Two more days went by as Orenda slogged through them. She was beginning to grow genuinely interested in her studies, but the gnawing at the back of her mind, that she was not really here, that she was on a mission and was actually a Knight of Order masquerading as a student, ate away at her and made her uneasy. She wanted to move on. She was overjoyed when she looked up from the paper she had been using to take notes on the lineage of Urillian royalty to see Ali’s face flickering in the firelight of the lamp that hung in the classroom.

He looked strange. He looked as he had when Orenda had last seen him- it felt like so long ago- but his hair had been arranged differently, a gold jewel rested on a chain around his forehead, and his face had been painted in a way that enhanced his already pretty features. His eyes, in particular, were so wide and expressive, being offset as they were with thick liner, that they made him look almost like a drawing, and Orenda wasn’t sure she liked it. He looked as if he had acquired a slew of new piercings, and she imagined that they hurt less than the brand she had been forced to give him.

Her eyes darted to the teacher, who was still going over the Urilian royalty, then back to the flame. She mouthed the word “tonight”. Ali nodded, looked to the side, and was gone.

“Which brings us to the current administration,” The teacher was saying when Orenda tuned back in, “Empress Xandra Uril was crowned on her thirteenth birthday, Year One of her reign, and of our current calendar system. This is the youngest of any recorded coronation, but shortly before a band of terrorists had attacked the castle, and both King Delphinius and Queen Xandra the elder were found dead upon arrival. Though the exact attackers were never identified, we do know that the group included both water and fire mages, as the castle and the surrounding countryside were attacked using fire magic, but the queen was murdered with a potion only brewed by water mages- yes, Orenda.”

“How?” Orenda asked.

“How what?” The teacher stood, still pointing to the chart.

“How were they attacked by fire mages? Fire mages can’t travel to the Capital. We can’t cross the sea. I passed out in the bathhouse. Water, in large quantities makes us ill, so ill we pass out. I don’t understand how they could have traveled there to make such a brazen attack.” Orenda’s eyebrows knit in the middle of her forehead as she thought on it.

“This was over three hundred years ago,” The teacher explained, “The fire elves were still plentiful, still had a vast network of city-states that stretched the entire range of the Sacred Mountains.”

“I’m not asking if they existed,” Orenda clarified, “I’m asking how they traveled to the capital.”

“On ships, I suppose,” the teacher shrugged, “It wasn’t recorded.”

“But fire elves can’t travel on ships!” Orenda argued.

“Obviously they can,” the teacher explained, “They were there. Now, going back to the texts, you’ll see that this is the first recorded instance of the Emerald Knight appearing during battle. The reason we have so few records of these terrorists as individuals is because none of them survived the night. By that morning, the entire advancing army had been completely eradicated.”

Orenda began to take notes again. She wrote:

They want to tell everyone that we attacked first. That’s why they say that fire mages attacked the capital. I do not believe it happened.

“The Emerald Knight appeared before the princess and drew the sacred sword,” The teacher went on, and Orenda became interested in the drawing in her history book. As the teacher began to speak about Xandra’s coronation and early reign, Orenda took in every aspect of the print. It had been a woodblock, she suspected, and depicted a princess, around the age Orenda was now. She thought that the wispy earth elves may think she was beautiful in her pretty dress with her pretty hair flowing out behind her. But she did not draw Orenda’s focus. Orenda was looking at the man behind her.

He was easily ten feet tall, but the branches that extended from the helmet made him even taller. Every inch of him was covered in armor that the artist had decided to depict as being made of plants and stone- not worked stone, but the very living stone of a forest. It didn’t look like armor; it looked like a forest had taken the form of a person. The knight’s chest held a stone that seemed to be particularly important to the design, because that was where the glow that surrounded him was coming from. He was obviously supposed to be a protective figure, standing behind the princess with his left arm held in a defensive stance over her head.

In that hand he held a sword, a sword that Orenda recognized. It was a hand and a half blade, though she did not know enough about swords to know that. She did know that it had the hilt that feathered out toward the blade- did not know that the “feathers” were called guards, but thought they were very pretty. She saw the flowers, vines, leaves, and runes etched down the blade, and thought that it looked more ceremonial than practical. She saw what she thought was an oddly shaped earth crystal in the place where the blade met the hilt and wondered if magical swords were a thing.

It was the same sword that the crazy man had drawn on his flier.

Orenda thought that this was a strange way to portray oneself. In the woodcut, Xandra was nothing; the Emerald Knight was everything. Were she Xandra, she would have made herself the focal point. She wouldn’t need a legend to hide behind. Orenda thought it made the princess look weak, as if she was covering for something.

Orenda wondered if the Emerald Knight was a real person, and if he was, why he was looking for Gareth. She wondered what Ali had to tell her. She took notes with half a mind and kept these thoughts in the back half, tumbling together with all the other thoughts that she kept there through the rest of her classes.

She had taken to having her lunches outdoors, where she could sit and read on one of the benches closest to the slave quarters. She was hoping that Bubbider would see her, in her comings and goings, but though Orenda saw her from time to time, they never spoke. Their friendship, like much of Orenda’s life, was secret. Orenda had, during her time in town, taken to buying stacks of the sort of cheap books often sold to young women, romances, horror stories, legends, and adventures. She thought that once she was done she may give them to Bubbider.

She found that there were quite a few romances about long-lost princesses, more than she had anticipated. They took her mind off of things, and, she thought, provided cover, the idea that she really was just a girl about to become a teen, interested in silly things like novels. She really would like to tell Bubbider that Ali had tried to contact her. She wondered if she should try to contact him- but it was difficult to find anywhere secluded during the day. She would have a better chance at night, and she didn’t want to interrupt him in his important mission.

So she had to wait, and waiting could be painful. She made it through the rest of her classes without incident, though she found herself zoning out during her etiquette class, and didn’t realize she had completely ignored everything going on around her until the young man in front of her snapped his fingers right in her face.

“I’m not getting a bad grade because you’re not paying attention,” he hissed, “I said, ‘How does this evening find you, Miss Nochdifache?’.”

“Fine, thank you, guy-who’s-name-I-can’t-remember,” Orenda huffed.

“I want another partner,” He frowned.

“I remember your first name, Tolith,” She told him, “I can’t remember your last.”

“Where even are you right now?” He asked, annoyed.

“I was thinking of something,” Orenda shrugged, “I can’t remember where we are. I have a very full schedule and I’ve grown tired. Let me look through the book.” She flipped to the page and read, “It finds me well, Mr- wait, no you’re not mister you have a title, right?”

“Yes, oh my god,” he whined.

“Shut up,” Orenda told him, “I have it. ‘It finds me well, Lord Tolith.”

“My name is Glenlen, there’s no way you don’t know that, come on, why are you so bad at this-” his eyes grew wide and he said, “He’s coming over here. We need to get it right.”

Orenda looked up and, sure enough, their instructor was making his way to them. Tolith stood quickly and bowed to Orenda.

“How does this evening find you, Miss Nochdifache?” he asked.

“It finds me well, Lord Glenlen,” Orenda answered, glancing at the book, “How is your dear mother?”

“She is well suited for her position,” Tolith answered, “And I find her in good health.” He watched Orenda watching the instructor move on to the next table, then whispered, “I’ve not talked to my mom since school started. This is stupid. Like… we all know this is stupid, right?”

“Shut up, Toli,” Orenda sighed.

“I can hear you two,” the instructor turned back to them, “Honestly, Tolith, I expect better of you. I put you with Orenda so that you could bring her up to your level, not so that she could drag you down to hers.”

“Sorry, Professor Erkas,” they said in unison.

“Do it again and go over your rankings, please. Orenda, honestly, never tell anyone to ‘shut up’. That doesn’t even have to do with nobility; I feel it shouldn’t need to be stated. That’s simply common sense. And Lord Glenlen, do not use the word “stupid” and do not pad out your sentences with useless expression such as “like”. You know better than that.”

“How does this evening find you, Miss Nochdifache?” Tolith asked, sounding as formal as he could.

“It finds me well, Lord Glenlen,” Orenda took the hand he offered and asked, “How is your dear mother?”

“She is well suited to her position,” Tolith answered, “And I find her in good health.” He seemed to be fighting laughter as he continued, “It would- hold on-” he glanced down at the book, “I was hoping that you would do me the honor of allowing me to escort you to the court this evening.”

“That sounds absolutely lovely,” Orenda answered.

“Much better,” Professor Erkas nodded, “Try to make it a force of habit, even when you’re not in this class.” He moved away, apparently actually shifting his focus this time, and Tolith immediately sat down.

“What did you mean you have a busy schedule?” Tolith asked, “You really are always falling asleep in here.”

“My first class is at seven in the morning, and I go through until this one,” Orenda explained, “I have more than twelve hours each day and then I have to do my work, of course, so I’m often in the library until late… I do well to get four hours of sleep a night. I feel a bit worn thin.”

“Really?” He asked, “Why?”

“Because I came to school rather late,” Orenda explained, “So now I must catch up.”

“Is it because you were out adventuring before you decided to study?” Tolith asked, growing excited, “On the high seas? I so wish I could do that! I’ve read all the adventure stories! I want to go exploring into the uncharted regions of Xren, into the desert or the frozen north- I’d like to go to the places on the map where it says ‘here be monsters’ and see what they are!”

“Shut up, Toli,” Orenda told him again, and tried to keep her eyes open. “I would very much like a cup of coffee. Be a gentleman and go get it.”

“Wait I think that is actually a thing,” he said, flipping through the book, and Orenda rolled her eyes.

Orenda really had taken to staying in the library until late at night studying, if not doing homework then reading everything she could about the history of the region, so it was not uncommon for her to take a lamp and go, alone, into the research section, long after everyone else had left. She had cultivated this habit until it had been expected, and had noticed that though the masons were working on the bathhouse, none of them had come to brick up the secret door to the strange room in the library. She hoped that Felaern had forgotten about it.

But, as she stood before it, she wondered if he had put up any magical wards. She had been reading up on them since he mentioned them, and found that there were different kinds. Some of the earth wards would simply create an impassable wall of stone, which is, she supposed, what he had threatened, but for some reason had not used. Others would prevent entry by making the person who tried to pass physically ill. Still others would just let the caster know the seal had been broken. Orenda did not know what kind of ward he had cast, and thus was skeptical about going into the room.

She supposed that she could simply say that she had forgotten something. For all his talk, Felaern hadn’t ever actually really punished her, aside from the one robbery. She went through long periods where she could not bring herself to fear him. She put her hand on the door, and when nothing happened, she opened it, and stepped inside. Instantly the magic of the place flowed through her, and she locked the door and sat the lamp on the floor.

Then she stretched out her hand, tried to remember Ali’s soul, and cast a flame in the shape of it. She was shocked at how it shot from her hand, at least twice the size she had intended, and her eyes darted to the windows lining the room- anyone looking up would certainly have seen that, but there was nothing to be done for it now.

After a few seconds, she saw Ali’s face again, looking extra strange this time. About half of it had been wiped clean, presumably with the rag he was holding in his hand, and his eyes grew huge when he saw her. He held up one finger, leaned in, and whispered, “I’ll call upon you in a minute. Extinguish the scry.”

Orenda waved her hand and the flame dissipated. She had barely sat down to wait when the flame in her lamp flickered and she saw his face again. She reached inside, picked up the flame in her hand, and expanded it to better see him.

“Can you talk?” She asked.

“Yeah, yeah I can talk,” he said, “I’m hidden well, I think,” still his eyes were wide and full of fear. He had changed in a way that Orenda did not like.

“Are you alright?” She asked him.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said defensively, “It wasn’t anything more than I thought it would be. Are you alright? Bubbider said you made it to the school and you’re taking classes.”

“There’s nothing here,” Orenda said, “I’ve stagnated.”

“Just use it,” Ali told her, “Learn all you can. We need as many skilled mages as we can get. Listen, Rendy, you’re an elf, and that means that they’re going to trust you more there. You’re not a slave, you’re a student. Learn all you can.”

“I think the headmaster was a soldier in the war against my people,” Orenda told him.

“I wouldn’t doubt it,” Ali agreed, “Elves live long lives. He could know something about them, but I don’t know how you would get it out of him. Listen, Rendy, I can’t talk long. Most of the boys in the harem do not follow the path of order- actually, most of the boys in the harem are aggravating the shit out of me.”

“You look awful,” Orenda agreed.

“I feel awful,” Ali sounded as if the prospect angered him, “Rendy you can’t imagine it. All they ever talk about is their precious Lady Glenlen, their drugs, and their appearance. That’s it. They’re like a pack of particularly stupid dogs. They don’t seem to understand that I’m trying to help them, but I can’t talk about it, because if they find out they’ll go running to their precious master. It’s a balancing act that is getting really tiresome! You have to pretend to like her well enough that you’re completely devoted, but not so well that they think you’re trying to get more favor than you deserve. They rank each other and guard those ranks closely- the entire thing is bizarre. People have died over it- I’m not exaggerating! These fools have killed over jealousy! It blows my mind!”

“Are you safe?” Orenda asked.

“Yes, I can defend myself if I have to,” Ali answered, “And I get a bit of a grace period because I’m new and I guess they expect it- but I’ll find out all I can. Rendy, listen, I need everyone to know this who possibly can. I’ve already told Bubbider.”

Orenda nodded.

“In the Lady’s bedroom,” Ali explained, “Something is trapped. I don’t know what it is, but it’s some sort of spirit. It calls out to me when I’m in there. It begs me to let it out. It says it’s looking for Xaxac.”

“The white rabbit?” Orenda asked.

“I think so,” Ali was speaking more quickly now, “I can’t speak back to it, so I can’t ask it anything. I don’t know if it’s trying to decieve me. It says its name is Lapus. I want to tell it that I follow the white rabbit and see what it does, but I can’t get in there by myself. I need more time. I need to make her trust me more, to let her guard down. But I’m going to find out what it is. I think she hears it too. She doesn’t speak back to it, but she makes faces as if she understands, as if she hears.”

“I’ve read stories of spirits trapped in items,” Orenda said, and meant to go on but Ali cut her off.

“So have I,” he said, “A djinn. If she has one, that explains everything. That explains how they conquered so quickly and how she’s ruled for so long. If I can get my hands on it, it can change everything.”

“It could be powerful,” Orenda told him, “Be very careful.”

“Ugh,” Ali made a sound not directed toward her, and when he spoke again it was hushed, “I have to go, Rendy. I’ll contact you again when I can. Just stay safe. Stay alive.”

“You too, Ali,” Orenda said, thinking of how red his eyes were and how dark the circles were under them, “Stay safe. Stay alive.”