First Witch's Tale

They also told me a great many things I had barely realised mattered. To the north, the Kingdom of Alluvia was slowly taking shape and sending students to Whitehall; to the south, several smaller kingdoms were slowly being absorbed into bigger kingdoms that would eventually be a match for Alluvia and the barely-known kingdoms further north. One student had travelled with his father, before going to Whitehall, and he told me about people far to the east who looked a little like me. It was strange to think about the man who had been my biological father, although I told myself - quite firmly - that my real father was the man who had accepted me as his own and raised me until I was old enough to decide my own path. The idea of travelling to see the east was attractive, but I doubted I would ever get the chance to go. Magic was just so fascinating. I could never give it up. And besides, I had no idea if my biological father had ever known he had sired a child.

And one of the other things they taught me left me feeling oddly sympathetic to Cemburu.

He was, apparently, a bastard. This was no surprise to me, for the obvious reason, but apparently he was a real bastard. He was not the son of a nobleman, born out of wedlock; he was the son of a noble woman. A nobleman could pretend his son wasn’t his, and pay for the mother to bring the child up, but a noblewoman could not hide behind a polite veneer of secrecy. Cemburu had been lucky to be acknowledged by his mother’s family, I was told, and it had cost her dearly. There was no prospect, now, of a good match. I couldn’t help thinking the nobility were crazy. But then, it was more important for them to ensure their children were actually theirs. It made me grateful, once again, for my father’s willingness to treat me as his own.

And I would have felt sorrier for him if he hadn’t been such a pain.

He returned to class two days after the duel, to find himself a pariah. No one had any time for a loser, not even his former cronies. They shut him out, refusing to have anything to do with him. Cemburu tried to tell everyone that I had cheated, that I had lured him into a trap, but no one believed him. Ironically, I discovered, it would have impressed people if I had. There was nothing morally wrong about setting a trap, or tricking one’s opponent into making a deadly mistake. I haven’t planned it that way, and if Cemburu hadn’t stopped to gloat he would likely have won, but it didn’t matter. I was up and he was down and that was all that mattered to our peers. The nasty part of my mind hoped he was enjoying being right at the bottom of the hierarchy. It was a taste of what he had doled out to me.

The teachers didn’t give us a break. They kept us practising magic from dawn to dusk, as well as practical skills such as swordfighting and harvesting potion ingredients from the herb gardens and wild animals. It made me smile to meet a unicorn and convince it to let us take some of its hairs, not least because unicorns could only be approached by maidens. It was clear proof I was still a virgin, embarrassing Cemburu still further. He shut up after that, save for the occasional snide remark about me still having a private room. I told him that that would change the moment another female student arrived. Who knew? One might arrive tomorrow. I couldn’t be the only girl who wanted to study magic, could I?

It pushed me to my limits and beyond. It was hard to keep up with my training as I dug further and further into advanced magic. Master Falladine was surprisingly understanding as I had to go straight to bed some nights, rather than practising with him, but I couldn’t help feeling a little guilty. I had promised I would be his assistant when the time came and not keeping that promise didn’t sit well with me. I knew I hadn’t developed the skills, not yet, but still … it bugged me. I felt embarrassed at the failure to be the person he needed. But what choice did I have?

Spending more time with my fellow students meant going on walks with them, either in the mountains or down to the nearby town. I decided fairly quickly I didn’t like the town and I was glad - very glad - I hadn’t gone there. It was bigger than the village, bigger than the nearest town, big enough for everyone to be strangers to everyone else. The pubs and shops and brothels felt weirdly disconnected from each other, even as they served the nearby school. I suspected they were hoping the school would protect them, when the kingdom tried to take control of the town. It was just a matter of time. The town had something to lose too.

Back home, we knew how to hide crops from taxmen, I thought. The kingdom’s inspectors were easy to fool. Most of them knew nothing about farming and we had no trouble hiding our produce in plain sight. Here, it might be a little harder.