2. Chapter Two #3
Viau was not formally dressed, as befitting the time and place.
But his white shirt was finely made enough to appear soft when Viau stood before an arched doorway and the breeze flattened it against his skin.
He wore the shirt loose, partially untucked from his trousers and unlaced at the throat.
His boots looked supple with use but the leather cared for.
He had on two belts, one for his trousers and the other for his sword, although that one he removed while talking to Feurne, setting it and his gloves aside.
They went in a pile that included his coat, hat, and cloak.
Then he accepted a thin strip of ribbon that Feurne must have been holding for him and tied his long hair at his nape.
He rolled up his sleeves next, and one of the younger students in front of Rafi actually growled.
A miné with a taste for other miné perhaps, or merely someone who appreciated beauty.
Viau looked like someone who regularly fenced and sparred and rode, and his skin was the color of ash wood, his hair shades darker than that.
He didn’t appear to feel the chill, and his control of his aer was so good that Rafi couldn’t really sense or see it, at least not at a distance.
“I need to get my beard like his,” Laure remarked thoughtfully. Viau, who worked at court in the palace, had a small, neat beard along his jaw and an equally neat mustache above his upper lip. Nothing out of hand or unkempt.
Rafi didn’t want to agree with Laure and accidentally insult his current facial hair, so he murmured, “It does seem to be the palace style,” and then crossed his arms and forced himself to look away. Viau might be used to stares, but Rafi would take no chances.
“We’re finally all here, I see,” Feurne said loudly without warning, addressing all the first-and-second years who were there for a lesson and not the gawkers like Rafi and Laure.
“Good. You’re all going to get some bruises today, but you’ll also learn something.
You have the extraordinary fortune of getting a lesson from someone who works near the king himself.
Viau di Ruzé is taking a temporary leave from many of his palace duties and has generously offered to assist your instructors. ”
Laure was looking at Rafi again, Rafi could feel it.
Rafi focused on tugging his sleeve down, only to regret it and roll it back up to let the morning air do what it could to cool him.
Of course, the morning air slipping into the Arms Room through the many arched doorways was also carrying the scent of green hay in a vast field.
The kind of field where farm hands and villagers snuck away to lie together, as Rafi’s father had once delicately put it after Rafi and one of his siblings, neither of them older than ten, had stumbled upon such a scene.
“Fucking,” Rafi’s oldest sister had bluntly informed Rafi later, “and not only villagers.”
“Rafi,” Laure’s whisper was urgent, “you’re red as a rose and I can see your aer. It is… agitated.”
“Shut up,” Rafi snapped back with more temper than he should have. He frowned as he looked up. “I apologize. I’m tired.”
Laure smiled, too knowing, the way miné sometimes got when aedis was mentioned.
“You could interrupt the lesson to bring him to you. No one would blame you. Katoh would probably urge you on. She gets eager in the days before as well, although you might want to go meditate first to calm down. You seem, uh, excited. That’s what happens when you avoid flirting in the capital.
You must be as pent up as a pot of boiling water with a stuck lid. ”
Rafi’s insides went bright and hot, then boiling, just as Laure had said. Rafi didn’t ‘avoid flirting.’ He wasn’t interested, and anyway, he worked hard not to make trouble. Laure, charming and good-looking, with money and family who adored him, didn’t understand.
Rafi swiped curls from his face to give Laure a glare that made Laure’s eyes widen. Rafi didn’t have to reach out. He didn’t have to do anything. The flow of aer from Laure and into Rafi was swift and exhilarating.
The silence that followed was alarming.
Rafi sucked in a breath and released the aer immediately.
He shuddered as he darted a look up at Laure.
Taking someone’s aer could be deadly if done recklessly, and it was rude no matter how one looked at it.
It was not something people did outside of dire situations, and even if it had been commonplace, it was not something that should have been easy.
Yet it had been. Rafi’s control had slipped but Laure’s must have too in order for Rafi to take that which was not supposed to be taken.
Aer belonged within people. Even a person who could not see or feel it had it inside them, and did not, would not, part with it without a struggle.
That they weren’t aware of the struggle didn’t mean it didn’t exist. Soulmates experiencing aertotius might share their aer, use it to strengthen one another, consciously or unconsciously.
Mages might also borrow aer from others, but even that was meant to be done intentionally and with permission.
One of the students in front of them whispered to one of the other ones, probably forgetting that they could be heard with the room so quiet. “What happened?”
Rafi had no idea what to say. He stared at Laure with his jaw clenched and his armpits damp and itchy.
He couldn’t quite make himself look over to the two instructors also watching them.
“I’m sorry. Maybe I should… maybe I should see the healers again.
Maybe there’s….” He swallowed but his mouth was dry so it solved nothing.
“I don’t know why I did that. I don’t know how I did that.
” Rafi could see and handle more aer than someone like Briene, but he was hardly powerful.
He’d been sent to the academy, not to a mage.
Laure blinked several times. He was not calm, not from what his aer was doing within him, but he was trying to appear that way. “I shouldn’t have teased you, especially not today, what with….” He jerked his head toward Viau, which lit Rafi back on fire since surely Viau would see.
Rafi was noticeably sweaty, flushed, and tired from a night spent fighting the need to run somewhere private to satisfy himself. He had just lost control in front of a bunch of younger students and Viau di Ruzé. He didn’t need any more attention on him.
“Virske!” Instructor Feurne called out, bringing Laure’s head up. “You’re not in my class. What are you doing here? Perhaps you ought to head to one of the other rooms for your exercise today. Or better yet, run one of the courses.”
Rafi slowly turned to look at Feurne as well, because that instruction had also been meant for him, and it was really Feurne saying: Go, and take your out-of-control nex friend with you.
Feurne, like some of the other students, might not have been able to sense the extent of what Rafi had done, but he would have sensed enough of it. Half of his job was monitoring the control of his students as they trained and mock-fought each other and sometimes lost their tempers.
But of course, Rafi’s attention didn’t stay on Feurne. It went right past him to Viau, and his heart stuttered when their eyes met.
Viau was speaking, though Rafi couldn’t hear the words. Feurne answered, still glowering at Laure as if Laure was to blame for what Rafi had done.
Rafi imagined the conversation between them was brief and unhappy.
Who is that? Viau would ask, tactfully quiet. The nex who lost control just now?
Tizzan, Feurne would answer, irritated. His current instructors must not be pushing him enough.