Faculty of Fire (22 page)

“Listen here, we’ve been hanging around for fifteen minutes already, and there’s still no sign of the duel starting,” Vickers junior whined.

I had to admit he had good reason to whine.

“No sign of the duel starting,” his older brother mocked. “How can it start, when the duellists haven’t even turned up yet?”

“Right, that’s rather strange,” I remarked and turned to Chas. “Chas, do you know if this often happens, or is it just our luck?”

We all gazed at Chas, and he wilted a bit.

Serve him right, he shouldn’t have spent all evening jeering at my new hairstyle.

“Why are you all looking at me as if it’s my fault they’re late? Who knows what’s keeping them? Whenever there’s the slightest problem, why is it always my fault?”

“No, don’t get the idea we’re trying to blame you,” Neville said to reassure him. “We’re just asking you as the person best informed.”

Chas thought about it.

“You know, I haven’t really heard all that much about duels. The Craftsmen and the senior pupils don’t go into detail about anything to do with them. Either they think the subject’s not worth talking about, or they don’t
want
to talk about it.”

“How can a magic fight not be worth talking about?” young Vickers asked in amazement.

“You just want to see a fight,” his older brother accused him.

“Yes, sure,” the younger brother retorted. “It’s not just interesting, it’s very informative too. We’ll all be involved in dust-ups sooner or later, and we can learn a lot from other people’s example.”

“Well, just listen to him,” his brother said in mock admiration. “He’ll spin any kind of yarn just to get a look at ... what was that you called it? ... a dust-up? What kind of slang’s that? If our parents could only hear you now ...”

“That’s enough, lads,” Chas interrupted. “I think the main
dramatis
personae
have finally hove in sight on the horizon.”

The brothers instantly stopped their habitual wrangling and turned to look at the door of the hall. Even Alice, who was standing there as usual like a statue, indifferent to everything going on around her, started gazing at the crowd and even went up on tiptoe. I couldn’t help admiring the vampiress’s slim figure.

“See anything interesting?” asked Chas, following the direction of my glance.

“You bet,” I said absentmindedly, and then remembered where I was. “Er ... I mean, this is going to be very instructive ...”

“You’re probably right,” Chas agreed, and whistled. “You could really learn a lot ...”

I tried to jab my elbow into his side, but he dodged out of the way.

“Watch it,” I said, waving my fist at him, and turned back to the two brothers. “Well, are they here?”

“Yes,” said the older brother, but he didn’t sound too sure.

I stared at the crowd, trying to understand the reason for Vickers senior’s strange reaction. Then I saw it.

The two young men who had been squabbling in the dining hall only the evening before walked in into the hall making lively discussion, complete with jokes and friendly slaps to each other’s backs.

As if they hadn’t seen the crowd of new pupils standing there in silent anticipation, they walked almost all the way to the centre of the hall before they paid any attention to the strange gathering.

“What are
you
doing here?” one of them asked in surprise, emphasising the third word.

There was silence for a few seconds, until someone suggested uncertainly, “Waiting for the duel to start?”

“What duel?” the two young men chorused. “Did you think we were going to fight a duel because of that quarrel yesterday?”

The whole crowd nodded together.

“Come on lads, we quarrel like that every day. What’s the point of having a dust-up over every little thing?”

Chas and I looked at each other anxiously, and Naive said what we were thinking: “But why not?” he asked in the voice of a child whose candy has just been taken away.

“You know,” said Vickers senior, giving his younger brother a look that sent him scurrying for cover behind Chas. “That quarrel yesterday didn’t seem as harmless as they’re trying to make out.”

“Of course not,” Alice snorted. “They must have rehearsed that scene for days.”

“What for?” Vickers junior asked innocently.

I had a pretty good idea what Alice was talking about but, as usual, she moved on ahead of me and explained everything very clearly. Although, unfortunately, not in very cultured language

“So that you, and the rest of this crowd of gawks,” she said, prodding Vickers junior in the chest with her delightfully pointed little finger, “would come running here at the crack of dawn and hang about until the end of breakfast.”

“But why would they do that?” the boy asked, puzzled.

The vampiress opened her mouth to explain, but when she caught Naive’s glance of total confusion, she realised it was pointless and gave up.

The older brother gave the vampiress a hostile sidelong glance, but he decided to avoid a direct confrontation and kept quiet.

The two tricksters were enjoying their joke, gazing at the hungry faces of the new pupils, but they didn’t jeer openly – either they were afraid of legitimate reprisals (although what could we do to them?) or they were actually trying to show a bit of tact.

The crowd began slowly drifting away, and some even went running off when they remembered they had missed breakfast. While we were expecting a duel, no one had even thought about food, everyone had decided it was worth going hungry for something like that. But when everyone realised there wasn’t going to be any duel, they recovered their common sense – and their appetites, too ... but it was already too late. I was sure the pranksters had deliberately timed their appearance in the hall for the end of breakfast, so there was no point in hurrying now.

So we didn’t hurry, which was why I was one of the last out of the hall, following the laughing jokers.

“You could say we’ve just been initiated,” said Chas with a forced smile. “They probably play the same joke on all the new pupils.”

“Of course we do,” one of the jokers said without even looking round. “But it’s no big deal, it’s not the initiation. You still have that to come yet.”

And the two jokers walked on, leaving our group of five stunned by this strange declaration.

We all automatically turned to look at Chas, waiting for an explanation.

“Would you happen to know what he was talking about?” I asked, deciding to take the initiative.

“I haven’t got a clue,” Chas said with a shrug. “What do you want from me? I’m not the Academy information desk.”

“A pity,” said young Vickers, looking down at his feet seriously.

I looked at him and burst out laughing despite myself. Chas and Alice joined in, and even Vickers senior allowed himself a gentle smile. But Naive just batted his eyelids in mystification at our frivolous attitude.

Meditation was next on our schedule, and I didn’t think anyone was going to wait for us.

“Let’s get to class, we’ve already missed breakfast anyway.”

Vickers junior looked at me in horror.

“But maybe if we go and explain how we were tricked?” he said with a sniff. “They might give us something to eat? A carrot or two, maybe ...”

“You’ll survive without any carrots,” Chas declared sternly. “It’s best to meditate on an empty stomach, anyway. Trust me, I know.”

And I must say Chas did know what he was talking about. He had practised meditation techniques in our School of the Arts, and while I still thought of meditation as a taking a nap after lunch, Chas had every right to regard himself as something of a specialist. I could honestly say that I had never once heard him snore during meditation the whole year long ... which is more than I can say for myself.

“So first they put us on a vegetarian diet, and then they make us fast? Do I look like I really need to lose weight?” Naive suddenly burst out (in all honesty, I must say he really did need to slim down a bit). “Where are those two jokers?”

The jokers had long since disappeared into the system of teleports, beyond the reach of hungry Naive’s vengeance.

“Okay then, meditation it is,” Vickers senior said with a shrug, interrupting his brother’s wailing lament. “Let’s go, shall we ...”

The teleports brought us to the right floor almost immediately. That is, we only missed it twice, and only because Chas and Neville couldn’t agree and we had to try both options, so that neither of them would be offended. And naturally, they were both wrong.

“I told you, you should have listened to me,” the two teleport specialists chorused when we finally arrived at the right level. Alice was the last one out of the teleport.

“Cretins,” she said in a quiet voice.

It was very, very quiet, but everyone heard her. And they felt ashamed.

“Why don’t you just shut up?” Neville suddenly said in an angry voice.

“Neville!” I said, giving him a sharp look. “Isn’t it about time you stopped hassling her?”

“No, it isn’t,” said Vickers senior, staring me defiantly right in the eye.

Alice turned away demonstratively.

“Come on, really Neville,” said Chas, backing me up. “What’s going on here? It’s about time you learned to get on with vampires as well as people.”

“Get on with them?” asked Neville, obviously about to blow his top. “Oh sure, of course! All of you here in the capital ‘get on’ with vampires, but where we come from in the Borderland people take turns sleeping at night so they won’t end up as a vampire’s supper. Every day someone disappears because they’re taken for food,” he said, with his voice getting louder and louder. “And you tell me I ought to ‘get on’ with her?”

Chas and I didn’t know what to say to that. Naive stood beside his brother to express his support.

“Our clan doesn’t drink human blood,” Alice said quietly. “And none of us have ever been in the Borderland. But I understand you ... and I don’t blame you ...”

Neville fell silent, ashamed of his sudden furious outburst.

We all stood there in silence for a while, each thinking our own thoughts.

“By the way, there’s not much time left before the class starts,” Chas remarked eventually.

I looked around anxiously.

“I didn’t see any of the others from our class. Are we definitely where we ought to be?”

“Definitely. Look, it’s written there especially for you: ‘Small Meditation Hall No. 13’,” Chas said to reassure me.

“You’re joking!” I gasped in horror.

That unlucky number again.

“Isn’t there any other hall here?” I asked in a dismal voice, looking around carefully.

“No,” said Neville, shaking his head. He seemed to have calmed down after his outburst. “It’s your destiny to live under the sign of that number, my friend.

And he grinned at me, the lousy parasite. So when did Chas find the time to tell Neville about my special friendship with number 13?

“Then let’s go into the hall quick,” Naive suggested. “I didn’t get enough sleep last night, maybe I can catch up now ...”

Aha, I thought, so Vickers junior knows all about the benefits of meditation too!

While we were bickering, Alice went up to the door of the Meditation Hall and knocked hesitantly.

“Who in a dragon’s name is that?” someone growled behind the door.

We all stood there in shocked silence, not knowing what to do next.

Chas twirled his forefinger beside his head and made several gestures with his hands to ask the vampiress why in a dragon’s name she knocked on the door. The vampire answered with a shrug and just one, very eloquent, gesture.

Naturally, Chas took offence and made several more gestures using both hands, to let the vampiress know what he thought about her. And at that very moment the door of the Meditation Hall opened.

“What’s all this, then?” growled the burly man in the doorway, gazing at Chas, who was frozen still in surprise. “Just who is that smut intended for?”

“Well, I ... er ...” Chas was a pitiful sight. “It’s not for you ... it’s for the lady ...”

“The lady?” said the burly guy, looking down at his feet. “Ah ... for her you mean? That’s okay then ...”

Alice almost choked on that disdainful remark, but she restrained herself and didn’t say anything. Incredible.

“Come in, now that you’ve finally got here,” the meditation techniques teacher grunted amiably.

We squeezed in sideways past the burly man and found ourselves in a rather large hall.

Were just the five of us going to practise in this massive place? If this was a small hall, then what was a large one like? It seemed like a waste of space, somehow ... a whole crowd of people like us could have fit in here.