I even started feeling ashamed.
“Nice to meet you!” I held out my hand, but the teacher looked at it as if it were a live cobra.
Well, that was the first strikeout. I thought that the main problem would be the kids!
But as soon as I started to speak, Mr. Fox came to senses and, with some effort, pulled himself together. In short, he finally shook my outstretched hand.
“Thomas… uh?” he smiled questioningly.
“Tangor! Thomas Tangor,” I tried not to shake his hand too vigorously.
“Luciano…?”
“We have the same mother but different fathers.”
“I see…”
Mr. Fox’s face slowly regained color.
“I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“I’m flattered!”
“Have you ever been to Mihandrov before?”
“Alas, no.”
“How do you like our town?”
“It’s pleasantly sweet.”
He stared at me as though he suspected a dirty joke. What did I have to say? “Not a bad village, but not enough brothels?” Wisely deciding to ignore my responses, Mr. Fox finally drew himself up a bit and even assumed a dignified air.
“I suppose you won’t stay for the banquet,” he said in a secular tone.
“What is your problem, a shortage of food?” I asked to clarify.
“Food has nothing to do…”
Ah! He must have seen a lot of drunken dark magicians.
“Do not worry; I’m not inclined to abuse alcohol!”
At least not in his company.
“We will not serve alcohol,” he said with some glee.
“Even better.” I always wanted to know how the white were having fun. “I can tell a few anecdotes.”
“Please don’t,” Mr. Fox was very serious.
“Okay, I won’t,” I said agreeably.
At that moment Lyuchik found a chance to intervene. “Thomas will stay for the party,” he said with some pressure. “I talked about him with Mrs. Hemul, and she didn’t mind.”
“She simply did not believe your brother would come,” Fox smiled indulgently.
He was an atypically nasty white. What else would he say in front of the child?
“Do you possess telepathic abilities?” I asked with awe in my voice, trying to catch his eye (that used to be very unnerving to the white). “Are you so intimate with Mrs. Hemul?”
“Who spreads dirty rumors about me?” a melodious female voice cheerfully sang behind us. The local headmistress was young, pretty, and a white mage at that, as her daisy brooch of rock crystal clearly indicated; the brooch seemed to be a symbol of one of the schools of healers. Judging by her tense look, she was already informed about my visit and came to rescue the situation.
“You see, Mrs. Hemul, Luciano’s half-brother came here for the holidays,” Fox said pointedly.
Why was he talking about me as if I was absent? I firmly took the initiative, moved him aside with my shoulder, and smiled most charmingly: “Thomas Tangor, at your service! Unfortunately, I haven’t been introduced to you. Lyuchik was telling me so much about the school that I could not resist the temptation to view it. I hope I did not cause any problems?”
“Not at all,” she weakly protested, and I grabbed her hand and kissed it.
Mr. Fox almost winced. An old lecher!
“I will go and make arrangements for another seat,” Mrs. Hemul flew off, flushing from embarrassment.
“Are you staying for just one day?” Lyuchik asked cautiously.
“Why?” I was surprised. “I will stay with you for the entire two weeks. You live in a gorgeous climate. I just got off the train; tomorrow I will bring gifts. If you do not like some, you’ll give them to your friends.”
Fox snorted indignantly. What did I say wrong?
We toured the school property, accompanied by the watchful assistant principaclass="underline" we walked through the garden and greenhouse, looked at the pond and the brook (why did they need that parody of the swamp, when a real lake was a stone’s throw away?), visited ponies in the school’s stables, and sat in Lyuchik’s room. I wished I lived like that… To be honest, that place was worth the money I paid.
The alcohol-free banquet promised by the assistant principal began exactly at a quarter past seven.
Naturally, they didn’t put kids next to me (except Lyuchik), but that was even better: adults had longer hands when you wanted something to be passed over the table. I methodically tried every unfamiliar dish, placing on my brother’s plate the most delicious (in my opinion) pieces. Among the treats, meat was clearly underrepresented but, thinking what could happen if the white kids saw a whole roasted piglet, it was certainly better to stay away from the meat.
Lyuchik didn’t care about the food; he hastened to narrate the events of the past four months in great detail. I nodded as usual and wondered how he managed to remember not only what and where he saw things, but also what he thought about them at that moment. I wish I could dump on someone my own experiences, curse my teacher obscenely, grumble about the blatant monster (Rustle was inaudible today for some reason), and complain about my ruined youth. However, it would be induced psychosis, the dark do not behave like that, and excessive talkativeness for a combat mage is generally considered pathology. Preoccupied with those thoughts, I ate twice as much as usual and almost fell asleep.
There were no interesting neighbors at the table. A couple across from me discussed with their child the style of her summer dress (“white lace?” followed by “lace, lace!”), and it was all about the lace for ten minutes in a row. Edan Satal did not seem so vile at all, in comparison. Before I wondered who wrote strange books about talking rabbits, in which all the characters expressed themselves as if they had no brains, but hydraulic brakes instead. Good that alcohol was not served—from the first glass I would have lost control over my tongue, and the sweet children would have learned a lot about human physiology and student life.
Should I flee maybe? I mean finish the trip earlier. I would not stand two weeks in such an environment. But as soon as I recalled that Redstone was now cold, nasty, and snowy, and Quarters had become gay?… the company of the white didn’t seem so bad.
After an unbearably long two hours at the banquet table, the guests were offered a break to warm up and dance. I was as good at dancing as a wild boar in ballet; besides, I ate too much. While pupils and their parents volunteered for an amateur orchestra, I managed to drag my chair to the opposite corner of the dancing hall and settle there in comfort.
I quickly gathered an audience around myself. Such attention did not bother me: the white were like sparrows; the worst they could do would be taking a dump on my head.
“Is it true?” the bravest kid had the courage to ask.
“What exactly?” I asked good-naturedly.
“That you are a dark magician,” he blurted out, looking as if he demanded that I confess to cannibalism.
I experienced a rare attack of good manners: “You needed to say a ‘combat mage’,” I gently reproached the kid. “Yes, I am a combat mage.”
Then came tense silence—I was closely examined to see if I had any unusual parts of the body. I wondered whether those guys had seen even one dark in their life?
“They believe,” Lyuchik remarked caustically, “that a dark mage should be in a sorcerer’s hat with a pikestaff in his hand.”
I rolled my eyes. People, stop it!
“The staff is good only as a bludgeon, and the hat went out of fashion two hundred years ago.”