A Place to Belong, Part IV
The next morning, Roshil ate breakfast with Aonva. Roshil had never eaten with anyone in the castle before, apart from Master Ekla the previous night. She glanced around and saw people all over sitting together and talking, as though everyone else had friends. She turned back and smiled at Aonva. Now she did too.
“What?” Aonva asked.
“I’ve never had a friend before!” Roshil said, then focused on her food when her face felt hot.
“Me either,” Aonva said, just loud enough to be heard over the din of the great hall. “I spend a lot of time in the library, so I’ve never gotten to know people here.”
Roshil tore into a slice of ham, stabbing it with her knife and fork.
“What about your master?” she asked before she’d finished her food. She glanced across the hall and spotted Master Ekla eyeing her from behind Aonva. Roshil wasn’t certain, but she thought she saw her mouth “cut, chew, swallow, talk” before smiling at her.
“I’m sorry?” Aonva asked after she’d finished her own mouthful. She didn’t eat with the same enthusiasm as Roshil. Instead, she picked at her food, never eating too much.
“Your master?” Roshil asked.
“Oh, that’s Master Kaernin. He’s nice, if not terribly talkative. You said you were being taught by Our Lord High Artisan, right?”
Roshil nodded and glanced up at the officers looming over them. Master Grund wasn’t there. Maybe he was already in the forge. Would he be upset if she arrived too early?
“He wants to see me right after breakfast,” Roshil said, then turned back to Aonva. “You don’t think it’s bad, do you?”
“I don’t know. Probably not, right?”
Roshil shrugged and ate more of her food. They didn’t talk much before they were finished and everyone began to leave. Roshil bid farewell to her new friend, then made her way through the castle to the forge. When she arrived, she found Master Grund there, working on something.
“Master Grund!”
“Apprentice Roshil, right on time.” He put down his work and turned to her. “What did you find out?”
Roshil repeated everything she’d read the night before. It didn’t feel real, even when she said it out loud. This was her. She was enchanted, an enchantment she guessed couldn’t be undone. Her face and eyes were going to be like this forever. People would always glare at her, insult her, regard her as inhuman. She was grateful Aonva was a mage and not a druid.
“Very good,” he said when she was finished talking. While she’d been talking, he’d placed his project in a furnace. When he removed it, he took a chisel and began carving something into it.
“Now it’s my turn. There’s something that you need to understand about Skwyr Court. There’s a place for everyone. Years ago, it wasn’t like this. The Kingdom of Nelaro was the norm, not accepting people outside the kingdom into the court, not allowing them to make the rules. Only the royal family or people like them had a say.”
He looked her dead in the eye. She gasped and took a step back, unaccustomed to people being so direct with her.
“Your family knows that better than most, I think.”
Roshil nodded, remembering the stories her mother had told her about growing up in Nelaro. It also crossed her mind that Master Grund knew a lot more about her than she’d realized. If it’d been anyone else, she’d assume they were just assuming she’d grown up in Nelaro, but Master Grund was better than that.
“But now, we make room for everyone. His Majesty sees to it. Had he taken the throne when he was your age, we’d have called him ‘her majesty’. Lord Gorkle prefers ‘Grand Master Gorkle’ because zie doesn’t identify as male or female, and doesn’t believe our titles should force us to identify as such.”
“‘Zie’?” Roshil asked.
“Gender-neutral pronoun,” Grund replied. He tapped his chair. “My legs have never worked, and when I was married, it wasn’t to a woman. Lady Emgard doesn’t feel the need for companionship at all. Half of the officers come from outside the kingdom, and we accept more people in every day.”
“So everyone’s different,” Roshil said, not understanding the point of the lecture. “But none of them compel people to hate them!”
Grund flipped the metal over in his hands, inspecting it. Roshil caught a glimpse of it, then glanced over at the storage cupboard. Was that her shield?
“You think because you have magic making people distrust you, that you can never fit in?” He glanced at her and let out a laugh that echoed through the forge. “Ha! You think there aren’t people that hated me and my husband because we were different from them? There will always be people that hate you because you’re different. Always remember, Apprentice Roshil, that it’s not you that needs to be fixed.”
He held the shield, closed his eyes, and muttered under his breath. Roshil picked out a few words, but it was all in the arcane language.
“Are you enchanting that?”
“Enchanting something you make happens throughout the crafting process,” he said when he was finished. “You start the enchantment when you start the project. It makes the spell a part of the object, so the two will always live together.”
He wheeled over to her and handed her the shield. It wasn’t perfect. There were rough edges and divots, and it was too small to do any good. It bore a spiral pattern now, with a flower engraved over it.
“All you need is someone to accept you for who and what you are, and help you grow into the best person you can be.” He placed the shield on her wrist, where it stayed without a strap, then extended her arm toward the wall. “Do you know the arcane word for ‘extend’?”
She nodded. “Deistudo.”
“Good. Now, focus on the shield, and say it like you’re reaching out to grab something.”
Beginning to catch on, Roshil focused on the shield and repeated the word.
“Deistudo.”
The shield uncoiled and a thin ribbon snapped out in front of her. The ribbon stopped abruptly when it reached the far wall.
“What’s the word for ‘contract’?” he asked.
She focused on the ribbon returning to her, and said, “Odstowro.”
The shield coiled back up, returning to her wrist to sit snugly as though it had never moved.
“Don’t use it on people in the court,” he said. “Don’t hurt anyone except in self-defense. If you’re going to impress your new friend, don’t do anything stupid.”
Roshil nodded, then frowned when something occurred to her.
“You weren’t at breakfast, how’d you know—”
“You weren’t my first visitor this morning,” he replied.
She nodded again, then looked down at the shield. She noticed the flower pattern again, then asked him about it.
“Everyone has a single, unique name,” he said. “It’s the Naming Phenomenon. For some reason, everyone ends up with a unique name in the arcane language. Do you know what yours means?”
She shook her head, but guessed the answer based on what he’d carved on the shield.
“It’s a type of flower,” he replied. “Like ‘Grund’ is a type of metal. You’ll learn all about that in your time at the court.” He handed her a piece of paper. “That’s your new schedule. Your classes have been rearranged, but I think you’ll find the arcane language classes more enjoyable now. The bad news is that you only get to work on the basics of forging for a few months.”
Roshil nodded again, still more interested in the shield than anything else. It wasn’t big, but it would help keep her safe. It would help her protect herself.
“What you said before,” she said. “About there being a place for everyone. The world isn’t like that.”
“Maybe not the whole world, but we’ve built an entire kingdom on it.”
He picked up his hammer and chisel, then went to put them away.
“Get your apron and gloves. We’re gonna start with the basics today.”
Roshil stuck her new schedule with her old schedule in a pouch on her belt, then followed Master Grund to the furnaces.