Bard: Chapter 16

**Incorrectly titled 'Chapter 16', this is actually *Chapter 17**

Trista shook off the rain before hanging her heavy outer robes near the door with her classmate’s robes and coats. She checked that her pin was secure, and inspected her violin case for any wayward moisture. It wasn’t until she stepped towards her seat that she realized everyone had stopped talking.

Her classmates were all staring. Some looked curious, other wary. Bart was blushing even more than usual, and Lila and Emile—who were almost her friends—looked ready to burst.

“You’re a mage?” Lila exclaimed rushing over to meet her. “Why didn’t you ever say anything? We’ve never seen you do magic!”

“I don’t know a lot,” Trista said quietly, letting out a sigh of relief. “Just how to light candles and mend things.”

“I heard you fought a dragon!” Bart said, his voice low and intense.

“Me too!” Emile said.

“It wasn’t a dragon,” Trista muttered, putting her back to the wall and winding her tail around her legs as close as possible. They kept moving in closer and closer. Other students had joined them as well, ringing around her tightly.

“You fixed a magic portal!” Lila went on. Trista marveled at how quickly the story had spread since they’d returned to the city. They’d barely been back two days, and things were only just getting back to normal, yet somehow everyone seemed to know what had happened in the hills.

“It was just a tear in the plane,” Trista said. “So I mended it.”

“A tear in the what?” Lila asked. Trista faltered. Plane was what it was called in the human language. Surely, she hadn’t spoken in demonic.

“Uh…”

“Can you show us something?” Emile asked eagerly.

“Yes, show us!” Lila chimed.

Trista looked around the room as they eagerly pressed closer. The lamps were already lit, and the room was plenty warm, heated by a round stove in the corner.

“I don’t really know what to show you…” she said awkwardly, and was saved when their instructor called out from the doorway.

“Trista! You’re wanted in the headmaster’s office!”

Her classmates let out various groans and complaints of disappointment. Trista ducked out of the room gladly, slinging her violin case over her shoulder and pulling her damp outer robe back on before hurrying back out into the rain.

She didn’t want this. She didn’t want to be known for doing magic. Humans looked too closely at people who could do magic, there were so few of them.

What could she have done though? Laura and Liam had already been in danger from the cold. Warmth had been vital, and the music had been the easiest way to provide it to all of them at once.

Then, once they’d met the creature, and found the gate, there hadn’t been another option. A creature of that size, and that ferocity, scared and desperate, would have killed them all easily.

Trista reached the headmaster’s office and took a moment under the eaves to shake the rain off again and gather herself. She’d never been called to the office, nor had she seen anyone else be called. This had to be about the magic as well. With a heavy sigh, she pushed the door open.

“Hello,” a prim woman with dark gray hair and spectacles greeted her from behind a tall wooden desk. “How may I help you?”

“I was called to see the headmaster,” Trista began, and before she could even give her name the woman nodded.

“Trista?”

“Yes.”

The woman pushed back from her desk and waved for Trista to follow her, not through the double doors to the headmaster’s office, but through a taller door that led into a hallway. “I’ve been asked to walk you down to the grandmaster’s office.”

“The grandmaster?”

“You must be pretty exceptional to have caught his eye,” the woman said cheerfully, shuffling along past long portraits of former headmasters and sweeping landscape paintings. “He’s rather reclusive, the grandmaster.”

“Oh?” Trista hadn’t even heard of a grandmaster. Each section of the college had its’ own headmaster, and there were various deans and professors, but no one had ever so much as mentioned a grandmaster.

“He’s a mage too!” the woman said brightly.

“Ah.” So that was it. There wasn’t really any other way she could have caught his attention, after all.

The walk to the grandmaster’s office was long, and involved several flights of stairs. Trista gaped at some of the rooms they passed through, museums in their own right for the relics and works they contained. Along one hallway, a plain glass case contained the single most beautiful violin she had ever seen. It was all she could do not to stop and stare.

Finally, the woman stopped in front of a much larger and ornately carved set of double doors at the end of a long, high hall. She knocked firmly on the door, and as if responding to some unheard reply, pushed the doors open and led Trista inside.

The office was shockingly dark, with a fire in the hearth and very little else in way of lighting. An older human man, with a straight back but stark white streaks in his hair, stood in front of a large, polished desk in the middle of the room. He wore bard’s robes in deep amethyst and sapphire velvets, beaded and embroidered to sparkle. His eyes were milky white.

As they entered and the woman made Trista’s introduction, a pang of fear formed in his chest, and Trista reached up to check that her pin was still in place.

“Will you excuse us?” the grandmaster asked benignly, inclining his head towards the woman. She bowed her head and stepped out of the room, pulling the doors closed behind her. There was a long moment of silence. The grandmaster held very still, looking down at the floor between them, then finally, he took a deep breath, and spoke again. “Why are you here?”

“You asked to see me,” Trista replied, confused. The fear welled in the grandmaster, but it wasn’t sharp or bright, just tired and dull. “Sir—”

“I know what you are,” he said abruptly, drawing himself up and fixing his strange, milky gaze on her. His voice quavered, but he held his shoulders back. “Demon.”

Trista went still. She opened her senses and found them to be quite alone. The woman had hurried away back the way they’d come, and to Trista’s surprise she found no other assistants, professors, or guards nearby. The grandmaster must have been very confident in his own abilities, or perhaps the little-known head of a bard college never faced many threats.

“Sir,” she began carefully. “I didn’t come here to do harm.”

“What did you come here for?” he demanded.

“I…” It sounded so silly to say it out loud, to someone who knew nothing of her other than that she was a demon. “I wanted to learn the violin.”

The grandmaster blinked at her. His brow furrowed and his shoulders stooped a bit, as if he’d stopped focusing on standing so tall.

“You’re not lying,” he said with a note of astonishment.

“Would you know if I were?” she asked.

“Yes,” he replied. “Give it a try.”

Trista considered for a moment.

“I am of House Bloodcrest,” she stated, and the grandmaster snorted.

“You are not,” he said, turning to circle around his desk and take a seat. He gestured towards one of the padded chairs across from him and Trista moved closer. “Though I would not need my senses to know you are not one of them.” As Trista sat down, he tugged down the cowl of his robe, exposing a jagged set of scars at the base of his neck, as if he had been mauled by a beast. Trista had never visited House Bloodcrest, but some of her cousins from that house had visited her mother, and she had seen them feed.

“You survived House Bloodcrest?”

“I did.” The grandmaster nodded grimly. “I’ve seen first-hand what your people are about, and how you use humans…”

Trista stared at the polished surface of the desk between them. She couldn’t refute anything he might think or say. House Bloodcrest was more bestial than House Infernal, but the worst of them couldn’t hold a candle to her siblings, and her siblings were nothing compared to her.

“…and you want to learn the violin?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I…think it sounds beautiful,” Trista replied honestly.

“I meant, for what purpose,” the grandmaster said, his voice turning hard. “Do not answer me with vagaries that feel like the truth.”

“It is the truth,” the Trista insisted, meeting his blank eyes. “I did not come to Everly for any other purpose. I was not sent by my house—they do not even know where I am. I don’t want to them to know where I am. I don’t want to go back. I do not serve the matron of House Infernal anymore. I don’t serve any of the other patrons either, for that matter.”

The grandmaster gave her a hard stare, then slumped back in his chair, drawing a deep breath.

“What have the gods dropped at my school?” he muttered, and Trista dropped her gaze again.

“I’m sorry if I’ve caused trouble,” she murmured. The grandmaster scoffed.

“Here I thought there was another adept come through the college,” he said wistfully, leaning back and setting his feet up on his desk. “But of course you have power. You all do.”

“No, that—that’s different.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I do have power through my house, but when I play the violin there’s a different magic I can reach for,” Trista explained. “It’s for making things, and healing things. I’d never felt anything like it, and I don’t know how it works—except for warming things up and mending…”

“That’s not what you can usually do.”

“Not at all.”

“Hmph.” The grandmaster straightened, placing his elbows on the desk, and resting his chin on his knuckles. “You’ve brought your instrument?”

“Yes.”

“Show me.”