I slept late and woke up groggy and irritable. Even Reichis somehow knew to stay away from me. If it wasn’t bad enough how quickly things had been falling apart for me lately, now I was going to look like some callous freeloader, eating the Thranes’ food and sleeping till midday in their bed. I’d have to apologise, and then … what? What in the name of all my ancestors was I supposed to do?
I got dressed and went downstairs to find that events had kept on moving even without my presence.
Seneira, Ferius and Rosie were seated around a table.
‘Saddle up, kid,’ Ferius said when she saw me. ‘We’ve got places to be.’
‘What’s—’
‘I’ll explain on the way.’
Reichis trotted down the stairs and Ferius immediately pointed a finger at him. ‘Forget it, squirrel cat. You’re staying here this time.’
Reichis looked over at me. ‘Kellen, tell the Argosi that the next time she points her finger at me, she’s going to have to dig it out of her—’
‘Just … You don’t want to come anyway, Reichis.’
‘How do you know? She hasn’t even told you what you’re doing yet.’
‘Because I’m fairly sure whatever it is doesn’t involve stealing or killing.’
Reichis stared at me for a second, then turned and sauntered up the stairs. ‘I’m going back to bed. Somebody wake me when this stops being boring.’
With that potential crisis averted, I barely had time to put on my belt that held the powders I use for my spell and get my boots on my feet before Ferius was ushering me out of the house. ‘Wait a second. Where are we going?’
‘The Academy. I want to see what we can learn about the place.’
I stopped at the door. ‘Shouldn’t Seneira come with us? She’s the one who knows how the Academy works.’
‘I can’t,’ Seneira said, her tone making it clear she was none too happy about the situation. ‘If my classmates see me wearing a blindfold, they’ll ask questions.’ She pointed a finger to the markings around her eye. They looked a fraction longer than they had yesterday. ‘If they see me without the blindfold, it’ll be even worse.’
‘Come on, kid,’ Ferius said, grabbing me by the shoulder. ‘Let’s move.’
‘Can I have a moment with Kellen before you go?’ Seneira asked.
Ferius raised an eyebrow for a second, but then nodded and went outside to wait for me.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘I have a favour to ask,’ she said tentatively. ‘There is someone I’m worried about, and I hoped you might enquire discreetly about their well-being.’
‘I can try. Who?’
‘His name is Revian,’ she said. ‘He’s my … classmate.’
Revian. The name was familiar, though it took me a second to place it. ‘You said his name the other night, when you were having the shadowblack attack.’ When I’d told her to think of the people she loved.
Seneira looked half ashamed and half betrayed. ‘Forget I asked. I shouldn’t have—’
Ancestors, why am I so bad at dealing with people? ‘What does he look like? I’ll look out for him. Discreetly.’
She gave me a grateful smile, then proceeded to describe what sounded like a figure pulled straight out of a painting of one of the old gods of sun and sky. Then she went on to describe his kindness, compassion, dignity, courage and great sense of humour. Whoever Revian was, I hated him already.
As I was turning to leave, Seneira caught my arm. ‘If you see him, tell him I …’
‘Tell him what?’
She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. Just tell him that I miss him.’
Ferius and I rode the half-mile back to the Academy, then tethered our horses and made our way inside. ‘First stop’s on the twelfth floor,’ she said.
Ferius walks surprisingly fast when she isn’t making a show of walking especially slow, so I had to jog to keep up with her. ‘What makes you think any of her teachers or classmates even want to talk to us?’ I asked.
‘Simple, kid: I’m going to charm her teachers, and you –’ she stopped, and turned to muss my hair – ‘you just try to be good-looking, okay?’
Wow. It really never takes Ferius very long to put me off. ‘How exactly am I supposed to try to be good-looking?’
‘You really want to know? As in, if I tell you, you’ll actually listen for a change?’
I nodded.
‘Right. First off, let’s fix a few things.’ She gently pushed me back against the wall. ‘Make your butt, your shoulders and the back of your head touch the wall.’
‘What’s that going to—’
‘Do you want to pester me with questions or learn how to be handsome?’
‘Fine.’ I leaned back.
‘No, stand up straight. Remember: butt, shoulders, head.’
I contorted myself into an incredibly uncomfortable position.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘Now, pretend you’re completely at ease.’ When I did, she said, ‘No, don’t start slouching again.’
I started to speak but she shut me up with a look. After a few more tries she seemed satisfied. ‘Good, now, give me your best smile.’
I smiled.
She flinched.
‘What?’
‘Stop doing that with your mouth.’
‘You said to smile.’
Ferius pointed to my eyes. ‘Smile from here.’
‘How the heck am I supposed to—’
‘Hang on.’ A girl around my age was walking up the stairs, pretty, with red hair that fell in curls to her shoulders. Ferius went over to her. ‘Miss? You mind helping us out for a second here?’
Oh ancestors, you’re doing this to torture me, aren’t you?
Ferius had the girl stand on the other side of the wide staircase. I guessed classes must be in session because very few people were coming up or down. Those who did, however, smirked at the sight of me standing there like an idiot.
‘Okay,’ Ferius said, speaking to me in a quiet voice. ‘That there is Hadina. I want you to look at Hadina and smile with your eyes.’
‘I still don’t know what that means.’
‘It’s all right, kid, I’m going to teach you.’ She stepped out of the way, still staying close so she could talk to me without the girl … Hadina … hearing. ‘Now, when you look at Hadina, I want you to look into her eyes – but don’t just stare at her like she’s a rock, and especially don’t stare at her like she’s some kind of food. Instead, I want you to look into her eyes and listen to what they’re saying to you.’
‘Listen? To her eyes?’
Ferius nodded. ‘It’s a dialogue. Just let her eyes say what they want to say. Listen to those eyes as if they’re the most fascinating storytellers you’ve ever met.’
Listen to her eyes as if they’re the most fascinating storytellers you’ve ever met. ‘Okay, fine. For how long?’
‘At least a second, maybe two, but no more than that. You stare at a stranger for more than two seconds and you’re some weird kid looking for trouble.’ She pushed my shoulders back. ‘And stand up straight.’
So I did. I looked into the eyes of this girl I’d never met and tried to listen to them as if they had something to say to me. Of course, they didn’t say anything to me. I had no idea what story her eyes had to tell. Strangely, though, something else happened: Hadina smiled at me – not a shy smile or embarrassed smile, but something else. Something … oddly flattering.
‘Here endeth the lesson,’ Ferius whispered, then went over to the girl and thanked her.
Hadina started up the stairs then stopped and came back down. ‘My archimetry class ends in about an hour,’ she said. ‘I mean, if you want to practise your smile a bit more.’
‘I—’
‘He’d love to,’ Ferius said, cutting me off. ‘But he’s got an appointment down at the hospital to look at a terrible rash on his … well, you know.’
Hadina – who’d known Ferius for all of a minute – somehow knew she was lying. Maybe she’d ‘heard it in her eyes’. ‘Well, maybe some other time,’ she said, then added, ‘I’m usually on the fourteenth floor on weekdays.’
After she’d left I found myself dumbfounded. ‘What just happened?’
Ferius clapped me on the shoulder. ‘You smiled at a girl, kid. Most natural thing in the world.’
‘Only I didn’t move my mouth.’
‘Really?’ She reached into her waistcoat, pulled out one of her shiny steel cards and held it up in front of me. I saw my reflection there, along with the slightest curve of a smile on my lips. It was odd, like staring at somebody else … somebody who was almost handsome.
‘Quit admiring yourself, kid,’ Ferius said, and carried on up the stairs. ‘Let’s get to work.’
‘Wait,’ I said, chasing after her. ‘Does this work on all girls?’
She kept on upping her pace. ‘Girls, boys, men. Sometimes it even works on women.’
We spent the rest of the afternoon talking to Seneira’s teachers and classmates. I thought we’d have to come up with some explanation of why we were there, but I guess she’d been gone for a couple of weeks and they all figured she had an illness. Ferius said she was a distant relative, thinking about enrolling me in the school. The teachers looked dubious at first – apparently neither of us looked wealthy enough to afford the Academy – but sure enough, Ferius turned on the charm and they melted for her. They all seemed to think she was some kind of genius in their own fields, which wasn’t possible, since they taught everything from how to build complex mechanical contraptions to the history of every country on the continent to strategic diplomacy (which, in my opinion, if Seneira wasn’t failing then there was something seriously wrong with this school).
‘Please,’ Seneira’s devices teacher begged as the conversation was winding down, ‘won’t you come and sit in on my seminar, Lady Ferius, you could—’
‘Not “Lady”, Master Westrien, just Ferius. I’m afraid I can’t today.’
Ugh. Reichis was right. That ‘don’t call me lady’ thing really did wear thin after a while.
Westrien looked a bit deflated. ‘Well, I hope you’ll reconsider some other time.’
She gave a small bow of her head. ‘It would be an honour.’
I took note of her phrasing: it would be an honour. Ferius had a tendency to avoid lying and yet always managed to do so without the other person understanding what she really meant.
‘Nice fella,’ she said, after we’d left Master Westrien’s seminar room. ‘Couldn’t understand a word of all that stuff he was going on about.’
I stared at her. ‘But you were talking with him for, like, twenty minutes! About all kinds of stuff.’
‘Nah, I wasn’t talking, kid. I was helping him make music.’
‘Music?’
She stopped. ‘All those things he was saying, in every sentence there was a word that mattered, that meant something to him. Most of the time I was just asking him to elaborate on it, or inquiring how some other word he’d said affected his views about it, or wondered how Seneira was doing with that particular subject.’
‘So you just kept prompting him and let him talk.’
‘It’s more than that. There are two parts to music, kid: the notes, and the silences. I let him play the notes …’
‘And you played the silences. Okay, but other than getting an invitation to his seminar, what did you really accomplish?’
‘I found out exactly what I wanted to know.’
‘Which was?’
She shook her head. ‘Sorry, kid, I don’t want to influence your judgement.’
‘My judgement of what?’
She steered me towards an open archway. ‘According to Westrien, that’s one of the study halls for Seneira’s cohort. I want you to go in there and find out what you can about her and how she fits into this place.’
‘Wait … Aren’t you coming with me? You’re the one that—’
‘Can’t, kid. I promised Rosie I’d go back and watch the house so she could do some investigating of her own.’
I suddenly felt stiff, awkward and, well, more than a little anxious. ‘But I don’t know any of those people! They’re going to think I’m some kind of weird creep who –’
Ferius shoved me and I went stumbling into the classroom. ‘Just remember to smile, kid.’