Dragon Student: Sythyry's Journal 1 Read online

  Havune, yes, would prefer to live with his relatives, because he is Cani. But his relatives are poor, and the longhouse is so crowded that a Cani can’t wag his tail without tipping over an agèd aunt and getting the tip of it in a nephew’s soup, and he knows they were struggling a bit to let him stay there even for a week or so.

  And Havune is pleasant and Havune’s parents are married to a baron and Havune’s uncle had met Thery’s parents a few times and certainly knew Countess Gloun, so that part was settled.

  I am the most desirable roommate, naturally. This does me no personal credit at all. I will sleep in the fireplace and my clothes will fit in the seventh part of a closet, and whoever shares my room will have more space. So Dustweed and I will take the smaller room, and Thery and Havune will take the larger one.

  I do wish Bandazure hadn’t been quite so quick to leave for home. I had to spend a cley to make the textbooks follow me — and had to go over roofs and through alleys so as to not be seen looking silly with five big books waddling through the air after me.

  [Cley is the non-physical currency of magic: a typical spell costs one cley, regardless of how strong or intricate it is. Most World Tree people get a dozen or so cley a day, refreshed at dawn. -bb]

  Starting Classes

  ‘Twas the Night Before Classes

  Classes begin tomorrow, and Havune and Thery assure me that that I won’t have the seventh part of a second to spare to myself once they begin. I have chosen Ancient Ketherian History, the Study of Differences, Elementary Theory of Tempador Magic, and Current Politics of Aradrueia, and, for the gymnastic requirement, Flirtatious Dancing.

  (Why Aradrueian politics, you may well ask, for, if you had been reading this journal since some years before I started it, you would never have heard me mention Aradrueia before? I was going to take Choinxeian Politics because I live on Choinxeia, but Thery warned me — and more seriously than that warning about spare time — that Professor Thistro of Choinxeian Politics was a pompous monstrosity who reveled in reciting a hundred kings a minute, and Professor Urastra of Aradrueian was actually worth listening to. Therefore I shall wait for another three months on the Choinxeian Politics.)

  As my first assignment, though not at school, I suppose in preparation for my proper receipt of my allowance, Hezimikkinen had me summoned up to the Owl Garden at the ducal palace, where I was to pose ‘til the sun was nearly full of flame while a tall corsetted Rassimel woman sketched me with colored charcoal. She is Lady Melicanthe ky Hybrasil, and the Duke of Vheshrame is her patron. (I am not at all certain why the Duke wants a portrait of me... perhaps he is running out of other subjects for her to paint? Or has a new toy catapult, for mulberries, and wishes for a suitable target, if he’s still annoyed with me?) The one she was working on when I got there (I saw the sketches and a half-finished painting) was of a Cani healer of no great distinction, armed with a spear. Perhaps there is some subtle artistic aesthetic going on here; Lady Melicanthe has done many portraits of more or less ordinary people of late. Or perhaps the Duke is planning ahead for such time as I’m famous and powerful and don’t have to sleep in the fireplace of a cheap apartment on Teapot Street.

  After staying still for so long, I went flying, then hunting. In Vheshrame, pigeons are plentiful, and, fortunately, not fireproof. I brought a brace of them home, flapping slowly after me from a Ruloc Corpador improvisation. It’s dignified for hunters to carry their catch that way, but not for shoppers to carry theirs. Etiquette is a twisty subject, of which I shall complain further on future days and centuries.

  Woe and Whimpering Anguish [14 Chirreb 4260]

  Lady Melicanthe finished my portrait, with which I am greatly pleased. The portrait now hangs in the Blue Brocade Suite of the ducal palace, by reason of coloration. Since I myself am not allowed to hang (around) there myself, I take this as a badge of indistinction.

  Havune and Thery were right about not having time to spare once classes have started. Not that classes are so terrible, nor yet studying for them — in the simple truth I haven’t studied a bit yet.

  No. For the custom here is that, on the first day of classes, all students go to the buttery. We have a round of drinks; we summarize our class schedules in woe-bestruck terms; we have a round of drinks; we rip a page from each textbook and throw it in the fire; we have a round of drinks. (This is why all the textbooks had a blank page at the back.) Then, of course, the first-term students are educated with terrible stories about all their classes. Professor Urastra, for example, is a fierce giant scyanturge luring us into a trap; any resemblance with a pleasant Rassimel woman is simply a delusion brought about by a lack of liquor! Which is to be remedied by all her students buying a round for everyone... Three tots of consimmon brandy, a quarter-pint of hosh beer, a quarter-pint of celery beer, and a pot of hallucinogenic tea, over the evening, and I was ready to believe that Professor Urastra was a scyanturge — or that I was.

  Certain other points are worthy of mention by morning’s flickering sunlight.

  One’s willingness to drink strong drink really ought to be tempered by one’s awareness of one’s own small body size.

  Even if one is distinctly tipsy, it is advisable to get out of the fireplace before emptying one’s stomach. Codicil to point the second: should one ignore Point the Second, one should clean the fireplace in short order rather than taking a brief nap.

  Rassimel recover from all poisons quickly, and, as a consequence, the entire species deserves to be used as a shuttlecock in a game between Accanax and “Here”, or whichever pair of our evillest gods you like.

  Spontaneous magic is made not one bit easier by the headache that comes from the remnants of strong drink.

  Botching a spontaneous Clean-Smelling Air can return the air to its state as of the middle of the night, with a less well-mellowed pungency. Healoc spells don’t necessarily make things better. They can be used make them into purer, more perfect versions of themselves. You do not want a purer, more perfect version of a post-drinking miasma.

  If the thrice-accursed and hideously-healthy Rassimel roommate chooses to complain or laugh, any form of vengeance is appropriate. Including looking pitiful enough so that she does the spell herself.

  Dustweed, it may be noted, is just as healthy as Thery. Zie removed all the alcohol from zir beer before zie drank it. As least zie had the grace to slip out quietly before I woke up this morning, for which I will rhapsodize zir ten thousand years hence. Or at least talk zir into giving me that spell.

  No rhapsodies now, though. Even the scratching of quill on smooth paper trickles through my head like daggersome icicles.

  The Long Way Around [15 Chirreb 4260]

  The first mystery of academic life is how to find your classes. For your convenience and safety, there is not the least trace of organization or structure to the naming of classrooms: they are named after their decoration, or the artist who designed them, or some notable event that happened there, or the whim of the first professor that taught there, or any other way by which things get names. Neither is there any catalog of where classrooms are. One must simply know — or, if knowing does not suffice, find someone who does.

  When one is readily recognizable as a first-year student in the first week of classes — be it by means of brilliant azure plumage that has never been seen before on campus, or by means of a woefully hung-over face and drooping tail — one may perhaps be given very creative directions to ones’ classes. I got to my morning’s class a third of an hour late. So early? The three grinning Orren upperclassfolk had no special tricks to give a youngster who could fly; they had me circle the steeple on the administrative building seven times, and then sneak in through the dean’s window. I consider myself fortunate here. Twillie, the Orren girl who came in right after me, had been sent through the cleaner parts of the plumbing.

  Nestrune Kreslink is Crown Prince of Daukrhame, and a proud proud Rassimel is he. He refused to follow the senior students’ directions: he strode, clothed, around the buttery, rather than going in the fur through it. Thery and some of her friends are plotting a suitable punishment for Crown Prince Nestrune Kreslink. By custom it must be delivered by the end of the week.

  In all truth and clarity, the end of the week will not come too soon for me. I am taking all these pranks in good humor, more to avoid Nestrune’s looming doom than because it comes naturally to me. Some other first-term students have been heard vowing that they will never do such pranks themselves: a vow that I will not take, though the academy would be a better place if everyone did.

  In Classes [16 Chirreb 4260]

  The Green Tile Classroom, in Sprowlween Hall, is not the prettiest of my classrooms. It is smaller than most. The podium is somewhat off-center. Mistake of the builder? Or design of the artist? I cannot tell. In any case, the aesthetics of the room are rather on the ostentatious side. The legs of the podium are covered with thin scales of green jade: so much stone that some postgraduate student was hired to enchant the podium so that nobody could prize scales off of it for stealing. Thus it is that the speaker in the podium scarcely need do more than whisper, and his voice is heard thundering throughout the classroom.

  Professor Achitka Koimarth may as well have taught in this classroom for a thousand years. (In fact he is a young sort of professor — but, if a professor of Tempador can’t manage to have taught in the same classroom for a thousand years by the time he’s forty, who could?) Absent Tempador tricks — and in all clarity, I can see no sign of Tempador tricks — I suspect it of being some Cani expertise in social matters: he knows when to whisper, and when to whirl around on the podium and boom forth some question to a formerly-inattentive Orren who had just started a reverie of fishing, drooping on her bench and thinking it safe because she was behind
the professor.

  The benches in the Green Tile Classroom are not well-suited for Zi Ri. If I sit on the low bench, I cannot see the professor through the higher. If I sit on the higher, I have no space for tablet and inkwell. Levitating takes enough attention so that I must miss bits of the lecture, or risk crashing to the floor and disturbing everything. Next session I shall come early — after the first week, even the newest students can take direct routes to their classes — and ask if I can sit on the rafters. Some professors might dislike the thought of not towering over all their students, but Professor Koimarth is Cani and should have no doubt who has affan in teaching, regardless of seating arrangements.

  Flirting for Credit [17 Chirreb 4260]

  Flirtatious Dance is proving to be a good bit of exercise. Not the kind I was hoping for, not yet. The teachers — there are four of them, for it is a rather popular class among the unmarried students — started with a dance to try to scare students out of the class. A traditional Thanish triafrella is a bit of an energetic dance. For a modern flourish, or perhaps for extra humiliation, they made us dance it with apples in our muzzles.

  It is hard to flirt properly with an apple in your mouth. It is hard to even pant properly with an apple in your muzzle; the Cani especially were looking rather miserable by the end of the class. I daresay I was looking rather miserable too: not hot of course, it takes a goodly fire to do that, but I’m far and away the smallest person in the class, and they didn’t shrink the set that I have to run around. Yes, run, my hind legs on the floor, my forelegs carrying two glasses of wine, and my wings trying desperately not to tangle anyone’s tail. A proper fool I looked — just like everyone else in the room.

  I suppose that “flirtation” will wait for the next lesson.

  For me, that is. Thery’s boyfriend Yarwain has resurfaced. His skyboat was delayed by a pack of ulgrane — they never got close to him, evidently, but he had to stay in Ulmarn for four days while knights flew around and did knightly things.

  “I bravely challenged the dangers of the Cafe Dumard — I defeated a whole roast pocker in the morning, and a dread and terrible loaf of squash-stuffed bread in the evening!” he proclaimed. If he is not a courtier, he has been reading too many novels. Thery laughed a great deal, and took him off to some park or other.

  Dustweed and I scowled at each other, and shrugged, and spiked a pot of tea with a bit of brandy. Zie’s somehow managed to offend every other Herethroy in Vheshrame, from the sound of it. Zie cannot get a date with even one Herethroy, much less two. Zie emitted a variety of oblique, self-hatey complaints about this point.

  I don’t think zie was inviting me to play. Just as well really; zie really isn’t very much to my taste, and I imagine sharing a room with a lover could get awkward here and there. Besides, zie’s not in my Flirtatious Dancing course, and I wouldn’t get any homework credit for anything I did with her.

  Postscript: one does not get homework in Flirtatious Dancing, and one does not get class credit for following up on any flirting that happens. I have made the unfortunate discovery that Flirtatious Dancing is a style of dance, rather like Carthenian or Kiss-Dancing.

  Aftermath of the Dance [17 Chirreb 4260, still]

  Now for some worrisome questions. Shall I be a mysterious cryptic lizard sage, or shall I date other students? Shall I date full-mammals, or, perhaps, Herethroy? How much physical affection is proper, since there is no-one else of my own species in the city except for my half-sibling? How much is dignified? Or consonant with a potent degree of decorum and mystery?

  At home, the answers were obvious. Mystery never worked with servants who knew me in the egg, and it’s futile to try it on your parent who is giving you lessons in it. So there was not the slightest reason not to ask (as the children of the wealthy and powerful often do) for special services from Amberwave now and then ... not until Palering told me Amberwave was complaining about it. Zie had to stay up late finishing zir work every time I stole an hour out of zir day for kissing, and Palering was scolding zir for it, and zie told Palering why zie was so slow. I stopped asking Amberwave then: it was embarrassing!

  It is only as I scribbled the last few words that I realize that I was more wicked than I might like, then. In hindsight I imagine zie was hoping for some valuable presents, or preferences, or ... whatever it is that the young child of a noble wizard can provide. If I had the money now, I should send zir somewhat, by way of apology. If I had courage and a few days to spare for travel, I would go apologize in person. But I don’t have. Travel time, I mean. Obviously I am as brave as a Gormoror in gravy.

  I even thought of apologizing to Hezimikkinen and trying to get my full allowance back. Next year is probably better than this year. I don’t want to be thought to be flighty and inconstant.

  Which is a long and morose excursion that I had not intended. Spirshash invited me to the Cafe du Fronde for a chalice of kathia. (He takes his kathia with butter and sugar and chissowary — a ghastly combination I think. Prenjuice for me!) He dances, and flirts amazingly well considering he had an apple in his mouth at the time. He’s lightly married to two other Orren students, down from three last year — but he was quite clear that no exclusivity was present that would hinder him from any further adventures. (And that’s all the request he made. He didn’t mention how concerned he was about species.) His courtly manner is excellent (the son of a Lord-High Treasurer or some such, I understand), and his discourse is charming and very very witty — so much that one barely realizes that he cannot stop talking about himself for three consecutive minutes.

  So: as a casual liaison, I think it would be fine. I think I’d be down a bit of status, I suppose, depending on who he’s married to and just how much cross-species affection is disliked here, which I have yet to find out exactly. He’s amusing to talk to. Only about himself, yes, but he’s a thorough and proper Orren and has done a thousand ridiculous things; it’s not like me trying to talk only about my life.

  And — Orren. I have not spent much time around Orren. quasi-mother‘s tower staff was mostly Herethroy with a few Rassimel here and there. Orren, it turns out, are alarmingly and upsettingly delightful to observe. They are slinky and elegant and bouncy and excited and happy. They plunge into life and joy as if they were diving down a waterslide into a warm pond. (Also, they dive down waterslides into warm ponds as if that were the supreme joy in life, which it may be, for them.)

  I may have a crush here.

  Dustweed, it may be noted, is no help at all on romantic matters. Zie snapped at me when I brought the topic up. Perhaps zie’s recently been jilted?

  So I suppose I’ll retreat into the tower of the cryptic lizard, for now. It is, at the very least, a safe sort of place. And I daresay that I’ll have another option or two before the end of the term.

  The View from the Rafters [18 Chirreb 4260]

  Professor Achitka was not in the slightest worried about me sitting on a rafter, or on a windowsill, or upon the wide, flat, polished head of the poorly-dressed blue-green Herethroy man in the front row for that matter. There wasn’t room for an inkwell there, even if the Herethroy hadn’t been in the habit of nodding off thrice a lecture. So it was the rafters for me.

  Upon the rafter I chose were: seven and a half pounds of dust; four quills in various degrees of dilapidation; a Cani beret in last year’s style with Halyn clan symbols; two-thirds of a grilled beetle sandwich that cannot possibly be more than a month old; a copy of Vengitarn’s The Squib and the Squaffern with all of the dirty bits carefully underlined in green ink (using a ruler!); a seed-bun which, I daresay, was baked by Flokin before the universe was sprouted; and a very beautiful copper fur-pin that probably cost a dozen lozens.

  I sat on a window ledge and spent the class in constant terror for my inkwell. So did the poor Cani lad sitting under the window.

  Next time, I shall come a third of an hour early, and bring a towel, and clean the rafters.