The Ruens of Fairstone (Aeon of Light Book 2) (6 page)

Miles shakes his head, still eyeing Pard. “Nothing.”

“Then why are you staring at me?”

Miles inches into Pard’s space.

Pard’s head and body stiffens and rises higher the closer Miles gets to him. “
Umm
, what are you doing?”

“Nothing.”

“Then why do you keep getting closer to me?” Pard’s breathing slows as Miles’s chest is almost touching his shoulder. Uncomfortable, he hugs his large stack of books and quickens his pace.

Miles, skipping up the stairs sideways, keeps up with Pard step for step.

“Stop it, you’re freaking me out, quit doing that.”

“Quit doing what?”

“Hovering and following me like you are.”

Pard makes a hard right as he reaches the third floor, and Miles clings to Pard.

Miles’s hand inches up the back of Pard’s robe, his fingers barely touching the neckline.

“There you are!” Headmaster Yitch says, gliding toward them through the hallway, and his red robe fluttering like a flag in the breeze.

Pard snaps to a stop, and Miles’s hand taps the back of Pard’s neck.

Pard whirls around and faces Miles.

Miles playfully smiles and swoops his hand over Pard’s head and brushes his own hair back behind his ears.
 

“What the hell are you doing?” Pard says.

“What? Nothing, just stretching and fixing my hair. Hey, so it looks like you have more important things going on, so, yeah, talk to you later, professor.” Head held high, Miles strolls past Yitch. “Headmaster.”

Yitch grumbles, “Lord Marlow,” then he turns toward Pard, “Wenerly, with me to my office!”

YITCH’S REPOSITORY OF YITCH

Yitch slams his office door shut, and Pard, just inside the enormous room, is unsure of what to do next.
 

Pard’s nose twitches from the overwhelming aroma of sweet flowers, a cross between a daisy and jasmine, and he sneezes.
 

Yitch swoops past Pard like an osprey and glides straight for his desk. “Hold you’re sneezes while in my office, I wouldn’t want you to ruin anything.”

“Yes, sir.” Another jolt of aromatic flowers hits Pard and his throat and lungs lock up as he tries to hold in his air.

Yitch stands with his back to Pard as he stares through his glass door leading out to the balcony. “Winter’s picking up now, lucky I got those flowers from Ulerue, I have connections there. Ever smell a jadaisy before, Wenerly?”

Pard doesn’t answer, trying to keep it together and not sneeze.
I think I’m smelling one right now. Hold it, hold it, hold it.
The pressure releases and his chest relaxes.
Ah…

“Is that a yes or a no, Wenerly?”

Pard opens his mouth and inhales. The jadaisies hit him with a vengeance and his body lurches forward letting out a flurry of sneezes.
 

Yitch growls, and Pard wipes his nose with his sleeve and leaves the fabric up by his face to filter out the jadaisy-laced air.

Grrrr

Pard’s eyes find Yitch’s dog Maximus sitting by his feet, a horrendous miniature bug-eyed creature, whose aggressive and little dog complex make it thoroughly unpleasant.

Ruff

Pard gives the dog an awkward smile. “Hey there, little guy, aren’t you cute.”

Grrrr

“Maximus, come, leave Wenerly be. I already know he’s suspicious.”

Grrrr

“Maximus!”

The dog flinches and darts across the room and sits next to his master’s feet.

Pard rolls his eyes,
charming little ugly monster
, then they circle Yitch’s office, a room he had hoped he’d never have to enter, and unfortunately his hopes are now dashed as he stands at the precipice, about to get interrogated about the cat he may have played a roll in electrifying the prior night. Pard’s eyes nervously dance around the room, a room so filled with fancy things it’s almost too hard to process in his mind. The office is more akin to a small museum than it is to a headmaster’s office at a private school. Yitch’s office is at least three times larger than anything Pard would imagine as normal for an office. And it is more like the size of one of the small lecture halls on the first floor. Brilliant, shiny suits of armor stand sentry on either side of the door. Portraits and landscapes painted by some of Vetlinue’s most renowned masters hang on the stone or birchwood-paneled walls. Pard recognizes a few paintings from plates in one of the art books he recently read. A Panoramic window looks out over the front of the castle and Greysin Lake, similar to Pard’s view, though this view is as if you are flying in the clouds and the glass fills up a good portion of the entire far wall. Glass display cases full of ancient texts and golden trinkets and ruby-encrusted swords and opals and emeralds are smartly arranged around the room to impress all who enter.

“Set your books by the door and get over here!” Yitch says from behind his desk, a good forty paces away from where Pard is still rooted in place.

Pard places his large stack of books on the floor then creeps forward, glancing at every painting and display case as he passes them by. He heard rumors of the ancient artistic wonders and treasure Yitch kept in his office, and under different circumstances, he would love to visit and see them all, that is as long as Yitch didn’t come with the tour.

Pard raises his foot, about to step on an eight-by-ten foot intricately woven white-and-green rug depicting several family crests intertwined with ivy and flowers.

Yitch leaps out of his mahogany throne-like chair and his eyes shoot open. “Not the rug!”

Pard, his weight already leaning forward, steps on a crest with a castle inside of a shield and intertwined with thorny vines. Pard’s face drops and his leg locks in place, grinding his sole into the fabric.

Yitch gasps. “I said not the rug!”

Pard shifts his weight and lifts his foot, stepping off the rug.
Who puts a rug on the floor that you’re not supposed to step on?
That’s stupid.
 

Yitch motions his hand in a circular manner. “Go around it, Wenerly, that’s my rug of Yitch, depicting the lineages of Yitch and it doesn’t need your grimy shoes stepping on it. Now hurry up and get over here, I don’t have all day.”

Pard scoots around the side of the rug and scurries forward as he stares at the headmaster’s desk. He places his hand on the back of a finely carved wooden chair and lowers his body to sit.

“
Not
the chair,” Yitch says.

Pard wobbles half-bent over and awkwardly rises back to a standing position.

“Wenerly, do you know why you’re here?”

“Sort of.”

“And what sort of do you know? The sort of that you know what happened to my darling Nero last night? A rare breed of Lynxus-grafelinalia that is worth more than ten Pard Wenerly’s. Or the sort of that I now have the evidence I need for your expulsion from the finest school in all of Vetlinue?” Yitch leans forward and growls. “
My school
.”

“
Umm
—” Pard lost for words, glances away, fixing his eyes on a painting of a snow-capped mountain.
I wish I was sort of on that peak right now, instead of sort of in here with the condor and his stinky jadaisies
.

Yitch leans back in his throne and clasps his hands, clanging together two gaudy gold rings, one on each hand. “Indeed
umm
. You’re lucky the previous headmaster took pity on your kind. I on the other hand don’t pity the unworthy when it comes to station or academics. But in either case, for far to long, you’ve gotten to stay here at Fairstone on a technicality, one that can only be overturned by the student perpetrating a crime or for gross transgressions against the school. And in this case I have grounds for your expulsion on both articles. This is your counseling on the matter so you will understand the process going forward. You will not speak on this matter to anyone outside of the hearing or this office. You will appear sometime next week in my office in front of the Fairstone Council. At that time, evidence will be presented on your guilt and punishment. Once the sentence is rendered, you will be vacated from the school’s premises, forever. Do you understand me, Wenerly?”

“
Umm
—” Pard, thinking this was only an inquiry, is ill prepared to make a case for his innocence. “Sir, but I didn’t do whatever you are accusing me of.”

“Do I look stupid to you?”

Pard thinks on his answer for a second, wanting to say,
yes
, but that wouldn’t help his case. “
Umm
, no, headmaster, you don’t look stupid. But still, I didn’t do the things you think I did.”

Yitch curls his lips in disdain and slides open his desk drawer. He removes a crumpled piece of paper, opens it, and holds it in front of Pard. “Do you recognize this?”

Pard’s heart sinks as he eyes his sketch of Yitch swooping over a Fairstone turret and him shooting an arrow at the headmaster.
 

Yitch shakes the drawing. “I asked you, do you recognize this?”

“Yes, but—but I didn’t mean anything by it. Every boy in the school draws stuff like that.”

“So you admit you have seen this drawing?”

“Yes—but—”

“Do you know where this drawing was found, Wenerly?”

Pard lowers his gaze as it hits him,
Shit, the west wing, I missed it
.

“Speak up.”

“I don’t know, headmaster.”

“It was found near my precious Nero.” Yitch’s lips twitch, and he looks over Pard’s head and stares at a portrait of himself holding the fat tabby, a gold chain around the cat’s neck. Yitch dabs the corner of his eye with a red silk handkerchief. “My poor, poor Nero, only a monster would hurt that loving creature.” His face transitions from sadness into a scowl, and he glares at Pard. “What did my Nero ever do to you,
Wenerly
?”

“I-I—”

Yitch pounds his fist on his desk. “What did my Nero ever do to you!”

“Sir, I didn’t—”

“I have witnesses!”

Yitch’s words hit Pard hard.
Blaine and Nox and Sully told—I’m so screwed
. “I don’t know, headmaster.”

Yitch sinks back in his velvet-cushioned throne. “I saw you, Wenerly, over a year ago on the Fairstone grounds. You and your little light show. I know exactly what you are and what you did to my Nero. I took precautions in case of just such an event. And now I may have all the concrete proof I need, but I can’t expel you until the council convenes and renders the final decision when all the evidence is presented. Until then you are confined to class, the dining hall, and your room. Now get out of my office. The sight of you turns my stomach, leave.”

Pard sighs and turns around, not looking at Yitch, his eyes lock on the birch floor in shame, he moves forward with choppy steps. His foot touches the edge of the Yitch lineage rug, and he catches himself before stepping on it. Pard jumps to the right, well away from the rug, and then walks along the wall, not wanting to offend Yitch and make his situation any worse. He moves forward, the lonely walk to the door taking an eternity. Pard is lost in his thoughts, unsure of what he will do or where he will go once he’s kicked out of Fairstone. His heart sinks further thinking how disappointed his parents would be in him.

“Watch out!” Yitch says, leaping out of his throne and pointing at Pard.

Pard bumps into the end of a mahogany display case resting against the wall. “Shoot—” Pard’s sweaty palms press flat against the glass as his body folds over the top. His disheveled reflection peers back at him off the surface, and right in front of his nose, inside the display case, resting on a flat white marble block, a gold locket embossed with a leafless Ida tree.

THE LOWER LORD OF THE NORTH

Pard races through the corridor and away from Yitch’s office.

Ding, Ding
—

The Fairstone bell tower chimes.

Nine, dang it, I’m supposed to be in Professor Videl’s class.
Pard dodges a group of older boys, each of them quickly jump out of his way to avoid contact, and then they stare at him with uneasy eyes, apparently also hearing the rumor that Pard can electrify them if they get touched.

Pard shakes his head, and is caught between worrying about getting to class on time, his trial, the students thinking he has a killer touch, his expulsion, what Yitch thinks or knows what he is, even though he doesn’t know what he is, and why his mother’s necklace, or at least a necklace that looks like his mother’s, is now displayed in Yitch’s office. Pard bares down on the math class door ahead.
Well, on a positive note, the boy’s of Fairstone think I’ll electrocute them, at least I’ll get to class almost on time, so at least I have that going for me.

Pard pushes open the door leading into Professor Videl's math lecture hall and slips inside the room.
 

All eyes in the back half of the room fall onto Pard and follow him as he moves forward to the front row to his desk. Pard avoids the students’ stares and the whispers and focuses on his seat.

“Class,” Professor Videl says, raising his arthritic finger, “five hundred words on Galen’s law and how it can help you solve Dreegan’s ten proofs. You have thirty minutes, now begin.”

The class groans and a chorus of shuffling papers reverberates throughout the lecture hall.

Pard slides into his seat and sets his stack of textbooks on the floor next to him. Sweat pools on his brow, and he leans back in his chair to catch his breath as he stares at the far wall of the portraits of all the past Fairstone advanced mathematics teachers.

Professor Videl exits through a private door in the front of the classroom which leads to his office. And as if by magic, the moment the professor’s door clicks shut, a wadded piece of paper strikes Pard in the back of his head.
Just ignore them, ignore them, ignore them
.

“
Psst
—” a boy says behind Pard.

Ignore them, ignore them

“
Psst
—” the boy says again.

Pard, unable to control himself any longer, scowls and spins around in his chair. “
What do you want
?”

A crumpled up piece of paper bounces of the bridge of Pard’s nose.