by Derin

I found Max outside, in the valley we’d arrived in. He was watching the waterfall, standing just far enough back to avoid being splashed.

“So the mismatched corridor thing,” I said, coming up beside him. “The stone all looks pretty much the same to me; same coloured and textured walls and everything. Does it look the same to you?”

“I… suppose so? Why?”

“Well, I’m not a… stone expert – ”

“ – Geologist.”

“I’m not a geologist, but I figure that even if they jump the corridors around, they’re all in the same place. Cut into one mountain, I mean. And I think I’ve figured out how to find it – or how to start, at least.”

“Why would you want to do that?” he asked.

“Why do you want to map the unmappable corridors?” I asked.

He inclined his head slightly. “Fair enough. But you understand that this location is secret for a reason?”

“Because there are important people here who might get assassinated, et cetera,” I said, waving this away with one hand. “If I wanted to assassinate one of the students here, I wouldn’t need to know where it was. I’d just need to ally myself with another student and have them do it. All the families send their mages here to be trained, right? So a pretty big proportion of them probably have at least one family member here at any time. And once people take the initiation trial, they’re trapped until graduation, so an assassin has literal years to figure out how to make their kill look like an accident. If the school’s only protection is ‘nobody can find it’, everyone’s screwed.”

“And how are you going to find it?”

I pointed up at the sun. “We’re on Greenwich Mean Time, yeah? Timing the sunrise and sunset will help me find the lattitude. Then I can probably figure out the hemisphere, maybe even how far we are from the equator, by keeping an eye on the weather.”

“Longitude.”

“What?”

“The sunrise will tell you the longitude. If you want to use the weather, you’re going to need a much bigger path aboveground than this. Those cliffs are going to affect the weather in here and it’s hard to know what the weather outside is.”

“It snows outside the medical ward. That’s something.”

Max nodded.

“Is tomorrow morning good for you, for shopping for this party? I have to get up early to time the sunrise anyway.”

“There is no need for you to attend. It was presumptuous of me to try to make you.”

“Look, man, I don’t know what’s up between you and Kylie right now, but I already said I’m going to the party. You think I’m gonna pass up an opportunity to schmooze with rich kids and eat every single one of the tiny hotdogs? Man, I’m gonna make such – ”

Max had looked away. Right. I was doing it again.

I sighed. “Max, has anyone ever told you you take things too seriously?”

“Yes, you have. Many times.”

“Well you should know better than to listen to that idiot.”

“To… you?”

“Of course. Surely it’s obvious by now that my life is a series of bad decisions. Just because I can’t take anything seriously and try to make that your problem doesn’t mean you should listen.”

“I’d like to take that advice and not listen to you, but that would involve listening to you to hear said advice, so…”

“Oh, look, you can joke. Good concept, poor delivery – you overexplained and dragged it. Ugh, I’m getting off track. What I meant to say was that I act laid-back out of habit, but that doesn’t mean I don’t get that things matter. I might not understand why these people are important to you, exactly, since you obviously don’t like them, but I have your back.”

“You’re not obligated to – ”

“What am I gonna do, sit in my room for the next six months? Your friends are the only people I know here yet. And I swear that when I inevitably embarrass you in front of all of them, it will be entirely unintentional. Which, since you’re going to be advising me on the social niceties here, means it’s gonna be your fault. Ah – I saw that smile! Don’t try to hide it now! You thought that was funny!”

Facing an entirely different direction so I couldn’t see his mouth, Max replied, “Tomorrow morning is fine. For shopping.”

“Great!” I said. “Now we just have to get Kylie on board. What did you say to make her so upset?”

“Who knows? Girls are weird.”

“Hey! My best friends are girls!”

“I didn’t mean – ”

“ – So I can confirm that you are right. Girls are super weird. And the chance that she’ll tell us what we did instead of making us guess is… twenty per cent, at best. Shall we roll the dice?”

“You like living on the edge, don’t you?”

“When you grow up with a curse in your heart, Max, there’s nowhere else to live.”

“That is becoming abundantly clear.”

But when we got back to the room, no probing was necessary. Kylie peered around her bedcurtain, avoided eye contact with the both of us, and said, “Sorry about earlier. I can go to the party. Did you want to go shopping now, or…?”

“What’s wrong?” Max asked.

“Just bad news from home. Nothing anybody here can do. Let’s go.” She shouldered a small handbag and stood up.

“Well,” I said, “you were pretty mean to us; I think you should at least explain – ”

“God, Kayden, can you stop being such a whitefelluh for five minutes? I said I’m sorry but it’s none of your business!”

I stage-whispered to Max, “White? Is Kylie racist?”

He raised a brow and shook his head slightly in warning. I raised my palms. Don’t make fun; got it. These people were so damn difficult to get along with; nobody at home was this difficult.

Well, Melissa and Chelsea weren’t this difficult. I’d never really tried to make friends with anyone else, had I?

Maybe it said a lot about me that the only people I could get close to were those who’d learned to deal with my bullshit since birth. I’d have to work on that. First step: read the room. The grumpy, awkward, vaguely tense room who did not want me to joke about racism.

We followed Kylie out of the room. Why put things off until tomorrow morning if everyone was eager to go right away?

By the time we got to the store, Max had relaxed, and was trying to explain the political intricacies of dull grey robes.

“Generally, you’ll want a more neutral colour,” he said as we swept into the shop. “A bold black or white can be taken as a bit of a challenge, or at least of showing off. I expect that Magista will wear black or white, and Magistus might match her depending on the image they’re trying to portray. Simon will wear black; not as a personal declaration but because it’s a sort of expectation with his family. Apart from that, I suspect we’ll be seeing mostly grey.”

“Will you wear grey?” Kylie asked.

“Oh, yes. Most definitely. Although I’m considering a dark sash as a sort of personal statement, if I’m feeling brave enough, because as an Acanthos… never mind, it’s very complicated. You two, of course, are practically obligated to wear grey, but I think we should actually put Kayden in black.”

“You want us to make a political statement?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. “I thought you’d want to play it safe.”

“Generally yes, but we have to consider your… somewhat disruptive personality.”

I crossed my arms. “I take offense to that.”

“You obviously don’t; you’re just being disruptive. Putting someone like you in grey would send a more controversial message than black, I think, because it would look deliberately and obviously dishonest. But more important than the colour is the cut.”

“The cut?” I asked, rushing to keep up as Max strode towards the rows and rows of monochromatic wizard robes. “They’re all basically dressing gowns, right? Some are just looser than others.”

Max shook his head like I’d said something stupid and began piling black robes into my arms. “For you, narrow sleeves with a square cut. Sharper than mine, I think; I might actually have to wear rounder sleeves than normal so that yours look right in comparison. Kylie, for you I’m thinking wider sleeves on a tighter gown, but with flare at the waist so your legs have a lot more room. We can put basically any sash we want on a look like that and it’s a classic look that will attract less strangers trying to talk to you.”

“Less strangers is good,” Kylie agreed.

“Will strangers talk to me?” I asked.

“Kayden, there is absolutely nothing I can put you in that will stop your personality from being walking flypaper for weirdos. We might as well lean into it. For you, a square kind of belt… no, you know what? We’ll see the robes, and then decide. Both of you, go get changed. I need to see the outfits on you.”

In the dressing room, I picked a robe at random from the dark mass and pulled it on. Max was a good judge of size; it settled perfectly across my shoulders, seeming to square and strengthen them, giving be a more dramatic, commanding look. I stood up straighter, admiring in the mirror the way they fell down my body in neat, straight lines, how the dark fabric cut off at my wrists and made my hand gestures seem more important. I even looked taller. Then I glanced up the reflection, into my own eyes, and the whole look fell apart.

Because I wasn’t a mage. I was a kid playing dress-up. And sure, technically speaking, the other kids walking around in such robes weren’t mages either, yet; but that was different. They had directions, destinies. They were here because they’d been judged by their families and by the school to be the best, most competent candidates for carrying and using dangerous spells. Why was I here? The exact opposite reason. I was so ill equipped for magic that I’d ended up with a curse. I was such a bad candidate for carrying a spell that the exact opposite had spontaneously buried itself in me so deep that nobody could get it out. A random person walking in off the street was more qualified to wear the robes than I was.

“It’s just a party,” I told myself. “No need to be so serious. Treat it like a costume.”

That’s what it was, really. A costume party. I straightened my shoulders once more, tried to look confident, and strode out of the dressing room.

In the end, Max did pick that robe, adding a square sash with a dramatic metal buckle that made it look more like a belt. Kylie took a lot longer to dress, and eventually Max moved her from grey robes to white. Her robes fit tightly to her waist, belted with a complicated knotted sash. Her wide, flaring sleeves matched the wide, flaring bottom of the robes, looking like a particularly dramatic dress.

Max lined us up next to each other, sized us up, and nodded. “Yes. Perfect.”

“And you’re wearing that?” I asked, indicating the grey he wore. “That’s just a slightly dressier version of your everyday clothes.”

“No, it has a black belt,” he corrected me. Then he frowned. “Is the belt too much?”

“It’s fine,” Kylie said. “We all look fine.”

“I don’t look fine, I look magnificant,” I told her. “Look at this. It’s like the world’s classiest trenchcoat.”

“Does that mean you look like the world’s classiest flasher?”

I grimaced. “Well now you’ve basically ruined it. You look like you’re getting married, by the way.”

“Can both of you try to maintain your enthusiasm at least until after the party?” Max asked wearily. “Then you can cut them up for rags for all I care.”

“That’s an unkind thing to say about a wedding dress,” I said. “Kylie will want to keep these precious memories forever and ever.”

“Certainly they’d be more precious that Kayden’s plans for his, uh, trenchcoat,” Kylie said.

Max rubbed his temples. “This is going to be a disaster, isn’t it?”

I put my arm around his shoulders. “That, I think, depends on your definition of disaster.”