1.
Out of all of the trainers Aegis had, Kazan was his favorite.
She looked scary, it was true, hatchet-faced and stern. But she wasn’t cruel—she didn’t hit the children in her charge, at least not often, and if someone was falling behind, she wouldn’t make an example out of them in front of the others. Other trainers would do that, even though it wasn’t the student’s fault, most of the time. Some mages were just born stronger than others, and the gap grew bigger with age.
Also, importantly, she didn’t play favorites. She didn’t treat Aegis differently from the other vassals’ children, even though he was a ward of the lord’s family.
That was how Aegis preferred it. He didn’t like being reminded that he didn’t fit in with the others, even if it was intended in a good way.
Aegis was eight years old, old enough to know that his upbringing was strange. The lord and lady of the House had more important things to do than raise him personally, of course; instead of parents, he had a rotating roster of part-time caretakers and minders. Sometimes he’d be given to a new governess, as a test run, to see if she could be trusted with little Clytemnestra in the future. The governesses were always on their best behavior around him, but he understood that their kindness wasn’t really about him, just like the favoritism of the trainers wasn’t really about him.
Once, in the woods, Aegis had stumbled across a lizard lying under a tree, so sluggish and still that he’d thought it was dead at first. Lizards got that way, when they were cold, and this one was cold because it wasn’t getting enough sun. There was some sun, falling through the wispy-clouded sky and green canopy, scattering bright coins of light across the leaf litter. But a breeze was rustling the leaves, making those spots of light dance over the lizard, no spot strong enough or lingering long enough to truly warm its numb form. Aegis had thought that the lizard might feel the way he felt.
(He’d taken the lizard and carried it out into the open, setting it onto a sun-warmed boulder by the stream. That had been a mistake. The next time he’d gone by, its guts stained the stone, ants crawling over the smear. Something had gotten to it. The lizard was right to hide in the shadows, to content itself with scraps of light. The cost of leaving was too high to bear.)
During Instructor Kazan’s training sessions, though, he could forget that uncomfortable, cold feeling in his chest. As usual, he timed his arrival in the training room carefully, not so early that he’d draw attention, not so late that he couldn’t get a good view of her sword drill demonstrations. Some of the other children complained that her style was boring—some of their other instructors were much more flashy, more aggressive—but he didn’t think that way. She moved—just right—no more than she needed to, no less, not wasting an inch. She could beat any of the others in a fight, Aegis was sure.
He was still thinking about it as the class paired up for sparring practice. His partner was Cuan Weaver, a big, loud boy who slapped him on the back as hard as he could before they began, a friendly gesture that wasn’t friendly at all.
“I’ve seen you,” Cuan sneered. “You think you’re so good.”
“I don’t—”
He struck. Aegis leapt back, the sword whistling past inches from his nose, and brought up his own blade in a high guard position.
Instructor Kazan had moved from dodging to guarding much more smoothly, Aegis thought. He remembered the way she’d set her feet and turned her arms. He let his guard fall, so he could try again. Cuan struck. Aegis dodged, and brought up his sword again. That was better.
With every strike, Cuan’s face got redder. “Fight back!”
But Cuan wouldn’t have liked it if Aegis had just beaten him right away either. That would hurt his pride too. “I’m fighting.”
“You’re playing games with me! You think you’re so good, don’t you?”
So Aegis gave a few jabs at him, like he seemed to want. But that only seemed to make Cuan angrier. His strikes got wilder, harder, forcing Aegis back. Every time their swords clashed, the vibrations jarred Aegis’s arms. Eight, he counted, muscles straining. Nine. Ten.
He twisted his blade, disarming Cuan, and leveled it at Cuan’s throat.
That should be good enough, he thought.
But Cuan’s face only twisted into an ugly snarl. He roared and grabbed Aegis’s sword by the blade.
You weren’t supposed to do that. A real sword would have cut his fingers off. But they were using wooden practice swords, and Cuan could yank, sending Aegis staggering. A leg swept behind his. He twisted as he fell, narrowly avoiding a kick to the ribs. A second kick clipped his shoulder painfully. He scrambled to get up, but Cuan dropped onto his back, knocking the breath out of him. Grunting, the bigger boy pinned him with his weight; Aegis scrabbled for leverage—
“That’s enough,” came a voice from behind them, cold and authoritative enough to stop even Cuan.
Kazan looked down at them with flinty eyes. “This is sword training, not brawling. Cuan, I’ll be dealing with you later. Aegis, come with me.”
Cuan climbed off sullenly. Aegis got up, rubbing his shoulder, and followed Kazan into the hallway. “I’m sorry, Instructor Kazan,” he said.
She eyed him. “What for?”
“For causing trouble in training.”
She gave him a look. “It’s generally considered arrogance to take credit for what someone else did.”
He ducked his head. “I’m sorry, Instructor Kazan.”
That earned him another look. “It’s another form of arrogance to think you can choose how other people see you.”
“I’m—”
“Don’t.” Kazan closed her eyes briefly. “If Rose could see this, I don’t know if she’d laugh or cry,” she muttered under her breath.
She said it so quietly that Aegis barely caught it. It was like the lightest brush against a stinging nettle. His head jerked up before he could stop himself. “That’s my mother’s name.”
Kazan’s lips thinned. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Did you know my parents? My mother?”
“None of your business.”
“Please.” His voice was too loud. He tried to make it quieter. “Do you mean—would she not have liked me?”
“It doesn’t matter,” snapped Kazan. “Your parents are dead and you’re alive. They were grunts, footsoldiers and you’re a ward of the Redbriars. You have more than they could have hoped for. Act like it or you’ll regret it.”
Complicated emotions passed over her face. “I take back what I said earlier. With the lords and ladies you’ll be around, it’s better if you’re…thoughtful of them. Yes, I see the use of that toward your superiors. You’ll live longer. And your parents would want that for you, if nothing else.”
Aegis shivered. He’d always had a kind of sense that death lurked over his shoulder, just out of sight, as if it had come when he was a baby to take his parents and never gone away. But her words made it seem closer than ever. His shoulder gave another throb.
“Regardless,” Kazan sighed. “I called you out here to tell you that from now on you won’t be part of this class.”
His stomach lurched. “I won’t?”
“You don’t belong here if you’re actively stooping down to the other students’ level. You aren’t getting much further benefit from the class if you can spend it fooling around refining minor details of swordplay. I’m informing my superiors that you should be transferred to advanced lessons ahead of schedule. Congratulations.”
It didn’t feel like an achievement. “Does that mean I’ll have a different teacher?”
“Naturally. I’m busy with this class.” She didn’t look upset. She never got her personal feelings involved. “Embrace it, Aegis. You’re a ward of House Redbriar. It’s a bad idea to let your lord and lady down.”
She clapped him on his good shoulder. “You can have the rest of the class off. Dismissed.”
She left him standing alone in the hallway.
2.
Aegis bowed his head in front of Leda Hastings, feeling her cool gaze pass over him.
“I broke the vase, my lady,” he said. “I’m very sorry. I deserve any punishment you give me.”
“Hmm,” said Leda. “That’s terribly clumsy of you, Aegis.”
He knew she would be smiling faintly right then. Both of them knew who’d really broken the vase; the hallway door next to them was cracked open just a little, allowing Cly to peep through.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to go without dinner tonight,” said Leda. She couldn’t let him go unpunished, but that was a light sentence compared to others she would hand out. She appreciated his loyalty to Cly at a time when even the lowliest servants whispered about their defective, magicless heir when they thought no one could hear. She would remember that about him long after the shards of the vase were swept into the trash. She would be in a good mood for the rest of the evening at the minimum, which would be a mercy. The thought of one of her bad moods terrified the entire household. They’d all be grateful to him for taking one for the team.
Aegis bowed his head even lower. “I understand, my lady.”
After she’d left, Cly slipped out from behind the door. “I was so scared,” she said breathlessly, wrapping her chubby arms around him. “You saved me, Aegis! You’re the best!”
Leda would have punished Cly even more lightly, of course—a few stern words at most. The nastier Cly’s father got, the more indulgent her mother grew. But this was a better outcome overall. Cly got away scot-free, Leda was pleased, and Aegis, in his own way, had gained even as he lost.
“Don’t worry about it,” Aegis said, smiling. “What’s that in your hand?”
Cly pulled away and opened her hand, revealing a rainbow of sticky, colorful lumps. “Candy! I brought them just for you. You should eat them, since you won’t have dinner.”
All the yellow ones were already gone. Cly’s favorite flavor was lemon too. Aegis took a black candy, not because he liked licorice, but because she didn’t. He was used to her; even if she said the candies were for him, if she saw too many of her second or even third favorite candies disappearing, she’d get antsy and run off with the rest. And since he wouldn’t have dinner, he wanted as many candies as he could.
Together, they walked down to the playroom. A year ago, Aegis would never have been allowed to spend so much time with Cly. Leda had done her best to surround Cly with cousins from House Hastings, to strengthen her bond with her mother’s maiden House. But nowadays that wasn’t safe anymore—they couldn’t let anyone outside the immediate family find out that Cly’s magic wasn’t getting stronger with age. So Leda was having Aegis keep her company during his free time.
“What did Princess Astra do today?” Aegis asked.
Cly caught him up on the continued adventures of her dolls. “The demon snakes tried to stop Princess Astra, but she blew them all up! Bam! Kaboom! And in the cavern she found the grail of the angels!”
“Didn’t she find a grail of the angels last time?” Aegis asked.
“She found a second one, silly! So then she drank from it. She was already the most powerful mage that ever lived, but now she’s twice as powerful. She soars out of the cave and does loops!” With one hand, Cly grabbed and waved the sparkling princess doll. With the other, she handed him a familiar stuffed dog and looked at him expectantly. “Now, what does her loyal hound Blue-Blue say when he sees her?”
“Gee, mistress, you’re amazing!” Aegis said, in his best funny voice.
Cly scowled. “You should sound more excited than that!”
Aegis tried again. “Wow! Mistress, you’re amazing!” He shook the stuffed dog, as if it was quaking in awe.
Cly laughed and clapped her hands together. “That’s better!” She had Princess Astra pet Blue-Blue on the head. “Good boy!”
As Cly acted out their return to Princess Astra’s palace in the sky, the thought occurred to Aegis that Cly was more interested in the lives of her dolls than his. She hadn’t even seemed to notice the bandage on his face, and it had been hours since he returned from training.
Aegis frowned. He shouldn’t be thinking that way.
Why couldn’t he be happy with what he had? He liked how much closer he’d gotten to Cly and Leda in the past year. They were what he always wanted. They appreciated him. They needed him. They made it clear what they wanted from him, and then he could go and please them. It was a relationship he understood. Cly’s sticky fingers clinging to his felt like the closest he’d ever come to belonging.
If there was something missing from this picture, he wouldn’t know. Every piece of affection he’d received in his life had to be earned, starting with his parents’ deaths, which had earned him his upbringing as the Redbriars’ ward. That was how things worked. And lately he was earning more affection than ever before. And he was definitely going to keep putting in the work, so the affection wouldn’t go away anytime soon. So it was all good.
He was woolgathering. With a start, he remembered that he was supposed to be playing make-believe with Cly—who was still chattering away, having remembered a detail of Princess Astra’s earlier adventures that she’d forgotten to tell him earlier.
“—So she went down and found a chest of treasure! There were fifty diamonds in there, and a magic dress made of feathers, like the one Mother promised me, but yellow instead of pink—”
She hadn’t noticed anything.
The room was warm. Heating runes glowed cheerful shades of orange on the walls. But for some reason, Aegis felt cold.
3.
The crack of a twig gave her away.
“Hi Cass,” Aegis said, getting up from the stream bank.
She huffed. “So close! I thought I could sneak up on you this time.”
“You could have, if you’d used magic,” he pointed out.
“But that’s cheating! I’m way stronger at you than magic. It wouldn’t be impressive if I beat you with magic.”
That was one of many things he didn’t understand about her, even after having known her for a few months. She could be a master of cunning and trickery when it came to evading Leda or getting even with Cly, but at other times she displayed a strange, stubborn sense of honor.
One that had landed her in hot water more than once. “Are you hiding from Leda?”
“What? No!”
“Did you need my help for something else, then?”
Her expression was growing increasingly offended. “I came here to hang out with you, and you’re calling me useless? If you’re going to be like that, I’m leaving!”
“Don’t, that wasn’t what I meant.”
And she said he was confusing. Aegis sighed, although he wasn’t sure he actually disliked the funny feeling her words put in his chest. It was pleasant. “So what do you want to do, then?”
“What were you doing before?” She came up to him. “You were looking at the stream.”
“Yeah. There’s tadpoles. They’re baby frogs, before they’ve grown legs.”
“I know what a tadpole is,” Cass said, rolling her eyes. “I’m not like Cly.” But she admitted, “I’ve never seen one in real life.”
They crouched down together to watch the little black blobs swim through the water. “They’re cuter than I expected,” she said.
“What did you expect they’d be like?”
“I didn’t realize they’d be this wiggly! It’s fun to watch. Which one is your favorite?”
What a weird question. They were tadpoles. He randomly pointed at one in the middle of the bunch.
Cass sighed loudly. “You didn’t even try!”
“Well, which one is your favorite, then?”
She pointed decisively at the one tadpole swimming in the opposite direction from the others. “That one.”
He supposed he should have known. Cass was like that.
A breeze stirred the tree shadows a few paces away. Aegis suddenly shivered.
“You shouldn’t spend so much time with me,” he blurted.
She scoffed. “I snuck out and there’s just the two of us here. You don’t have to worry about Cly or Leda getting mad.”
“No, it’s not that.” He searched for the right words. “I know I helped you a lot at the start, but you shouldn’t just rely on me. You should make friends with other vassals.”
“Them?” A darkness entered her eyes. “I hear the things they say about me and Mom. Mom can be nice if she wants, but I don’t make friends with jerks.”
To be honest, Aegis understood how the rest of the household felt. Their new guests brought out the worst side of Leda. She’d gotten more snappish, more demanding, faster to hand out harsh punishments. The wrath of one lady of the House could make life difficult for the hundreds of people underneath her—and it was much easier for them to take it out on Cass and her mother than on Leda Hastings, or Priam Redbriar himself.
“They’ll go easier on you if you make life easier for them,” he insisted. “I know from experience. You have to work at getting people to like you.”
“That sounds horrible.”
“That’s just how things are.” He reminded himself that he was older and wiser, the one who grew up at Redbriar Manor, while she was the newcomer who didn’t understand how anything worked. She hadn’t even known what a mage was when she first arrived. “Cass, I’ve had to deal with a lot of people who aren’t very nice to me. I get that it’s not fun. But I promise, it’s worth the effort to smooth things over with the people you’ll be living with. You’ll get there in the end. Don’t you want to have an easier time here?”
She waited until he was done with his speech to meet his eyes stubbornly. “I want to hang out with you.”
Sunlight blazed on her light brown hair, the tips of her lashes. She was light; he was meant for shadow. He wanted to flinch from her as if from a hot coal. “Why do you like me so much?” he asked, helplessly.
“Because we’re alike.”
“We’re nothing alike.”
“You don’t belong with the others either.”
Aegis froze. He wanted to laugh her off. He wanted to tell her that wasn’t true. Because it wasn’t true. He’d made a place for himself here. It had taken so much, but now the other vassals tolerated him, and Leda trusted him, and didn’t Cass herself have to go to him for help more often than not?
He—he’d prove it. “Didn’t you say you wanted to learn how to fish with magic?” he asked.
The prospect instantly distracted her. “Wait, you’ll finally teach me?”
He smiled. “You’re good enough to do the magic now.”
He wrapped himself in the protective mantle of serving as a mentor, and shoved her words as far out of his mind as they’d go.
By the time he remembered them again, it had been too late.