Fairytales Slashed, Volume 2

by Megan Derr

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  Sleeping Beauty

  Part One

  Asa stared blankly into the room of empty desks. In about half an hour, the room would be filled with students, most of them deemed 'special cases,' which just meant that the students were older and harder to teach. Mostly they were stragglers still trickling in to follow the king's edict that all wizards receive a rudimentary level of schooling to control their magic.

  Normally, Asa didn't mind being stuck with the tougher, more intractable students, but his mind was other places today. He was entirely not in the mood for idiots who wanted nothing more than to be back home instead of locked in a class room learning how to use the magic they'd either never known they had or that they'd already been using their entire lives. He needed to be home with Sariah, not here with a group of stubborn half-wizards.

  Stifling a sigh, he slowly climbed to his feet. Collecting the thin books that were too condensed to hold any useful information, Asa started around the room, setting one book on each desk.

  This classroom wasn't large; there were only a dozen desks, none of them too sturdy, but why spend anything on lackluster students who didn't want to be here in the first place? Setting down the last book, Asa frowned when he realized he was a few books short. He'd have to go next door and get more.

  Raking his hands through his hair, Asa sighed. He moved slowly through the maze of desks and out of the dimly lit classroom. The hallway was mostly deserted, only a few students and one professor gathered at the far end.

  Asa wasn't a full-fledged, highly accredited professor, like most of the staff were. He didn't have the schooling for that, but in the aftermath of the king's edict, many exceptions had been made to ensure there were enough teachers to go around. Asa had qualified—his official title was assistant professor now.

  He'd love to be a full professor, but they didn't, and never would, have the money to pay for both tuition and to keep them all fed, clothed, and with a roof over their heads.

  They didn't even have the money to keep Sariah alive.

  Letting himself into the classroom next door, Asa paused, flushing a little when he realized the room wasn't empty. Curse Breaker Bralin didn't teach many classes anymore, but his brilliant copper hair was unmistakable. His face was long and thin, his eyes were a pretty, faded blue, and he was nearly always smiling.

  Bralin was also, Asa thought miserably, incredibly out of his league, which wouldn't be so bad by itself, but Asa always managed to make a fool of himself whenever he was in Bralin's vicinity.

  "Good morning," Bralin greeted, a smile immediately stretching his lips. He casually dropped a bookmark into the book he was reading, tipping his head at Asa inquisitively. "Can I help you with something?"

  "Hey," Asa said, lifting his hand in a little wave and feeling incredibly stupid for it. "Um, I ran out of intro books; they're kept in here."

  "You teach?" Bralin asked, his smile widening a bit. "You look like a student."

  Asa shrugged, his stomach sinking unhappily. Bralin apparently had the same mindset as the other professors as to how even assistant professors should dress.

  "It's not a bad thing," Bralin said, standing up from the desk he'd been sitting at. "It's probably more comfortable than six layers of cloth." He plucked at the front of his jacket as he spoke. He was dressed respectably enough—not quite in the fashion the real professors followed, but he was a curse breaker who taught on the side, not an assistant professor who taught part time and worked commissions the rest of the time.

  Asa shrugged again, crossing his arms defensively as Bralin rooted through the book cabinet in the corner.

  "How many do you need?" Bralin asked, pulling out a small stack of three or four books.

  "That should do. I only have the one class," Asa said. His thoughts wandered—should he go home before he headed to the magic-by-commission shop he worked for to see if they had any work for him?

  "Here you are, then," Bralin said, drawing Asa from his thoughts. Asa blinked at him stupidly for a long moment before moving forward hastily to accept the books.

  "Thanks," Asa said, half-mumbling the word. He ignored the flush warming his cheeks, pulling the books close to his chest.

  "So you're teaching the basics course? I'm sorry, I'm Bralin," Bralin said, looking a little sheepish. He smiled again, and Asa just nodded stupidly.

  "I know," Asa said, then shut his mouth, because really, what sort of reply was that? "I mean, I'm Asa."

  Bralin laughed, looking a little rueful as he tugged on a loose lock of his bright copper hair. It was straight and fine-looking, unlike Asa's unruly curls.

  "My reputation precedes me," Bralin said, but he sounded cheerful enough about it. Asa shrugged uncomfortably, wondering why he couldn't keep his mouth shut long enough to make a decent impression.

  "I should get back," Asa said, even though he didn't have anything but sitting around to do for the next twenty minutes.

  "Your class doesn't start for a bit," Bralin said, then paused to reconsider. "You probably have prep work to do. But look—" He hesitated, indecisive for a moment before he finally shrugged his thin shoulders dismissively. "A friend of mine is taking your class, right? He's had a rough time of it, especially when it comes to magic, and he's not… the most outgoing of people. Can you keep that in mind as you teach him?"

  "Be nicer to him?" Asa interpreted, nodding a bit. "It's not a hard class, so I don't think—I mean, I've had all sorts, so nothing I teach should put him on the spot or make him uncomfortable."

  "Even if he's a latent with a perfect power mix?" Bralin asked, raising his eyebrows skeptically.

  Asa sighed, wondering what it was about him that made people think he was dishonest.

  "Even then," Asa said flatly, agitatedly scrubbing a hand through his curls. "The class is designed to handle everyone from introverted latent wizards with perfect power mixes to extroverted, angry working-class men who don't believe they have magic. It's an intro course. He'll probably have to deal with me a little more to work on blocking, but nothing I teach is going to ask much of him."

  "All right, sorry," Bralin said soothingly, smiling at him cautiously. "I didn't mean to imply you were personally going to upset him. Really, I'm just more worried he's going to come to trouble from one of his classmates."

  "I'll keep an eye on him," Asa said stiffly. Like he'd do anything less—and if Bralin paid any attention to what went on at the university, he'd know that. Asa had rooted out a young mage only interested in finding easy mages to prey on for their power in his last semester's class. "Was there anything else?"

  "I—no," Bralin said, rubbing the back of his neck and looking faintly awkward, like he wanted to say something else but couldn't really figure out the right way to say it. "Thanks."

  Asa nodded, making a hasty retreat into the hallway. Fantastic; he'd managed to get away with only doing and saying a few stupid things, and Bralin still thought he was an idiot and mean on top of that.

  Asa came to a stop quickly, nearly dropping his books in surprise as he narrowly avoided running straight into someone. A soldier or mercenary, from the look of him. His dark brown hair was cropped short and his nose had obviously been broken at least one in the past. He had a single visible scar; a thin, white line cutting across one side of his forehead. Asa didn't doubt there were more lurking under his jerkin.

  He was tall and well-muscled, and currently he was scowling as though Asa hadn't actually managed to stop before running into him.

  Asa stared back at him without flinching; there was always one pain in the ass in each class, even if Asa was hoping he didn't have to deal with this man—or his very long, impressive looking sword—in this class.

  "Roark?" A quiet voice asked from behind the solider, distracting him enough that Asa could slip around him and into the empty classroom.

  A quick glance over his shoulder showed the soldier—he was too clean to be a merc, Asa decided—still glaring at him
, though much less venomously. Something that was probably a direct result of the pretty blond man ensconced in his arms.

  Turning away, Asa dropped books on the last few desks and tried to regain some of his equilibrium. Usually it took so much more to fluster him—one of the reasons he was still teaching the class of stubborn students. He could probably lay most of the blame on Sariah's illness. He couldn't figure out a way to fix that and after everything she'd done for him—

  "You're the teacher?" the soldier demanded, drawing Asa from his less-than-happy thoughts.

  "Assistant Professor," Asa corrected tiredly, absently activating the power sight that was the other reason he taught this class; seeing the type of power people had wasn't exactly rare, but it wasn't common, either.

  Solider boy had no power, so he wasn't going to be in Asa's class. His pretty blond, however, was the wizard Bralin had been talking about. He had a huge power reservoir and it was a perfectly blended mix—he could use all of his energy and so could anyone else. Probably that was the source of the 'rough time' Bralin had referred to.

  "Roark." The blond wizard touched Roark's arm gently, raising his eyebrows but smiling fondly. "It's fine. I'll be fine." He gave Asa a shy smile, biting his lip briefly before adding, "You're going to be late."

  "I am not," Roark muttered crossly. His glare never wavered from Asa's face, and he jabbed a finger in Asa's direction. "If I hear so much as a single bad thing about you, I will break your face."

  "Right," Asa said wearily, wondering if Roark could count as his angry soldier or merc for this class. He turned deliberately to the wizard, ignoring his angry protector for the moment. "You can have a seat anywhere you like. Class will officially start in about fifteen minutes."

  "I don't think—" Roark began, taking a threatening step closer to Asa.

  "Roark, please," the blond wizard said, obviously exasperated. He looked embarrassed too, if the flush in his cheeks was anything to go by. Roark subsided grumpily, regarding Asa suspiciously.

  "Can I get your name for the roster?" Asa asked, tugging open his faded portfolio. Inside was a sheet of paper that listed the dozen students assigned to his class.

  "Cos Ditor," Cos said. Roark continued to look annoyed and grumpy, but Asa didn't have to deal with him three days a week, so he wasn't too concerned about it.

  Asa made a small mark next to the name in the ledger, glancing up at Cos curiously. "Any relation to Liok Ditor?"

  "Um, no?" Cos replied, blinking and looking rather baffled at that.

  Asa nodded, setting down his pen. "I'm Asa, the assistant professor for this course. Like I said, you can sit anywhere. This course isn't too difficult, though you will be required to come to all three weekly sessions. We do power control on Monday and Wednesday and power blocking on Friday. If you need help with anything, don't hesitate to ask."

  "Okay," Cos said, smiling shyly back at him. "Thank you."

  "No problem," Asa said easily, distracted as another student entered the room. A farmer by the look of him, though he'd made an effort to clean himself up. Asa waved him over, and Cos took the hint, dragging a surly Roark out of the way.

  Asa spent the next ten minutes greeting students, taking roll, and getting all of the students settled. He was one over the class limit, but that routinely happened so Asa gave up his desk without blinking. He'd steal more chairs and desks from the next room later.

  Cos had left the room after depositing his bag on a desk in the front, and as everyone settled, Asa crossed the room and stuck his head out into the hallway. Cos and Roark hadn't gone far—Roark apparently hadn't left despite Cos's comment that he was going to be late.

  "Cos?" Asa called, feeling a little bad about interrupting their moment. Roark glowered at him, not releasing his hold on Cos. "We're starting."

  Cos nodded, his cheeks red. Asa ducked back into the classroom, waiting until Cos slipped in quietly and took his seat before beginning. "All right, so, how many of you knew you had magic before you were told so by the King's scouts?" Asa asked. Eight of the students—the eight most powerful, unsurprisingly—raised their hands. The class was a good mix; some really powerful, some with barely any power, and three who had power that could be freely used by any mage.

  "And how many of you who were using it?" Asa asked and two hands dropped. "Good. This class is probably going to be pretty dull for those of you with your hands raised. Unfortunately, this class is required, so you can't skip just because you know everything I'm going to tell you. I'm required to report absences; miss two classes and you'll be tracked down and tossed in jail."

  Asa paused, surveying the class slowly. Most of them looked bored, but one man towards the back looked mutinous—Charlizat Laditore Kinsley the Fifth—and Asa made a note to keep an eye on him.

  "If you know you're going to miss a class, talk to me and I'll set up a time for you to meet with me and make it up. Though I'll say now you'd better have a decent excuse, because I'm not wasting my time outside class for just anything.

  "The good news is that most of you will only need to attend class on Mondays and Wednesdays; unless I mentioned it to you before class, you don't have to attend Friday's session. Today we'll be covering the basics of magic. This is all n the books in front of you, which are yours to keep. The first two pages detail the topics we'll cover over the course of the class and what reading you should do before you come to class."

  Asa paused again, pushing a hand through his half-tangled curls. Most of the class still didn't seem to be paying him much attention, but it wasn't his fault the introductory details were boring, or that the class material itself was boring.

  "Any questions before I begin today's lesson?" Asa asked, unsurprised when no one moved or spoke up. He'd had a few smartasses try to test the bounds of the excuses Asa would accept for missing a class, but no one here was apparently that interested. Stifling a sigh, he launched into the basic vocabulary of magic, explaining everything from the two types of power to what a wizard's power mix was to some of the occupations wizards could pursue.

  The class ran a little short, but the first one always did. Asa meted out the assigned reading and dismissed the students. None of them lingered, having better things to do than hang around. He waited until the thirty-something woman at his desk left and then settled down behind it again.

  Only fourteen more classes to go. Asa didn't usually mind teaching—just the opposite, he loved it—but he was tired of teaching this class to the same uninterested students over and over again. He wanted to teach a real class, where the students were actually interested in learning what he had to teach. It would never happen, though; he'd need to become a full-fledged professor first, and to do that he needed to complete more schooling than he could afford.

  Waving absently as the last few students trickled out, Asa collected his binder of reference materials—long since memorized, but useful if a student tried too long to argue a point against the book—and his portfolio, and then headed out of the room himself.

  He could go home to check on Sariah before he headed to the shop, Asa decided as he shut the classroom door. It would almost double his trip, but knowing she was doing okay now would set his mind at rest, and he then he might be able to spend some extra time researching her condition tonight.

  "He'll be back in a few months, Cos," Bralin's voice drifted out into the hallway from the next room. The door was open, Asa noted as he fumbled with his keys, balancing his binder and portfolio in one arm. "Roark's thick-headed. He'll be fine. From what I've heard, the bandits he's fighting aren't very smart or strong."

  "I know," Cos said, his voice quieter than Bralin's but getting louder, as though he was approaching the door. "I just—worry."

  Asa ducked his head, sorting quickly through the keys—only to fumble and drop them when Bralin left the classroom next door. So Roark was off to fight bandits for the next few months? A soldier then; mercenaries were not usually dispatched to handle bandits.

  Scooping
up his keys, Asa ignored the way his ears were burning—and really, it wasn't fair he could talk easily to teach a crowd of strangers, but he couldn't put together two words in a row around Bralin. He stuck the key in the lock of the classroom, quickly turning it to lock the door.

  "Hey," Bralin greeted when Asa finally turned away from the door. Cos was standing next to him, looking more than a little awkward as he clutched his book to his chest. "How'd it go?"

  "Fine," Asa said shortly, still feeling a little cross with Bralin, even if he couldn't pinpoint why. He sighed, giving Cos a polite nod and half a smile—Cos hadn't done anything wrong after all. Cos smiled back shyly and Asa seriously wondered why Roark and Bralin were so protective of him. Obviously he was shy, but he wasn't an invalid.

  Asa glanced back at Bralin in time to see the smile slide off his face. Asa lifted his portfolio quickly, making himself move before he could feel bad about that. "If you'll excuse me, I need to get this paperwork in. See you Wednesday, Cos."

  "See you," Cos said. Bralin took the hint and stayed quiet, stepping back and letting Asa by without a word. Asa grit his teeth and walked away, stubbornly refusing to look back over his shoulder at them.

  *~*~*

  Asa climbed the stairs slowly, simultaneously wishing he'd packed less in his bag and that they didn't live on the top floor of the apartment complex. The tiny set of rooms he shared with Sariah and Elebia were worth every step though.

  The apartment complex had once been a rather large and lavish manor for an extremely rich merchant. After he'd died and after many generations of neglect, one of his descendents had the manor sloppily chopped up into rooms and small apartments and rented them out to the workers who served in the noble's quarters a few blocks north and in the docks a few blocks south.

  The apartments were poorly maintained and overpriced, but there weren't many options for housing in this area, so Asa and Sariah shared the rent between them. Their rooms were nice enough, owed in part to Asa's magic and Sariah's determination and skills at making them seem homey with the careful arrangement of a few knickknacks and throws.