“Gennady, this is Lady Flower,” Lord Timothy said. “She will be one of your tutors, preparing you for school.”
Gennady blinked. “I need to be prepared?”
“Yes.” Lord Timothy sounded surprised. “You don’t know how to read, let alone write. You don’t know basics that most students learn from their parents. So ... Lady Flower and her fellows will be tutoring you. Once you’re ready, you’ll be sent to Whitehall.”
He lowered his voice. “And don’t give her any problems, or you’ll be turned into a toad.”
“I have never turned a person into a toad,” Lady Flower said. She had an aristocratic voice Gennady hated right from the start. “I’ve always preferred slugs, myself.”
Gennady shivered. The threat was terrifying. And yet ... he’d always been weak and helpless, unable to defend himself. Hogarth would have had a real problem with women in authority, if their places had been swapped. Gennady was too used to being bossed to care.
“Yes, My Lady,” he said.
“Lilly was right,” Lady Flower said. “You do have good manners.”
Lord Timothy stepped back. “Do well,” he said, gruffly. “I’ll see you after you graduate.”
Gennady felt a flash of panic. “You’re just leaving me here?”
“I have to watch for others like you,” Lord Timothy said. He buckled his coat. “Lady Flower will tutor you and your fellows. She will take care of you.”
“You’re not the first person to come here,” Lady Flower assured him. “You’ll be fine, as long as you work hard.”
“I will,” Gennady promised.
“Good,” Lord Timothy said. He nodded to Lady Flower. “I’ll tell your family that you’ve settled in nicely.”
“You’re going back to the mountains?” Gennady leaned forward. “Tell ... My Lord, please tell Primrose that I’ll make myself worthy of her.”
Lord Timothy’s face went blank. “If that is what you wish, I’ll pass on the message next time I see her,” he said. “If, of course, I ever do.”
“Thank you, My Lord,” Gennady said. He hoped the sorcerer would pass on the message. Primrose would want to hear from him, wouldn’t she? “I will make myself worthy of her.”
Chapter 3
On one hand, the boarding house was the best place Gennady had ever lived.
The food was good—and plentiful. He shared a room with three other boys, but there was more room—private room—for himself than ever before. There were no drunkards waving their fists as they crashed through the rooms, no savage beatings for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time ... in many ways, it was perfect. He never wanted to leave.
But, on the other hand, it was the hardest thing he’d ever done.
Gennady had never learnt to read, let alone write. The thought of learning to write so he could send letters to Primrose had died when he’d realised she couldn’t read either. He’d never thought he might be ignorant until he’d left the village, seen a far wider world and discovered—too late—that he was woefully unprepared. The villagers hadn’t prepared him for studying reading and writing, let alone magic. Even the more complex forms of arithmetic were beyond him.
It didn’t take him long to discover just how far behind he truly was. Lady Flower and her staff were patient, but Gennady rapidly grew frustrated as they helped him work his way through hundreds of exercises in the hopes some of it would stick. He’d always had a good memory—he’d needed one, as he’d never been able to write anything down—yet it wasn’t good enough. Other students came and went, but Gennady felt as if he wasn’t getting anywhere. The frustration burnt at his mind as he memorised thousands of letters and sigils, remembering what each one meant without being able to modify them to suit himself. He could—and he did—learn by rote, but it proved impossible to make the jump to actually understand what he was being taught.
He was tempted, more than he cared to admit, to simply run away. It wouldn’t be hard to leave. The boarding house wasn’t a prison. He’d spent enough time exploring Dragon’s Den to be sure he could get out of town if he wished. But where would he go? The magic pulsed within him—Lady Flower had taught him a handful of exercises to control it—but he didn’t know how to use it. Not yet. He couldn’t go home until he did. Primrose would reject him if he wasn’t a sorcerer. And Hogarth and his cronies would kill him. Gennady still had nightmares about their last meeting.
“I just don’t understand,” he confessed, after two months in the boarding house. “It just doesn’t make sense!”
“You’re lacking the basics,” Lady Flower said, calmly. “And until you master those, you can’t jump ahead.”
Gennady looked at the walls. There were a handful of ancient textbooks on the shelves, each packed with knowledge ... knowledge he couldn’t access because he couldn’t read. His own journal was empty, mocking him. He could copy a paragraph word for word, like a common scribe, reproducing the words without actually being able to comprehend it. It was frustrating as hell. He knew it was just a matter of time before he got kicked out, yet ... it just refused to click.
“I don’t know,” he said. He stared at her, wildly. “Is there no way to teach me through magic?”
Lady Flower’s lips thinned. Gennady felt his heart sink. He’d seen that expression before and it always meant trouble. Lady Flower had no qualms about smacking his hands or his arse with a ruler, if she felt he was being deliberately thick-headed or malicious. The other students whined and moaned about it, as if it was the worst thing in the world ... Gennady knew, better than any of them, that there were worse things. His body was so used to pain he could shrug off something that would leave his fellows crying like babies and begging for mercy. It wasn’t something he intended to tell them.
“Not in the sense you mean,” she said, finally. “Yes, I could cast compulsion spells to make you learn. But they wouldn’t really make you absorb the knowledge. And ... there are potions that are supposed to improve your wits or sharpen your memory ...”
“They sound ideal,” Gennady said, wistfully.
“You’re not stupid,” Lady Flower told him. “You have a very good memory. Your problem is a lack of comprehension. There’s no magic I can do to aid with that.”
Gennady looked down at his slate. The words mocked him. He knew what they were supposed to say, but ... he didn’t, not really. The words had meaning, yet ... collectively, they had a different meaning. He felt his heart sink, once again, as he parsed them one by one. They seemed to contradict each other.
“You know what the words mean,” Lady Flower said. “You just have to learn to put them together.”
She stood, leaving Gennady to his work. He barely noticed when she left. He was too busy trying to parse the sentences. The writing was as crisp and clear as he could have hoped, yet understanding was denied him. He felt his head pound as the dinner bell rang. They wouldn’t let him stay forever, not if he couldn’t learn to read and write. They’d kick him out, and then ... and then what? He’d been too frightened to ask.