“How did you meet the Blade Baroness?” The gnome didn’t even bother looking up from his book this time.
“In the hold of a sinking Empire clipper.” I unpacked a couple reference books and writing supplies onto the little desk, next to a brass glow lamp.
“Cool. Anything interesting happen?”
“We almost died.”
“Looks like you didn’t, though.”
I blinked. The storyshould have been worth some kind of reaction from him.
“We also found a dead body.”
“Least it wasn’t you.”
I blinked again. Yes, I had trouble reading people. I didn’t always understand how normal people were supposed to react. But…
I tried to mimic his devil-may-care tone. “He’d probably been murdered too, but I couldn’t prove it.”
“It wasn’t you, was it? The one that did it, I mean.”
My eyelids were going to collapse from exhaustion at this rate. “Nooo.”
“Good. Because there wasn’t a check box on the roommate form for ‘homicidal,’ but if there had been, I’dhave checked ‘no.’ ”
Should I have said something like ‘not that anyone could prove?’
He set the book down and hopped over to me. “The name’s Cleggs. I was worried that I’d be assigned a boring roommate with a stalactite up their butt.”
“Aren’t stalactites the formations that hang down from the ceiling?”
He grinned. “At least you don’t seem to be boring.”
Chapter Three
The rest of the day had been a mad rush. I’d picked up my uniform—a green velvet vest and long charcoal coat with green piping to be worn over gray-brown trousers and cream-colored shirt supplied by each student. Presumably because the internal attire required the most tailoring to fit the student’s species. I’d explored the common rooms of the dormitory, including a large open lounge, a quiet reading room, and bathrooms with hot and cold running water!
I’d even found a few hangers.
Feelings that my life was organized and under control proved fleeting with the start of classes the next day.
Geomagic was one of the classes in common with many other specializations, and in addition to Lady Arazniros and Brenda, I recognized all three disapproving elves from the prior day. Fortunately, with a good eighty students in class, I was able to sit well away from them.
“Magic.” The instructor, an elven woman intraditional silk robes, spoke coolly. “It is the core of our world, it is the foundation of civilizations, it influences all life. It influences our geology, mineral formations, and even topography. And is in turn influenced by the same. Geomagic is therefore the foundation, the bedrock of all natural sciences taught at this illustrious institution. Let us see how well you grasp the rudiments of the subject. Take out a standard sheet of paper and pencil. Books away, this will be a short quiz.”
I put away my notebook, leaving a single sheet atop the polished hickory desk. Geomagic had never been my strongest subject, so many formulas, and the phases and crystallization of minerals was daunting to grasp. I’d practiced and practiced to become ‘adequate.’
The instructor began writing questions on the blackboard in quick succession.
“May we use trig tables?” asked a long-haired elven woman.
“You may not.” The instructor continued to speak as she wrote. “This institution has seen fit to establish a specialization for pure magic. A specialization with perilous similarities to the ratings system used for battlemages in the dark days of the Melandrach Empire. I cannot argue with that. Yet I would expect members of this new specialization to display excellence in geomagical theory. Along with ahealthyreverence for the lessons of history.”
Ahh, thecontroversy.
She turned over an hourglass.
Ten questions, most with calculations, and itlooked likea ten-minute hourglass.
