Riah's Story Chapter 4

A/n: Hey everybody!! Thanks for being patient!! The last couple of chapters have gone through some major edits again - we not get a fair amount more of Mathias Greuster's point of view, which I think is important. Hopefully that'll be the last major back-edit on these stories, though I can't promise - this early in a story, seemingly minor changes can be really important.

Anyway, hope you like it!!

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Riah felt his mood lift a little as he walked to the Base Magic building. The school was really beautiful, in places. Though in autumn there wasn't much in the way of flowers, gardens alongside the larger pathways were arranged to have some fall color. His mother had talked about that, with her garden – disparaging gardeners who could only claim two season's worth of beauty from their gardens. He could see what she meant, though couldn't imagine how she made “fall interest” a moral imperative. Personally, he wasn't much interested in growing anything he couldn't eat. Still, the gardens were nice, and something in them smelled very pleasant – spicy and lightly sweet at the same time, and he finally realized that there were flowers he hadn't seen, tiny little yellow ones almost hidden by their own extravagant foliage.

The building wasn't difficult to find, either. For one thing, the map he'd been given was quite helpful, and for another the paths were marked with signs at each crossroads, pointing to the Beginner Complex in one direction, and the Intermediate Complex, Base Magic building, and mess hall in the other. He'd already been to the mess hall before, but hadn't noticed the other building across from it. It was a good deal smaller, roughly the same size as the classroom buildings he'd already seen but without the upper floors. His hopes for finding a place to hang before his class drooped a little as he saw that this was the Base Magic building.

When he got inside, though, he realized that he was mostly wrong – instead of a lounge inside, this building surrounded a partially covered courtyard, with wooden benches and tables set up much the same way as in the other. This one was also less crowded than the one in the Rituals building, and he found a spot easily, sharing a table with an older man who studied some papers with absolute concentration.

Two copies of Rituals homework, coming right up, he thought, pulling the papers he'd been given out of his textbook and opening it to the requisite pages. Having now read the introduction helped him understand better than the last time, but this time he was supposed to take notes. I could just do the one for Taller, he realized. He had no more real reason to do his homework than he did to go to class. But then, what else did he have to do? And it wouldn't be hard, to do two sets of the notes instead of one, when he had to read the stuff anyway.

The reading was the same as he'd tried to start before – elements of the next ritual they were doing and the theory behind them. In this case the next ritual was one to produce a small flame. The cautions on it were strongly worded enough to sound like the ritual could cause a firestorm if done incorrectly. Riah smiled a little. They probably just don't want us setting our own clothing on fire.

The elements for the ritual were more interesting than the last one, or at least they sounded it in the description. The witch was supposed to rub fine sawdust quickly between his hands while singing “heat and light – flame!” to a simple rhythm, indicated by two bars of standard musical notation. Good thing I can read music, he thought, thinking briefly of his cello before dismissing it. That wasn't him anymore.

He was to take notes, but he needed to make his and Jaden's look different. He never did give me his pen. That was okay. Most pens were pretty much the same, anyway. As long as Jaden didn't usually take notes in some sort of colorful ink, it'd be hard to tell.

In the end, he set out both scrolls, weighing them down with rocks provided on the table, and took notes on both at once, in script on the one, and print on the other. He also worked to make the organization different, doing Jaden's in an outline format with underlined headings and vocabulary words, and his as an annotated list of definitions and concepts. Realizing that while certain definitions were new to him, they wouldn't be to Jaden, he integrated as much as he could of what he'd learned from the textbook's introduction – the definitions of 'incantation', 'materials', and 'arrangement', among other things – into his, but left them out of the other boy's. He also copied some of the diagrams into his that he didn't put into his classmate's, figuring that they'd be too easy to recognize as the same and that Jaden probably didn't do that for himself. It would benefit Jaden to leave his notes as generic-looking as possible, so there were fewer things that might look odd. If Jaden got caught, even if by some miracle Riah didn't, then he'd've lost his tutor.

Working thus, he'd only managed to get through two of the six pages he needed to read before it was time for him to get up and go to his lesson.

But he didn't want to go. He was relaxed, he was comfortable, no one was staring at him or asking him questions. If he went, it would be the same damned routine as his last two lessons: “Who are you?” “I'm a murderer.” “Oh, you don't belong here.” “Well no, I don't. Nice to meet you, too.” And worse, this was M'Lord Greuster's class. No doubt the man would be even worse than his previous teachers.

So, I won't go, he told himself. M'Lord Greuster probably doesn't care, anyway. He'd said he didn't, after all.

Oh, do stop deluding yourself, Riah. The man had given him the papers. He'd showed up to tell him where to go and to tell him not to be late. And he had just decided not to mess with the man. Soo...I won't mess with him. I'll just avoid him, he thought stubbornly. How important could his presence be to the man, when he'd explicitly said that Riah's academics didn't interest him?

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Mathias watched as his first students came into the room. There should be only four of them, and so far he had two – a girl and a boy, both roughly seventeen years old. The girl was a big, curvy blond whose eyes were a strange, almost orange shade. Some sort of were? She avoided his gaze and sat down, picking at her painted nails. The boy was a pretty redhead, and entered the room without seeming to notice Mathias' presence at all, but chose a chair and sat back in it, as if to dismiss the whole class before it started. Since he was clearly not Zachariah, he had to be Rudy Babinsack, the only other boy he was expecting. The girl was either Cedri Puller or Malla Eben, but he had no way of knowing which until he asked.

The other girl came shortly after those two, a rail-thin brunette, who gave him a harried glance before she sat, and promptly pulled out what he guessed was homework for another class.

Zachariah Mordelle had yet to show. That the boy would simply not come had not occurred to him. He'd gone to his other classes. Perhaps I intimidated the poor lad, he thought ironically. He doubted it. The boy's body language screamed defiance even when it didn't come from his mouth.

“Where is Zachariah Mordelle?” he asked the class. Babinsack was startled, and the two front legs of his chair hit the floor with a bang.

“I don't know who that is,” the blond girl told him nervously.

“Me, either,” the other girl said.

He turned his gaze to the boy, but Babinsack just shrugged and shook his head, looking unconcerned.

“There are only going to be four of you,” he told them, knowing they heard his annoyance and not caring. “If there are three, I notice. Do not skip my class.” He sat back in his chair, closing his eyes.

There was a reason he could do things like live in a house on campus and still monitor the boy in the dorm. The same reason, probably, that the Consort had chosen him for this rather than another of his contingent of witches. And the primary reason I should be at the palace, he thought, frustrated. But he would do as the Consort had commanded him. If that meant using his abilities to track down a rebellious fifteen-year-old boy, so be it. He sank quietly into his head, finding the soft buzzing that was always there, and listened for witches.

The most immediate, of course, were the three in his classroom, and then the twelve in the classroom beyond. He let his awareness spread out into the whole community. He could only 'hear' witches this way, but the school had a lot of them, little flecks of something halfway between light and sound, that grouped in classroom buildings and the mess hall and lined the pathways. He'd 'listened' to Riah like this before, and memorized what he sounded like, so he knew what to look for. Riah was a particularly bright/loud, messy tone, reddish, and like a low note on a cello, or high on an upright base...there. He was just downstairs, in the lobby. Maybe the boy had simply lost track of time? That seemed unlikely, when he'd told the boy not half an hour ago to get here. And the boy was just as clearly not lost. He should've known that a juvenile delinquent wouldn't voluntarily show up for class. But he showed up for Charms, he remembered. Perhaps it was just his class the boy was avoiding.

When he looked up, the students were staring at him, probably wondering what he was doing. He couldn't see himself doing it, but a friend had described it for him once – he sat with his eyes closed, yet looked around himself like he could see for miles. He couldn't. He couldn't even hear the entirety of the school campus, but he could hear all of the palace, and that was one of the reasons he'd found himself a Lord of the Court at the age of twenty.

“I'll be back,” he told his class. “Do something productive.” He left the room.

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Riah pulled his textbook closer, tracing a finger over a paragraph as he tried to understand. The author was trying to explain the properties that the incantation gave to the ritual, but it didn't make any sense.

Music is frequently used in ritual to infuse it with the will of the caster. If the ritual requires song, then it is very important that the caster want the outcome of the ritual to happen, and that he put that will into the incantation.

“Put his will” into the incantation? How was he supposed to do that?

Abruptly Riah became aware of someone behind him. He turned, and looked up to lock gazes with Lord Greuster. The man was angry, and Riah stood quickly and turned to meet him on equal footing.

“M'Lord Greuster,” he greeted, lifting his chin. What was the man doing there? The class should've started minutes before. Had he sought him out specifically? Weird.

The man didn't say anything, but grabbed Riah's textbook, snapping it shut with one hand, and piled the rest of his papers on top of it with the other.

“Come,” the man said, turning away to walk off with all of Riah's supplies.

Riah watched him for a moment, startled, before hurrying to follow. What the hell? “Those are mine,” he told the man.

“I will give them back as soon as we are back in my classroom,” his jailor answered implacably.

And short of ripping them from the man's arms, or leaving the stuff behind, there was nothing Riah could do but follow him.

Damnit, he thought, following the man down a corridor and up a flight of steps.

They got to the classroom, and his jailor stopped to turn to him.

“In the future,” he said. “You will come here on your own, on time, without giving me trouble. Is that clear?”

Riah bared his teeth in a smile. “Crystal.” What are you going to do about it?

Whether the man believed him or not, he nodded, and turned back to the classroom door. He walked right in, leaving the door opened for Riah, who still had no choice but to follow. He found himself in a room with four seats. Three were taken, and Lord Greuster put his book and papers at the one empty one, in front of two girls and to the left of the only other boy. Giving the man a last glare and ignoring the curious gazes of his classmates, Riah sat.

The classroom seemed larger than it needed to be, with four seats towards the front and a large space in the back. Lord Greuster gave no indication that he knew Riah or even that he'd retrieved him. He simply walked to the front of the class and looked at them for a moment before speaking.

“Welcome class,” he said brusquely. “My name is Lord Mathias Greuster-” There was a gasp, and Greuster paused. “My reputation proceeds me,” he said, not sounding happy about it. “Yes, normally I work at the palace. I have been asked to work here for the time being.”

He works at the palace? Works? Once again, Riah wondered who the guy was, but Greuster just kept talking. “You may call me Lord Greuster, or Master Greuster, as you are comfortable, but at any rate you should approach me as your classroom master and not as a Lord of the Court.”

Lord of the Court? He considered asking, but Greuster still just kept talking. “This class is basic Base Magic. As Base Magic is somewhat unpredictable, especially when it first develops, each of you will no doubt progress differently. As such, I will not be holding each of you to the same standards. That said,” he continued sharply, “if you do not work in this class, you will not progress. It is my responsibility to see that you leave this class with your Base magic under a certain minimal control, and you will not leave this class until you have obtained my approval. As my summer holiday does not start until that happens, you will work.” He paused, then continued again. “This class can be as pleasant, or as miserable, as you wish to make it. I am not accustomed to teaching, and while I will attempt to be patient, I will become less so rapidly if you do not make some minimal effort. Any questions?”

Well that was welcoming, Riah thought. Apparently M'Lord Greuster wasn't any more friendly to his actual students as the other teachers were to Riah. Unsurprisingly, nobody had any questions.

“Good,” the man said. “Then introduce yourselves. Name, age, how long you've been here, and why you're in this class.” He looked at one of the girls, a skinny brunette. “You first, please.”

For all he said 'please', it was a command, and the girl responded quickly and nervously.

“I'm Cedri Puller,” she said. “I'm eighteen, and I've been here since I was twelve. I'm here because - ” she frowned and shrugged, seeming unsure. “I guess just because I can do base magic and my adviser said I needed to learn it.”

“How did you learn you were capable of base magic?” Lord Greuster asked impatiently. “Did you do something - unexpected?”

“Oh,” the girl said, blushing. “My little sister fell from a tree this summer while I was watching her, only she fell real slow, and didn't get hurt. Mama was real pleased.”

“I pushed my younger brother off the porch,” the boy next to him cut in, grinning. “He didn't get hurt either, but Da still wasn't exactly thrilled. And I used to pull down mangoes, using it.”

“Mangoes from your trees, or somebody else's?” Cendri asked him. He grinned at her, and winked. Riah watched them, vaguely disgusted.

“I'm Rudy Babinsack,” the other boy said belatedly. “I'm sixteen, and I've been here a year.”

M'Lord Greuster nodded, and looked to the other girl, a curvy blond. Her eyes were strange, Riah noticed when he turned to look at her. Sort of orange. “I'm Malla Eben,” she said. “I'm seventeen, and I've only been here three years.”

Only? Riah wondered. Three years was a long time! Well, some kids start as young as twelve, and clearly some are still here at eighteen. Maybe three years was short, here. But then, Rudy had only been there a year, too.

But Malla was still speaking. “I'm not really sure why I'm here,” she said. “My dorm mother told me to sign up for this class because I see so well in the dark. She says I make light, but I don't see it. I just thought I was normal, for a feline were.”

Were, Riah thought. That explains the eyes.

“Not if you make light that others can see, Miss Puller,” Lord Greuster answered her.

She nodded. “Okay.”

And then everybody turned to Riah, expecting him to speak. Hi everybody, I'm murdering kid. How are you? “I'm Zachariah Mordelle,” he told them. “Riah. I'm fifteen, just got here today.” He hesitated. Nobody -yet – knew why he was there, or that their teacher was also assigned to keep him in line. That could change in an eye blink. Telling them that he was a murderer – he could handle that. But having this – keeper- was humiliating.

Too fucking bad. He straightened his spine, glaring at the man. He was not going to make any excuses, damn it. And Lord Greuster could go to hell.

“I'm here because I wanted a man to die, and he did,” he said sharply, “and because M'Lord Greuster here is supposed to be powerful enough to keep me from killing anyone else.”

There was a moment of absolute silence, before one of the girls- the one who'd said she was some sort of cat-were – spoke up. “You – you're saying you killed someone?”

Malla, he remembered finally. Her name was Malla. “Yup,” Riah answered, forcing it to come out relaxed.

“On purpose?” she asked incredulously.

“Yup,” Riah said again.

“His wrists,” he heard Rudy say.

Everybody looked, and everybody stared. “Murder,” one of the girls – Cedri, that time – said softly.

“Yup,” he answered a third time, staring at her. She looked away fast.

“Zachariah is on loan from Barlin City Correctional,” Lord Greuster said in the silence. “He is here for the purpose of getting his magic under control. You are perfectly safe.”

There was another silence, and finally the man spoke up again. “So,” he said. “Base magic. Older terms for it are 'natural' or 'instinctual' magic. Each of the terms is an attempt to capture the idea that Base magic is the most inherent, basic form that humanoid magic takes. It requires little concrete knowledge, only a certain will and power, though experience is helpful, and that is part of what you will be acquiring here. Base magic is the only type of magic that one can do truly accidentally. It can, however, be controlled, and that is a large part of what you will learn here. Unlike other classes you will take at Ritten, this will be largely about how not to do magic. Any questions?”

“So what you're saying is, Jailbird here needs to learn how not to kill people when he wants them dead?” the red-headed boy Rudy asked promptly.

“Yes and no,” Lord Greuster said, apparently ignoring the sarcasm. “Magic follows the will. If he had not genuinely wanted the man to die, then he wouldn't have died the way he did. What I will teach you, more, is how to be specific about what you want.”

“Wanting a man dead isn't specific enough?” Rudy pursued.

Riah stared at him, but the boy just stared back.

“One could want to hurt a man, and kill them by accident, or want them dead without wanting to kill them,” M'Lord Greuster lectured, clearly still pretending like it was just part of the lesson. “More often, a witch will attempt to pick something up, and break it. That is what we are here to prevent. If something happens exactly as you want it to, then I cannot help you further.”

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Mathias watched the class as they reacted to the exchange. The two girls clearly had no idea how to react, staring, then looking away, then meeting each other's eyes as if looking for an answer there. Rudy was staring unflinchingly, a calculating look on his face, but Riah promptly returned his stare, but Rudy just gave him a cocky smile, utterly unimpressed.

If Zachariah – Riah, he remembered – was bothered by the scrutiny, it didn't show. He just stared back at Rudy with the same cold pride, and refused to back down. And the class was thoroughly distracted – staring at the standoff between the two boys.

“And once again I will attempt to return to the lesson at hand,” he said finally, managing to get both boys to at least glance at him. “Each of you will attempt, at your desk, to do something small. You know better than I what you are capable of, so I will leave it to you what direction that something small might take. Do not worry about it going wrong - I am more than capable of shutting your magic down if I have to. Pick something to do, and will it to happen. It may help to picture it in your head.”

He waited for them to move, to ask a question, to do something, but they didn't. The girls stared at him like a couple of cows, and the two boys still clearly had their attention on each other.

Those two will be trouble, he realized.

“For the record,” he told the four, “when I say to do something, I mean it. You should be more than capable of getting something small to happen, if not of doing exactly what you intend. Begin.”

They all stared at him a moment more, but finally Malla Eben frowned, and he 'listened' as her magic flared. As it did so, the room's light charm flared brightly and suddenly died, leaving them in the dark.

“Oh, well done,” the boy Rudy said.

“I'm sorry!” the girl said instantly, sounding mortified.

“You are the only one of the four to follow a basic instruction,” he told her, irritated. “Do not apologize for it.”

Remembering where the light had been, he found the charm, a now-dark polished crystal still fixed in space. As he'd suspected, she'd fried it completely.

By the time he'd examined it, though, there was another light in the room – Malla trying to see in the dark. Mathias almost smiled. It was immediately evident why Malla couldn't see the light she produced - the girl made herself glow, mostly her eyes. But it was enough light that he could navigate easily to open the shutters and let light into the room. As soon as he did so, Malla's light disappeared.

“Can you do that when there is already enough light for you to see by?” he asked her.

“I can try,” the girl offered.

“Do,” he told her. “That's your assignment for the afternoon.”

“Yes sir,” she told him.

Rudy Babinsack and Cedri Puller had seemingly figured out what he wanted of them. Puller frowned, and pulled a piece of chalk off the blackboard towards her. It started flying fast, then dropped abruptly to the floor as she panicked and threw out a hand to stop it from hitting her.

Babinsack picked it up for her, floating it over his own shoulder to her with a triumphant smile. He'd been the only one other than Riah to mention intentional magic, Mathias realized. But he and Cedri seemed to use their magic on physical objects, where Malla seemed to work with light. That might change, but it was some indication of where their power might go. He set Cedri to working on lifting the chalk slowly, and gave Rudy a roll of paper to work with.

“Work on not crinkling the paper,” he told the boy. “This is about precision, not power.”

Riah just watched the others without doing anything, and finally he stopped to look at his ward.

“Well?” he said.

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Riah watched the others, interested. Cedri and Rudy could make things fly. Malla broke magical lamps. And Lord Greuster clearly wanted him to do something now. What could he do? He'd killed someone, so he knew that was a possibility, but somehow he didn't think that was what the man was looking for. Well, the others made light and threw shit. Maybe I can, too.

Not feeling like further trashing the classroom, Riah tried for light, picking the glass window as the most likely option.

Glow, he told it silently, picturing what he wanted. Glow.

He felt something stir within him, a warm, vibrating, roiling mess taking over his chest. He knew the feeling, from using it before. He'd built up a ball of it, a chaotic mass of anger and fear, hate and despair, and threw it across the room with perfect accuracy. Die, he'd told the man. Die.

He'd felt the magic leave him, heard and saw the evil red-black ball of will barrel into Kervin's chest. Die, he'd thought again. God damnit, just die.

And the man had stared for a moment, mouth open, and finally made a wet gurgling noise as he fell to the floor, blood showing at his eyes and nose and flecking his lips, and fresh coffee spilling all over as Mom's favorite mug broke on the floor.

Should've waited for him to put his coffee down, he remembered thinking, before his mind had caught up. Jesus, he's dead, he'd realized, mind fuzzy with it. Just like that, and it was over. The man just...died. It had been easy.

“Not so big, now, are you?” he'd told the man, suddenly angry. “You're nothing. You fucked with me, and I'm still alive.”

Shaking off the memory, he looked up and found Lord Greuster staring at him.

“You shut it down,” the man said. “Why?”

For a moment Riah just watched him impassively. “All I can do is kill people,” he told the man. “It's good enough for me.”

“But not for me,” the man told him, apparently unimpressed by Riah's statement. “Try again.”

“No,” Riah told him.

“No,” Lord Greuster repeated. “Why not?”

“Because I don't want to,” Riah told him.

The man's eyebrows snapped together. “This is my class, Mr. Mordelle. I told you to try again.”

“And I said no,” Riah told him, raising his eyebrows.

Lord Greuster stared at him for a bit. Riah met his eyes aggressively, and finally the man nodded. “I see,” he said. “Stay after class.”

Riah watched him for a bit, then stood, grabbing his textbook. But the book wouldn't budge, and Riah met eyes with Lord Greuster again. The man wasn't even touching the book, but it was clear Riah would not be able to bring it with him.

“Sit.” The man said.

He needed to hold up his end of the bargain with Jaden. He sat, ignoring his classmates' stares.

The man ignored him, helping the other three with the assignments he'd given them, and finally Riah pulled out the homework he'd been working on, until Lord Greuster came by and took it, and the textbook, back to his desk. Riah flexed his hands, resisting a sudden urge to scream. He couldn't do what the man wanted, he couldn't just sit and do his homework. What the hell could he do?

And so he sat impassively and did nothing, watching as the others worked on their respective assignments. Only the obnoxious Rudy managed any real progress, picking up his piece of paper and bringing it to himself without doing it too much damage. Eventually, the class ended and the other students left, and Lord Greuster met his eyes.

“Come here,” he said simply.

Riah swallowed. They were alone. “Why?” he asked.

Once again, the man stared at him. “Because I am the only reason that you are here instead of prison, and I said so,” he answered bluntly.

And it had only been yesterday that the man had informed him of the sort of 'accommodations' that would be provided if he went back to prison. I could equally have been asked to build appropriate accommodations for you, accommodations which would prevent you from escaping or hurting your fellows, but that option would confine you to a six by eight foot cell with neither yard time nor companionship, and it was decided that that would be inhumane. I'm sure that it can still be arranged.

Shit. The man could do whatever the hell he wanted. Taking his textbook was the least of it.

“Come here,” the man repeated.

This time, Riah gritted his teeth and obeyed.

He reached the desk and stood straight in front of it, meeting the man's eyes angrily. The man didn't say anything, and Riah's stomach churned. Still he stared, daring the man to try something.

Finally, he spoke. “You are here in order to learn to control your magic. That means this class. If you do not learn, you will not stay.”

Riah still just stared at him, and the man continued.

“Therefore,” he said. “You will come to class, and obey me while you are here, or you will leave. Is that clear?” He was obviously waiting for a response.

“Crystal,” Riah bit out.

“This decision is entirely up to me. I can make your life here as miserable as I choose. Is that clear?”

Riah glared. I probably understand that better than you do, asshole. “Yes,” he answered again.

“Yes-?” the man said.

Riah closed his eyes for a minute, clenching and unclenching his jaw. “Yes, sir,” he said.

“And this means-?” the man pursued.

“You say jump, I fucking jump, Sir,” Riah told him.

The man gave an aggressive smile. “Smart boy,” he said. “You will come half an hour early for tomorrow's class to make up for your effective absence today. Do not make me come find you again. In the meantime, you are dismissed. Do not forget your belongings.”

Bowing ironically, Riah grabbed his books off the desk and left.

Once out of the classroom, he took a deep breath, fighting down the adrenaline that was suddenly rushing through his system. He'd gotten out okay that time. There was no need for him to wig out. But what the hell was he supposed to do tomorrow?

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Mathias watched the boy leave, shaking his head. He hoped that that had been sufficient. If it wasn't - his orders were to keep the boy here, keep him from hurting anyone, while he got his magic under conscious control. If the boy did not get his magic under control, then Mathias had to report to the Consort that he'd failed. He may not like the orders, but he would not fail the Consort. How far he had to go to achieve that was up to the boy.

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Immediately after leaving Lord Greuster's class, Riah headed back for his dormitory and got settled in finishing his and Jaden's homework. It took him almost two hours, working on both versions, and when he finished he found himself hungry. He didn't have access to a clock, but the bell had just rung the half hour, and his class had gotten out at three-thirty, so it was probably roughly five-thirty. According to the guide book, dinner was served five-thirty to seven.

He could just go, he realized. He didn't have to wait for a specific time, or even for Bat to show him. He could just go. God, that was nice.

Just as nice, he could go alone. He had his map, and the mess hall was likely to be pretty likely to be much less crowded now, at early dinner, then it had been at lunch. He'd be able to eat without worrying about any interference. Feeling a load come off his shoulders, Riah headed out alone.

As predicted, the mess hall was nearly empty when he got there. It meant that he could see the food and make his choice as slowly as he wanted, and not have to deal with anyone staring at him. There was a wide variety of choices – a chicken pie, some sort of broth-based soup, several salads and plenty of bread. He asked for and received a serving of the pie and some salad. He sat alone, and this time nobody joined him. He pulled out his schedule and 'Welcome Newcomer!' booklet.

Tomorrow he had history and first-year Modern Lesser Fae in the morning, and Brews and Base Magic in the afternoon. He'd already taken Lesser Fae for two years, but nobody apparently cared. He'd done some brewing, too, just messing around at home, but he hadn't gotten much beyond herbed broth for his brother when the kid got a cold. He'd liked it then, if only because it made Jamie less miserable for a couple of hours. He'd mostly just wanted the kid to stop snuffling and complaining, but Jamie had worshiped him for it.

Doesn't speak for his taste, he thought bitterly. The poor kid had worshiped Kervin, too. He probably hated Riah, now, if he was right and his mother had told him why both his big brother and stepfather were gone. His chest tightened up at the thought. Let it go, damnit, he thought fiercely. Just let it go. That wasn't his life anymore. He'd never see Jamie again, just like he'd never play his cello and he'd never eat his mother's food. Who cared if the kid hated him for what he'd done? He didn't know shit, and that was as it should be. Let him worship Kervin and hate Riah. He'd never see either of them again.

Shaking off the grim thoughts, Riah folded his papers away and got up. He gave his tray to the dishwashers and returned to his dormitory. Curfew was nine o'clock for his age group, but that was irrelevant. For one thing, it wasn't yet seven, and for another he just didn't care. He left everything but his map in the dormitory and headed out to wander the grounds.

God, he was so fucking free here. He was still in prison. He knew that. But the fact that he could wander at all- God. It made him nervous, that freedom, like someone was going to come up and make him go back. But he wasn't doing anything wrong.

He knew where the beginner complex was, and the intermediate complex beyond it, but he hadn't really explored the latter, or tried to go beyond it. Now he did, following the path past the Base Magic building and into the intermediate complex. Mostly he found buildings in a setup much like that of the beginner complex, just with older students on the pathways, but there was another path out, and after a couple of forks he ended up in another area of the school, one with only a small, one-story building surrounded by gardens, and a grander building further away. They seemed to be purely practical gardens, but as he walked down one side towards the larger building, he found that they turned nicer, with a path winding between ornamental plants. To one side was was a low wall, surrounding a pond.

Looking down into the water, he found to his delight that it was full of colorful fish, and that they swam towards him, rather than away, as he approached. It was the biggest goldfish pond he'd seen in his life. He stuck a finger in, then withdrew it as they came up. They'd bite if he let them.

“Don't you be hurting my fish, boy!”

Riah looked up to see an old woman approaching angrily from the direction of the big building. She was mad at him for hurting her fish?

He just watched her come, and finally she was right in front of him, scowling into his face. “I wasn't going to hurt your fish,” he said finally, confused.

“My garden is not a playground!” she told him.

“Well no...it's a garden,” he told her, eyebrows raised. “For people to walk in. And look at. If that's forbidden then it ought to have a sign, and a fence.”

She scowled at him, then spoke again. “It's not forbidden,” she admitted finally.

“Well good, then,” Riah said. “Leave me alone.”

She just kept scowling at him. “You are rude.”

“Generally,” Riah agreed.

She scowled further. Apparently he was supposed to apologize, and it didn't look like she was going to leave him alone. He shook his head. “I'll leave,” he told her finally. Turning away, he headed back on the path towards the smaller building and the area he'd already explored. He turned back to find her still staring at him. She hadn't moved. He just turned back and kept walking. Weird old lady.

He didn't discover anything else interesting on his walk, though, and eventually returned to the dormitory. Not feeling like talking to anybody, even if he could have found a friendly face, he went to bed.

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A/n: And that's it for chapter four! (Jeez, four chapters to progress one day. I need to speed up!)