So the thing about fire is this: it’s bad.

As soon as the flames erupted, I grabbed the fire blanket from the kitchen wall and tossed it over the dish, but that did nothing for the globs of flaming batter now scattered about the walls, floor, and benches. Magista swore and started stomping them out.

“That all of them?” I asked.

“Yeah. Yeah, I think so. You hurt?”

“No,” I said, rubbing at a painful burn on my wrist. “You?”

“Not significantly.”

“What were you trying to do?”

“I thought I could get a more precise cook, and thus do several textured layers, if I used a… different heat source.”

“It wasn’t even in the oven!”

“Exactly.”

I glanced at the mage mark on her collarbone. “You tried to electrocute a cake?”

“Cupcakes, technically. And it should have worked!”

“Well, it obviously didn’t. Seven points, usually I’m the one doing stuff like this. You’ve had that spell for 2 weeks and things are already on fire. Do we need a change of plan?”

“No. No, all of the big pieces are already complete. This is just something I wanted to try.” She tucked a long strand of batter-encased hair behind her ear. “We’ll be ready in time.”

“Can I… help in any way?”

“No. No, I’ll be fine here. Thank you, Kayden.”

I took the opening to escape kitchen duty and left her to it. I’d been surprised, after moving into the main school, to discover how in-demand the little kitchens, laundries and various workshops provided for the students were, even though everything was provided for us. And it wasn’t just people like me, who didn’t want the janitors touching their stuff, who were using them – everyone just seemed to want to be able to make things.

I didn’t get it, myself. I never really liked cooking.

Once I was well out of Magista’s sight, I inspected the burn on my arm. It didn’t look bad; I could probably handle it myself. The shop sold first aid supplies. A month ago, I would’ve taken it straight to Malas, who could handle it neatly and painlessly, but… well, I didn’t want to see him again unless I absolutely had to. If I were careful, maybe I could avoid ever having to see him again.

Going through years of school without hurting myself. Forget learning magic, that was the true challenge.

I checked the map for the shop’s location, memorised it and put it away, only getting lost and having to pull it out again twice. I paced out the distances of the corridors as I walked, keeping track of the turns as best I could, writing them down so I wouldn’t forget.

Max and Di Fiore were in the shop, arguing over flowers.

“Trust me, she’ll like the white ones better,” Max said.

“The white ones are juvenile. Are you trying to insult her? You understand the message you’re sending to her?”

“It’s only a message to you! She never learned the – ”

“So you intend to condescend to her and make fun of her ignorance? Max, if we don’t use red – ”

“And you’re, what, going to take her aside and explain the political significance of things that she’s never remotely cared about? Why do you care so much about pulling every single person into – ”

“Why do you insist on ignoring – ”

“Hey, numbnuts,” I cut in. “Why not just buy both flower types? All that sweet, sweet Madja and Acanthos money run out?”

Di Fiore sniffed. “It’s not like we could just place…” he trailed off, thoughtfully.

“That would actually work,” Max said.

“Well… okay, yes, it would. But not for the reasons you think, Kayden.”

“Uh-huh. Max, a present.” I handed him my travel notes. “I’ll do the classrooms when, y’know, my classes actually start.”

“Thank you.”

“Why do you want me pacing these out again anyway? You’ve been taking the school map data from the actual map for months.”

“Just a suspicion. How’s everyone doing?”

“Magista’s cake is on schedule with absolutely no problems – ”

“Of course, she’s a genius at baking.”

“ – Kylie’s first class finishes in ten minutes, and I was just about to go check in on Magistus before heading around to waylay her.”

“You’re sure she won’t suspect anything?” Di Fiore asked. “She is a prophet.”

“Unless somebody’s planning to die at the party, it’s a little outside her speciality,” I explained for the fourth time. “So, y’know, so long at you don’t accidentally make a death threat flower arrangement and trigger a multigenerational Acanthos/Madja blood feud…”

“I doubt flowers would be necessary,” Di Fiore grumbled under his breath.

I bought my burn supplies and got out of there before they could drag me into any ridiculous fighting, and headed for our dorm.

The new Dorm Australia contained only three beds, but had rather more actual space than the initiate version had. Apparently the good stuff was reserved for actual mage students; we had our own little kitchenette, a nice bathroom, and a TV, although it only played stuff on the intranet or uploaded from our tablets. The whole private-area-behind-the-bed design had been carried over, which still struck me as ridiculous. I was starting to suspect that some master student had mass produced a bunch of force field enchanted beds generations ago and the school was trying to find excuses to use them.

At that particular moment, the room looked rather more crowded than usual due to the centre of the room taken up with an empty table shrouded in an unnecessarily fancy tablecloth that Magistus was carefully straightening out.

“Is it gonna be big enough?” I asked, causing him to jump.

“Yes. Magista would’ve cooked for the space we have. I do wish we had more, though.”

“There are only six of us. How much party food can we eat?”

“Ha! Well, whenever anything Magista cooks is in the room, Clara – ” Magistus stopped talking abruptly, and cleared his throat. “Well. Everyone likes leftovers.”

“Yeah. That’s, uh, true enough.”

We were silent for a long moment.

“Haven’t seen you around the gym much,” Magistus said. “Slacking off on your routine?”

“Well.” I tried an awkward smile. “Some of us come to school to exercise something other than dumb muscle.”

“Ha, right; because your brain…” he trailed off, apparently realising at the same moment I did that his comment was coming out meaner and less lighthearted than they used to. He cleared his throat again. “It’s nice to have a decent spotter, is all.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m just busy with getting ready for school, and all.” It was a transparent lie; we both knew I’d been avoiding hanging out with him. But he let it pass, and I gave another weak grin. “First class later today. You have anything yet?”

“Just math. What have you got?”

“Potioncrafting.”

“Ha! Nerd.”

An alarm beeped on my tablet. I had to get to Kylie’s class.

“Gotta go,” I said. “Message me when you’re ready.”

“You got it.”

I got there just as she strolled out of class. “Hey there. Want to go have that talk with Instruktanto Cooper?”

“What, right now?”

“He’s in his office right now.” I brandished the map on my tablet. “Alone, unless he’s with someone with their location turned off. The sooner the better, right?”

“Of course. But we need to… I mean, I’m not sure how to convince him to help us. When we were initiates, everyone was kind of… cagey… about the whole thing.”

“Oh, but you’ve got me. And I’ve got a secret weapon.” I brandished one hand in front of us, like I was revealing a great secret. “Guilt.”

“Uh… what?”

“Guilt! Instruktanto Cooper feels massively guilty about accidentally helping Malas screw me over at the trial! And that guilt’s going to fade fast, so we need to take as much advantage of it right now as we can!”

“That’s a great point. Okay, let’s do it. Let’s go exploit our teacher’s mistakes for personal gain.”

Getting to Instruktanto Cooper’s office from the main school meant approaching from the opposite direction than we were used to. I stared down the blue-lit corridor on the other side, the one I knew to lead to the initiates’ cafeteria. I’d been told, on the first day, that blue areas were general access, but when I was there I’d never seen any older students milling about, visiting friends or whatever. Was it just kind of ‘not done’, or were we actually not allowed to –

“Don’t,” Kylie said.

“I was just looking!” I could walk down that corridor and find out for myself whether I was allowed to be there, but it would be a bad idea. If it wasn’t allowed, and somebody found and explained that to me now, then I wouldn’t be able to use ignorance as an excuse if I ever had to go there in the future. Best not to risk closing that particular door for mere curiosity.

Instruktanto Cooper was indeed alone, his door open. He looked up in surprise as we knocked.

“Can we talk?” Kylie asked.

“Of course. Come on in.” He glanced between us warily. “What can I do for you two?”

“We came to know if there are any cursed kids among the initiates this semester.”

Whatever Instruktanto Cooper had been expecting her to say, that clearly wasn’t it. “Uh. I’m not really sure. It’s unlikely, statistically speaking, but possible. Why? Has there been some kind of problem?”

Kylie shook her head. “We want to meet them, if there are.”

“You want – why?”

“Isn’t that obvious? The transition can be difficult, and none of you guys get it. They need someone they can actually talk to, who knows what questions they’re going to have, and how to answer them in a useful way.”

“Ah. See, we generally find full immersion to be the best way to acclimate students to mage society, so we don’t encourage – ”

“We know. We just lived through it, remember?”

It was my turn. I played my whole hand at once – why not? “And maybe if you were a bit more gentle with that acclimatisation, you might have better results,” I pointed out. “Like, somebody in our position might be able to tell kids what they need to know to not nearly drown on their first day, something that nearly cost you both of last semester’s witches at once. Or maybe we could figure out any unusual circumstances before they’re publically announced in a courtroom. You brought me to talk to Cheryl Castor because your wizard diplomats were failing; you know we can help each other where you can’t.”

“Those are fair points, I suppose. But a student’s information is private.”

“Then ask them first,” Kylie shrugged. “It doesn’t really matter. Everyone knew about Kayden and me within days, so I’m sure if we ask around enough – ”

“I will inquire about whether there are any new witch initiates,” Instruktanto Cooper said reluctantly. “But it’s not likely. And if there are, unless they’re Australasian, nobody’s necessarily under any obligation to tell me about it.”

“Thanks,” Kylie said, giving him an appreciative smile. “See you in maths!”

We left.

“So why are we asking him anyway?” I asked when we were alone. “I mean, like you said; if there are any witches, word’s going to get around. I’m sure the initiates will all know soon enough.”

“Di Fiore suggested asking him,” Kylie said. “The school hasn’t… well, nobody ever stopped us from talking to Talbot, but the whole thing is clearly not designed to make it easy. Di Fiore says there probably won’t be any problems if we want to start a little Witch Club, but on the off-chance there are, making our surveyanto complicit will help.”

“And you trusted him? That witch-hating git?”

“He’s a prick, sure, but he’s an expert on awful underhanded politics. And he seemed to like the idea, honestly. I think he hopes witches mentoring witches will limit how much those ‘undeserving witch initiates disrupt the school and drain its resources’. We can protect them from people like him, at any rate.”

“You sure it’s any of our business?” I teased. My tablet beeped; a message from Magistus. Good. I didn’t bother to respond. My location was on on the map; they knew how far away we were. I quickened my pace and Kylie, not really seeming to notice, accelerated to keep up.

“Not if they don’t want it to be,” she said. “But I think they will.”

“You don’t look certain.”

She shrugged.

“Seriously, what’s wrong? Witch Club is a great idea. I mean, doing it out in the nemagisto world would get us all killed, but here – ”

“Then why doesn’t it already exist? We can’t be the first people to have thought of helping each other out.”

“Maybe it has, in the past. Maybe it’s just that there weren’t any witches who were interested when we we initiates. I mean, the only one here we know is Talbot, and he’s… not a groupwork kind of guy.”

“Maybe. But Instruktanto Cooper would know if that’s the case, right?”

“Maybe he doesn’t want to encourage us. Or maybe he wouldn’t know; we’re his first witches, remember?”

“Yeah. I guess that’s true.”

“Anyway,” I said, throwing an arm around Kylie’s shoulders as we approached our door, “we can worry about all that later. Right now, we have something way more important to focus on.” I pushed the door open.

“What could we – ”

“Surprise!”

“Happy birthday,” I said with a grin.

Kylie’s eyes skimmed over the hastily pinned flowers about the room, the pile of brightly wrapped gifts, the kitchenette and central table laden with elaborate snacks.

“I was only gone for half an hour,” she mumbled.

Well, she was surprised!