Over the next few days, I noticed him with the other apprentices—while I delivered food to their table or took dishes away. I liked to linger and watch them practice their tricks. They might make the napkins soar about the room or command the salt cellar to waddle across the table.
The older boys usually put the newcomer in his place before the sunset on his arrival, but as the days wore on, Ronan refused to be intimidated by their threats and pranks. He was better at magic right off than some of the older apprentices, a fact they didn’t appreciate. Most impressively, one day Ronan changedtwo of his tormenters into geese. They flew across the dining hall table, honking and knocking over glasses until Ronan changed them back. Animal transformation was a skill very few wizards ever achieved. He did it within his first weeks at the castle.
After that, Mage Wolfson, the head wizard, watched Ronan with greedy, expectant eyes.
Ronan would’ve never paid any notice to me if the older boys hadn’t been so persistent in their harassment. A month after he came, three of them managed to gag and bind him. From my spot in the kitchen door, I saw them levitate him in the courtyard, upside down and thrashing furiously. They moved him toward the stables where a manure pile sat, clearly planning on dunking him, face first, into the pile. I couldn’t stand to see anyone treated so, even if Ronan was a wizard and therefore bound to be arrogant and disagreeable.
Mage Wolfson had a distinctive whistle he used to call his apprentices inside, and I knew how to imitate it. Keeping hidden in the doorway, I let out a shrill whistle.
The boys lowered Ronan, none too gently, and scattered back inside. In their haste to escape, they left him tied on the ground. He twisted to and fro, red-faced and grunting. I couldn’t leave him like that. I grabbed a kitchen knife, ran over, and cut through his bands.
He was too furious, too busy hurling curses at the boys to thank me, and in truth, I expected no show of gratitude. Nobles and wizards rarely thanked servants for their service. But the next day when I had to go out in the rain to fetch eggs, an invisible covering hovered over me from the kitchen door to the hen house. Not a drop fell on me. When I turned and gazed back at the castle, Ronan was grinning at me from one of the windows.
I didn’t speak to him again until a couple of months later when I was caught unnecessarily risking my life. Perhaps Iwanted to better myself because I felt the vastness of the distance between the apprentices and myself. Perhaps I just had a social climbing nature like some in the kitchen afterward accused me of. Servants weren’t supposed to be educated, lest they get ideas.
But I wanted ideas. Most of all, I wanted to learn to read.
Mage Wolfson and his assistant Mage Quintal only taught the apprentices magic. Several professors also lived at Docendum to instruct in reading, history, logic, and mathematics. At times, I caught snatches of their lessons as I performed my duties.
One day, I brought food into a side courtyard where the reading teacher had convened class for Ronan and the two apprentices a year his senior. Instead of leaving after I deposited the tray, I hid behind a tree to watch. It was easy enough to do because no one ever paid attention to the comings and goings of the servants.
I knew Cook Lindon would smack me with her spoon for not returning to the kitchen promptly, but I decided the future welt was worth it. When I couldn’t hear the teacher properly, I darted over to a hedgerow and tiptoed along it to get closer. From this spot, I pushed away a few branches to see the words the teacher held up on a wax tablet.
I didn’t understand much of what was being said, but what I pieced together of the letters and their sounds made me feel like I’d reached out and caught hold of something as rare as the yellow orioles that came to the castle orchards in the summer.
When the instruction ended, I waited for the four to leave so I could slip away undetected. The teacher and the two older apprentices strolled toward the castle door. I’d lost sight of Ronan. I peered around, searching for him.
His voice came from beside me. “You’d make a terrible spy.”
I jumped and put my hand to my throat. I couldn’t justify my actions so I sputtered, “How did you catch me?”
He crossed his arms, the smile I’d adored earlier nowhere to be found. “You’re so clumsy, the dead themselves would notice you tromping around.”
I lifted my chin. “Well, the dead ain’t got nothing else to do ‘sides watch for people, do they?”
Ronan almost laughed at my response. I could see him fight the impulse and turn cross again. “If you keep spying, you’ll soon find out about the habits of the dead. Trying to learn wizarding secrets is treason, Sella.”
He knew my name. Or at least the nickname the servants used. I refused to show him how pleased I was about that. I brushed off bits of bark and leaves that had collected on my skirt. “I don’t care none about the wizarding stuff. I just want to learn how to read regular words.”
He frowned. “And what would you do once you learned to read?” His expression grew sterner. “Don’t think of lying to me. I’ve said an incantation that will make your fingers blister if you don’t tell the truth.”
My mouth went slack with fear. I could get in so much trouble in a castle with nine boys who knew magic. “I…I might peek at some of the books in the guest library.”
A library was a display of wealth, and Docendum had an entire room lined with tomes of history and philosophy, elegant gold lettering decorating their spines. I longed for the thinner books, though, tales of the adventures of knights who fought dragons and, even better, rescued princesses.
“I’d be careful,” I added. “Not a soul would even know I’d borrowed one.” No one ever read the books there. Neither of the wizards was married or had children, and their visitors didn’t stay long enough to finish a book. The guest library was just for show.
Ronan shook his head. “That is an even worse idea than you skulking around here—borrowing something that costs more than you do.”
“I cost more than a book,” I insisted, lying before I realized what I was doing.
“Not much more,” Ronan said. “So it’s still a bad idea.”
The truth was the wizards hadn’t paid a servant’s price to anyone to buy me. My parents died when I was seven, and Cook Lindon, a friend of my mother’s, had convinced the wizards to let her take me in. In exchange for a place to live and food to eat, I served in the castle in what little ways I could until I turned twelve and began work in the kitchen.
Ronan must know my parents weren’t servants at Docendum and had assumed I’d been sold by villagers who were too poor to take care of their children. It also meant he’d lied to me about the truth incantation. My fingers didn’t blister.
I folded my arms. “Wizards can’t really force people to tell the truth, can they?”