White Hall (The High King: A Tale of Alus Book 10) (41 page)

Giving him what he believed was a thankful look for his words, Uliya replied with a shrug and said, “That would be nice, Piotr.”

Her eyes strayed in the direction of the back door into the garden even so letting him know her preference.

Trying not to draw in the others as they spoke, Piotr leaned slightly closer to the girl sitting next to him and mused, “Niklaus always was the one that people preferred talking to; so if you don’t want to dance with me I’d understand.”

With a start, the red head turned to look at him in surprise. Her blue eyes widened as she thought that he had felt insulted by her distraction. “I guess I shouldn’t be worried over it. Niklaus has always given Xara more attention than me. They seem to get along pretty well, and it isn’t like he has ever said anything to make me believe that he was interested that way.

“On the other hand, I didn’t mean to imply that I don’t like you; but considering yourself as second best to him surprises me. People seem to like and respect you a lot actually. Katya and Cheleya have been your friends since before I met you and I think if you asked Lyssa to dance every night, she wouldn’t complain either,” Uliya giggled as she got him to look towards the water novice to catch her gazing at him.

Piotr noticed a slight blush as the brown haired novice cast her green eyes down at her plate to quickly stab into her vegetables. He wanted to smile at the idea, but the boy was as much a novice with young women as he was with magic, Piotr thought to himself. Working with animals was much easier, especially since the novice could make them do as he wished if worse came to worst.

Since that first day of orientation working to light their lamps, Lyssa had seemed to like working with him, though they were almost always a part of a group when they did. Piotr looked to Uliya again and shrugged.

“I can ask her if you don’t want to dance,” he stated without making that his decision unless Uliya would rather dance with someone else.

Playing with her food with her fork, Uliya leaned her chin onto her free left hand and sighed, “Of course, I’ll dance with you. I just don’t want you to do it out of pity, because I don’t seem to matter to your brother.”

Piotr wanted to grind his teeth. Dealing with girls or women, depending on how they viewed themselves which could be equally annoying to discover; was maddening. They never seemed to simply give a straight answer, the boy thought to himself. Perhaps part of that came from being wizards as well, which certainly was unlikely to help.

He still had no idea what was going on with Iris for instance. The girl had seemed to like him on the trip, but the apprentice had been in eyesight within the dining hall and never bothered to say a word to him in roughly three weeks. Again the nature novice longed for his time on the farm where there was more space than people and he could keep to himself instead of dealing with others’ problems.

In spite of a less than enthusiastic start to the night, Piotr took the red haired cadet’s hand and led her to the dance floor as the musicians started up the night with an energetic warm up dance. The two moved well together. It wasn’t his first time dancing with the Uliya, but they rarely made a habit of it either.

By the second song, Uliya was looking up at him slightly examining his face with her blue eyes. When she asked, “Do you often try to make up for your brother?” it was only partly a surprise.

“What do you mean?” he asked only vaguely comprehending what she might be inferring.

She sighed. “While I like your brother, if we’re being honest about him, he tends to think about himself more than anyone else. I guess a lot of people are like that though.”

“Trying to become the best seems to be a wizard trait and probably for mages too,” he replied with a shrug. “To be the best, sometimes they’ll step all over other people's feelings or worse to get there, I suppose; but I think Niki isn’t necessarily that way. He likes to have fun, sometimes at others’ expense, but I don’t think that he always is just thinking of himself. He’s more caring than that, I believe.”

Uliya looked at him a moment as they danced before she shrugged, “I suppose no one would really like him, if that wasn’t true as well.”

Nodding in return as she looked thoughtful, Piotr mused, “Whether he’ll ever be someone I would recommend a girl should date is probably an entirely different matter, but I am hoping that he might be a bridge between wizards and battle mages. We haven’t been here that long, but I am amazed how many from both sides seem to push the others away. Apprentices think they're better than novices and mages. Since we can learn and become apprentices and full wizards; that can change. Cadets can become falcons, but wizards look at them as inferior because they have less power.

“Maybe by having people like Nik and Katya’s brother around to show that mages can do more and be more than any wizard thought before; we will see change. Since I am only a novice and from a farm, maybe I am missing something; but I don’t see anything inferior about mages,” he finished looking the girl in the eyes.

Uliya’s hand slid from his shoulder to the back of his neck pulling him closer to kiss him on the lips. A little surprised by the girl, Piotr didn’t pull back and enjoyed the soft warmth of her lips. It was a short kiss, yet amazingly affectionate.

“Not that I mind, but what was that for?” the boy asked slightly breathless.

Giggling, Uliya replied, “Oh, I was just curious and thought you deserved something for being so nice.”

He wanted to shake his head, but tried not to read too much into the gesture. Since the girl seemed to be into his brother so much, Piotr doubted it was much more than she said it was. Still, the young mage had certainly made for an interesting dance partner.

After a handful of dances, the two separated and after getting a drink Piotr noticed the girl had been immediately scooped up by another cadet. Hoping that she was in good hands, the boy rejoined a couple of his classmates and friends sitting off to the side talking.

Katya looked up as she sat besides Briahnna and Job. “Did you have a nice dance with Uliya?” the girl asked with a knowing smile.

Nodding in return, the novice responded, “She’s a nice girl. It’s just a shame that Niklaus seems to be playing a game with both of them. My guess is that he is more interested in them as friends at this point, so perhaps he is leading them on more than he should.”

Job shook his head, though his words didn’t contradict his friend, “It’s not like he could get away with much in the school anyway. Unless mages are less strict, the teachers have made it blatantly apparent that we shouldn’t even be looking at girls like that.”

At the slight frown from Briahnna next to him, the boy winced and placed his arm over her shoulder trying to tell her where he stood with the girl. The two had definitely become close, Piotr thought, but it wasn’t his business and he had too many other things to think about without taking on who was dating each other or if.

Thinking on the various lectures from the mentors, Katya replied, “Well, they don’t want us acting like peasants out on the farm popping out children to help work the fields or something like that. We have more important things to do than worrying about marrying or having children, not that I would at thirteen anyway.”

“You’ve never pretended with your friends?” Briahnna asked with a raised eyebrow knowing how most young girls were in Delanne. Playing dress up, including playing brides getting married, was pretty common among the younger girls growing up in town.

“I meant no one should be seriously thinking about it, especially now that we are wizards,” Katya noted thinking of how her mother would have put her family before missions. “There is too much to learn here and once we are competent, there will always be tasks that require us to remain free of too many ties.”

Piotr’s sigh was nearly drowned out by the musicians and noise of the other students in the hall, but his words were said loud enough to be heard by his friends, “Our lives aren’t our own essentially for the next ten to twenty years at the least. I don’t think I like the thought of being owned by our country, even if I know that what we are a part of is incredibly important.”

The others nodded but Katya quickly rebounded giving him a smile as she popped to her feet. “Well, if we have to be here with our future all but written for us, we need to have what fun we can. Come on you gloomy little novices. Let’s go dance.”

Grabbing Piotr’s hand, the girl laughed brightly making the boy smile as well. She was right. They were entirely too young to be so depressing and it wasn’t like there wasn’t a lot of enjoyment in what they were doing for him at least. There was fun to be had as Katya had mentioned, so he let his friend drag him onto the dance floor once more to enjoy the moment.

The sun shining down into the corner of the fire wizards’ courtyard looked stronger than it felt. Though the calendar said Spring had arrived almost a month and a half ago, White Hall remained too cool for Katya to remove the lightweight coat she wore over her long sleeves. Like the novice white of her dress, the jacket was a color match as was the clothing of the rest of the young wizards in the courtyard.

For a school dedicated to magic, it seemed like a particularly boring thing to be forced to wear. Equally annoying for the girl was the test she was failing at the moment.

After her tongue licked her lips as she nervously tried to remember the wording of the air spell, Katya prepared to attack the target twenty five feet away from her. A ball made of leather just shy of a foot in diameter sat on a pole with its attached bowl at the top. The bowl was almost as shallow as a plate and sat at nearly her chest height. It was one of about two dozen set up for the novices to practice upon in the courtyard.

Her words seemed right and her fingers expanded and contracted trying to make the proper shapes to set her mind right to cast her spell. It was simple air magic, but it continued to elude her. Thrusting towards the ball as the command finished, Katya imagined a burst of wind rushing towards it to push the offending target from its mount.

If even a slight breeze managed to affect the ball, the girl couldn’t even be sure that it was from her attempt at the wind spell. A target to the right of hers was struck an invisible blow shortly afterward making the ball roll strong enough to move off the far side of the base to drop onto the ground with a double bounce before rolling towards the stone wall beyond the targets.

Letting out a hoot of joy; the brown haired novice, Alec, who had started with her the first day of orientation, glanced over at the girl and winced at her glare.

“Sorry, air is supposed to be my field according to our mentors though, so it is probably going to be easier for me than you this time,” the boy said trying to avoid Katya’s wrath.

Not typically a jealous girl, at least where magic was concerned, Katya just felt frustrated when new spells refused to work for her. It wasn’t the first and always she had put in the time and practice so she could eventually master each one. Still all that work seemed like a waste of time when the novice felt magic differently from the way she was being taught.

While she didn’t doubt when her mentors told her learning the proper way would make things easier in the future, the novice remembered watching her brother use magic in a completely different way. It was simple and direct without all the mumbling of unknown languages or twisting of fingers and hands, but it wasn’t the way wizards cast. Well, it wasn’t the way for most. Magnus, the Winter’s Edge champion had used several spells from the battle mages to win and the handful of wizards in Sebastian’s team had learned quite a few as well.

Racking her memory a moment, Katya tried to recall the words she had heard him use. She had also asked Niklaus to keep her informed as the cadet learned his new spells, so that she could figure out as much of the simpler magic as she could. It was a fall back plan, though the girl hadn’t told Ylena of her strategy. The older woman had seen her use mage commands a few times, but only after Katya could prove that she understood the proper spell casting first.

“Gust,” the novice muttered trying to imagine the strike of wind on the ball as she had been for half an hour now. Magic rose in the girl and a strong gust of wind focused on the ball driving it off after just a moment.

“Stop cheating, Katya,” Ylena said quietly into her ear from just behind her startling the young girl. “The whole point of studying the wizard way is to make sure you don’t lapse into wilder habits. Wilders who can’t adjust rarely manage to learn half of what those who use the training as a foundation can. Don’t short change yourself by using what is easy for you or you may find your magic limited as well.”

Ignoring the wizard’s comments a moment, Katya tried the proper way having felt the magic work from her “cheating” way of doing it. With a moment’s concentration and the proper spell form followed, the novice managed to recreate the magic properly though with slightly less control. It wasn’t as solid a push, but the second target did roll over the lips of the bowl to fall onto the ground.

The girl turned to face her mentor with a satisfied smile, though she avoided grinning at the older woman in her triumph. “Sorry, it was easier to find the feel of the spell with a mage version I remember my brother using in the tournament. Once I knew how it should work, the wizard version wasn’t hard at all.

“I just wish we could at least work in common tongue. Using some ancient language that no one really understands, just doesn’t make sense to me, I guess,” Katya finished looking sheepishly at the diplomat wizard in her black wizard robes and cloak. Silver striping made her clothing look rich and even fancy compared to the students around the woman.