The walled courtyard was paved with enormous stones, each about five feet across, painted with subtle patterns of flames and stars, interlocking crescents, and radiating sunbursts. Grills along the sides smoked with the scent of wood fires and roasting meats. Fountains, set equidistantly around the courtyard, burbled and splashed in a cheerful rhythm.
Banners, each emblazoned with a creature and color, adorned the front of the building: the Roc, the Phoenix, the Halcyon, and a great crested bird Dalliance didn’t recognize, respectively in emerald, gold, lapis, and silver.
It was everything he’d dreamed of.
His finger stubs ached.
Dalliance looked at the inscribed paper he held, clenched over-tight in an cramping hand. It carried the four-crowned seal of King's College, long-since broken and dangling off its ribbon, and said:
Dear Master Rather,
It is our pleasure to welcome you to attend this coming semester in the King's College School for Imperial Magecraft as one of the beneficiaries of the King's Collegiate Scholarship.
Room and board shall be provided in the Penitence Hall. There will be a chest assigned for your effects and a single shelf. Bear this limitation in mind when packing your belongings.
There shall be no consumption of alcohol on the premises.
There shall be no fraternization between the sexes behind closed doors.
There shall be no injurious spellcraft, nor summonings of any kind.
Your suite shall contain the necessities and a bed. It is expected that you should make use of the Academy resources for study, practice, and nutrition.
Your evaluation for mana sensitivity and type shall be conducted within the week at the Commencement Ceremony, prior to your formal induction into a House. Once inducted, defer to the instructions from your House Elder as to procedure.
Congratulations on securing admittance, and may the Divines smile upon your endeavors.
My office is located within the Lakeside Tower, floor 3B should there be any unforeseen complications. Unless such an occasion arises, I will remain,
Dame Perspicacity Challenger
Dean of Admissions, King's College
“You are lost?”
Dalliance turned at the greeting, to see a shaggy man with hair a solid red like cherry wood. A tin plate heaped with thick slices of pink meat—fish—was in one thick hand, a forked stick in the other. The grill smelled amazing.
“I’m just new, I think,” Dalliance said.
“We all were, once. To which House are you bound?”
Dalliance must have looked as confused as he felt, because the man gestured at the banners. “Fire. Water. Earth. And Air—the thunderbird, many do not recognize.”
He nodded. “There, I think.”
“House Wakinyan. Is good! The thousand paths to a single goal, they say. House of Wind. Would that I had as gentle an introduction.”
“Is the hair a . . . Phoenix House thing?”
The man laughed. “Solomonari thing. Houses don’t care what you look like.”
The fish was sizzling, and the man flipped the steaks deftly with his forked stick. “You are hungry,” he observed. "Here.”
From the side of the grill, another plate, much the same as the first. Tin, with the academy seal stamped into it. “Take one. For luck!”
Dalliance accepted the hot fish with reverent hands. “Thanks.”
It was slathered in a peppery sauce, with deep grill marks.
“See you ‘round, kid,” the man said cheerfully.
Dalliance waved, then turned back towards the great double doors of his new home.
Penitence Hall was a squat building two tiers down from the temple, along a wall-hugging and narrow walkway and several hundred steps’ stairs. The unsmiling matron had accepted his letter of acceptance, produced a key, and marched him up two flights of steps to his apartment, which compared favorably to his shack through having a balcony, though the balcony was under the overhanging ‘ceiling’ of arches and stone that made up the tier above his—trader’s tier, perhaps?
No sunlight would ever grace his balcony, but he could look out at the cool shaded block of city streets and merchant-houses, and breathe in the cool fresh wind sweeping through the ever-chilled pillars, building-sized and looming in the dark.
But the strangest thing to Dalliance had been the discovery that the apartments were single occupant, and that there was no particular distinction between who lived where, as there was only one key for each apartment.
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Veridian Trails, a short, scowling young woman several years his senior, had turned out to be his neighbor. Their first interaction had been quite unpleasant, as he had miscounted the number of doors and attempted to unlock her door with his key, while the Matron quite failed to check what was taking so long.
"Well, that’ll be all," she’d said instead, dusting invisible filth off her hands and walking purposefully away, leaving her new charge alone. “You’re academy bound, you’ll figure it out.”
His neighbor and landlady having left him to his own devices, Dalliance stared into the darkness off his balcony, and breathed it all in.
Over the following few days, Dalliance fell into a rhythm. Charity had been housed in the somewhat more proper apartments; she had such conveniences as a courtyard, an antechamber for visitors, quarters for her guardsmen, and even a kitchen. However, in a bid to avoid "playing house"—one of her guardsmen’s words, not hers or Dalliance’s—they found themselves inevitably out upon the town.
Enjoying the increased regeneration afforded by his Spirit investment, Dalliance began to familiarize himself with the eateries on Lapidarium Place and their offerings. It was a revelation to discover that his mother had been a terrible cook. He would walk the temple grounds with Whimsy under the watchful eye of the mistress of novices or her staff, whereupon he would oftentimes encounter Earnest as well as the newly-made acolyte completed his duties about the Hall of All Gods.
Earnest, meanwhile, had moved into the novice house—the chief of ironies, as he was now the only one from their village that Whimsy had occasion to see more than once a day. Dalliance had done his best, but he was unable to help the geographic isolation of the temple’s novice quarters, located several streets above his own.
The reasons given were excellent. To wit: Lapidarium Place was where nearly all of their practical work would be taking place; the great rock galleries, which had once been quarried, were excellent for throwing fireballs or what-have-you without the risk to bystanders who might otherwise be injured. Dalliance had fully expected an arena of sorts in the Academy, but the Imperial Arena apparently served double duty: its primary purpose, of course, being sanctioned dueling, and the secondary being contests of magic for the purposes of achieving a grade.
And there would be contests. Scholastic achievement, he was told, would make on third of his grade, with contests making up another third, and the final portion being his -service record on the Wall during the school year.
Most interesting, however, had been Earnest's onboarding. His friend reached out for him early the third night via a runner who deposited the message, accepting one thaum in return for safe delivery and speeding off to his next destination.
Dalliance unrolled it to read:
I am going to kill someone. Would you mind meeting up terribly much?
A place, that message, and that was it.
Dalliance trod on, pulling on his shoes—now finally becoming worn in after three surgeries throughout the capital, combined with the need to look nice, or nice-adjacent anyway.
They met at the Overlook, where almost a year before they’d been planning petty theft. Looking at him now, Dalliance could already tell the difference time had made. His friend's acolyte robes were nicer than office apparel. They were white with panels along the chest and sides from top to bottom, enumerating the gods. For the ones Earnest was studying . . . he bore all six.
"I hate it," he said. They’d been walking for a little while up and down the Overlook as orange flashes announced the arrival of each descending point of light hurled from whoever manned the mages' tower today. Fireballs in action, just like Dalliance used to dream about.
Earnest had been following the priests from door to door, ‘ministering’ to the flock. And it had only taken three days for him to lose his cool about it.
"They’re all corrupt," he complained in summary. "Every single one. I’ve got to get out of this town, Dalliance."
He wasn’t serious about leaving, but was about the issue at hand.
And so Dalliance started meeting his friend for venting sessions along with everything else, and between one thing and another, though a week of freedom sounded interminable, it was over practically before he knew it. Firthsday turned to Theaday, and on through—Dowsday, Gresday, Paxday, and it was finally Patersday.
The realization struck him with the force of a physical blow when he finally registered the date. Commencement was tomorrow.
The feather touch of his oldest friend upon his shoulder was even more surprising, but in a nicer way.
"You did it, Dalliance,” she said.
Dalliance looked up, his face alight. The worries and stresses of the day seemed to fall away, leaving only the uncomplicated happiness of a thirteen-year-old boy in the presence of his very first friend.
Topaz zipped down and alighted on his shoe, which was propped up on the bedpost. He was sprawled upside-down on his cot, a textbook from his school list propped open, in the boneless way of youth everywhere.
"I’ve missed you," she said.
Dalliance smiled. He was, he knew, much matured from the boy she’d seen all those years before, hardened a little, perhaps, but at the end of the day, he was still her Dalliance.
He watched as she cupped her tiny hands in an invocation of Danu, raised them to her lips, and blew. A glittering mineral dust scattered from her palms, settling over his shoes in a shimmering film.
"I bless you," she said, "to be sure and swift, and to always land on your feet."
Dalliance looked at his newly sparkling shoes in surprise. "Couldn't you have done that before?"
“I saved that one up all spring for you," she told him. “Besides. You’ve got more authority over your self, so I get more leeway. And it won’t last for long," she said. "It will wear off. But this first week, these first few weeks anyway, is your chance to make an impression. This is when you’re going to set a foundation for your social success, up on the Walltop."
“Already plotting my social commencement, and I haven’t even met my teachers yet," he protested. Then, thoughtfully: "Though I’ve met the librarian. She seems nice."
"When did you grow up to be such a bold man?" teased Topaz dramatically. "Chatting up service workers."
He blushed. She quirked her lip in a fond smile.
The thought surfaced, unbidden, that one day soon he might not be able to see her when she didn't show herself. The realization brought a strange pang, a feeling mirrored in the sudden, quiet sadness that had replaced the teasing light in her eyes.
With a buzz of her wings, Topaz fluttered up and alighted on the top of the flat, canvas-covered carpentry of his wooden closet and chest of drawers. It was the sort of furniture that was ugly but functional.
"I am so proud of you, Dalliance," she told him.
His returned smile was bittersweet, and his sleep poorly that night.
When he woke, early on Firthsday, Commencement day, he saw the note on his dresser.
Dalliance,
We should talk.
—P. Pleasant.
Solomonari dude!
Who’s gonna be the least favorite house?