Prodigy of Thunder, page 19
“I will absolutely do that.” Samantha abruptly hugged Anna, who awkwardly patted her back. Although she loved hugs from Father and Panza, she wasn’t sure how she felt about getting them from anyone else, and so she gently pushed her away and hurried off, only to stop at the doorway.
“You … you wouldn’t happen to know a Jordan Winters?” Anna made a circling motion around her head. “Likes to color his hair. Enjoys sarcasm.”
“Oh, yes. Um …” Samantha wrung her hands. “I confided in him about my problem in class. I … I was desperate.”
“Ah, I figured. All right, see you around.”
“See you in class!” Samantha called after her. “And thanks again!”
“Bye,” Anna mumbled. The entire way back to her room, she pretended to be scratching her forehead, hiding the eye. And although she didn’t retain the services of a healer, she did pay an ice warlock two castles to ice it, which helped with the swelling, allowing her to see out of it again.
The Scent of Mystery
Anna had kept her head low in Arithmetic, and also now in Theory of Standard Spellcraft. She’d sat at the very back, left side of her face hidden by her hair, and hadn’t answered a single question even though she’s known the answer to each one. She had pressed together a smile for Samantha, who shared the class and sat near the front, but she hadn’t let Jordan see the injury, though he’d seen nonetheless when she had absently scratched her temple, revealing the ghastly eye.
“Black as pitch,” he whispered from beside her. “Going to be two tendays before that goes away. Congratulations on the war wound.”
“Yeah, right.” But after that, she stopped caring if he saw it, and she even answered a question about why certain higher degree spells required Ethics classes, though she spoke just as the first of twelve gongs sounded, indicating lunch was about to begin, and her answer got lost in the bustle of students clearing out.
William, who took that class as well but sat down the row, fell in beside the pair of them as they walked to the Supper Hall.
“There’s a rumor going around,” he began, “that a certain someone beat the living snot out of a group of bullies who then had to make up a training story to get the proper healing. One broken jaw, one broken wrist, one broken nose, and unfathomable levels of humiliation. Ation, ation, ation—” He winced, shaking the repetition off.
Jordan’s eyebrows went so high they threatened to abandon his forehead.
“I have to eat,” Anna blurted, striding faster.
“Why’re you hiding your face?” William pressed.
“Have to eat. Starved. Mmm!”
“She’s ridiculous,” William said to Jordan, parting ways.
“You are, apparently, ridiculous,” Jordan said, catching up and trying to keep a straight face.
“I really am,” she deadpanned. “Thanks again for that quest. It was … meaningful.”
Jordan smiled. “I thought it would be. Wait, where’re you going?” he asked as she walked right past the Supper Hall.
“To buy a new robe. Tired of walking around in rags.”
“But I thought you didn’t have the money—”
She dismissed the point with a flap of the hand as she strode off.
“All right, guess I’ll see you later then, Miss Ridiculous!” Jordan called.
Anna didn’t want to go robe shopping with a boy or have to explain how much money Samantha had given her. In fact, she reminded herself to tell the girl not to reveal that her parents were well off—and did just that when she spotted her heading toward the Supper Hall.
“I may look simple but I ain’t stupid,” Samantha replied, kicking the toes of one foot with the other as she stood before Anna.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you feel bad.” Anna dawdled. “Er … I’m going to buy myself a new robe. Want to, uh, want to come along?”
Samantha brightened. “Absolutely.”
The pair soon entered Shoptown, which bustled with the energy of those who could afford to spend lunch there instead of the Supper Hall. The only young students were ones from rich families, whereas the older students also worked for their monies and could afford the various luxuries. Anna kept her eye hidden behind her hair, not wanting to lie for the umpteenth time that it had been a training accident.
“Why don’t you eat here?” Anna asked as they squeezed by a gaggle of 8th degree amber-robed students, who took about as much notice of the two girls as they would gnats. “You could afford it. I mean, look at that roast turkey in the window.”
“I would if I had someone to eat with.”
“Well maybe I could eat with you when I find regular work. In the meantime, you can eat with me and Jordan in the Supper Hall.”
“That would be wonderful, thank you. So you made friends of him, huh? I saw you sitting together in class. He’s nice.”
They chatted about this and that, with Samantha doing most of the talking, asking Anna about her family, upbringing, and the like. Anna replied but kept her answers short.
“You’re pretty private, aren’t you?” Samantha asked as they finally spotted the Robe Emporium.
“Sorry. I just … it’s hard for me to open up to people, I guess.”
“You have to learn to trust them.”
“Mmm.” Not going to happen.
“That’s all right, I understand. Let’s go inside.”
Anna and Samantha swished into the Robe Emporium, with Anna keeping her face averted and the eye hidden behind her long hair. She went straight to the counter, behind which sat a heavy-lidded woman with eyebrows so thick they would look at home on a wolf.
“Hi remember me I was here a few days ago I would like to purchase a robe I think you have plenty of the burgundy sort as I need burgundy because I’m trying for my 1st degree I mean that’s obvious probably sorry never done this before I’m an aspirant what do I need to do?”
The shop attendant raised those mossy eyebrows. “Maybe try taking a breath and picking a robe out first?”
“Right a robe of course I should pick out a robe I’m sorry to have bothered you,” and she wandered off, cursing at herself for being so awkward.
“You don’t shop much, do you?” Samantha asked.
“Not really.” How about never? Let alone for something so expensive.
They browsed the 1st degree section and Anna found that there in fact was a large variety of robes available, each with minor variances in cut. Some robes had larger cowls, others wider cuffs, others different colored threading, and so forth. She felt a particularly lavish ruffled cuff with her fingers. “Pretty …”
“Do not dare touch that with those greasy ink-stained fingers unless you plan on buying it!” the shop attendant barked, startling Anna. “Those ruffles are more expensive than that whole bundle of rags you have going on.”
Anna saw the price tag—a stunning two hundred crowns. “Ugly anyway,” she muttered but backed away from it nonetheless, lest the shopkeeper demand she purchase it just for breathing on the stupid thing.
“Ooh, look at this one.” Samantha showed off a silver-threaded affair that came with matching silver shoes.
“Bit too flashy.”
The next one’s hood was too large, the one after that stank of nausea-inducing rose perfume, and the one after that was as rough as a potato sack. Only when Samantha showed off a stunningly rich burgundy with golden threading, the wool so fine it had a slight sheen, did Anna nod. “That’s the one.”
“Go try it on.”
After a short argument with the shopkeeper that involved Anna having to prove she had the money to buy the robe, Anna put it on and twirled upon re-entering, the golden threads glittering.
The shop attendant pressed a hand to her bosom and gasped. “Girl, what happened to your eye!”
“Training accident.”
“Well, ain’t no boy going to like no ruffian.” Then, seemingly realizing she had allowed her country twang to spoil the airs she had put on, she cleared her throat and quickly added, “It is unseemly to walk around proud of having been in a scrap. Very unladylike indeed.”
“Thank the Unnameables I’m not here for boys then, eh?” Anna slapped all sixty crowns on the counter and took off with Samantha, the pair giggling at her boldness.
After that, Anna stopped hiding the black eye altogether.
* * *
“Who’d you steal that robe from?” someone shouted. Heads shot up from their meals. Anna, who’d been only half listening to a lively conversation between Jordan and Samantha, sighed.
“I asked you a question, little sis.”
Anna returned to jabbing her boar pie with a two-pronged fork while she flipped a page in her Arcane Element of Lightning, 1st degree, 812th Edition book. “I stole it from the Emporium. Just walked in there and nipped it off the rack.”
Students tittered at the sarcasm.
“I’m sure the arcanists will appreciate that humor during the disciplinary meeting.”
Anna flipped another page, chewing slowly. “Have fun organizing one,” only for the book to shoot out from under her finger.
“This is my old book, isn’t it?”
Anna finally looked up and her sister recoiled at seeing her eye, then snort a laugh. “Already got the snot beat out of you, eh? Who here busted up my little sister’s eye?” she smilingly asked the amused crowd. “Huh? And why’d you stop at one?”
As the crowd laughed, Anna flicked a finger and the book shot back to her. “Piss off,” she spat.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me, big sis.”
Deya pretended to twirl away and walk off, only to somehow slip and slam her hand on the edge of Anna’s plate as she fell. The pie slapped into Anna’s chest, making a terrible mess down her front.
“Ugh, is that how you treat your older sister?” Deya loudly asked as she got up, playing to the crowd. “That’s what you get for tripping me,” and she strode off.
Samantha and Jordan gaped in disbelief before both handing Anna cloths.
“That evil witch,” Anna muttered, wiping her robe. “Ugh, this isn’t working. Do either of you know a cleaning cantrip?”
When Jordan and Samantha shook their heads, Anna got up and stuffed her book into her satchel, conscious of the many eyes gawking at her and girls snickering behind their hands.
“Where you going?” Jordan asked.
“To learn a cleaning cantrip.”
“But isn’t that, like, a 3rd degree spell, making it illegal?”
Anna froze. “Oh, it might be.” She slumped back into her seat, defeated.
Samantha stood. “Come on, let’s get you changed then take the robe to that laundress in Shoptown. I’m sure she’s a fair bargain.”
“I’m coming this time,” Jordan blurted, and the three of them set off.
* * *
“No, I got this,” Anna said upon Samantha’s offer to pay for the robe cleaning. “You’ve been too kind already, and I don’t like owing people.” She paid a spine and received eight castles in change for a washing and an arcane drying by the fire element laundress.
“It’ll be ready this evening,” Lila the Laundress said whilst chewing something.
“Any chance I can have it done in the next—”
“Not unless you want to pay triple for a rush job, sweetie.”
Anna sighed and they began the trek to their next class, but she barely got twenty paces before she froze, having caught a whiff of a very particular scent. Meanwhile, Jordan and Samantha obliviously walked on ahead, chatting about how boring Arithmetic class had been.
Anna turned around and kept sniffing, ignoring the looks of passing students. She followed wisps of the scent a little ways before losing it underneath the sweet scent of roasting honey garlic chicken.
“There you are,” Jordan said when Anna had caught up to them. “Thought we lost ya.”
“Everything all right?” Samantha pressed.
“Not sure.”
Jordan and Samantha traded looks.
“Probably nothing,” and Anna turned around.
“So anyway,” Samantha went on to Jordan, “I says to her, I says, ‘But to what purpose will I need advanced arithmetic when all I’m ever angling to do is become a warlock scribe?’ ”
“Hey, have you two ever heard of camphus myrrh?” Anna interrupted.
Alas, they had not, and Anna dropped the subject, thinking it must have been her imagination.
Fishhook
“Now allow me to demonstrate upon a victim.” The towering arcanist pointed at Anna with a hand adorned with rings, arm jingling with bangles. “Blackeye. You’ll serve as my practice dummy.” The brown-skinned man then stepped off the vibrant platform, graying black hair waving about like a preening rooster’s comb, for he had slathered grease on it to make it stand upright. He was one of two arcanists presiding over a hundred lightning warlocks.
“Yes, Arcanist Prigmathani,” Anna replied and got up from her craquelure-like desk to stride across the similarly patterned floor.
Accessible only to lightning element students, the lightning elements room was a strange room indeed, for it sprawled infinitely with a forest of lightning trees. Anna thus naturally thought chaotic meadow was a more apt description for the place.
Everything in the room, from the ground to those trees to the desks, was made from prismatic lightning fibers, some as hard as stone, others, like the colorful tree branches, were soft as wood and moved slow as a snail. Even the floor, like opal when looked upon at an angle, subtly changed colors. The prismatic blue-hued sky too was made of vast craquelure fibers. It was said that a non-lightning warlock would go mad in such a room, yet its chaos felt like home to all lightning warlocks.
A hundred pairs of eyes shifted their gaze to her. Anna felt instant judgment over her shabby robe and black eye and wanted to shout that her robe was being cleaned and that the black eye had been earned honorably. But she said nothing.
“Do you know how to summon your shield, girl?”
Anna flexed her left forearm even before he finished, instantly summoning the black lightning crust.
One of Arcanist Prigmathani’s shaggy eyebrows rose. “Good. Now I want everyone to watch how the shield absorbs a strike. You ready, Blackeye? Here we go—” He slapped his bangled wrists together, shouting, “Annihilo!” A blast of lightning slammed into the shield, and Anna grunted as she took a step back to steady herself.
“That was a full-strength First Offensive, yet note how it failed to penetrate her shield. And I knew it wouldn’t as the girl’s shield density is quite obvious. Weaker shields are flimsier and thus easier to penetrate. That is why we shall begin with teaching you not only how to properly summon your shield, but how to strengthen it.”
Anna deflated. She’d been hoping for far more advanced training as she’d long learned this particular skill from Father and Panza. Her shield was thick for her degree and as dense as steel, though it only weighed a third of the weight of an Ordinary’s shield.
“Thank you, girl. You may go back to your seat. You, boy—how about you?” he barked, rooster comb of a hairdo quivering. “Can you summon your shield? Then show me.”
As Arcanist Prigmathani went on at length about various shield principles Anna already knew, her mind drifted. She wondered about cleaning cantrips, reviewed her more advanced spells in her mind, pondered the matter of the necromancer still at large, and mentally fought duels against imaginary opponents in preparation for Dueling Club, that day’s after-class. Throughout, she floated her satchel underneath her desk, hoping the class wouldn’t be this tedious forever.
“All right, people, let’s have you pair up and get those of you who have yet to cast their shield with those of you who can.” He clapped once, bangles jingling. “Move it! Pair up!”
A shadow fell over Anna. “Want be partner?”
Anna looked up and saw a blue-eyed boy about her age. His skin was as white as snow, and he had handsome scraggly hair to match. “You’re Henawa,” she blurted stupidly.
“Glad you not blind from eye,” the boy replied in his clunky accent, smiling cheekily.
A cringing Anna stood up and offered her hand. “Anna.”
The boy took it. “Not Blackeye?”
“No, Anna.”
He shrugged. “Blackeye good name,” then pressed a hand to his chest. “Fishhook. You smell nice. Like wildflower.”
“Er … thanks, I guess. Interesting name.”
The boy tapped at a scar beside his left eye. “I once accident maybe rip out eye with, uh, with—” He made a motion as if casting a rod overhead. “—feeshero.”
Must be a Henawa word, Anna thought. “So you almost lost your eye fishing?”
“Yes.” He tapped his eye again. “Fishhook.”
“Right.” Anna gestured to a clearing away from everyone. “Shall we?”
“Yes, yes,” and the boy went to stand under a slowly morphing tree. “I cast to show, but it ghost. Ghost like ancestor Thunderchild.”
“I don’t quite understand,” Anna said, standing opposite him, “but let’s see your form.”
Fishhook raised his right arm. His snow-white eyebrows furrowed with concentration as he flexed. A small blob blinked into existence before vanishing with a brief crackle. “See? Ghost like Thunderchild.”
“Oh, you meant ghostly.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re left-handed.”
“Yes, but no matter. You teach.”
“Yes, I teach. All right, let’s begin with your thought process,” and so Anna began guiding the boy’s thoughts. The pair struggled with the language barrier as Anna made him try again and again. Throughout, he told her a bit about his people, how they migrated with the snow and how his grandfather had recently been left in the forest “to go to sleep with ancestors,” as was their custom, how his mother was almost as good a hunter of elk as his father, and how he was one of only a small handful of Henawa “blessed by god Nuagwa” to make the magic, which Anna politely corrected as arcanery.
