Chapter Three – (Un) Welcome

After we all finished our meals, the dining hall emptied, Shyshyun and the conundrum both disappearing in the crowd. I flashed a quick look at the bodyguards, looking for Sheyni, only to see her chatting away with another girl. No doubt about whatever was in fashion right now. God, I could strangle the girl. I stood to go grab her and leave, but Saria popped up at my elbow.
“Let’s wait for the halls to empty out a bit, and then I’ll give you the tour,” she said.
“I do believe I’ll join you,” Ash sauntered up, his gaze flashing once more to my hair before settling on my hair. He flashed a charming smile, “I simply cannot resist the company of a pair of ladies as beautiful as you two.”
“Three,” Saria muttered, “as we’re going to have to endure Lopi.” She looked me, rolling her eyes, “I swear, that girl is descended from some sort of leech. Latches on to his arm and never lets go.”
“Ah, yes, Lopi,” Ash’s cheer fell and he looked out at the crowd, trying to spot her approaching.
Saria raised an eyebrow, “Tiring of your current flame already?”
Ash opened his mouth to respond, but got no farther than, “I-” before he was jumped by a hugging girl. He would have toppled over, had there not been a table for him to prop himself up on.
So this was Lopi. Hair magicked into a rainbow of pinks, set in high pigtails, face painted just a little bit too much, smile just a bit too wide, collar just a little too low, skirt just a little too short, skin a little too smooth, chest just a little too big – Lopi was just a little too much to be real. I wondered how much of her had been enhanced magically – besides the obvious hair. After smothering Ash in kisses, she turned to me. Behind her, Ash was bitterly trying to get the lipstick smears off of his face.
“So, this is the Princess of Myfyme,” Lopi spoke in a smooth, low voice, and I wondered if I was the only one who heard the jealousy that colored it. I realized I wasn’t; Saria gave me a warning look from behind Lopi. “I like you hair,” she smiled, “such a vivid color. You shall have to teach me the spell.”
“I wouldn’t know,” I said, shrugging, and trying to appear friendly, “I’ve never been particularly good with magic.”
Lopi’s eyes widened a tad, pronouncing the raccoon effect of her makeup, “You mean that’s your natural color?” She inspected me up and down, “It really goes with your dress…”
“The halls should be clear by now,” Saria cut in, “Let’s go summon your luggage first.”
“Summon?” I asked, as I was guided down the hall. I glanced back briefly and, to my relief, found that Sheyni was indeed following, with Ash’s and Saria’s bodyguards as company.
“Sure,” Ash said, “You find an empty room and then call for your luggage, and it appears. You can change rooms anytime using this method.”
Saria grinned, “There’s an empty room down the hall from mine, I’ll show you that one, and you can move later, if you want to.” We mounted a staircase with a long, silver-black banister. I moved as best I could in the heavy dress, nearly forgetting how Sheyni had told me to walk. We made it up to the next floor without me tripping over my skirts and falling – I’m sure Ash would’ve caught me, but I didn’t feel like dealing with Lopi.
The halls were beautiful – decorated thematically to represent different creatures or landscapes, I had never seen such ingenious blending of paintings and lamp fixtures. Saria’s room, predictably, was in a long green corridor, which was sparsely decorated with greenery. Some stood in pots, but some were planted in bots hung from the ceiling- I noticed a few of these were lopsided or falling out.
There is no proper excuse for badly hung greenery.
Saria opened a beautiful wooden door for me, one fashioned in the style of the Cynneni, a living door coaxed into shape by their careful gardeners. I felt almost that I could sense the door’s life as I brushed against it. The room was homely, warm, and comfortable. I looked around and then back at Saria, Ash, and the Leech, standing in the doorway.
“How do I call my luggage?” I furrowed my brows, trying to recall what they had told me.
Saria shrugged, “Think of your luggage and snap your fingers, I suppose. It works differently for everyone.”
“You weren’t lying about being bad with magic, were you?” Ash smirked.
I frowned at him, not liking to be mocked this way. Had we been on my home turf, in another situation, I would have pulled a sword on him for it. In this time and place however, I had no choice but to bear it and Call my luggage. I closed my eyes and breathed out, words drifting back to me through the haze of disuse. I had had a teacher in these things once, but he had found me a poor student, and I found him a boring teacher. His monotone came back to me, now, summoned by the concept of Calling.
A Calling, the monotone droned without a care who he was boring to death, is a summoning of less imperative weight. Simply put, a Call may be turned down. A Summons cannot. I grit my teeth. Would this man never tell me how to Call? To Call, one must focus very hard on what you are calling, then bid it come. Some speak to it, some snap their fingers, yet others…
I turned back to the present. Focus on the object and bid it come. I summoned in my mind my luggage – a little battered, heavy with weaponry, and I envisioned Fieshoma, whose pure beauty was burned forever into my mind, and I envisioned Sheyni’s – a well-kept bag of silk and gold, laden with dresses and other fineries. I issued them an unspoken command to come to me, as I would command any of the soldiers at the castle.
I opened my eyes in time to see two black flames, edged with crimson, erupt in the room, expand to the shape of our luggage, then peter off upwards. Our luggage stood there, unburnt but arrived. Ash and Saria stood with their jaws wagging, Lopi eyed me with suspicion.
I walked out to the hallway and gestured on, “Shall we continue?”
Saria swallowed, then nodded. Her smile returned, “Let’s go down to the Lounge. Everyone hangs out there, and there’s a small book collection…” We went down the hallway and took a set of stairs at the end. I think, perhaps, it was more difficult not to trip going down.
The Lounge was a very large room with high, vaulted ceilings. It was stone and only stone, like a proper castle room, with some small windows in which groups of winged demons. At the base of the walls, half-bookshelves were pushed up against the walls, and round tables with plushy chairs were scattered next to them. Many students were there, with many conversations going, some of which ceased upon my entrance. There were two exits that were not stairwells to living quarters: a hall way to the left, dark and foreboding – no groups of student hung near that hall; and a nice, lit hall to the left.
“Where does the hall to the left go?” I asked, my curiosity filling me with questions best left unsaid. Saria and Ash exchanged a look.
“Nowhere you should be going,” Saria said shortly. “Now, we’ll continue to-”
“Now, now, Saria, the Biaray might be interested in her,” Ash said smoothly, cutting in without raising his voice.
“Biaray?” I asked, “Like B-R-A?”
“Black Rose Aristocracy,” Ash said, “But I warn you not to taunt them and say bra, the last kid who did fell in with… some bad luck.”
“So, this Black Rose Aristocracy,” I replied, “ignoring their violent, imperious nature and pretentious name, who are they supposed to be.”
Ash chuckled, a bitter smile forming, “I see you catch on quickly. The Biaray is supposed to be a collection of the cream of the cream, the brightest, most beautiful, most promising people of the gathered nobility here at Shyshyun’s.”
“Ah,” I muttered, “Can’t see how that got corrupted.”
Ash merely smiled again, “I wish the founders had been so astute.”
“Their meeting hall wouldn’t happen to have rose carved in the door, would it?” I asked dismissively.
“Indeed it does,” Ash raised his eyebrow. Even the likes of him knew that this question was odd.
“How typical of them,” I waved a hand as if I had expected no more from their likes. “No creativity.”
“Let’s move on to the training grounds, shall we?” Saria said firmly, the last question sounding forced.
We descended the staircase and exited a glass door to the right, the crowd parting to avoid Lopi – they remained tight on Saria’s side. We came out on lush green fields. We walked out a little bit before we came to a ring set in the grass. Outside the ring, the grass was lush and green, inside… nothing but sand. Around the ring there stood several layers of wooden bleachers. There were a couple smaller rings without bleachers nearby.
“Dueling rings,” Saria explained.
“Fancy a duel with me, Fana?” Ash grinned, mischief shining brightly in his eyes. I noticed he was staring at my hair again.
“Not now,” I said. “Some other time.”
“I’ll hold you to that.”
I merely raised an eyebrow.
Next we came to the practice areas for spells, which were little more that cleared groves.
“You’ll be needing those,” Saria joked. I glared at her jokingly.
We came finally to the archery range, where there was, indeed, someone practicing. He lowered his bow when he saw us coming. Saria waved briefly, and the dark-haired youth began to walk over. I shot a questioning look at Saria, but she ignored me.
As he got closer I recognized my anomaly from dinner.
“This is Fintise, Prince of Miettari,” Saria announced, and I winced a little. Miettari were the demons driven from Myfyme. “If you ever need to know anything about archery, just find him.”
The tension was practically palpable. I expected him to slap me, maybe give me a good sock to the gut or challenge me to a duel.
To my surprise, Fintise bowed low and placed a brief kiss on my hand, “the pleasure is mine, milady.” He straightened up and his eyes narrowed on Lopi. Obviously, like the rest of the sane people in this school, he had no liking for her either.
Ash opened his mouth to question Fintise, but the Miettari cut in first, “It will be dark soon, you should all head inside. I have to pull my arrows out of the target still.”
Saria hastily agreed, glad to be rid of the tension.
We re-entered and stood in the Lounge for a bit, discussing what the teachers would be like, and what to expect on free time.
“Those are beautiful combs,” Lopi commented, out of the blue, eyes trained on my hairmy hair, as Ash had done repeatedly.
“Yeah, but a tad uncomfortable,” I replied, scratching at my irritated scalp.
Suddenly, I felt my hair fall. I had barely seen Ash move, so fast has he been – and too late I recognized the anger in his face. He reappeared right in front of me, holding one of those combs only and inch in front of my nose. The others were clenched in his other hand.
“Do you know what these are?” he asked, eyes aflame.
“Honestly?”
“Preferably,” he gritted his teeth.
“Hair combs,” I tried very hard not to laugh in his face, but I knew the corner of my mouth twitched. Almost in response, his eye developed a twitch.
“These,” he said slowly, grinding out the words as if it took all his strength not to shout them, “belong in demon hands. Carved from pure dragon bone, meant only for the hair of the royalty of the Myfyme clan.” He began trembling now, the comb shaking before my eyes. “Tell me, Princess,” he spat the word like a curse, “did your family steal these too from your ‘friends’? Along with their lives?” I paused. There was some speculation that the royal family had lived, but as no one had heard from them again, this was not a good argument to push.
Without warning, some invisible force threw Ash back, knocking the combs from his hands. Sheyni scooped in and grabbed them, handing them to me as she placed herself between Ash and I. Lopi immediately ran to his side.
“I think it’s time we all went to bed,” Saria suggested, looking back and forth between the two warring groups. As I followed Saria back to our respective rooms, one question haunted me:
Had Sheyni cast that spell?
I didn’t get a chance to ask her, though, because as soon as we got back to our room and had the door closed, Sheyni said, “Bra? Seriously?” and we were both overcome by uncontrollable laughter.