I turn away quickly, my face growing hot, embarrassed to be caught staring at him and stunned by the violence in his emerald glare. I can almost feel the tension vibrating off him.
“Aislinn,” I whisper, swallowing hard, “who’s the Kelt sitting opposite us? He’s looking at me like he wants to kill me.”
Aislinn glances discreetly toward the young man.
He’s turned away and is once again focused, with obvious effort, on the High Chancellor, his fists tightly clenched.
“That’s Yvan Guriel,” she informs me. “Don’t let him rattle you. He hates Gardnerians.”
Especially me, I think. Especially the granddaughter of the Black Witch.
I venture another look in his direction. He’s still staring straight ahead, his jaw flexing with pent-up tension. I sit there for a moment, a disquieting tangle of emotions swamping over me. My foot still smarts from its encounter with an invisible object, my head and wand arm are now throbbing in time with my pulse and my wrist is stinging from the Icaral’s tearing grip. It’s a wonder I’m still upright.
This Yvan Guriel doesn’t even know me, I lament, glaring resentfully at him out of the corner of my eye. He has no right to be so hateful.
“What else do you know about him?” I ask Aislinn, feeling dejected.
“Well,” says Aislinn, leaning in close, “he was almost expelled last year.”
“Why?”
“Practicing medicine without Guild approval. On some Urisk kitchen workers. He’s a physician’s apprentice.”
I risk another glance at Yvan Guriel, surprisingly stung by this stranger’s undisguised loathing. He’s still focused militantly toward the front of the room, practically seething with hostility.
Determined to ignore the hateful Kelt, I let my eyes wander back a few rows to a young man with deep brown skin who towers over everyone around him. There’s an impressive stillness to the way he sits that speaks of military discipline. His dark purple hair is cut short, revealing pointed ears pierced with rows of dark metal hoops. But perhaps the most striking thing about him are the swirling black rune-tattoos that cover his face, which mirror the glowing red rune-marks on his crimson tunic.
“Who’s the tall, tattooed man?” I ask Aislinn.
“Shhhh!” A slim, stern-faced Gardnerian chastises us with vast irritation, and both Aislinn and I shrink back, my face heating. We’re quiet for a long moment.
“That’s Andras Volya,” Aislinn finally whispers.
“He looks like he’s from the East,” I puzzle out, “but his ears are pointed, and he has purple hair.” I know many groups in the East have darker skin, but not pointed ears or purple hair.
“He’s Amaz,” Aislinn clarifies. “They’re of all different races. Andras and his mother are part Ishkart, part Urisk.”
I remember the tattooed women I saw at the Verpacian horse market and am confused.
“But...he’s not a woman.” Amaz tribes are made up only of women. They kill men who wander into their territory. I lean in toward Aislinn. “And I thought they used rune-magery to only have baby girls.”
“They do,” Aislinn concurs, “but it doesn’t always work. Every now and then, a male is born. By accident.” Aislinn gestures to the front of the room with her chin. “That’s his mother—Professor Volya.”
I scan the green-robed professors sitting silently in rows behind the High Chancellor and quickly locate a woman who greatly resembles Andras. Her face is similarly rune-marked, though her hair is black with streaks of purple.
“She refused to abandon Andras when he was a baby, so she was exiled from Amaz lands,” Aislinn explains. “For a while she and Andras lived on their own in Western Keltania, but then she came here. About ten years ago. Andras has pretty much grown up here.”
“What does she teach?”
“Equine Studies, of course. And Chemistrie. That’s one of your classes.” Aislinn reaches over and riffles through my papers, pulls one out and hands it to me. “I’m taking it, too.”
I skim the paper.
APOTHECARY SCIENCES, YEAR ONE
Apothecarium I with Laboratory—Professor
Guild Mage Eluthra Lorel
Metallurgie I with Laboratory—Professor
Guild Master Fy’ill Xanillir
Botanicals I—Professor Priest Mage
Bartholomew Simitri
Advanced Mathematics—Professor Guild
Mage Josef Klinmann
History of Gardneria—Professor Priest Mage
Bartholomew Simitri
Chemistrie I with Laboratory—Professor
Guild Master Astrid Volya
There it is. Chemistrie. Professor Astrid Volya. I glance back over at Andras.
“What’s her son like?” I wonder.
“He’s quiet,” Aislinn whispers, looking over at him. “And he’s amazingly good at every sport: sword fighting, ax throwing, archery, you name it. And he’s a natural with horses, just like his mother. That’s his job. He cares for the horses stabled here. The Amaz can talk to their horses, you know—with their minds. He’s a skilled horse healer, too. Last year one of the Gardnerian military apprentices took a nasty fall on his horse, and the horse’s leg was broken. The animal was so wild with pain, no one could get near it. But Andras could. Within a week, he had the horse good as new.”
“How do you know so much about everyone?” I ask, impressed.
Aislinn smiles. “My own life is so incredibly boring, I have to live vicariously through everyone else’s.” She pauses and lets out a sigh for dramatic effect. “I suppose, seeing as how I’ll be fasting to Randall, perhaps the most boring young man on the face of Erthia, I will always have to amuse myself in this way.”
Around us, scholars are beginning to talk and get up, the High Chancellor having finished his presentation. Aislinn and Echo stand up, and I follow suit, glancing down at my pile of papers. Aislinn helps me search through them and pulls out one from the middle.
“You’re supposed to meet with the Vice Chancellor,” she tells me, handing the paper back to me. “Come. I’ll bring you to her.”
Reluctantly, I say my goodbyes to Echo and follow behind Aislinn, trying my best to ignore the Kelt, Yvan Guriel, as he sets his fiery green eyes on me and shoots me a parting, hostile glare.
CHAPTER FOUR
Vice Chancellor Quillen
Vice Chancellor Lucretia Quillen sits at her desk, efficiently finishing some correspondence as I arrive, motioning me in with a sharp flick of her hand. She’s Gardnerian, with straight black hair pulled into a tight bun, her dark tunic finely made.
Her office is located high up in one of the White Hall’s many towers, the diamond-paned windows providing a panoramic view of the lamp-lit University city.
I stare, amazed, at the breathtaking view of the entire valley and the mammoth Northern Spine beyond. It’s clearing outside, the gray clouds breaking up, stars pricking through. There’s a sea of domed Spine-stone roofs laid out before me, the cobbled streets like small paths from this height, a stone bridge below us connecting the third floor of the White Hall and another building.
All stone and so little comforting wood, I lament. But still, it’s beautiful.
It’s uncomfortably quiet, and I can make out the ticking of the clock that sits on the bookshelf behind the Vice Chancellor. There are framed maps of the Western and Eastern Realms hanging on the walls, as well as one of Verpax. A set of bookshelves below the windows holds a small library. The ceiling is a curved dome, much like the White Hall, and painted to resemble the night sky in a similar fashion.
I’m positively leaden, so exhausted I’m barely able to concentrate around a now-vicious headache.
The Vice Chancellor sets down her pen and regards me coolly over gold-wire spe
ctacles. “You’ve had quite an eventful day, Mage Gardner,” she observes in a voice full of authority not easily questioned.
My pulse throbs against my skull. “It’s been very difficult.”
“Yes, I imagine it was.”
“I’ll be happier when my brothers get here...and it’ll be good to get some sleep.”
The Vice Chancellor hands me a sturdy necklace—a gold disc hanging from a linked chain. “This is your Guild insignia. It will get you into the Apothecary Archives.”
I turn the disc over in my hand and run my thumb along its bumpy design. Warm excitement wells inside me over my new status as an official Guild apprentice. I slip the chain over my head.
“You’re to meet with the Kitchen Mistress tonight,” she informs me levelly. “About your work assignment.”
I riffle through the papers Aislinn has given me and find the one detailing my labor assignment. I hold it out for the Vice Chancellor’s inspection. She gestures dismissively to indicate that she’s already familiar with the details and does not need to see it. I lower it back into the pile of parchment on my lap.
“I’m supposed to be living somewhere called the North Tower?” I mention tentatively.
“Ah, yes,” she says, turning briefly and pointing toward the windows behind her. “It’s past the University’s northern grounds, just beyond the horse stables. You can see it from here.”
I peer out. I can just make out a gloomy stone structure at the crest of a long hill, the open wilds visible at its back and the Northern Spine beyond.
“It looks like a guard tower,” I say, heavily disappointed, wistfully remembering the richly lit lodging houses Lukas and I passed on the way in.
The Vice Chancellor purses her lips. “You entered late, Mage Gardner. Our lodging houses were full. In any case, you won’t be alone. We placed you there with two other scholars.”
“Ariel Haven and Wynter Eirllyn?” I ask, having seen them listed as my lodging mates on the papers I’ve been given.
The Vice Chancellor’s eyes narrow at this, and a small smile twitches at the corner of her mouth. “Yes, they will be your lodging mates.”
“Are they Gardnerian?” I wonder. Wynter is a strange name. I’ve never heard it before.
She gives me a cryptic look—the same look my aunt gave me when she explained that Selkies are sometimes kept as pets.
“Ariel Haven is Gardnerian,” she replies slowly. “Wynter Eirllyn is Elfkin.”
An Elf. That’s unexpected, and despite my painful headache and aching wand arm, I find myself intrigued by the idea. I’ll be lodging with an Elf. “Oh,” is all I can think of to say.
The Vice Chancellor is still studying me closely as if she’s trying to figure something out. “Your aunt was hopeful that you would someday follow in the footsteps of your grandmother,” she says stiffly. “Apparently, this will not be the case.”
My disastrous wandtesting. Well, at least the truth is finally out. “I think, because I resemble her...”
“You look exactly like her,” she corrects sharply.
I’m thrown by her icy approach. “I’ve only seen paintings of her, and I was only three when she died, so...”
“So you have no clear image of her,” she says, cutting me off. “Unlike you, I remember her quite well.” She pauses a moment to stare at me, her lips pressed into a thin, tight line.
My brow creases in confusion. Why is she being so terse at the mention of my grandmother? Our greatest Mage. Our people’s Deliverer. Most Gardnerians worship her memory.
She stands up unexpectedly and gestures toward the door. “Very well, Mage Gardner. It would seem that it’s time for you to report for your labor assignment.”
For a moment I just sit there, blinking at her, then realize I’m been summarily dismissed. I gather up my papers and make my departure.
CHAPTER FIVE
The North Tower
I follow my map to a long building near the White Hall, enter and make my way through the sizable dining area toward a door at the very end.
An engraved wooden placard on the adjacent wall reads Main Kitchen.
I push on the door, and it swings open on heavy iron hinges. The corridor it opens into is lined with shelves stacked full of cleaning tools, and the smell of soap is heavy in the air. I walk toward another door just ahead and peer through its circular window.
Warm light emanates from the kitchen and spills out over me like a cozy blanket, the smells of food and well-banked fires filling me with comfort.
It smells like home. Like the kitchen in my uncle’s cottage. As if I could close my eyes, and when I opened them, I’d be home, my uncle offering me a mug of warm, mint tea with honey.
On a broad wooden table directly before me, a plump, elderly Urisk woman busily kneads a large pile of bread dough. She’s carrying on a quiet conversation with three other Urisk women doing the same. Almost all of them look like the seasonal laborers at the Gaffneys’ farm—rose-tinted white skin, hair and eyes. Members of the Urisk lower class.
The women laugh every now and then, the fragrant herbs hanging in rows from the rafters above their heads giving the kitchen the look of a friendly forest. A number of young Kelts joke with each other amicably as they go about washing dishes, tending fires, chopping vegetables for tomorrow’s meals. A small Urisk child skips about, her rose-white hair braided, the kitchen laborers skirting around her, careful not to spill hot water or plates of food on her head. She can’t be more than five years old. The little girl is holding some twisted wire and a small bottle, pausing every now and then to blow bubbles at people, the bread makers good-naturedly shooing her and popping bubbles before they can land on the piles of dough.
As I continue to watch the warm scene, relief washes over me.
To think Aunt Vyvian imagined working here would be so terrible. This is work I truly welcome. Peeling potatoes, washing dishes, pleasant people.
And then I see him.
Yvan Guriel.
The angry Kelt. The one who hated me on sight.
But he doesn’t look angry now. He’s sitting in a far corner in front of a table. With him sit four young women—three of them Urisk, one a serious, blonde Keltic girl—all of whom look to be about the same age as me.
There are books and maps open in front of them, and Yvan is talking and pointing to something on one of the pages, almost as if he’s lecturing. Every so often he pauses, and the Urisk girls copy something down onto the parchment in front of them. Two of the Urisk girls nod at him when he speaks, concentrating intently on what he has to say.
These girls have rose-white coloration, like most of the Urisk in the kitchen, and are plainly dressed in aprons over work clothes, their hair pulled back into single braids. But the third Urisk girl is different. She reminds me of the Amazakaran—her hair worn in a series of beaded ropes, her posture defiant, her emerald eyes as intense as Yvan’s. And her hair and skin are as vivid green as her eyes.
The small, bubble-blowing Urisk child runs over to their table, to Yvan, and throws her arms around him, spilling almost the entire bottle of the bubble liquid down his brown woolen shirt.
I wonder what he’ll do, intense and angry as he seems to be.
But he surprises me. He reaches up and puts a gentle hand on the small arm that’s still wrapped around him, the little girl grinning at him widely. Then he turns his head to her and smiles.
My breath catches in my throat.
His broad, kind smile transforms him into a completely different person than the angry young man I saw earlier. He’s dazzling—more boyish than Lukas, but devastatingly handsome. The flickering lantern light of the kitchen highlights his angular features, and his brilliant green eyes, so hateful before, are now so lovely to look at—brimming with intelligence and kindness. Seeing
him like this sets off a sudden bloom of warmth in my chest.
He says something to the Urisk child and squeezes her arm affectionately. The child nods, still smiling, and skips off with her bubbles.
For a moment I can’t take my eyes off him, and I imagine what it would be like to be on the receiving end of such a smile.
It’s all so wonderful. Friendship. Cooking. Children.
And, the icing on the cake, a large, gray cat walks across the floor.
It reminds me of home. And I know that once Yvan gets to know me, he’ll see that I’m not a bad person.
Everything is going to work out just fine.
I summon what little courage I have left, push open the swinging door and walk into the kitchen.
As soon as I enter, every last trace of friendly conversation snuffs out like a candle doused with a bucket of cold water.
My transient happiness evaporates.
Yvan stands up so abruptly he almost knocks his chair over, the look of hatred back on his face, his eyes narrowing furiously on me. The fierce green Urisk girl and the blonde Kelt girl shoot up, glaring at me with pure, undisguised loathing. The two other Urisk girls at the table take on looks of terror, glancing from me to the books and maps in front of them as if they’re thieves caught with stolen goods.
I blink at them in confusion.
Are the books not allowed in here? And what about the maps? Why are they so afraid?
One of the older Urisk women pushes the little girl behind her skirts, as if shielding her from me. Everyone in the room begins casting secret, furtive glances at each other, as if they’re trying, desperately, to figure out what to do.
Everyone except for Yvan, the heat in his rage-filled glare radiating clear across the room.
I struggle not to shrink back, an uncomfortable flush rising along my neck and cheeks.
The plump, elderly Urisk woman who was kneading bread comes forward, a forced smile on her face as she wrings her flour-covered hands nervously. “Is there something I can do for you, dear?”
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