CHAPTER 5

“Next!” Someone called as Winfred and I stood in line under the warmth of the sun.

The academy grounds were massive, the walls around it serving as a guide and protection from the various beasts who roamed outside them in the forest where the older students spent more time training.

“This is the line for the quartermaster.” Winfred explained, “Here you’ll receive your issue of clothing, uniform, uniform items and gear. This is more a military camp than everyone seems to think, so everything you need to do to enroll is done in this line here.”

We stopped and there was a line of sorts that formed at a row of tables. At one end I gave my name, then there was a plank of wood passed from person to person as I obtained the items they had. First was a thick green bag, then boots, white and black shirt, brown and black trousers, socks, underwear. Then came a dark green jacket and pants with black slippers that went into a smaller back by themselves and then were shoved into my bag. After that I they gave me something to brush my teeth with, a chamber pot, a small book on rules and regulations and then sent me to wait in a long line.

“This is the line to test magical aptitude.” Winfred stated. “This with a strong enough aptitude with it can take certain classes and can even become officers”

“What is Revina?”

“She is a captain.” Winfred looked proud as we stepped forward. “You’re lucky, you know. Her sister is just a few spots in line ahead of us and is a little older than you are, I think. Both of them have high aptitudes for magic.”

I tried to lean over to see who she meant, but all of us wore the same smocks to this.

“If I became an officer, would I need to serve with her?” Winfred frowned at my question. “Do multiple officers typically serve in the same units.”

“They can, but it’s irregular.”

Good enough for me. I thought about my status screen and went to the portion of my stats that allowed me to allocate my points. “How do they tell how powerful your magic is?”

“You touch a crystal and the brighter it gets, the more aptitude for magic you have.” She motioned with her hand at the crystal that she was speaking of about twenty people ahead of us in the line.

The person reached out and touched it, no glow emanating from it as the man who watched grunted and pushed him out of line away from him and someone ushered the boy away.

“Touch the crystal.” The man droned in a bored tone. The girl in front of the mass of stone and pointed parts reached out and complied and a second later the room glimmered and shimmered with a rainbow of light that hung on the walls. “Excellent. Name?”

The girl replied coldly, “Xanile Doranda.”

Winfred perked up and grinned, “That’s her.” I had to feign ignorance, I recognized the last name.

“Welcome to Sidhe, Cadet Doranda, please leave the line and go down the hall past me.” The man nodded his head in a sort of grudging respect to her.

I didn’t really have any sort of basis for how high I should make my Magic stat, so I went with seven points into it and muttered, “Confirm.”

An itching sensation overcame my body that was infuriating with everything that I carried in my arms already. By the time that I got to the crystal, the man rolled his eyes and barked, “Touch the crystal hopeful!”

I growled and reached out even before the quest giver could give me the quest. My palm touching the crystal, a surge of warmth left me in a hot flood and a blinding light flashed from the item, bathing the darkened room in light like the sun.

“My gods!” The man gasped and shielded his eyes as Winfred yanked my hand away from the earthen test. “What’s your name?”

“Saemus.” He stared at me and motioned as if there was supposed to be more. “My family and I aren’t court, we have no surname.”

The proctor turned to Winfred, clearly at a loss, but she just stated, “You can choose your own surname, or you can be a ward of house Doranda.”

“Do I have time to think on it?” Winfred took that as her cue to get the proctor’s attention and he nodded emphatically. “Thank you.”

The proctor blinked and turned back to the other prospects in line and growled, “Next!”

Winfred rushed me off and whispered tersely in the hallway, “Could’ve warned me you were a magical prodigy!”

“I didn’t know?” I tried to sound like I was being sincere, because I was. I had no idea that seven measly points would be so much of a huge difference in magical ability.

Someone stood in the shadows waiting for us at the end of the hall, “Winfred, who is your guest?”

“Our guest, my lady.” The older elven woman corrected the younger Doranda. “He was brought here by your eldest sister as a recruit.”

“I doubt she brought him here for his own merit, why did you come, boy?” She sounded suspicious, downright hostile.

“I was kidnapped from my village by force and your sister was responsible.” I spoke honestly. “I have no love for her or any of them, but I’m here to repay a debt of sorts.”

She stepped from the shadows and I could see her she and her sister shared a good deal in common, but where her sisters eyes were golden and serious, this girls eyes were pink and curious. I’d never seen pink eyes before except in some of the creatures near my home.

“You are too close to me, peasant.” She growled low, and I came back to myself, finding that I had leaned entirely to far forward to look at her more closely. “You find my deformity amusing to gawk at?”

I blinked, “Deformity?”

She went rigid and turned her gaze to Winfred, “See that he is treated well as a guest of our house, Winfred. Especially as magically talented as he is, he will be a wonderful asset.”

“Yes, my lady.” Winfred nodded her head as the young woman turned away and stalked toward the end of the hall. Once she was out of earshot, the old woman snatched me up into her grip with ironlike grasping hands, “Never do that again!”

“Do what?” I asked softly so as not to push her toward further violence. “They were pretty, I didn’t mean to stare.”

She blinked, “Pretty?” She sat me back onto my feet. “Her eyes are a deformity impressed upon her by her magic. It’s why her sisters eyes are golden, with her magic running through her veins, people see the attraction of gold. With the young miss, they see the mark of the beasts.”

“Is that so bad?” I raised an eyebrow at her, confused. “A lot of the beasts with eye color like her’s were always the strongest ones of their type where I come from.”

“In higher society amongst the families of the Courts, they are regarded as base and ugly.” Winfred said by way of explanation.

“Sounds like higher society has too much time on its hands if it has the luxury of worrying about something so stupid.” Once again the woman had me lifted and thrown against the wall so that I was forced to look into her furious gaze. “We have to stop seeing eye to eye like this, ma’am.”

“Listen, smart mouth and listen well.” She hissed. “This is the Seelie side of the academy, certainly, but there is no where that you can hide from those powerful enough to find you and find ways to you. I would be highly conscious of what you say concerning the nobility and powerful, because you never know when one of their ears are nearby ready to tattle.”

“Wait, Seelie side, what is that supposed to mean?”

She put me down and I rubbed my arms where she had grabbed me as she explained, “This is Sidhe Academy. The Gray Fae rule here and as a show of impartiality, they train both the Seelie and Unseelie Fae in matters of war.”

“Doesn’t that mean that both courts can spy on each other and have a good idea of the others capabilities?” She nodded and stared at me as if I were finally getting something. “How does that make sense?”

“When does anything the courts do make sense?” Winfred snorted and rolled her eyes. “It might seem odd, but the Grays are amazing instructors and both the courts would lose much without their expertise.”

“But that means the standstill and status quo stays the same.” She nodded once and wouldn’t elaborate any more on what I said. So it had to be true. I could think on all of that later. Finally, I felt the fact that this place existed truly dawn on me. “Training isn’t the only thing we do here, is it?”

“No.” Winfred muttered. “No one says it, but the academy is as much a battleground as any other where Fae blood was shed, or will be shed.”

She glanced my way and added, “We leave the fate of the Seelie and Unseelie to the hands of children generation after generation who have never even seen war and now here you are in the trenches as surely as any before you and those who will come after you.”

“Is this place really that dangerous.” She paused at my question, then must have decided that I really didn’t know because she mulled it over for a moment.

Finally she said, “Yes and no.” I was about to ask her what she meant when she whispered, “Do you want to get dressed and eat, or not? I can hear your stomach growling.”

I blinked, too startled by her direct question to deny it and followed after her as she navigated the hallways and corridors to where she wanted to be. She pointed to a room, “This is where you will live from now on. Cadets aren’t required to live within the recruit lodgings and barracks, but that does mean you will be responsible for getting yourself up and to classes on time.”

I blinked at her again and she opened the door and said, “These are Doranda lodging quarters. Right now, it’s only you and the young miss living here but if there is an overflow of cadets, they may be assigned her as guests. Your door will open for you and me only, all others will need one of us or special permission which the upper echelon staff will have.”

She yanked me into the room and pointed to a rack where a bar hung over head, “You will hang your uniforms there and your boots can go in the cubby below that. It’s enchanted to clean them and keep them from smelling.”

There was also a thin wall that she pointed to that was about four feet taller than me, “That’s where you can dress for privacy, as well as bathe. The wooden tub is of Cindry make, so the water will be hot for you, do you know how to make it work?”

“It needs nothing, the wood just takes the properties of the magic given to it and enacts them onto the thing you want to happen.” My flippant reply was such that it made her turn to blink at me. “If the Cindry wood was made to channel heat from the environment and heat the water or contents inside, that’s what it will do as soon as I begin to add water to it. It’s the same for other minor enchantments that the wood can take without special treatment or rune craft.”

“How do you know so much about that wood?” Her voice was soft as she asked the question.

I answered tersely, “My family raised trees of the same kind.”

She nodded and made a shooing motion so that I would go and get dressed, “In the normal clothes.” She cleared her throat and continued as if nothing had happened. “Today is still an enrollment day. There will be three more days before courses begin and you’ll start your classes. I will be enrolling you on behalf of the family.”

“I was told there would be classes I could take that weren’t basics?” I tried to sound like I knew what I was talking about.

“I know, I was there.” She replied with a soft hint of humor. “I will collect a list of them and bring them to you so that you can see if any of them interest you.”

I finished putting on my clothes, the simple white shirt tucked into my brown trousers tucked into the boots.

She eyed me as I came out from where I had been changing and nodded once in approval, then grimaced, “Those are a tad large on you, aren’t they?”

I looked down. The shirt was large, I had to tuck it in a little far so it bunched up weirdly in the back at my waist. It didn’t look like it fit well at the arms, as the short sleeves hung over my thin arms and the neck was a little low for my tastes as well.

“I suppose you’ll grow into them but we should see about getting the tailored or other shirts added.” She tapped her chin with her thumb and grumbled, “White is for first years of Seelie court. Then you have green for second and red for third.”

“Why color code?”

“So that you will know to respect those above you.” She replied tersely then looked at me. “There may not be actual bloodshed here, but duels for honor are something that all take seriously. If you offer an affront to someone and they challenge you, they will have the absolute right to beat you within an inch of your life—remember that.”

I blinked at her as I followed her out of the room and into the hall, the click of my door surprising me before I said, “Yeah, but what is to stop the Seelie and Unseelie from challenging each other endlessly?”

“Strict adherence to the rules of the academy and its rules.” She pulled out the book that I had thought I’d left on the small table in the room and handed it to me. “Any and all duels will only arise when the subjects involved have offered affront or offense to the other or their honor. The loser forfeits the right to pursue justice as it has already been served and compensation will be made.”

“Fae have honor?” I snorted and she just shot me a withering glare. “We’re prideful beings at the least of us and now I’m stuck in a prison with nobility and whatnot with no way out for three years? How am I supposed to be compensating anyone if I lose, I don’t have any coin.”

“Time flies.” She replied dryly. “And I wouldn’t worry too much about that just now. It’s unlikely anyone will be challenging a first year to a duel. Come along, we need to get you fed and then I must carry on with my work if I am to get you and the young miss prepared for this coming year.”

She led me down the hallway to an open air corridor that had the same dark stone blocks stacked one atop the other as all the other hallways we had been through. All of these halls looked the same to me and I wondered if I would be able to make it back on my own in this place.

“There will be maps erected for the first years and some of them will even be given to the more affluent to carry with them at all times.” I looked at her and she had a knowing way about her and I just nodded. Soon, the scent of food wafted through the air and I could have told her where we were heading before she walked me there.

Two minutes later we stepped into a large room with long wooden tables, covered in table cloths that looked to designate the year of the students who were meant to sit there.

Winfred opened her mouth and I simply stated, “I can see the decorations on the tables, I’ll be alright for this part.” I turned and found that there were three more sets of tables on the opposite side of the room in a mirror of the Seelie tables that had yellow, orange and purple cloths on them.

“And those are the Unseelie tables then.” I cocked my head to the side as I beheld a large group of people surrounding someone in the center of the room.

“This can’t be good.” Winfred growled and clomped her way forward.

I joined her, though the smell of food almost sent me walking in the opposite direction and found that the source of the problem was Xanile Doranda surrounded by a group of sneering children older than me.