really wasn’t damaged, and she is using this just to get out of the efforts that everyone else is putting in. You’ve been teaching us that teamwork is everything. Her efforts are nothing but sabotage to the culture that you’re trying to create. I was trying to protect all of us.”
Armsmaster Tinels’ voice was low and dangerous. Corda was frozen into place, hoping that staying motionless might keep her out of what was promising to be a deadly encounter. Almost growling, the man in charge of teaching Battle Magic demanded, “I would believe that if you had consulted with me or verified your information and then brought it to me for discussion. To break the chain of command without any consideration sends a different message. What would justify that?”
