Iris had long since noticed a trend in Excala city’s land use. Where many cities Iris had briefly visited built up to signify importance, wealth and power, Excala instead spread outwards. Very rarely would one stumble across swathes of single-use land, and every such case was a landmark of the city, one maintained either by state, crown or syndicate. The Excalan Academy was one such establishment.
Its sandstone edifices spread across a generous plot of prime city land, created within itself a small ecosystem: an insular society that seemed divorced from and raised above the rest of the world by its tall, encompassing iron fence. Divorced from the bustling inner city where people mingled between their different walks of life, the Academy was quartered off, quarantined, sterile. A single walk of life, unchanged for hundreds of years, preserved in the name of tradition.
Like Excala outside, the campus was divided into different courts, organised along a loose pattern that allowed for courtyards, brick lanes and gardens to glue it all together. Different banners, colours and demographics occupied each one, bringing subtle individuality to every court, like districts in a city.
The way the Principal walked, each strut placed so consciously yet executed so effortlessly, made Iris straighten her back out of instinct. They travelled from one building to another through undercover arcades and overhead skyways, avoiding the light snowfall that had long since melted off Iris’s jacket. They weren’t alone, far from it. From students her senior chatting nonchalantly to the new recruits scared stiff, they were always fighting a current of black uniforms that threatened to sweep away Iris at any moment.
Exiting the dim oak halls of a stuffy building of classrooms, they exited a last set of doors into a garden courtyard. Even with the flowers wilted and trees leafless, the place held a serene, delicate beauty about it, like something frozen in ice. Iris realised the irony, considering the fountain in its centre was due to be out of commission for the winter. There were very few students around, perhaps one or two roaming the arcades, bundled in scarves and pulling on gloves for the day.
“This is the administrative building,” the Principal said. “If there are any problems, you should come here.”
They continued through the courtyard, diligently following the left arcade as though an invisible barrier encased the garden. Perhaps it was a rule not to step foot in it.
Rules, those strange things Evalyn sometimes enforced when Iris overstepped her boundaries. She wanted to try to break them, but if the consequences from her own mother scared her, she didn’t want to try messing with the Academy’s miniature society. Maybe they also had police.
The Principal pushed open the doorway, letting Iris enter the lobby first. Red carpet stretched between the building's ends, the area acting as a tranquil buffer between the public world and the school's underbelly. It felt like the entrance to a museum rather than any public facility, especially when the arched windows themselves were art pieces. Preserved as much as it was used.
They continued, passing small offices and staff rooms where each staff member who noticed bid the Principal good morning, and those that didn’t a fleeting smile before they disappeared out of sight. They climbed a flight of stairs, reaching an even quieter domain deep in the school’s heart. No students, and only one important-looking person per office, slaving away at whatever paperwork lay on their desk. None said hello, and little more than the sound of typewriters even filled the room.
Gold plate, with ‘Principal’ adorned into the glossy finish with a fine-tipped brush. Old, but with immaculate maintenance, much like the rest of the building. Iris was offered inside, where a small chair opposite an imposing desk awaited her.
“Please sit, I’ll sign a uniform pass now and ask one of the ladies outside to type you up an official one.”
She entered, impressed at how well-furnished the place was, even if she knew much of it was for show. Iris had seen many such offices, and after knowing the inner workings of Evalyn’s, she was now practically desensitised to whatever awe-inspiring qualities their decor once held. The books in the bookshelves were most often for show, and if there was a globe somewhere in the room, it was usually coated in dust.
She sat down while the Principal rounded the desk, taking a small note of paper from a drawer and a pen already lying by a typewriter. He began to write.
“This isn’t the first time in our history that we’ve had such a situation,” the Principal began. “Given the clientele of our school, we’ve often had maids…servants and the odd bodyguard attend classes.”
The scribbles ended with a dot, and the Principal handed the note to Iris. She glanced at it, the cursive handwriting so immaculate that she had no clue what it said.
“But it’s no longer last century. I do not care if you score horribly in your classes or get on the nerves of our teachers as long as you do not disclose that you are Crestana Mallorine's bodyguard to anyone, understand?”
“Okay.”
“That’s ‘yes, sir’ to you.”
“Okay…yes sir.”
The Principal watched her for a moment, his confidence in her visibly shaken. He sat down proper, the well-oiled chair staying as silent as he, while his attention took a moment longer to assess her—her worth, skill, danger perhaps. Iris recognised the expression but could never figure out the intention.
“Ms Mallorine is a close sponsor of ours, and if it wasn’t for her…vigorous input, I’d see no reason to worry about Crestana’s wellbeing. Don’t overstep your boundaries, do as much as you’re paid for and nothing more. Understand?”
She had experienced ‘talks’ before, the most terrifying from Marie who’d so often combine the words of a drill sergeant with the voice of a serial killer. But ‘talk’ didn’t describe whatever the Principal was saying. ‘Threat’ did.
“Why…sir?” she asked, coming off as more clueless than intimidated. "She's in a lot of danger."
The Principal’s voice box jittered as he gave a quiet sigh of disappointment.
"Because who would want anything to do with Crestana Mallorine?”
As it turned out, too many people.
Iris had followed one of the many administration workers back through the school, taking a different combination of undercover walkways and overhead sky bridges until they came to an enclosed court: one of many she had seen on her way through the school. This one had been particularly restless, with lines of students her age single file in the courtyard being led off into doorways and stairs. Another part of the first-day rush; it was all but silent now.
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Iris followed her guide through the archway and into the courtyard, tracing the pathway left while indistinct eyes flickered through dimmed glass windows and wooden shutters. They continued into a stairwell to the third floor, footsteps echoing up and down the dim cavity while the stained-glass window towering behind them again coloured her clothes. She looked at it for as long as she could, failing to recognise the illustration as anything significant.
A sunset, a small village street, five humanoid shadows rising from the ground.
They turned right once they reached the third floor, walked three rooms down before coming to a fourth, each marked with a class code. 7L marked hers. The guide knocked on the door, and someone answered.
A skeletal hand reached around the door; jagged and graphite black bones that disappeared under the sleeve of a suit. Caught utterly off guard, Iris stepped back, her hair standing on its ends as her brain was jumpstarted with adrenaline. A blue flaming orb rounded the door in place of a head, runes evaporating like smoke trails. She had to know if she was dreaming.
A hallucination? Maybe, but her body didn’t feel sluggish or paralysed, and her fright was her own, not induced by anything else.
“Yes?” the Spirit asked, turning from Iris’s guide to her. He spoke with a voice instead of pulses of Aether, the familiar tone of a Beak’s voice box. She held in her fright, focusing enough to notice the contraption clipped to his tie instead of fastened underneath a mask.
“Good Morning Mr Caynes, Iris Hardridge-Maxwell, your missing student?”
Iris watched him, and he did the same, or whatever the Spirit equivalent to it was. Without eyes, she couldn’t tell exactly where he was looking, only that his interest was concerned with her.
“Did I scare you, Miss?”
Iris slowly shook her head, her body still tense and preoccupied with diagnosing her state of consciousness. She was alive, yes, and she was awake. Pinching the skin on her waist until it went numb changed nothing.
“Oh?” he said. “Well, call me Mr Caynes. If you’re part of this class, then I’ll have the honour of being your Aetherology teacher.”
He opened the door fully and stepped through, a bony figure hidden underneath a worn corduroy suit saved from being in tatters by numerous subtle stitch jobs. Offering a hand to Iris, he politely waited for a moment despite her having no intentions of obliging him. Evalyn was the one who always handed negotiations; she didn’t like the idea of that responsibility falling onto her.
Caynes understood, nodding his head before retracting his hand. “So sorry, teachers don’t do that with students. It’s my first day as well.” He nodded at her guide, letting out a soft thank you before ushering Iris inside.
She followed his direction, stepping into the classroom and finding the attention of thirty different children. It clicked with her why she barely ever saw children her age in the city outside of weekends. It had occured to her in theory, but seeing the real thing amazed her.
“Now where were we?” Caynes asked the class, returning to his post behind a lectern at the front. The alphabet was etched into the blackboard behind him, half the letters crossed out seemingly at random. He leaned closer to Iris as she hovered near him, paralysed by the glares, half on her face and half on her jacket.
“What does your last name start with?”
“Uh…H.”
“H…,” he mumbled, turning back to the blackboard. “Ah, we haven’t done H yet. Would you like to start us off?”
Caynes took a piece of white chalk and crossed the letter off the blackboard. “Now if you’d introduce yourself to the class.”
Iris stood stock still, glancing at Caynes and then back at the sea of black uniforms, a mix of humans and Spirits homogenised by the deep colour.
“Introduce yourself, like your name and something about you.”
Introductions, the thing Marie had warned her about once. She’d preferred not to think about it since, brushing aside the thought that she’d ever need to. Her name, that’s still all she had that she could carelessly disclose to anyone.
“Iris…Maxwell-Hard…Hardridge-Maxwell. Hello.”
The class was silent.
“Anything else?” Caynes asked. Iris shook her head, refusing to break line of sight with the other thirty bodies watching her. Fear, but in a way that tried to pull her feet away instead of lash out and bear her fangs.
“That’s okay as well, Iris, thank you very much. There should be a seat for you somewhere…down that way. Third column, five seats down.”
Iris spotted it and followed his direction, keeping her head low to not look anyone directly in the eye. Yet they were more concerned with the teacher than her, attention turning back to the front as soon as she passed them. Like machines, they were diligent to the point Iris questioned their sentience.
She took her seat at a small, square writing desk barely large enough for her to fit both her elbows on comfortably. There was an empty tray hanging underneath, pencil etchings and scratch marks vandalising the ageing woodwork. Not every nook and cranny in the school was maintained to perfection, and Iris would have added to it if not for her lack of pens. None needed for orientation day, apparently.
“Who’s next on our list of Hs…Hallory? Could we get Hallory to introduce yourself please?”
Afraid to look left and right, Iris stared at the person sitting in front of her, absent-mindedly studying the back of their head as a few rows forward, someone stood up and loudly introduced themselves.
“Turic Hallory! From Excala City Primary! I like dogs! That is all!”
A few people chuckled as Turic Hallory’s voice box crackled and cut out under his voice’s volume. He sat down, and the next name was called. Once H was exhausted, Caynes chose P at random, and another group of students were called one by one.
Iris kept quiet, doing her best to memorise the names and ignoring the extraneous details. Names were always handy, except she wasn’t doing the best job of pairing them with faces. She guessed that she wouldn’t remember much besides the back of one Veronica Horrick’s head by the time the process was over.
But someone grabbed her attention, someone staring at her from the front of the class. A Beak, mask embroidered with gold leaf and shutters across the eyes. Hair that flowed in strands instead of the roughly formed black mass Iris was used to, and fingers that were more angular than the average Beak’s. She even seemed to have fingernails.
“M next! Let’s see…Mallorine?”
The girl stood, posture immaculate and voice box buttery smooth, articulating her words so clearly even the deaf would understand.
“Crestana Mallorine. Nice to meet you all.”
That was all she gave, as brief as Iris’s, but born from a place of confidence instead of confusion. The class was silent, born from a place of awe and respect rather than pity. Iris’s client sat back down again, uniform fluttering gracefully as she did. Another sidelong glance and Crestana Mallorine turned away from her entirely.
Their orientation continued for the morning, the class stiff under Caynes’s guidance. If it was his first day, he certainly didn’t show it. Charismatic in a quiet sense, he’d call on members of the class without putting them in the spotlight, even mentioning Iris’s jacket and turning it into a light-hearted joke when she blurted out that she had a uniform pass.
“Okay class, so although I am your Aetherology teacher, your normal homeroom on Monday first periods will be headed by Mr Greidus Forecer, your…I believe it was your music teacher. Yes, music teacher, who could not make it today,” he said, checking the notes on his lectern. A shrill bell rang throughout the entire building, waking Iris up from her daze in a startle that brought more than a little unwarranted attention from her peers.
“First break. Everyone is free to either stay in the classroom or go out into the courtyard, but be back by…ten thirty for your next class. Dismissed.”
With Cayne’s back exiting the room, it seemed as though everyone around her let go of whatever they were holding in beforehand. Chatter erupted rather quickly; girls grouped up with girls and boys linked with each other to run out of the classroom and join the sudden flow of students now saturating the court’s many floors.
Iris tried to gain a view of her client, but she was already surrounded by a group of girls, chatting back and forth with each other in a dizzying number of directions. It was a barrier that Iris had no chance of penetrating, but she decided she did not have to.
Instead she was was bored, and staying in her seat twiddling her fingers for half an hour didn’t appeal to her in the slightest. If such a powerful barrier already existed around Ms Mallorine, what could possibly happen?
So she decided to go for a walk.