I woke up the next morning to a message on my tablet.

Kayden,

I’m looking at a very confusing incident report from Instruktanto Miratova. Please come see me at your earliest convenience.

Taine Cooper

Oh, right. That.

I checked my cuts (painless under Malas’ blue magic, but it still looked creepy as hell), took a few minutes to decide which of my jeans was closest to monochromatic, and headed out to face the music.

Mr Cooper looked a lot more comfortable out of a suit. He was dressed in purple shorts, like a brown, tattooed hulk. The elaborate blue lines raced halfway down his unnecessarily muscled torso.

Between Mr Cooper, Kuracar Malas, and what Magistus was clearly hoping to achieve, were incredibly stacked mage men a thing? That little factoid never got into the stories. Maybe it was coincidence; Dr Marley had been a mage and he’d have blown over in a strong wind. Max came from an important magical family and he looked like someone had taken a normally proportioned human and stretched them upward.

Mr Cooper’s mage mark seemed to glow in the soft light of his false window. The design was different to Dr Marley’s. I had no idea if that meant anything; there was probably a super important secret language in the tattoos, or maybe everyone got to pick whatever they wanted so long as no one else had it, like clown faces. He looked up from his tablet as I entered.

“Ah. Kayden. Please, take a seat.”

I sat.

“I have some very interesting reports here from Alania Miratova and Malas Aksoy. Well, Malas’ reports are never very interesting since all he’s allowed to tell me is that you’re not currently dying, but Alania’s is… puzzling. Care to explain?”

I explained. It was almost disappointing how little time it took. We’d nearly died and I could summarise it in less than sixty seconds.

“I see.” Mr Cooper looked back down at the tablet. “You understand that this is not acceptable.”

“Oh, of course it isn’t.”

“You realise that you could have died.”

“Very easily.”

“And taken Kylie with you.”

“Yes.”

“Well then. I daresay that Alania has already penned a note to your parents, but as your surveyanto it is appropriate that I do the same. I’ll have to report to your parents about your unsanctioned incursions into restricted areas, and Kylie’s about her terrible decision to get herself involved instead of going for help, but contrary to Alania’s… perspective… I don’t think this is all that big of a deal, especially since nobody was hurt. If I can record a formal apology from each of you then – ”

“Oh, absolutely not.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I can’t speak for Kylie, but there’s no way I’m apologising. We didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Kayden, you just said that you understood that this was not acceptable.”

“I agree there. The school’s actions here are completely unacceptable. We got dumped into a new place with weird rules, behaved as reasonably as we could with the information we had, and your school nearly killed us. I didn’t jump into a monster pit for funsies; there’s a slope trap covering the path! There was flooding! I nearly got drowned and eaten! Would it have killed you guys to put up some lighting, maybe in red, the universal colour of danger? Or a safety fence? Or, here’s a neat idea this place seems to have trouble with – there’s this cool thing you can do where you put a door in a hall and – get this – lock it! It stops everyone from wandering into incredibly dangerous areas that have no business being in the middle of a damn school!”

“This is a dangerous place! We teach magic here, which is dangerous! It’s why we have the colour system. You were told that areas outside the blue lights were unsafe.”

“No. I wasn’t.” My heart thundered; my hands shook. Nausea rose inside me; the curse, waking up. I clamped down on my emotions.

In a more reasonable tone I said, “I wasn’t told anything. The only time anyone mentioned the lighting was when you made a single off-hand comment about blue lit areas being general access. You never mentioned any kinds of restrictions; you never mentioned any kind of danger. You know what someone thinks when they hear about areas that aren’t general access? They think “staff room”. Not “death trap”. Is that how the rules work here – memorise everything anyone happens to mention in passing or you might die? That’s absurd. Furthermore, I was barely off the path – I was so close that by the time I realised it was hard to see, I was already falling. Why the hell were general access tunnels anywhere near a place like that? There was nothing there, just twisty tunnels. If blue is safe, why did it tell me things were safe so close to something so dangerous, which wasn’t signed, blocked off or indicated in any way?

“You nearly lost two students yesterday. We’d both just got here, both acted perfectly reasonably – and if you spent one goddamned minute thinking about how Kylie got here you’d realise that she did the best thing she could in this situation. You’re responsible for us, right? You failed. You were negligent. Whoever designed this school was negligent. Whoever built this school was negligent. Instruktanto Miratova, while I’m grateful she saved us, was negligent – who pulls two kids out of a situation like that and then hands them off to another student to walk to the doctor? We could have had internal bleeding! We could have been dying! Kuracar Malas was negligent – who patches up kids after something like that and then just sends them off on their own without any kind of counselling reference, plan for a follow-up, or even someone to keep an eye on them? We’re alone here! We just settle into a dorm and go to dinner like nothing just happened?! This whole situation, beginning to end, was mishandled by this school, and you’re right about one thing – it is definitely not acceptable. If my lawyer didn’t work for you I’d be contacting my parents and pressing charges.”

Mr Cooper watched me carefully, chin resting on his interlaced fingers, while I said my piece. Once he was sure I’d finished, he nodded.

“You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

That threw me. “Uh, what?”

“The thing about this school is that most of our students have some idea of what they’re getting into. They’re from mage families and have the stories of their parents or cousins, or they’re new students who have had extensive interviews and recommendations. Every few years, the school gets a case like yours. This is the first time in my career here that I’ve served as serveyanto for a cursed student, and luck threw two at me at once. It didn’t occur to me that there would be things you didn’t know, and things I couldn’t assume about you. I’ve been doing this job for so many years, I just assumed I knew what I was doing. I should have sought advice on your specific case, and I didn’t. I should have made more of an effort to understand your specific situation, and I didn’t. You’re right; this event is on me.” He stood up. “You have my sincere apologies and vow to try to do better in the future. I will also, of course, send a letter of apology to you parents – ”

“Uh, maybe… maybe hold off on that,” I cut in. “I get it if you need to tell them what happened, but there’s no need to be… graphic, or explicit about blame, or…”

“You don’t want your parents to know about this?”

“Forgetting about my situation again already, see? They didn’t sent me here to learn this so-called dangerous magic you teach. If you tell them I nearly died on my very first day here, and then take the blame on yourself – you, the person who pitched this idea to them in the first place – they’re going to pull me out of school before classes even start. And I’m not watching my parents remortgage their house to pay for lawyers just because I couldn’t keep a curse in my body.”

“That is… reasonable. I will have a word with Alania over her letter, too. I’m sure she will have calmed down by the time you have her for class.”

I froze, hand on the doorknob. “She’s teaching us?”

“Oh, yes. She teaches basic magical theory to the initiates. She’s the one who’ll be teaching you to control your curse.”

I thought about the brusque, stern woman who had chided us for interrupting her experiments with our inconvenient danger after casually creating an ice bridge as if it was nothing. “That sounds… fun.”

“She is extremely effective at what she does.”

“Good, I’m here for effective. Will you be teaching us anything?”

“Have you looked at your schedule at all?”

“Dude, I got here yesterday and nearly died. I haven’t even gone shopping yet.”

Mr Cooper chuckled. “You’ll have me for maths. Don’t forget to do the basic competency test. Shop is on the other side of the cafeteria, by the way.”

“I’ll try to survive the journey.” With a little wave, I left.

Finally, it was time for a shopping spree.