The Lion Pavilion
Led by David, the men in yellow robes stepped forward and called the roster.
"Squad One. Mark Grant, Alex Taylor..."
The candidates who had passed had sorted themselves, of their own choosing, into six clusters. Those clusters were broken apart and reassembled into thirty-two squads.
Squad One was the most varied of them all, running from a prince all the way down to a slave, and Chris was placed in it alongside Prince Mark.
They seem to set great store by diversity of origin. Otherwise they would never have put royalty and a slave in the same squad. If he was honest, he did not like the assignment. From where he stood, a prince was someone as high as the sky, and discomfort was inevitable. He was grateful that Smith and Alice, who shared his lot, had landed in the same group. Had he been the only one of slave birth in Squad One, it would have been truly unbearable.
Once the squads were settled, David led Squad One away. Chris clenched his fists in excitement, certain they were about to climb the white staircase — three stories tall — and pass into the Tower itself. They were not. The group came back down, followed the curve of the mountainside, and set off in another direction.
It was a small pleasure to be guided by a familiar face. Glad of it, Smith went to David's side and tried to speak with him, only to be ignored outright. Smith's face burned. The noble-born seemed to be sneering.
Squad One was assigned a two-story building called the Lion Pavilion. The ground floor held a lounge, a recreation room, and a kitchen; upstairs were the bedrooms and the bath.
David spoke.
"I am the keeper of the Lion Pavilion. If anything difficult arises, tell me."
So he said. His face, hard as stone, conveyed something else entirely: if trouble finds you, do not be a nuisance. Sort it out among yourselves.
"Divide the rooms by agreement."
Prince Mark answered.
"Yes. We shall."
Alex, of the Taylor marquis house, was quick to second him.
"Nothing better than settling it ourselves."
"I will come in the morning and guide you to the apprentices' lecture hall," David said. "Be ready and waiting by nine."
With that, he left the Lion Pavilion.
A brief silence followed. Mark in the lead, the apprentices went up to the second floor. The largest room — the finest view, the best furniture — went to Prince Mark as if there had never been another possibility. No one objected. He was the son of the reigning king. Royalty among royalty.
Trouble began over the second-best room. The moment Alex claimed it, Tony cut in.
"I want Room Two."
Alex's eyes narrowed.
"What is your father's title?"
"Count."
"My father is a marquis."
He tossed his bag onto the bed. In the same instant, Tony threw his down as well.
"You're a bastard, though."
Chris watched the two of them with keen interest. From the look of it, Alex's marquis house outranked Tony's count house. But the first was a concubine's son, and the second had been born to the lawful wife. A marquis's bastard against a count's trueborn heir. Who wins? This ought to be worth seeing. Better still if it comes to fists.
The verdict arrived from an unexpected quarter. Prince Mark's voice was thick with displeasure.
So the magnificent prince was a concubine's son.
Flustered, Tony rubbed his hands together.
"Your Highness, that isn't what I meant."
Alex, with the prince's displeasure at his back, flung Tony's bag off the bed. Tony glared at him with savage eyes, but he could not bring himself to object any further. He gathered up his bag, looking as wretched as a cat caught in the rain.
They came out of the room. Looking more closely, the lower the number, the larger the room and the better the furniture. After the prince in Room One and the marquis's bastard in Room Two, Room Three went to Tony, trueborn son of a count.
So those three are the only nobles.
Everyone else was a commoner or lower. Room Four went to Catherine, whose family ran a merchant guild, and no one moved to stop her.
The quarrel broke out at Room Five. A young woman named Faye declared the room hers, and Smith stepped forward, raising his voice.
"Don't decide that on your own."
Faye's face soured.
"You're objecting?"
"I am."
"You didn't object before."
"They were nobles."
One corner of Faye's mouth lifted.
"So you discriminate by station? Then I am a commoner and you are a slave, which puts me above you. This room is obviously mine."
"We are mages. The same station."
"A moment ago... didn't you say nobles ought to be given special treatment?"
Cornered, Smith hesitated.
"It shouldn't be that way. But that's how things are."
"And commoners aren't included in how things are?"
Smith answered flatly.
"That's right."
Faye pointed at Catherine, settled in Room Four.
"Catherine is a commoner too. Why didn't you protest then?"
"That's... that's..."
Smith flushed red and could not answer.
Chris understood him perfectly. Smith had been unable to say a word to Catherine because she was beautiful — not ordinarily beautiful. Beautiful enough that a man might wonder whether she was an angel.
Hard to argue with a woman like that.
He looked at the golden hair falling all the way to her waist. That must take an hour to tend. Doesn't it get tiresome? His gaze shifted to her clothes. Expensive. She must be rich. A maid does her hair, no doubt. Satisfied, he nodded. It did not occur to him that there were no maids here.
Still without a reply, Smith jabbed him in the ribs.
"Don't just stand there gaping like an idiot. Say something."
Chris scratched his head with an awkward laugh.
"I've got no complaints."
He was not backing away because he disliked a fight. He truly had none. As a slave in Javier Barony he had slept in a livestock pen. The worst room in the Lion Pavilion was a palace beside that old lodging.
He laughed harder and added to it.
"Room Nine is fine too."
"Fine. Then you take the smallest one, Room Nine. Idiot."
Mark, who had been watching the squabble among the commoners and those beneath them with bored eyes, spoke.
"The rest of you, decide. Quickly."
Mark considered himself captain of the Lion Pavilion. That was why he had not gone into his own room: he was supervising the assignment. Between Chris's answer and Mark's word, Room Five fell to Faye.
Frank spoke.
"I'm a commoner too. I want Room Six."
"Damn it!"
Smith's temper snapped. Fasten the top button wrong, and every button beneath it comes out crooked.
"Room Seven is mine."
He scowled, as if daring anyone who wished to object to go ahead and try.
Alice answered, bright and easy.
"Fine. You take Room Seven."
She looked at Chris.
"What about the rest? I can take Room Nine."
"No, it's all right. Like I said, I'm happy with Nine. You take Eight."
"Good. I'll take Eight. No take-backs?"
"Nope."
And with that, the room assignments, and their small uproar, came to an end.
His eyes opened at four in the morning. In his slave days he had worked without rest from dawn until dark, and he rarely woke before someone shook him. Now there was nothing to exhaust him, so he rose early.
Hungry, Chris went downstairs. A search of the kitchen turned up bread dried hard as wood. I've eaten bread that had spoiled. This is nothing. He tore off small pieces and ate, and he added cheese he found by rummaging through the cupboard. Set beside his years in the barony, it was a feast.
When he had finished and rinsed his mouth, he went into the lounge and nodded off. Voices woke him. Alex, the one from the marquis house, was speaking to Smith and Alice, and the tone was not kind.
"Is it strange to be told to make breakfast?"
Smith pushed back.
"Why should we be the ones to make it?"
Alex let out a heavy sigh.
"The magic tower truly is a wonderful place."
"What do you mean by that?"
Alex mimed a noose around his neck.
"Out there, you'd be hanging for the crime of talking back to me."
"Well said. This is the magic tower, and we are apprentices of the same station. We have no reason to prepare meals."
Watching Smith answer Alex, Chris was impressed. Back in the barony, Smith had trailed after Jack doing nothing but a lackey's work, and Chris had thought little of him. To think that a spine so easily bent back then had a self this stubborn, this full of its own mind, hidden inside it. He looked at the man anew.
Alex clicked his tongue.
"Listen carefully, you half-witted slave brat. Why do you think the mages put us all in one dormitory?"
"..."
"Consider why they would house nobles, commoners, and slaves together."
"You mean they put us here to wait on the noble-born?"
"Yes. Now you understand."
"I don't see it that way. They gathered us so that people of different stations might come together and produce results."
Chris marveled aloud.
"Wow. Smith, you really are clever."
Hearing himself praised, Smith flared.
"What the hell, man!"
"I'm not mocking you. I didn't know you could talk this clearly."
Chris looked around at the nobles and commoners scattered through the lounge.
"What do the rest of you think?"
The prince and Tony ignored him as if the matter held not the slightest interest, and the commoners only watched, the way one watches a fire burning on the far bank of a river. Alice alone answered.
"I think Smith is right."
"So there you have it, Lord Alex."
"Insolent wretches. Let's just kill them."
On his father's estate, Tony had surely lived exactly that way. A slave who displeased him would have been killed, and no trouble would have come of it. A bitter taste rose in Chris's mouth. Even so, he smiled as he spoke.
"Noble young master of a count's house, I beg your pardon."
Tony's brows rose.
"Are you mocking me?"
"No. I mean pardon, quite literally — and, going a step further, understanding."
Prince Mark spoke.
"Understanding?"
"Smith may feel otherwise, but I am entirely willing to prepare meals for my betters. I have left the station of a slave. What hardship could there be in cooking? With a glad heart! I could do it willingly."
"Good. Then you shall."
"That is precisely what makes it difficult, which is why I am asking to be understood."
"And why is it difficult?"
"The work I mainly did as a slave was raising livestock. Pigs, for the most part. Do you know how foul a pigsty smells?"
A shudder ran through him, and he went on.
"Mucking out dung every day, putting down feed. Tending cattle, goats, sheep, and chickens besides. In autumn, hauling wood against the winter, splitting it, drying it."
Mark's brow furrowed.
"You talk too long. Make it short."
"I don't know how to cook."
Chris clicked his tongue, as if the admission pained him.
"Have you heard the saying that when you make bread, flour sticks to your hands? Your faces say you haven't. The kitchen is a sought-after post, because anyone who works there ends up with food. It was never a place a slave without a patron, like me, could go. I do boil an excellent slop for pigs — but I can't imagine His Highness, or the young masters of noble houses, would care to eat such a thing..."
At the words pig slop, Catherine's whole face crumpled in disgust.
She's a commoner, but her family really must be rich.
Chris pointed at Smith and continued.
"He's from the same territory. He worked at a brewery. The father of Jack — the man we used to look up to as our chief — was a technician there, and this one clung to him doing the menial work. He doesn't know the first letter of cooking. An ignorant lout."
His gaze turned to Alice.
"Can you cook at all?"
"I was in charge of cleaning."
A smile rested at the corner of her mouth, as if she enjoyed giving that answer.
From the young gentlemen of the noble houses came the sound of tongues clicking.
"We'll have to hire a maid."
Alex spoke.
"Can we even find one at the magic tower?"
Tony spoke.
"Hard to say."
The more they considered it, the less likely it seemed. Alex and Tony turned their eyes on the commoner girls.
Catherine held out hands as white and smooth as polished jade.
"Not a single drop of water has touched them in all my life."
Their gazes shifted to Faye. Alex looked her up and down.
"You look as though you've had plenty of water on yours."
Faye answered, prim.
"I do know how to boil an egg."
Alice burst out laughing.
"I know how to boil an egg too."
Chris picked it up.
"The problem is that there are no eggs. There weren't any when we were slaves. There aren't any now."
As he said it, he remembered the wild pigeon eggs he had hidden in the forest. They've rotted by now, surely.
In the end, they had to go without breakfast. Chris, who had risen early and eaten the bread, was the winner.