Chapter 9 #2
“Hey, Ionáin, looks like Ailbhe’s on her way.
Seems we’re not the only ones to hear about your oh-so-strong Reckoning,” Coll muttered.
Looking around, éadha saw an exceptionally pretty girl heading for them from the other end of the Round Hall, a bright smile on her face.
She was richly dressed in a traveling habit, her brown hair caught up in a filigree net that reflected the were-lights above them.
“But I thought she and Gry…” said Ionáin, looking suddenly disconcerted.
“Didn’t you hear? Mr. First Family only managed to pass as a Keeper. I’d almost prefer to have failed completely. The Family is trying to put a brave face on it, but there’s something humiliating about being so…mediocre.”
Senan had wandered back to their group, and his tone was gleeful as he watched Ailbhe push her way through the crowd, nodding hellos to other apprentices as she passed.
“Of course, that means any match between Gry and Ailbhe is off now. There’s no way her father would let her marry a Keeper.
Serves her right. Remember how she wouldn’t even look at any of the rest of us when we were younger, she was so sure of her First Family match?
About time she learned a little humility.
I’m going to enjoy this.” He chuckled, waving cheerfully toward Ailbhe as he spoke out of the side of his mouth.
“I’d make her work for it, Ionáin. Doesn’t do to make it too easy for those Keeper girls. Let the mating season begin.”
Ionáin had gone red again at Senan’s words, and éadha felt a sting of unease. Not so much at Senan’s glee as at Ionáin’s reaction, how thrown he was to see Ailbhe. She reached them just as Senan finished speaking, but at the same moment a gong sounded, summoning them into the next room.
éadha fell in behind Ionáin as they filed in.
He was talking to Linn now, their heads bent together, already completely at home with all these people whose names she only knew from his tutor’s stories.
Manons, De Paors, De Lanes. To her these were the names of legendary dragon-slayers, Master Architects, Growers, and Illusionists.
But to him they were friends, the children or grandchildren of people who’d trained on Lambay with his uncle or grandfather.
And though she’d known this, not until this moment had she understood it—just how much Ionáin was already a part of this whole other world she neither knew nor understood.
But as they stepped through into the next room, those thoughts were driven out of her mind by the heady smell of a space filled with books, shelf after shelf of varnished oak stretching away as far as she could see.
This was the Library, a long, high chamber with a barrel-vaulted ceiling, its dark wooden floor burnished by the passage of generations of apprentices.
Here, Ionáin had told her as they rode together, stood all the records of Channeller lore and history—the Annals of the Three Brothers, the first Channellers; the witness accounts of the Channeller wars, collected by Lady Huris when peace finally returned to Domhain; the vast body of dragon lore added to each year by Channellers returning from the western borders.
The shelves stretched far beyond the reach of human hands, yet there were no ladders.
éadha saw instead that dotted about the shelves were cushioned nests where Channellers could fly up to sit and study.
Breathing in the dry air, watching dust motes spin in the slanting sunlight, just for a moment she let herself imagine using her power to fly up to sit in one of them and read about the dragon wars.
But Master Dathin was standing there waiting.
From behind them Master Irial called, “Channellers to the center, Keepers to the side.”
Rows of chairs cushioned in red velvet stood in front of Dathin while plain benches were lined up sideways-on. As Ionáin took his seat on a red velvet chair, éadha, who’d been quietly shadowing him, had no choice but to go and perch uneasily on the edge of a Keeper bench.
It was her first chance to get a look at the wider group.
All the Keeper novices on the benches with her were girls.
Most of them were elegantly turned out for the journey to First House in riding habits with soft leather boots, clearly Family daughters, though there were a couple in plainer tunics and thinner cloaks.
Commoners like éadha, looking as uncertain as she felt.
As the Family girls sat down, they broke into small groups, whispering to each other under their hands as their eyes darted about the Channeller apprentices in front of them.
At the center of one Keeper group was Ailbhe, the girl Senan had talked about.
Up close she was just as pretty, but now éadha could see how tense she and the other girls looked.
It felt, she thought, like she’d walked in on a game already underway, one being played with deadly seriousness by the people around her. One where she didn’t know the rules.
As she thought this, she was joined on the narrow bench by a young man who grimaced as he sat down and whispered, “Doesn’t take them long to separate the wheat from the chaff, hmm?”
She glanced sideways. There’d been no bitterness in his tone, only a kind of detached amusement as he sat back on the bench beside her.
He’d the dark skin of a westerner, with deep brown hair cut ruthlessly short and startling gray-green eyes that gave his face a bright intensity.
His beautiful soft leathers marked him out as another Family son, the only one so far to take a seat on the Keeper benches, and he was, she realized, looking directly at her with those bright eyes.
This wasn’t part of the plan; she’d far too much to hide to draw anyone’s attention.
So she nodded but didn’t respond, focusing instead on the Channeller apprentices in front of them.
Ionáin was on a plush wide-armed chair a little in front of her, waving hello to this and that person.
Beside him sat Coll and Linn, and in front lounged Senan, one leg crossed above the other knee and an arm draped over his chair as he candidly assessed the group.
Linn was the only girl on a red velvet chair.
All the rest—she counted fifteen—were richly dressed Family sons, nodding familiarly to each other and staring about confidently.
Following her gaze, the apprentice beside her said quietly, “Better get used to it. All the rooms are the same: red velvet in the center for the Channellers, wooden benches sideways-on for us Keepers. After all, how are you to know you’re special unless someone else is being treated as less than you? ”
éadha turned back toward him as she realized what she hadn’t been able to put her finger on at first. He was the only apprentice she’d seen so far who didn’t seem excited.
Everyone else radiated a barely suppressed delight; even Senan, for all his snark, was clearly thrilled to be there among the chosen ones.
Instead, something about him reminded her of the wolfhounds at home when they picked up a predator’s trail.
For all the easy cynicism of his words, there was an intensity to him, a sense of controlled focus.
But there was no time for éadha to make sense of any of this as a hush fell over the group. Master Dathin had started to speak.