The Ruens of Fairstone (Aeon of Light Book 2) (13 page)

“Come on, it’s got to be hard to forget your own birthday.”

Pard snorts. “You’d be surprised.”

“So you attend Fairstone?”

“That’s right—for now.”

Selby squints. “
For now
?”

Pard glances away. “It’s nothing.” Pard changes the subject. “So you said you’re trying to decipher a Rue text?”

“That’s right. My father has a Ruen book in his study. Have you heard of Ruen?”

Pard nods. “A little.”

“Well, I want to read it, or at least try to read it, but if I can’t even read Rue, there’s no way in heck I can even begin to read Ruen.”

Pard lets out a sarcastic chuckle. “Tell me about it.”

“So you’ve seen a Ruen text?”

“You can say that. I actually have a Ruen book too, my mother gave it to me.”

Selby snorts not believing Pard. “Right, your mother gave a fifteen-year-old a priceless Ruen text. That makes zero sense.”

“She died,” Pard says, “many years ago.”

Selby sucks in a breath and holds it. “Oh my.” She touches Pard’s arm. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize.”

“It’s okay. It was six years ago.”

“This is getting awkward,” Selby says. “You really put your foot in your mouth this time, Selby.” She smiles at Pard. “What am I thinking, you know I never even asked you your name. My name is Selby.”

“I kn—” Pard catches himself.
Dumb Pard, play dumb.
“What a beautiful name, it’s nice to meet you, Selby. I’m Pard, Pard Wenerly.”

Selby covers her mouth with her hand and lets out a faint gasp. “I remember now, your parents used to teach at Fairstone a few years ago, before—” She cringes and gently slaps her forehead with her palm, scolding herself to shut up.

“That’s right,” Pard says. “It’s okay, no need for it to be weird or think you hurt my feelings. My parents have been gone a long time.”

Selby gives Pard an innocent smile. “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Pard.”

“And it’s very nice to meet you too, Selby Barrow.”

Selby’s eyes narrow. “I didn’t tell you my last name.”

Pard gulps.
Dummy, deflect, deflect
. “I-I, well, everyone knows who Selby Barrow is, the daughter of the mayor of Greysin. I didn’t want to be presumptuous.”

“So you want to help me learn Rue?” Selby says, her eager eyes and smile beaming.

“Of course I do. I would love too.”

“
Really
?”

“Sure, most definitely, I can’t think of anything else I’d rather be doing right now other than teaching you Rue.”

Selby chuckles. “You’re joking, right?”

Pard’s face stiffens and his butt shifts in his chair. “
Umm
, yeah, of course, well, no, wait.” He clears his throat. “Maybe only ten other things I’d rather be doing.” Pard searches Selby’s eyes for the right answer as her face goes blank. He slowly shakes his head. “Or maybe a hundred things? A thousand?”

Selby’s mouth curls into a grin. “You’re funny.”

Pard shrugs. “I get that often.”

“I bet you do.”

“So when do you want to meet up to study Rue?” Pard says.

Selby scratches her cheek as she thinks on it. “How about here in the library the day after tomorrow?”

“Day after tomorrow sounds good. I only have twenty other things I’d rather be doing than studying Rue with you on that day.”

Selby slaps her hand over her mouth. Her body does a single bob, and she lets out a sudden, high-pitched laugh, but she quickly catches herself and stops.
 

Ms. Cookle snaps her head toward Selby as she vocally drops a book on the wooden cart. The librarian’s glare, keen to the errant student laugh in the library, fixes on Selby.

Selby sinks in her chair.
 

Ms. Cookle slowly turns away and goes back to her book business.

Selby smiles and slaps her hand on Pard’s wrist. “I look forward to it, and I’m glad I cracked your top hundred things you’d rather be doing other than teaching me Rue.”

“Yeah, glad—” Pard gets lost in her deep-blue eyes.

“Selby!” a gruff man’s voice says.

Pard and Selby flinch at the same time and both snap out of their moment.

A lumbering, medium-height man with portly belly, wavy grey hair, and a round clean-shaven face, waddles toward them.

“Father,” Selby mumbles. She leans into Pard’s ear and whispers, “I know you know who he is, but he likes to be called mayor.”

The mayor points at Selby’s books then circles his finger around the library. “Pack up your things and go home. I have to stay here a little longer for my meeting with Edvin and his guests.”

“Father, I’d like to introduce you to a friend of mine.”

The mayor looks at Pard with a suspicious eye. “So who is this?”

“This is Pard, he attends Fairstone, Father.”

“Yes, yes,” the mayor says with a jiggle of his jowls and a puff of air. His thin eyebrows relax and his face turns welcoming. “Pard, my good boy, Fairstone, of course, right, nice to meet you.”

Pard knows the reaction by now, all the locals and even the outsiders traveling through Greysin treat him as if he’s a filthy rich lord once they realize he attends Fairstone, that is, unless they know who he really is. Selby’s father, even though he’s the mayor of Greysin, doesn’t know all the boys who attend the school. For all the mayor knows, he could be talking to a future king like Miles. So his demeanor adjusts to this revelation as he thinks that Pard might be one of his betters—that is unless—

“You said Pard?” the mayor says, tilting his head and scanning Pard’s face. “You wouldn’t be the Wenerly boy, would you?”

“Nice to meet you, mayor.”

The mayor furrows his brow. “What are you doing out of Fairstone so late, Mr. Wenerly?”

“
Umm
—” Pard, a loss for words, glances around the library for his escape. Then a shiver overtakes him as a swooping red robe flutters down the marble stairs on the other side of the library.
Yitch.

“Pard was helping me read Rue,” Selby says.

The mayor’s face transforms from slightly welcoming to something thoroughly unpleasant.

Pard peeks back at the staircase as Yitch’s robe continues to flap with a life of its own.
 

Yitch turns the corner of the bannister to the lower level with a flourish.
 

The mayor glances toward the stairs and sees Yitch. “Here comes Edvin now.”

Pard smiles at Selby and mouths,
see you later, gotta go
. “Nice to meet you, mayor,” Pard quickly says as he darts away, ducking into a book aisle.

“What’s that you said?” The mayor turns back around toward Pard no longer in sight.

Pard races through the outer aisle of the library to avoid Yitch. He reaches the waiting room by the front door, and Miles springs off a red velvet cushy couch next to the fireplace and saunters toward him.

“So how’d it go? It must have gone all right—took you long enough. I’ve been waiting here forever.”

Pard rushes past Miles. “Went great—but we gotta go.”

The front door of the library swings open, and Pard skids to a stop. He stares through the muted void as swirls of snow and a cool rush of air bursts through the threshold. The bitter breeze steals Pard’s breath away for a second as he peeks behind him for any sign of Yitch or the mayor.

Miles nudges Pard’s arm. “What’s got you in such a hurry? There’s no need to race away from the girl this time if it went great.”

“Yitch is here,” Pard says, though the words dribble out of his mouth and barely make a sound.

A different kind of wind gusts past Pard’s right shoulder, and he tilts his head to the side.

A beautiful middle-aged woman with long brown flowing hair and wearing a weathered dark-tan leather duster coat glides by him. She peeks back at Pard, no emotion on her face, focused and calculated, her steely hazel eyes connect with his, two scars, almost matching, one scar per cheek, they extend from under her eye to her chin, and entirely out of place on an otherwise beautiful face.
 

Pard slightly flinches as the woman’s demeanor unnerves him.

The scar woman turns away with an elegant grace and continues to stroll with authority and athletic precision toward the center of the library.

And then another gust of wind wisps by Pard, this time on Pard’s left.

Pard’s eyes shift as another beautiful woman of similar age to the scar glides past him. Her long black-hair rests on her shoulders, and the bottom of her black leather duster coat flutters as she strides a few steps behind the scarred woman. She suddenly spins around square to Pard but continues to walk backward with the same grace as she was walking forward. Her face thin and strong, fearless and full of confidence.

Pard’s jaw drops, taking in the two women, who appear more like characters from one of the fantastical stories of old he has read than them being real and right here in the Greysin Library.

The dark-haired woman’s duster flaps open with a flurry and a shiny silver whip unlike anything Pard’s ever seen before is attached to her black belt. Her pale smooth skin, gorgeous, but her eyes hollow and black, eyes that have seen and done many things that drain the soul of any emotion. She gestures her hand toward Pard.

Pard sucks in a breath.

The whip woman points once to Pard’s left and then once to his right. “Star—Penter.” Then she gracefully spins back around as if floating on air and continues to follow the other woman deeper into the library.
 

Pard tracks their movements, never seeing such women.

“What’s with you?” Miles says, gently setting his hand on Pard’s shoulder.

Pard flinches again.

“Jumpy.” Miles nods at the two women now at the far end of the library and almost out of sight. “A little old for you, don’t you think?”

“Huh?” Pard says.

“Those two ladies—way out of your league. Heck, they might even be out of
my
league, and that’s saying something.”

“Yeah,” Pard says not following Miles’s meaning.
What are they doing in the library?
Their demeanor, the way they dress, they sure don’t seem the type to be roaming the library in Greysin, nor have children at Fairstone.
An uneasy feeling crawls over Pard’s skin.

“So it went well with Selby?” Miles says.

“Yeah.”

Yitch and the mayor step out into the open at the far end of the library, both smiling and nodding as they introduce themselves to the two women that just past Pard.

“What is it?” Miles says, staring at Pard’s blank face. “What’s wrong?”

Pard quickly turns away and walks with purpose with his head down. He mumbles, “Yitch is here.”

Miles follows him, swinging his arms in a carefree manner and taking his sweet time. “Slow down, it’s not a race. So tell me how it went?”

Pard shakes his head in frustration and looks up and comes to another abrupt stop as two large, worn black boots come into focus in front of him. He inches away from a tall man’s chest. Startled, he stares into the man’s face.

The goat reading young bearded man with the white splotch on the side of his head stares at him with a cool gaze. The goat man’s eyes narrow as he scans Pard.

Getting more uncomfortable with each passing second, Pard slides to the side of the goat and inches forward. On the right side of the library entrance, another man, a little older, maybe ten years older, the star man Pard saw on the way home from the library the other night who appears to have almost buzzed black hair underneath his tight leather skullcap. His thick yet wiry mustache slightly curls at the ends, and his black leather duster, much more worn than the goat man’s, has seen many scuffles and battles. His solid silver right eye glares at Pard through the monocle, and under his left eye, a small star tattoo.

Pard gulps and glances away from the star man.
I guess this is Star and the goat guy is Penter.
Pard reaches the front door and peeks back.

Penter slowly turns, almost mechanical, and tracks Pard’s every move.
 

Pard gives Penter a forced smile.
No way these guys nurse baby goats
. And Pard pushes through the front door. As soon as the door clicks shut behind him, Pard takes off, slipping and stumbling down the ice-covered library marble stairs and his eyes fix on Fairstone glowing on the hill in the distance.

Miles, finally exiting the library, stands on the top of the stairs and watches Pard race away. “Professor, you sure are an antsy one. If you’re gonna hang with me you gotta chill out sometimes.”

Pard angles his body back. “Yitch!”

Miles continues strolling down the steps, not wanting to move any faster, his mind still focused on how it went with Pard and Selby, it doesn’t register that Pard said Yitch. “So it went well, did you get a date with her?”

Now at the bottom of the stairs, Pard whirls around and opens his arms. “Will you move! Didn’t you hear me? Yitch is here, right now in the library!”

“
Yitch
?” Miles says with a head twitch.

“Yes—move!”

Then it hits Miles in force, and with athletic precision Miles sprints down the rest of the stairs and doesn’t stop until both he and Pard reach the gate of Fairstone.

At the iron gate embossed with a falcon talon, which leads into the school grounds, they rest their hands on hips as they catch their breath.

“So tell me,” Miles says, “it went exactly as I told you, right?”

Pard chuckles, and not wanting to disappoint Miles, he looks him in the eyes, smiles, lies, and plays dumb, giving him a compliment. “Yup, just as you said, thanks a lot, great advice, you’re the best, and we’re going to study at the library the day after tomorrow.”

Miles grins, fully satisfied with himself. He pats Pard on the back. “See, I told you, if you listen to me, you and I will go far together.”

Pard laughs and gazes up to his little window on the fourth floor. “This is the best birthday ever.”

Miles flinches. “Today’s your birthday?
Seriously
?”

“Yup.”

“
Huh
, happy birthday, Pard, happy birthday.”

SOMETHING FROM THE CESSPOOL

The following day, in the Fairstone library, Pard hides in a corner, studying for the upcoming terms beginning on Monday in two days, and he does his best to stay out of sight from prying eyes. Everywhere he goes he either gets fearful stares, snide remarks, or questions about how he killed Nero with his mysterious blue light. Pard peeks up from his history book and away from The Treaty of the Mast, to find none other than Hector hovering over top of him with eager eyes and pen and paper at the ready. Pard lets out an annoyed sigh and looks back down at his history book. “What do you want now, Hector?”