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“Dancing can’t be that different from sword-fighting.”
“I’d prefer not to be gutted at my wedding ball, darling.”
“So noted. No sword on the dance floor.”
She laughed, a free and musical sound he rarely heard from her. “A wedding ball would be fun,” she conceded. “As long as we’re dragging everyone out to the marshes of Meresin. So, the ballroom leads onto the terrace above the gardens on the river side, and out to the lawns north of the arcanium lake.”
“Only best not to call it that,” he reminded her.
“What do you call it?”
“Just… the lake,” he told her, feeling foolish, but she only nodded.
She reached a set of several paired wooden doors on the north wall. “If I don’t miss my guess, this will be…” With a dramatic shove, she pushed a pair of doors open. “Aha. Yes, a feast hall.”
“We need two dining halls?” He followed her into the darker room with open windows only on the river side, so admitting less moonlight. A large fireplace, inlaid with stone, took up most of the opposite wall.
“This one is much larger,” she pointed out unnecessarily. “The other is an intimate dining hall, for family or small parties.”
He refrained from commenting on the absurdity of calling the other dining hall “intimate.”
“We’ll use this one for large banquets, feasts we’ll host in concord with balls, or on special occasions. The rest of the time, this will be the dining hall for students, contracted wizards, minions, and other assorted guests.” She walked briskly from door to door on the north and west walls, opening them and peering in. “Here is a secondary kitchen. And these corridors lead to the guest rooms you mentioned, so the design makes sense. This space is large enough to also serve as a common room. We can set up seating areas near the fireplace on that end, with conversational groupings and also singles for reading and study. A few desks would be nice. There’s space for bookcases, too, which might be convenient for the students—unless you’d rather require that all books be stored in the library? There’s a good argument for that, too.”
That was the second time she’d mentioned students. “I remember agreeing to minions and contracted wizards.” As she envisioned the room for him, it came alive in his mind. A cozy room for gathering in the evenings, filled with study and lively conversation. “But students? And assorted guests,” he added with a frown.
“Students and guests,” she echoed firmly, going to the terrace doors on the river side. “Not marsh rats and water snakes. Don’t make it sound like that. This terrace connects to the one for the ballroom. We can have more seating out here. In good weather, it will be like having an additional room.”
“For all of those students and guests.” He added a grand gesture at the dark and empty hall, the moonlit—and still distinctly marshlike would-be terrace.
“Exactly.” She beamed at him. “Let’s check out the bedrooms.”
The woman was indefatigable. “We should sleep at some point.”
“And we will. I just want to see what we’re facing with these guest rooms, like will it be possible for a person who is not a swamp creature to live in one. You can go to bed if you’re tired, and I’ll join you soon.”
No way was he leaving her to explore on her own. Not with the possibility of more hunters lurking about. Besides, he wasn’t tired, but he worried that she was. “A compromise. We save the south wing for morning.”
“Done,” she happily agreed, charging into a long, shadowy corridor.
“Tell me about these students and guests.”
“Students are like apprentices. Sometimes wizards graduate from Convocation Academy with a mix of mid-level MP scores. They travel around and study with various wizards who are high level in a magic they’d like to explore. Sort of testing out what suits them best. Think of them as proto-minions. There’s three stories?”
“Yes, but I wouldn’t trust that staircase.”
Ignoring the warning, she traipsed up the wide wooden stairs that led to a semicircular landing with tall bay windows admitting bright moonlight. She peered at the dark corridor on that level, which he obligingly illuminated. It was almost scary how easily the magic flowed into him, with unimaginable potency.
Nic was already climbing the right-hand flight of stairs to the third floor by the time he joined her. “It’s perfectly solid,” she informed him. “You do good work, so stop worrying.”
“How are these students different from minions?” he asked, rather than argue.
“Minions are already trained and settled in their specialization, or one step away and simply needing a contract with a house to finalize it.” She opened the first door and walked confidently into the shadowy room. “Much the same floor plan as the master suite in the main house,” she noted. “These will be the best suites up here. Maybe a few like this on the ground floor, for people who don’t do stairs well. Otherwise, the grander guests and higher-status wizards will want the view. Second floor will be smaller, student rooms.”
Bemused, he followed along as she made her inventory of the third floor. And the attic rooms under the gables. Then the second floor, which indeed held a series of smaller rooms. Finally the ground floor proved her theory correct, with a blend of smaller rooms and grander suites. He nearly remarked that she knew everything ahead of time, so actually going in each room seemed redundant, but he wisely held his tongue.
At the far north end of the ground floor, they came to a set of impressively large and imposing doors. Nic raised questioning brows at him, and he shook his head. “I don’t know. Guest suites for the army?”
“Ha ha. Given the amount of water here, we’d do better with a navy.”
