When he arrived back in the principal's office so recently abandoned by Portnoy, Albanos spent the first several minutes leaning against the desk, giggling uncontrollably. He honestly hadn't expected to leave that room alive, much less under such comparatively positive circumstances, and couldn't remember the last time he'd been that nervous. It was one thing to face down a squad of armed men trying to kill you. You knew where you stood with them (preferably a step or two farther away than their swords were long), and there were, in general, only two possible outcomes.
Politics, on the other hand, was so much fuzzier. You could be dead for months before anyone got around to informing you. But they'd seemed interested, nine out of the ten had looked at least slightly less homicidal when he'd left the room, and the crossbow bolt he'd expected to stop his escape had never come. Granted, that was probably down to Rodderick only having one good hand at the moment, but...small victories. It was the principle of the thing. And now, apparently, he was the principal of the thing, too.
Rodderick was still going to be a nuisance, but that was fine. Let him do something stupid that endangered a student or two, make him the common enemy of a newly united faculty. A persistently foolish bad apple would always give you ammunition to use against them. Besides, he'd seen the files. He had a pretty good head start on his efforts to ostracize poor Mr. Rodderick. Albanos even imagined he'd heard a few words of encouragement when he'd stabbed the man in their brief scuffle. There were more important things to focus on now.
Regaining his composure, he sat down in the principal's chair and gave it a few satisfied swivels. If all the faculty furniture was this comfortable, it was no wonder so many of them began to take on a significantly more egg-like shape than any assassin or thief should have a right to.
Another set of memories began presenting themselves. Images formed in his mind of standing in this office when he was a student, watching Principal Rillkin swivel back and forth slightly while lecturing him on the fact that, while thieving was indeed taught at this institution, certain articles of female clothing should not be stolen simply out of decency. Or that he was too young to pretend to be bartending at the Staggering Shadow. Or that laxative poisons were not to be baked into food items.
There had been so many lectures, but he'd never really paid much attention. He'd always zoned out, but there was one thing he'd always wanted to do, watching the droning man in front of him slowly turn this way and that...
Grabbing the corner of the desk -- his desk he reminded himself -- with one hand, he yanked hard. The chair spun wildly, the office rotating around him as a nauseating blur. Albanos had learned early on in his exile that you had to take joy in the little things. When the chair slowed to a point he could grab the desk instead of handfuls of empty air, he gave another hard pull and went spinning around again...and again, occasionally letting out a small "Wheee!" for good measure.
On his fourth go, he thought he saw a couple of figures peering curiously around the door frame, but was far too dizzy and uncoordinated to stop and check. He decided to ride the chair out until it slowed again and see if there was anyone there, but wasn't given the chance. The swivel screw holding the chair and its base together finally reached the end of its threading and gave out, sending furniture and assassin toppling over one another behind the desk.
As he lay on the floor, trying to stop the room and wondering if he was old enough to have to start worrying about his hips, he heard a polite knock on the door and what sounded like stifled laughter. He supposed he couldn't blame them.
The two people in the doorway watched as first one arm and then another appeared over the top of the desk, eventually pulling the head and torso of Albanos up with them. His eyes were still rapidly darting left and right with the effort of trying to focus on them through the vertigo.
"Ah...Mr. Billicks...and Ms. Elwhite...my two deans...what a pleasant...surprise. I do say it seems that Mr. Hagglit left the furniture in a horrible state of disrepair. I shall...have that looked at immediately, yes?"
Billicks did not look amused. Elwhite, on the other hand, had turned beet red, and appeared to be in the process of of swallowing her lower lip. She was trying to remain professional, which was commendable, in light of having seen the most dangerous man in existence, spinning around in a chair and squealing with joy. It was now somehow difficult to imagine him sneaking in to kill them all in the night.
The image of Albanos standing over a sleeping faculty member, blade raised and at the ready, then shouting "WHEEE!" as he began stabbing pushed its way into her brain. She buckled and gave one last valiant effort to maintain her composure, made a noise like a dying elephant, and fell over completely, practically seizing with laughter. Billicks sighed. Albanos grinned sheepishly, managing to find his feet with copious assistance from the desktop.
"You requested the files on the top five students, per profession, per year, did you not?" Billicks asked, ignoring the woman now rolling around on the floor next to him.
"Ah, yes, indeed. I appreciate your quick response, let me just get seated and...er..." A few moments passed as a still slightly disoriented Albanos tried to screw the top of the chair back into the base, staggering nearly through the window once in the process, causing an Elwhite who had nearly regained her senses to redouble her howling, tears streaming down her face. Eventually he was settled in once more, trying in vain to look as authoritative as possible. "Right, so let's see what we have here."
"Might I ask why you wanted these?" asked Billicks as he set a pile of folders down on the desk, dropped from enough of a height to add an emphatic thud to their landing. "Not scoping out any potential 'problems' to be eliminated are you? Taking out the most talented of the generation trained to fear and hate you?"
"Oh, heavens no. I'd planned on slipping some high-grade poisons into the cafeteria and taking care of the whole lot at once at the opening feast, no need to cherry pick."
Albanos watched Billicks' eyes go wide as the cafeteria trays themselves. Even Ms. Elwhite's laughter trailed off from somewhere below his plane of view. "I am, of course, kidding, sir. I wish no more harm on these students than you do, perhaps even less so, considering my particular and precarious circumstances."
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
Billicks, whose file had said nothing about the conspicuous absence of a sense of humor, was now bristling with rage. "You've come in here, turned everything upside down, and you can't even give me a straight answer to an honest question? I will have you know that--"
"I'm forming an elite class, Mr. Billicks, to train the best how to be even better. You lot should have been able to kill me by now. I want to make sure the next me, a more deserving me perhaps, isn't so lucky. And while I know that Hagglit's sense of humor extended no further than knock knock jokes, do keep in mind that if you try and take me seriously at all times, you and I will have a very rough go of it indeed."
Elwhite's head popped up rather abruptly, putting Albanos suddenly in mind of a garden rodent.
"If it makes you feel any better, sir, I don't believe I will have any problem not taking you seriously at all now." She grinned as she stood and put her stack of folders down.
"Glad to hear it! Now if you two will excuse me, I have a lot of preparing to do before the school year begins, as I'm sure you do as well."
The pair left, Billicks still grumbling, Elwhite grinning, and as the door closed behind them, Albanos put his head down and muttered about the uncanny sense of timing the universe had. Or, as his uncle had been so fond of saying, "No faster way to summon a lady you fancy than to break wind in an empty room."
After a few moments of stewing, he picked up a file from the stack the deans had left behind, started swiveling back and forth a bit, and began to read.
"He's an absolute loon," remarked Billicks as the two walked away down the hall together.
"Indeed. I think he's overqualified for the job," responded Elwhite, who would continue to giggle long into the evening.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The remainder of the week passed in haze of faculty introductions, building preparations, dorm cleanings, and the endless signing of memo after memo. On more than one occasion, Albanos found himself thinking that hunting, killing, and preparing your own food was somehow less complicated than approving each teacher's proposed curriculum, while also preventing course materials from overlapping, which always led to spirited discussions (stabbings) in the teacher's lounge.
His sense of humor and ability to retain the information he learned about everyone from their records was helping to ease tensions. One of the great ironies of his reputation remained that he was remarkably personable, if not a bit introverted. Still, there were quite a few people on staff that were uncomfortable with the idea of...well, him.
He'd already learned not to wear his cloak, as reaching inside tended to harm people's mental states. He had to keep the crossbow concealed, or it was impossible to get people to listen to him for staring at it, but he wasn't yet in a place where he felt comfortable being apart from it. It would take time, but at least it was time he had now. He felt like he had a future, a foreign sensation to be sure.
Two days before everyone was due to return, he finished reviewing the files of the 40 best and brightest students the school had to offer. He was not at all surprised to see Elayna's name among them, but Willam's presence had been a bit of a shock. What he lacked in common sense, or the ability not to faint in a crisis, he made up for in raw thieving instincts.
Several others had caught his eye as well, whose names and information he had been careful to memorize and whom he looked forward to meeting. The administrative stuff was all rather droll, but he had this experiment to look forward to, at least.
One student's record had been a bit troubling, though, in that it did not exist. It was simply a name written on a folder with the assassin insignia on it, and nothing inside it. Mr. Billicks, as dean over the assassins, was currently standing in front of Albanos concerning this very issue.
"It's not much of a file, is it, Billicks? I know her name, and I know she's an assassin, but for all other intents and purposes, she could be a mountain goat particularly skilled at holding a knife in her teeth."
"She is not, I can assure you, a mountain goat."
"You're taking me too seriously again. If she were a goat, she'd have been killed and eaten by the students the first time everyone's care packages full of contraband from home were delayed."
"You have knowledge of contraband food on the grounds? You're allowing students to violate their fitness regimens?!"
Billicks was no longer openly hostile, but he remained stubbornly dense. It was probably a habit too deeply rooted to be broken at this point in his life.
"Do you not remember being a student here? Everyone shared their chocolates and cookies from home. It was practically as good as currency in the dorms."
"Nossir, don't recall that. Back in my day, I ate nothing but the nourishing gruel provided us directly after doing my entire physical regimen for the afternoon, and no one ever offered me anything."
"I simply...cannot imagine why. Anyway, tell me about this Lillith girl."
A troubled look darkened Billicks's features for a moment. "She--"
A frantic knocking at the door interrupted them. One of the office secretaries opened the door without waiting for an invite, wearing a concerned look of her own.
"Sorry to interrupt sirs, but there's a man here. Says he's a messenger from the new king of Cestia."
Billicks scoffed. "A king's messenger? Here? How would he even know how to find us, the whelp's barely got his feet wet!"
"Send him in. Billicks, I'm afraid we're going to have to continue this discussion later."
"Certainly...but he shouldn't be here! I don't trust this, and I don't like this! I want that noted!"
Albanos pulled a scrap of paper out of one desk drawer, quickly doodled an angry stick figure shaking its fist ruefully at the sky, and placed the paper in a random pile.
"So noted."
The dean, unable to see what exactly Albanos had jotted down for all the folders stacked near the front of the desk, simply nodded and walked off, satisfied.