First Witch's Tale

I stood, nodded politely to my tutor, and followed Cemburu through the door. He said nothing as he walked through another maze of corridors, walking so quickly it felt he was desperate to get rid of me as quickly as possible, as if there was something about me that repelled him. I made a mental note to explore the school as quickly as possible, just so I wouldn’t have to rely on anyone to show me around, then studied his back. He wasn’t unhealthy, as far as I could tell, but he wasn’t anything like as muscular as my brothers or father. He would not last long on the farm.

He stopped outside a door and turned to face me. “Why do you get a room? A private room?”

I tried to hide my surprise. His tone might be snooty, but I had seen the look on his face before. It was the look of a man who had been denied something he wanted, then found himself forced to watch as someone else got the thing he wanted, without even asking for it. A private room? I had grown up on a farm. I might have slept in a cage, but I had still shared a chamber with my brothers. I wouldn’t have been that afraid of sleeping in a dorm with male students.

“I didn’t ask for it,” I said. I should probably have been more diplomatic, but I didn’t feel diplomatic. “They just gave it to me.”

“They just gave it to you,” Cemburu repeated. He couldn’t have been more incredulous if I have claimed to be the direct descendant of a god and goddess. “How much special treatment do you think they’re going to give you because of those?”

He jabbed a finger at my breasts. I felt a hot flash of embarrassment, rapidly followed by anger. I have had more reason than most to resent my appearance, but still … I had grown up on a farm. I wasn’t ashamed of my body. Or my sex, even though it brought restrictions as well as advantages. No one back home would challenge me to a bare-knuckle fist fight.

“Get this,” Cemburu said. “I will not be giving you any special treatment at all!”

“That’s good,” I snapped back. “I never asked for it!”

Chapter Four

If any of my tutors were giving me special treatment, I decided over the next few weeks, it was impossible to tell. They worked me hard. They worked us all hard. We woke in the morning and had breakfast, then studied until lunch, after which we returned to the classrooms or the training grounds for more studies and practice. The evenings were spent doing chores, some carrying buckets of water or firewood around the castle to cleaning up in the kitchen and even helping to prepare food. I didn’t resent it, certainly not as much as the other students. Cemburu and his cronies, Jahat and Irihati, spent more time grumbling than they did working. I was very tempted to point out that if they stopped moaning and actually did the work they’d be done well before nightfall. They wouldn’t have to go straight to bed after their chores.

I kept that opinion to myself, as the weeks turned into months. It wasn’t easy being the first female student. The men didn’t seem to know what to make of me. Some tried to flirt, others seemed to expect me to know who they were and why I should hop into bed with them, still others paid as little attention to me as possible. Cemburu wasn’t the only one, I discovered all too quickly, who resented the fact I had been given a private room. Whitehall appeared to be trying to treat all of its students as relative equals, and even though it was clear I needed some privacy no one seemed very happy about it. The dorms were not exactly cramped, I had been assured, but there was still very little privacy. I couldn’t help feeling they had a point. And yet …

It was disconcerting, I had to admit, to realise just how ignorant I was. There were factions amongst the students, and even amongst tutors who were supposed to be old enough to know better, factions that made little sense to me. I knew almost nothing of the world outside my village, or the world surrounding my new home, and it was hard to work out what was really going on when Cemburu clashed with another student. Cemburu himself was an aristocrat, I discovered, but other students were commoners like myself or even people of no clear origin. The aristocratic students sought everything should come to them by virtue of their name; the commoners, obviously, thought otherwise. And the aristocrats had factions of their own … I didn’t even pretend to understand them, let alone the questions of rank and hierarchy that preoccupied my fellow students. I had hoped for friends, or at least someone I could talk to on equal terms, but my combination of birth and sex made it impossible. It was deeply frustrating. What was I supposed to do about it?