by Emily L K
Cori stood and joined the queue, her parchment clutched in her fingers by her side. The sunlight that softened the room had changed to the harsh brightness of midday. She didn’t think Instructor Marcus had been talking that long. Fear swelled like a wave within her when she remembered the dragon. Had she somehow done magic to draw it? Even the memory of her pen touching the page was becoming hazy. A few students left the room and she shuffled forward in the line.
Tempted to throw her paper in the bin, the only thing staying her was that she didn’t want Instructor Marcus to think she hadn’t been following his lesson. When she stopped before him, he assessed her with a crease between his brows and a downturned mouth.
“You’re Cori, the servant,” he said matter-of-factly. She nodded, heat creeping up her neck. He held out his hand, and she reluctantly gave him her parchment. He stared at it. The silence dragged on. It wasn’t until all the other students had filed out of the classroom that he cleared his throat. Cori glanced at the door, relieved the others wouldn’t hear his comments on her lack of classwork. Hands clasped before her, she resisted the urge to wring her fingers.
“This is wonderful. You’re an artist?”
“No,” Cori replied. He raised an eyebrow at her but she didn’t know what else to say.
“Well,” he concluded, attention back down at her drawing. He shrugged ever so slightly. “It’s very nice, but in the future, please apply yourself to the intended lesson.”
“Yes, Sir.” She bowed stiffly and left the classroom.
The dining hall was packed with students when Cori reached it, and the noise they created while talking to one another was deafening. Servant moved lithely from table to table, serving lunch. She found a seat alone at the end of a table of third-year students. They studiously ignored her, and for that she was grateful. The server that bought her lunch was Daily, Dahl’s sister. She grinned and winked at Cori but didn’t stay to talk. Cori watched her go, wishing they could trade places. She ate her lunch quickly: a chunk of bread, sliced cheese and a handful of fruit, before heading back out into the gardens.
She wanted to return to the kitchens to seek solace in the familiar space and predictable tasks, but her mother would likely send her away again. She wasn’t needed today. Instead, she went back to the bench under the flame tree.
The sun travelled a cloudless sky, as it often did and Cori stretched back on the bench to watch the light filter a dappled glow through the leaves above. The estates of Auksas lay in the southern lands of Tauta and as such, the balmy summers gave way to equally mild winters. It made for rich soil and healthy crops in the surrounding farmlands, as well as a popular destination for those lucky enough to travel for pleasure.
Swallowing back a lump of trepidation, Cori’s mind returned to the dragon she’d drawn. She wasn’t a particularly creative person, but, as Instructor Marcus pointed out, the dragon was so well done that it could have been drawn by one of the Karalis’ own favoured artists. Shivers ran down her spine each time she thought about it. She had no recollection of drawing the dragon. She wondered if it had anything to do with Instructor Marcus’ retelling of the history of the Karalis. All the strange things happening in her life at the moment seemed linked to that man.
The second half of the day passed much as the first. Cori attended the dancing, decorum and instruments lessons with little success. Oh, she knew decorum well, having learned it most of her life as a servant, but the other students only ridiculed her servant status more when she demonstrated her knowledge. She was beginning to get an inkling that they wouldn’t accept her no matter what she did or didn’t know. She had little skill for dancing, and none for music but it became painfully apparent that the other children had, with many of them bringing their own instruments to the class.
Cori finished the day, utterly defeated. She was so far behind the others that there was no possible way for her to catch up. As she trudged back to the kitchens, she decided she wasn’t going to reside at the school and risk further torment from the girls in her dormitory. She was too worn down to even care if she’d get in trouble, and she passed the time of her walk home fantasising that the Advisor would come to the kitchens again and remove her from the school.
It was past dinner time when she arrived back at the kitchens and there were only a few people still around preparing for the next morning's breakfast. Not hungry despite her long day, she went to her room and found her mother and sister were absent. They’d probably taken a walk through the gardens after their own meals and Cori, not wanting to discuss her day when they returned, washed her face with warm water, and stripped from her school robes. Though she had only sat in class while wearing them, she felt dirty, not worthy of their colour. Still, she handled them carefully, hanging them up and smoothing the creases from the hem so she could wear them the following day. Without looking at herself in the mirror, she extinguished the candles and climbed into bed.
That night a black dragon visited her dream. Hot power emanated from it and Cori shrank away. But the black dragon didn’t deign to notice her. It swam through her mind, expanding with each breath. Cori backed away, though there was nowhere but darkness to go. Each step created a ripple beneath her feet that caught in the light, more smoke than water. Before long little space remained. The dragon brushed against her, its hot scales slithering along her raised arm. She yelped, expecting the touch to burn, but her skin was smooth and mark free. The dragon faded, and Cori woke. Beneath the blankets, her fingers brushed the spot the dragon had touched her. Her skin was cool to touch and she stared at the ceiling above, convinced that the dragons were becoming more real. Bel and Saasha slept on beside her.
Cori rolled over, punching her pillow into shape, and tried to sleep again.
THE DRAGONS DIDN’T bother her again that night, and she rose with Bel and Saasha the following morning. They dressed together, though Cori pulled on her purple school robes instead of white.
“Purple doesn’t suit you,” Saasha said. Cori’s eyes jerked up to meet her sister’s. Saasha had barely spoken a word to her since the messenger had arrived with the invitation to the intake ceremony and Cori still experienced pangs of guilt at the thought of taking the attention away from Saasha’s cake.
“I know,” she said finally, her voice cracking ever so slightly. Saasha’s mouth quirked almost to a smile, but she said nothing more as she left the bedroom for the kitchen. Bel and Cori followed, and Cori couldn’t help feeling hopeful that her sister might forgive her yet.
She helped for an hour at her mother’s workbench, and found the therapeutic kneading of the bread dough took her mind off the sickening nerves stirring in her stomach whenever she thought about the school day ahead. But all too soon her time cooking came to an end as the servers rose to start their day and she approached Tarp about her homework.
“I’ve got a book on the estates somewhere,” he offered as he handed out gold trays to the servers who passed by him in a single file. “You can copy the words from that.”
And so Cori spent the next hour painstakingly copying out the history of the Auksas Estates. The House of Auksas, while located on the borders of Hale and Shaw, didn’t belong to a state. Rather, the palace and Lautan were on their own sovereign land and were exempt from many of the taxes and laws that the states were privy to. Cori had lived in the estates her entire life so it seemed only fitting that she wrote about them, despite having little idea what the letters said.
“What do you think?” She asked her mother when she was done, proffering the parchment. Bel wiped her hands on her apron and smiled.
“You know I have no idea what it says, darling, but it looks very neat for your first go. Now, you best be off. I can see some other students walking through the gardens.”
And so Cori, homework in hand, left the kitchen and followed the path down to the school. She was almost there when Olivia and a few girls from Resso appeared behind her.
“Oh look, it’s the Servant,” Olivia sneere
d. The other girls snickered. Cori ignored her and kept walking though she clutched her belongings closer to her chest.
“I think you’re wearing the wrong robes, Servant!” The Resso girls nudged each other, laughing.
“Yeah!” One of them piped up. “Those colours look ridiculous on you because they’re not white!”
“Where are your manners, Servant?” Olivia piped up again. “You should bow to your superiors.”
When Cori continued to ignore them, albeit with a racing heart and a quicker step, one of the Resso girls grabbed her by the back of the robes, pulling her to a jarring halt. The girls crowded in close and Cori sucked in a panicked breath. Should she scream? Would they hurt her if she did? Would anyone even care enough to help this close to the school?
“She said bow,” the girl holding her robes hissed, her lips close to Cori’s ear, then shoved her away.
Cori sprawled in the dirt, and the girls walked over her, laughing. Her parchment, with her carefully copies letters from Tarp’s book, fell from her hand and floated across the grass.
Tears pricking her eyes, she stood. Her robes snagged. Her fall had ripped a hole in them near the knee. With a quick glance to see that the girls were still walking away from her, she brushed the dust off her grazed hands, picked up her parchment and circled back towards the kitchens. Her hands shook and the dirt that now stained them transferred to her parchment, streaking her careful work. All she could think about was how she would have to quickly sew her robes and go back to class. She’d be late and Instructor Marcus would likely be upset with her. And what would her mother say?
She stopped outside the kitchen door, unable to go any further. Inside flowed the familiar and comforting chaos that was the kitchens preparing for another day. She couldn’t face her mother, or any of the other servants for that matter, didn’t want them to know she was being bullied by the Hiram kids. They might raise it with the Advisor, or take matters into their own hands. And she certainly didn’t want their pity.
She turned and strode away - purposefully this time - towards the laundry. None of the washing staff were around so she stole a pair of white servant robes from the line and hastily changed behind the wash shed.
With her ripped purple robes stashed away in a bush, she headed into town, feeling lighter. As she strolled along the main street, unnoticed by the crowd, she promised herself that she would go back to school the following day. She promised herself that she would try harder.
Chapter Six
Cori's days fell into a steady routine of deceit and hiding. Mornings began in the kitchens where she dressed in her purple robes, now mended, have breakfast and kiss her mother goodbye. She then traipsed towards the school and stopped at the bench under the flame tree on the way. There she waited until all the other students had passed on their way to class. She kept a case of carefully pilfered clothing under a viburnum bush and alternated between dressing as a servant and a town girl in a patchwork brown dress. Neither outfit drew attention, and she easily blended into the crowds.
After the other students were at their lessons, she changed into one of the outfits and slipped back around the back of the stables toward the town. The first few days of her truancy she constantly glanced over her shoulder, sure someone would catch her out. She crept around the kitchen, imagining Instructor Marcus or Instructor Thyme would talk to her mother, but they did no such thing and Cori decided that the Hiram probably preferred she wasn’t in school at all. Things had worked out for all of them it seemed.
Lautan was a busy town with so many visiting for both trade and pleasure, and it was easy to become invisible in the crowds. She became familiar with all the shop fronts and sometimes she’d take hours just to stroll and browse the windows, dreaming wistfully of the sparking treasures inside.
If the days were hot, she‘d go to the docks and sit under the piers to the magnificent tall ships come and go. The sailors who unloaded cargo onto the docks cussed as they worked, jostling with each other and hollering orders, but they were methodical and efficient. Only once she wondered what it would be like to get on a ship and sail away, but when a captain mistook her for an idle deckhand and threatened to string her by her ankles from the taffrail she decided getting on a ship wouldn‘t be worth it.
The longer she went without going to school or working in the kitchens, the more she enjoyed her time alone. Never had she been so idle with no tasks to complete. The rare occasions doubt crept in, she pushed it away, reminding herself that she was hurting no one.
Before she knew it, she had been visiting town daily for over six months.
It was an unusually cold winter day when Cori was hurrying back to the bench beneath the flame tree to change back into her school robes. A grey and yellow wool shawl she'd filched from her mother's dresser warmed her, wrapped snug around her shoulders. She moved stiffly today, covered in bruises from her nightmare dragons. Over the past few months matters had steadily grown worse.
At first, Cori had left the dreams with a soreness in her limbs that she couldn’t place. Then, after a particularly vicious dream about the green dragon, she woke a crescent shaped bruise on her arm. Sheer terror had almost driven her to tell her mother everything, but in the light of day as she had gone about her daily routine, it hadn’t seemed as bad and she kept the secret as her own.
She shrugged out of her town clothes and quickly pulled on her school robes then she sat down to wait. As she did, her fingers found the bruising on her legs from the night before. They were mottled blue and purple where the red dragon had slammed into her, knocking her down. She frowned, her lip caught between her teeth. Not for the first time she debated whether she should tell her mother about the bruises. She hadn’t mentioned the dragons at all, despite Bel’s continued concern over her restless sleeping. She couldn’t pinpoint why, but every time she tried to bring them up, her words died to a lie. The physical reaction to her dreams was unnatural and she couldn’t envision a way that verbalising her fears would help. Voices approached and she quickly dropped her robes and peered through the bushes.
Students spilled out of the learning hall, laughing and chatting. When she’d first stopped attending school, she’d heard the other students comment at length on her absence. Now they no longer mentioned her at all. Not that that was surprising. She was an easy person to forget. Her fingers twitched against her school robes.
Some of them didn’t go to the dining hall, which wasn’t unusual. A group of five or six students from her previous class liked to go into town to dine at the taverns and today was no exception. As they walked past her hiding spot, Cori picked up the topic of their conversation: the Karalis.
“He could be a mute, had his tongue ripped out by dragons or something?” That was Quart, always voicing the most unlikely scenarios. Cori shifted on the bench so she could see them through the bushes. Quart walked with hands in his pockets, scuffing his shoes in the dirt.
“Don’t be stupid,” the girl from Resso - the one who had pushed Cori over - said. “He must talk sometimes, to the Advisor and to his staff. How would he be able to rule an entire realm if he couldn’t speak?”
“Maybe it isn’t really the Karalis in charge,” Olivia said conspiratorially, glancing about as if she thought someone might hear her. The others scoffed, and more than one of them rolled their eyes. Obviously it wasn’t the first time she’d raised this subject. “No, hear me out,” she said as Williym made to interject. “What if the Karalis is just a figurehead? Nobody has seen him do magic and nobody has heard him speak. I think the Advisor is the one who really runs the show around here.”
“But if that‘s the case, why doesn’t the Advisor just become the Karalis himself?” Rosie countered.
Why indeed? Cori thought, leaning back on her bench. The others drifted out of hearing range. Their conversation confirmed one thing though, that the Karalis hadn’t spoken mind-to-mind with any of the other students the way he had with her.
She gave her classmates
a few more minutes to get ahead before she left her hiding spot and headed back to the kitchens.
“How was school?” Bel asked when Cori approached her workbench. Saasha glanced up but said nothing. Their relationship was still tense and the two of them had barely spoken more than a few strained words in the past months, despite Cori’s hope that Saasha would forgive her. And yet she didn’t try to mend things herself. Her guilt over skipping school was tenfold when she thought of Saasha. Her sister was a hard worker and Cori felt every bit the fraud she was when compared their situations. Still, Cori was lonely without Saasha to talk to.
“It was fine,” Cori offered, as she did every day. “What would you like me to help with?” Bel set her daughter to work slicing potatoes into chips and as she did every day, Cori threw herself into the work with an intensity that gave her a few hours reprieve from her own thoughts.
The green dragon visited Cori that night. She exhaled slowly, a familiar dread chilling her. The green one was vicious, and Cori was almost accepting of her fate. She knew what would happen. This dragon was going to hurt her, badly.
The dragon knew she was there and it rounded on her with a deep snarl. Its spiked tail thrashed as it glided towards her, scales glinting in the unseen light. Cori turned to run, a scream stuck in her throat, but the dragon was too fast. Unerringly, its jaw snapped down on her arm and she woke from the dream with a start.
The room was dark. Bel shifted beside her but didn’t wake. It was all Cori could do to not cry out at the pain in her arm. She doubled over, grasping her wrist. Small, silent sobs escaped her lips and tears slid from her cheeks to wet her nightgown. As quietly as she could, she got out of bed and went out to the kitchens.
Some lights burned low, throwing a soft glow over the room, but thankfully everyone had gone to bed. Cori pulled up the sleeve of her nightgown and moved closer to a candle. Two red welts bloomed under her skin. The welts grew, and blood swelled from them, dripping down her arm and onto the floor. She’d been bitten from the inside out.
