‘Yeah, sure. I didn’t take it with me last time because I wasn’t really intending to need it.’
‘Never can tell when lust might strike,’ Krystal replied. ‘Believe me, lust was a hot topic at the orphanage. We were always being told about the horrors of lust. Especially after Sister Jackelyn Greendale got pregnant.’
Charlotte was climbing under the covers. ‘One of the nuns got pregnant?’
‘Yes. Well, Sister Jackelyn Greendale was very pretty, and she left the nunnery without much warning, and then we got a lot of lectures about lust. We kind of put two and two together and the answer was a good approximation to four.’ Dressed in her pyjamas, a different set in white with red lace and printed with cherries, Krystal climbed into bed and turned on her side so that Charlotte could cuddle up to her. One of Charlotte’s hands cupped Krystal’s left breast, but Krystal ignored it.
‘Krystal?’ Charlotte asked after a few seconds.
‘Yes, Charley?’
‘Um, do you think I look good in this thing?’
Krystal giggled. ‘I’m really not the person to ask. My fashion sense comes from nuns. You look like a woman intent upon sin. Does that help?’
‘Yes. I guess it does. Glinda was the only other person who’s seen me in it, and now she’s…’
Krystal turned in Charlotte’s arms and returned the hug. Charlotte just pressed her face into Krystal’s shoulder and began to cry. The last girl to cry on Krystal’s shoulder had been one of the other orphans who had been passed over for adoption. The other girl had been thirteen and Krystal had been eleven, but Krystal had always been a little older than her years and everyone knew it. If you could not take your troubles to the sisters, Krystal had been the one to go to, the stable girl, the one who was always there when you needed her, and the one who could handle anything. Lifting a hand, Krystal began to stroke Charlotte’s long hair. Krystal had become used to it, even though no one ever gave a thought that she was always passed over when families came looking to adopt.
‘There you go,’ Krystal crooned. ‘Just let it all out. You’ll feel better for it.’
Concord City, Concordance, 19th Day of Autumngate.
Krystal and Charlotte trudged into the corridor and walked down as far as Charlotte’s door. Charlotte opened it and found it dark inside.
‘I guess Trudy thought she should move back into your room since I wasn’t here,’ Charlotte said. ‘Do you, um, want me to come with you?’
Krystal shook her head. ‘If this goes badly, I might need a place to stay tonight.’
‘Always welcome.’ Charlotte pushed into her room and put down her bag. ‘I’ll… I’ll wait to put on that teddy until you turn up. Don’t want to jinx it.’
‘Thanks. If I’m not back in thirty minutes, you can probably assume I won’t be coming.’
‘Huh. If you’re not back in thirty minutes, I’m going to assume Trudy is handling the coming part.’
Krystal grinned and set off down the corridor, but her smile slipped away as soon as her back was to Charlotte. She walked down the corridor in silence and tried the door. It was not locked and there was a candle burning inside. As Krystal edged around the door, dreading what she would find, Trudy looked up from the book she was reading.
‘Oh good,’ Trudy said. ‘Do you realise how bored I have to get to read a book without having to read it?’ Krystal raised an eyebrow. ‘And how do you do that anyway? If I try to lift one eyebrow, they both go up. Is that some kind of weird, royal thing?’
‘Shh!’ Krystal hissed while walking into the room and closing the door.
‘Why? No one’s going to hear that doesn’t already know.’
‘Still…’
‘Oh, get in here and sit down. You’re going to tell me why you’re keeping it secret, and I’m going to listen this time, and then, um, we’ll see where we go from there.’
‘Okay…’ Krystal walked over to her bed and set her bag down on it. She frowned. ‘Have you been sleeping in my bed?’
‘We’ll get to that later,’ Trudy said quickly. ‘Sit. Talk. Explain.’
Krystal sat down with a sigh. ‘One evening in Highsummer, I was trying to do something magical that was a little too difficult for me and… Well, suddenly I had rainbow scales and long hair. I, uh, didn’t have much of a bust then and I was shorter, so the other differences didn’t show up until later. I didn’t know much about dracoforms, but I knew that rainbow scales were royal and I was an orphan. So, someone must’ve decided I wasn’t good enough or something. I told no one and did some reading.’
‘Really, how surprising.’
‘Sarcasm is not called for. Either I was a lesser royal, which was worse than being an orphan, or I was a true royal. If I was a true royal, well, can you imagine the reasons a royal would end up in an orphanage?’
‘Because your parents are dead,’ Trudy replied flatly.
‘And none of my other relatives wanted to take me in?’
Trudy opened her mouth to speak and then closed it again, frowning. It was true that royal births tended to be trumpeted far and wide. When accidents happened and a young royal was orphaned, there was always someone ready to take on a new child. There were a few rumours that some adoptions had been arranged prior to the untimely demise of the parents, and Trudy was quite willing to believe those rumours. ‘It’s unusual, I’ll grant you,’ she said. ‘So, you kept it a secret all this time? Someone has to know. How many people know?’
‘You, Charley, Xan, and Jesse.’
‘No one else has found out?’ Krystal shook her head. ‘Wow. You, um, really must’ve thought it was important to change when you did.’
‘I’m not that good at fire magic. I can do it, but I’m better at all magic when I’m in scales. I wasn’t sure I could get it together to throw the fireball without changing and I couldn’t… Well, I wasn’t going to let you all get eaten by a zombie.’
‘So, you showed us all something you’d kept hidden from every other dragon you’d ever met.’
‘Um, yes.’
‘And then I got angry about it.’
‘Well, yes, but you said you didn’t like royals. I could understand why–’
‘A royal killed my brother,’ Trudy blurted out. Krystal’s eyes widened, but she really could not think of what to say to that so she stayed silent. ‘My eldest brother,’ Trudy went on. ‘My parents saddled him with George as a name. I think it was my mother’s grandfather’s name or something. He was the oldest and the strongest. He was stronger than my dad. Anyway, one night he didn’t come home after a night out. We found one of his friends who told us he’d got into a fight with a royal and some others. They were picking on some girl, trying to get her to go with them. The royal stuck a knife in George and left him to bleed.’
‘But… What about the city guardians?’
‘A grey knifed by a royal? They weren’t going to do anything about that, even if they could’ve found anyone willing to testify. I was five, almost six, and I thought the sun rose because my brother George willed it… and they killed him.’
‘Um… Trudy… Well, I don’t want to start this argument all over again, but that’s just one royal. I’m not saying most of them aren’t entitled and selfish, because most of them are. But not all of them. And–’
‘Not you. You haven’t actually done anything to harm me, uh, apart from not telling me about your scales, and you had a pretty good reason for that.’
‘And Celestina Nightsky hasn’t exactly done anything to hurt you either. She seemed really nice when I met her.’
‘Well, I haven’t met her.’ Trudy frowned. ‘I’m not going to get over the way I feel about royals overnight, Krys, but you’re not like other royals and… And I missed you. Which is why I was sleeping in your bed. It still smells of you.’
Krystal bit her lips, but the giggle came out anyway. ‘That’s really sappy, Trudy.’
‘Shut up and take your clothes off.’ When Krystal raised an eyebrow, Trud
y added, ‘Then you’re going to get into scales for me. I want to munch rainbow feathers.’
Krystal got to her feet and pulled off the T-shirt she was wearing. ‘Are you sure about this? I mean, you just decided you could handle me being a royal and now you want to–’
‘That’s precisely why you’re doing it. If I can’t cope with it, we’re going to find out now so you can change back and we won’t have to worry about it again. And if I can cope, I’m getting into scales too.’
‘Why?’
Trudy grinned, just a little maliciously. ‘Because we have to have make-up sex, and if we’re both in scales, we can get really wild about it.’
20th Day of Autumngate.
Krystal opened her eyes to find Trudy’s grey ones looking back at her. They were pretty close, given that they were in the same single bed. Krystal gave a sleepy grin. ‘You’re looking at me,’ she said.
‘I like looking at you,’ Trudy replied. ‘You’re a royal, by the way.’
‘I thought we’d established that.’
‘No, I mean that you’re not a lesser royal. You’ve got rainbow eyes when you’re in scales.’ They had both turned back to their normal form now; in Krystal’s case, that had happened when she had more or less collapsed into unconsciousness. ‘You’ve never looked?’
‘Mirrors were not encouraged in the orphanage. Mirrors are a sign of vanity.’
‘Well, you should take a look. You’ve got beautiful eyes. They’re like…’
‘A rainbow?’
‘Well, yes, but no. The colours shift with the light. It’s…’
‘Iridescent,’ Krystal said. ‘A bit like the shell on some insects.’
‘Comparing them to an insect does not make them sound as pretty as they are, but that word sounds good.’
‘Iridescent. Rainbow coloured, lustrous, colourful. There, you’ve learned a new word. The physics behind the way it works is really interesting too, but I won’t demystify it for you.’
‘Good,’ Trudy said. ‘Breakfast? Don’t know about you, but I’m famished.’
Krystal’s stomach chose that moment to make itself known with a deep rumbling sound. She blushed. ‘I could eat.’
~~~
Krystal looked at the sheet of paper Trudy had given her and raised an eyebrow. ‘“Lectures this week should be covered by chapters sixteen and seventeen of Elements of Magical Theory, and by chapter two of Thoughts on the Nature of Magic which I am aware that Krystal Ward has available,”’ she read. ‘Theodore Marin wants us to read a few chapters and that should cover it?’
‘If that’s what the paper says,’ Trudy replied. ‘We’ve got chapter five to read and a problem to solve from Sareena Slate.’ Charlotte and Xanthe were gathered around her on the floor, peering at their books.
Jesse, sitting on Krystal’s bed with Krystal, opened her copy of Elements of Magical Theory and located the two chapters. ‘This doesn’t look too hard,’ she said.
‘It’s not,’ Krystal replied and reached for her copy of Thoughts on the Nature of Magic. ‘This, on the other hand… Oh, no, this shouldn’t be too bad. We’ll go through it together.’ Jesse grinned thankfully at that suggestion.
‘Just so long as we can ask questions about our work while you’re reading your books,’ Charlotte said. ‘We don’t have Sareena Slate to ask if we don’t understand something.’
‘Fair enough,’ Krystal replied. ‘But try before you ask. I promised your parents there’d be no slacking, remember?’
‘I remember.’ Charlotte grinned and looked around at the girls assembled in Krystal and Trudy’s room. ‘Who needs extracurricular activities when we’ve got our own little club right here?’
‘I’m not sure this counts as a club,’ Xanthe responded.
‘Not like the gardening club,’ Jesse agreed. ‘We get to go take a look at the school gardens next week. We even have our own beds to tend.’
‘And I don’t think this can be extracurricular,’ Trudy added, ‘when we get together to work on our homework.’
‘Still a club,’ Charlotte said. ‘The misfits club. None of us really fit into the other cliques. And we all went through something with Glinda that none of the others will really understand.’
‘Well,’ Krystal said, ‘I’m certainly a misfit, I’ll give you that.’
‘A royal misfit,’ Trudy agreed.
‘Yeah, so, I hereby call this meeting of the misfits to order. Get your noses in books, ladies, or we’ll still be working through it all on Royalday.’
‘Oh, she’s so regal,’ Charlotte said, grinning.
‘No,’ Trudy replied, ‘she’s just Krys. Just like she always has been. She just has pretty scales sometimes is all.’
Part Two: Mean Girls
Concord City, Concordance, 23rd Day of Autumngate, 999.
Krystal had noticed a few odd looks aimed in her direction during the morning lectures, but it was not until lunchtime that she found out what was going on. Trudy, Charlotte, and Xanthe hurried in to meet Krystal and Jesse, and they had some weird, but bad, news.
‘There’s a rumour going around that you’re a necromancer,’ Charlotte said as soon as she was sitting down.
‘Me?’ Krystal queried.
‘You,’ Trudy said. ‘As far as we can tell, it started last week, but none of us were in classes. I still think we can guess who started it.’ Her gaze lifted to the gang of indigos across the refectory.
‘Huh, maybe. Is there any evidence behind this rumour, or are they just shouting loudly and hoping people believe it?’
‘Apparently, you answered a necromancy question in a lecture.’
‘Well, th-that’s true,’ Jesse said. ‘You did, sort of.’
‘The answer came from a book on general magical theory,’ Krystal replied. ‘And Theodore Marin pointed that out in the lecture.’
‘And you were there when we found… the zombie,’ Charlotte said. ‘They’re saying she got turned as part of some necromantic ritual.’
‘Which makes us your accomplices,’ Trudy added.
‘That has to be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,’ Krystal said. ‘If it had been me, us, doing it, we’d be hung and burned by now. The guardians had forensic magi crawling all over that building. They would have found indications that Glinda was killed there, changed there, and they would have at least questioned us about it. Whoever did that to her, they did it somewhere else and then took her to that house.’
‘Which happens to be the house the necromancer lived in,’ Xanthe said. ‘At least, according to the rumours it was.’
Krystal bit her lip. ‘Nothing much we can do about it for now. We’ve no proof it came from Felicia and her cronies. So long as the staff don’t believe it, all we lose is some social connections we didn’t have anyway.’
Trudy nodded. ‘It’ll probably blow over soon enough when they find someone new to be mean to.’
24th Day of Autumngate.
‘I don’t know how they can sit there, eating among decent people.’
Krystal looked up from her evening meal and turned to look for the owner of the voice. She found the group of indigos sitting behind her, but the voice had not been Felicia’s, because Felicia spoke next.
‘I’m not sure why they’re allowed to. I’m sure the authorities will be looking into the matter soon enough. My father wouldn’t hear of me being in a hall with someone dealing in dark magic.’
There was a smug quality to Felicia’s tone which just rubbed Krystal up the wrong way. Pushing her chair back, she made to rise and Trudy reached out to stop her. ‘Just ignore them,’ Trudy hissed.
Krystal considered that for a second, then she pushed her glasses up her nose. ‘No,’ she said, and stepped across to stand right behind Felicia. ‘Felicia Goldring, I was wondering whether you could point out the decent people here for me? Decent people don’t spread unfounded rumours. Perhaps you know who hasn’t been.’
Across the table, one of the other girls raised
her head and glowered at Krystal. ‘Don’t speak to us, dirt hugger.’ This was the one who had spoken first. She was a sort of lesser version of Felicia. She had the same sort of angular features, but they were a little softer. She had the same shade of purple hair, but hers had more volume and less length. From the looks of it, she was a good inch and a half shorter than Felicia too, and her eyes were more blue than purple, though there were purple flecks in them.
Krystal ignored the insult: she had, of course, just insulted them, though she had been more subtle about it. Dirt hugger was a pejorative term for a dragon without a dracoform and Krystal had heard it many times before. The fact that her dracoform would probably make the entire gang shrink back in horror for insulting a royal made things easier to bear too. ‘I’ll speak to whoever I wish within the bounds of public manners. You’re all just students like me.’
Felicia turned in her seat. ‘We are nothing like you, Krystal Ward. You are an orphan, an outcast. No one wants you, not even your parents. Everyone knows what you did. Everyone.’
Krystal smiled, putting as much malice into it as she could muster. It was easier considering the comment about her parents. ‘Everyone? Everyone except for Dean Scintilla Rainshadow. And the city guardians. They were there to investigate what happened, and they found no reason to detain us.’ Felicia opened her mouth to speak, but Krystal kept going. ‘But I must commend your bravery, Felicia Goldring, I really must.’
That stalled whatever Felicia had been about to say. ‘Bravery?’ she asked instead.
‘Well, yes. As you pointed out, we’re in the same hall. If you really think I’ve been working necromancy, you must be very brave to confront me like this. If I was going to confront a necromancer and they knew where I slept, I think I’d be investing in all sorts of charms and spells to protect myself.’ Krystal widened her grin and her eyes until she looked just a little insane. ‘Just a thought,’ she added, before turning and going back to her table.
‘You are madder than a bag of tanglecats,’ Xanthe said, keeping her voice low.
‘Thank you,’ Krystal replied, going back to her food.
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