It wasn’t until I’d gotten back to the room where I’d stashed my stuff that I remembered the whole point of going out had been to go shopping.

Ah, well; that could wait. Max’s belongings were still on one of the beds, so I guessed he hadn’t found the optimally positioned dorm yet. Kylie lay on her bed, scrolling through her tablet.

“You’ve gone with the mage look. Nice.”

“Yeah, I’m not sure how I feel about them.” I adjusted my robes. “I guess I’ll get used to them, but they don’t really feel like clothes.”

“I’m sticking with normal clothes, myself.”

“Wait, that’s an option?!”

“Are you allergic to using your tablet or something? I’ll send you the thing.”

My tablet beeped at me. The school had a messaging service, apparently; Kylie had sent me a link to an information page. I clicked the ‘English translation’ button and gave it a skim.

UNIFORM POLICY

Skolala Refujeyo is committed to international cooperation towards a better tomorrow. Because clothing standards vary so wildly between the cultures from which we draw our student body, Skolala Refujeyo does not mandate a single clothing style as a school uniform. Instead, students are expected to adhere to the following colour scale:

Initiates – black, grey, white

Acolytes – red

Apprentices – orange

Craftspeople – yellow

Wizards – green

Masters – blue

Students with religious, cultural or other restrictions on what colours they may wear should speak to their surveyanto before the start of term.

“So we can wear whatever we want, so long as it’s monochrome?” I asked.

“I guess so.”

“Anything? Could someone go to class naked but with, like, a black tie?”

“Why don’t you try it and find out?”

The door opened. Max darted into the room, saw us, and jumped. “Oh. It’s you two.”

“Who were you expecting?” I asked.

He sighed. “The Magistae are here.”

“The what?”

“The Cottingly twins. I’d forgotten they were starting this year. They’re going to want to share a dorm with me, and I don’t have a good excuse to refuse.”

“Sure you do. Your excuse is, ‘I don’t want to share a dorm with you’.”

Max looked scandalised. “I couldn’t say that!”

“Why not?”

“They’re the Cottingly twins!”

“Max,” Kylie spoke up, “neither of us have any idea who that is.”

“Oh. Right. You’re both… new. The Cottinglys are an old mage family of intermediate power.”

“So not super powerful then?” I asked.

“If they were extremely powerful, there would be no problem. Very powerful families don’t need to play the same sorts of games that the rest of us have to. Their family and mine have been good friends for generations.” He made a face. “Naturally, they’re going to want to room with all of their friends at school.”

“So the mage families have tons of politics, and the up-and-coming new kids want to play too now that they’re big powerful mages like their parents, and they’re going to suck you into their little politicking clique because you can’t say no without looking like you’re setting yourself up as an enemy, politics-wise,” I summarised. “Is that right?”

“That is an extremely uncharitable assessment, but… yes.”

“Oh, there’s no problem then,” Kylie said. “Just tell them you’ve agreed to stay with us.”

“How would that help?”

“How wouldn’t it help? I’m betting the guys setting up this mage power squad or whatever wouldn’t want a couple of wit – cursed people dragging them down, right?”

“Being cursed does not necessarily mean the two of you couldn’t make perfectly adequate – ”

“Yeah, yeah; I know you’re supposed to pretend not to judge people and all that, but we’re talking about high school cliques here. Kayden and I aren’t getting invitations to the Mage Family Dorm, are we?”

“… Most likely not, no.”

“Great. So when they ask, tell them you’re real sorry but you promised to stay with us for now, until we get used to the school. That’ll buy you time to come up with a better excuse.”

“That… could work.” Max glanced at me.

I shrugged. “You sure you’re okay with that, Kylie? Sharing a dorm with a couple of guys?”

“Honestly, not under normal circumstances. You boys seem nice but I don’t really know you. But these force fields can stop a chair, so I’m fine with it. It’s not like I know anyone else here either.”

“They can stop a chair?” I asked. “You mean like a thrown chair?”

“Sure can. Try it.”

I hopped over my bed to grab my chair.

“If we’re rooming together,” Max said, “are there any objections to staying in this dormitory?”

“It doesn’t have a twelve-bed-exclusive coffee machine,” I pointed out.

“Or the exclusivity of a tiny four-bed room. Personally, I don’t care. Go on, Kayden, just swing it right at me. You can’t hurt me.”

“If Max is right about there being way too many rooms, I don’t mind having spare beds in here. I’m sure between the three of us we can keep out anyone we really want to keep out.” I swung the wooden chair with a moderate amount of force at Kylie’s bedcurtain, careful to aim well above Kylie (who hadn’t even bothered to move). The chair bounced off the shield and out of my hand, crashing to the floor. I stared at the broken chair leg I was still holding. “This isn’t great.”

“Just swap it for a chair behind one of the unused beds,” Kylie said. “No one will notice.”

“At least we have progressed from bodily damage to property damage,” Max noted. He busied himself unloading bags of monochromatic clothes onto his bed, presumably recently purchased, and sorting them by shade of grey.

“Hey, don’t count out bodily damage yet. I have so much body I haven’t got around to damaging yet.”

“Is it too late to take my chances with the Magistae?”

I switched ownership to a new bed to steal its chair, started to carry the broken chair through the force field, and hesitated. “Hang on.” I stepped back and swung the chair through the force field. It moved through without difficulty. “I can bring it through this field, but not that one.”

“You just claimed that bed,” Kylie pointed out.

“Yeah, but how does it know? I get that maybe it… reads my DNA, or whatever – ”

“DNA doesn’t work like that,” Max said.

“ – but the chair is a chair. Why does your force field stop the chair?”

“I assume because you’re touching it?”

“Okay, but how far does that… field… go? The chair’s made up of lots of pieces, so the field must ‘know’ that I’m touching a piece that’s touching… hang on.” I stood well back and lobbed the broken chair leg at Kylie’s bed. It bounced off the field. “I wasn’t touching that at all.”

“But you threw it.”

“Are you suggesting the force field has some kind of memory?” I lobbed the chair leg at ‘my’ force field. It passed through without a problem. “Or some kind of… way to tell ownership, maybe? Kylie, give me something of yours to throw.”

“Max, please just explain the force fields to him or he’ll be here all day.”

“Why do you assume I know how they function?”

“You know magic, right? You’re a proper mage and all?”

“I don’t think you understand the purpose of going to a school. Nor do I understand why they even have these fields instead of simple locked doors. They’re a safety hazard.”

“The super-strong, owner-specific forcefields are a safety hazard?” I asked. “They’re the safest thing I’ve ever seen!”

“Yes, that is rather the problem. What would happen if somebody were to become incapacitated behind such a field? How would anybody render assistance?”

“Maybe there’s a medical staff override?” Kylie guessed.

“Woe betide anybody who collapses and has to wait for medical staff!”

“Doesn’t the same problem exist with normal locks?” I asked.

“A regular lock can be forced, if need be.”

“Are… are you saying weaker locks are safer locks?”

“I’m saying there’s a natural compromise in safety and security, and nothing on the intranet tells me if there’s an emergency override.” He picked up two identical-looking grey robes and inspected them in the light, ordering them one way in his shade order of clothes and then changing his mind. “It’s the classic speed bump problem.”

“The what now?” I tossed a shirt of mine at Kylie’s force field; it bounced off.

“Speed bumps. They are put on roads to reduce the speed of traffic and prevent accidents, but they kill far more people than they save by slowing down ambulances and other emercency personnel.”

“Say, Max, do you have a reputation for being particularly fun at parties?”

“I am exceptionally fun at parties,” he assured me, swapping the two identical-looking robes again.

“Oh, I bet. I’m gonna put some real clothes on before going to dinner, especially if there are other people here now.”

“The robes do look good on you.”

“No, they look weird. I thought I might be able to pull off the look if I could get used to them, but they’re just… weird. It’s one thing for you mages-in-training to get your looks down early but when I go home in six months I want to still remember how to wear pants.”

I pulled my curtain closed and fished for the most monochromatic outfit I owned. I found a black shirt, but my only pants were blue jeans. I’d have to do some shopping very soon.

We headed to the cafeteria as a group. We weren’t the only people there; in one corner, a couple of girls spoke to each other in rapid Chinese, while over at the buffet a redheaded boy tried to hold four bowls at once while his friend piled different kinds of pudding into them. Near the door sat two square-jawed, lightly muscled blonde teenagers. Aside from one being a boy and the other a girl, they looked almost identical.

The girl noticed us and burst into a grin. “Nonus! I was wondering when you’d show up!” she boomed in a thick American accent, leaping to her feet and enveloping Max in a hug.

“It’s Max, actually,” he said.

“Oh, come on, relax a little!” the American boy said. “You won! Seventeen kids in your lineage and they chose you. You’re here; you’re Nonus Acanthos! No need to hide it!”

“Technically, none of us are mages at all,” Max responded testily. “We are initiates. We won’t be mages, Acanthos or otherwise, unless we survive the trial.”

“There’s a trial?” I whispered to Kylie. “That needs surviving?”

She shrugged.

“Whatever you say… Max. Anyway, we saved you a bed in the dorm. Up back, like you – ”

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible. I’ve already arranged to stay with…” he glanced at Kylie and me.

The twins noticed us for the first time. Their eyes skimmed over both of us, then landed and stuck on Kylie’s witch mark. She blushed under their stares and crossed her arms.

“That’s right,” I said, putting an arm around Kylie’s shoulders and stepping forward to block their view. “We’re cursed. Spooky, I know. I’d show you my mark too, but it’s somewhere I usually don’t bare in polite company.”

The girl laughed. “Then I won’t go looking for it, Mr…?”

“Kayden. This is Kylie. She doesn’t like being stared at.”

“Magista. This is Magistus.”

“And I do like being stared at,” the boy said with a wink.

The twins were, like Max, dressed in dark grey robes. Unlike Max, they’d tried to wear them with some sense of style; Magista had wrapped and belted hers tightly to create a sort of form-fitting dress, whereas Magistus had abandoned all pretense of subtlety and wore his open to the navel with a very tight t-shirt beneath. The attempt was probably to show off their curves and muscles respectively, but since they were both fourteen and very tall, neither of them had finished developing the figures necessary to pull it off.

“So we have North America and Oceana,” Magista said. “Anyone else here yet?”

“Everyone I’ve seen is right in this room,” I shrugged.

“That’s not true!” Max grinned. “We saw Alania Miratova!”

“Miratova? Really?! What’s she like?”

“Well, she was a bit busy at the time. We didn’t really get a chance to chat. She had to run off to check an experiment.”

“She’s running experiments right now? Do you think she’ll show us?”

“Unlikely,” Magistus said. “Max is right; we’re just initiates. What could we learn from them at this stage?”

“Initiation is only six months.” Magista bit her lip. “How young does she take on students? Do you think we have to wait until we’re apprentices, or can we get in as acolytes?”

“Oh, wow – you’re aiming high, aren’t you?”

“Ambition is an important quality, little Acanthos.”

I left the mages to talk and headed for the buffet. They all seemed to have a life plan, which I guess made sense; it’d be stupid to spend so much money to go to an elite school if you weren’t going to do anything with it. But me, I only had to be there six months. Six months to learn to control my curse.

I hoped it would be long enough.