Dear Uncle,
I just finished a lovely book. I have found school to be rather enjoyable as well, and I have already made some friends in my classes. What class was your favorite in school? At the moment, mine is alchemy, but demonology is likely next.
Thinking of you fondly,
Theo
"Thinking of you fondly" means the cipher boils down to four sentences with the relevant words: 6th word, 3rd word, 1st word, 11th word.
Or in other words, Book found. What next.
Short and simple. Rather, how I liked to send ridiculously coded messages. Well, that and it was too much a pain in the arse to actually bother with more elaborate bits of ciphered frippery Lord Woodman seemed fond of doing.
I folded the letter neatly into an envelope. I quickly, but cleanly, printed out the address for Woodman's estate, and I sealed the letter with a bit of red wax and the stamp he gave me. Just to be safe, I even lay a little Working on it. I'd woken up a few hours early to refresh my mana stores from the previous night's…adventures, and I had enough to spare to try out a simple little cantrip.
Get home safe. Get home sound. Get home soon.
Nothing terribly elaborate or fancy. Mason had taught it to me. Said that he put it on every letter he sent home to his parents. The spell probably wouldn't even do much with the pinprick of mana I used to cast it, but every little bit helped.
With that done, I slipped the note into my pocket and stood to leave for breakfast. But I paused at the door and looked over at Sylas, still sitting on his bed. His hair stuck up in unruly black tufts that resembled horns, and he was still wearing a ruffled set of green pajamas. Sylas had occasionally glanced at me while I wrote my letter, but mostly he had retreated into the silence we'd both grown accustomed to.
For some reason, that annoyed me.
I sighed deeply. "Hey, I'm heading to the cafeteria. Would you like to come too?"
The look of surprise and poorly hidden elation that swept across Sylas face made me regret asking him immediately.
"Sure," he said, quickly climbing from bed. "Let me just—" he quickly changed out of his pajamas and into his uniform. I glanced, but not noticed Sylas Thorne's back. Well-muscled and with the faintest traces of white scars dancing up his spine.
I stared down at the envelope holding my letter to Lord Woodman, as Sylas moved around searching for a clean shirt and jacket.
This, I thought, is a terrible, terrible idea.
***
My tentative friends seemed to agree with me when Sylas and I walked up to our table. Mason and Iroha looked at him like he had two heads.
Rosamund, for her credit, just smiled at him. "Hello, you must be Sylas Thorne. I'm Rosamund, ever so glad to meet you."
How Rosamund's voice got all high and sweet when she said Sylas Thorne made me vaguely nauseous.
I couldn't help but feel like people stared at us when Sylas sat down at our table. Primarily upperclassman from Lion Hall, who took turns glancing over at us and whispering.
I could almost feel their eyes burn questioning holes into me as I sat next to Mason.
Mason was buttering a biscuit and gave me a look I tried very hard not to read. But I think it said something around the lines of "Isn't this your roommate? I thought you hated your roommate? Are we all going to be friends now? Isn't that lovely."
I clenched my hands into tight fists beneath the table while Sylas gave Iroha and Rosamond each an uncertain smile.
"You are in my alchemy lab," Iroha informed Sylas, and he blinked in confusion.
"Yeah, I think I am," he said uncertainly. "Third period, right?"
"Yes," Iroha said, nodding. "You often sit in the first row. I am often impressed with the work you do with formula fabrication and analysis. I did not think England had much in the way of training for their alchemists."
"Oh," Sylas said.
"I mean no disrespect, of course," Iroha said. "It is simply that in Shang, many of us associated with the Seven Families are raised with a strong alchemical tradition as part of our earliest education. I thought most British magicians shared this with us."
"I certainly don't," Mason said. "My parents focused more on teaching us about how to do things with water." He held out a hand, and the liquid in his glass floated out in demonstration. "I never was able to do much with it, though, aside from a few party tricks. You lot should see my sister though. She can freeze a bucket solid just by looking at it the wrong way."
"You have a sister?" Rosamund asked Mason, tucking a lock of golden hair behind one ear.
He beamed. "Yes, I do! Haven't I mentioned her before?"
"No," I said, vaguely hoping to put Mason on another long-winded family story. Anything besides whatever had been happening. "No, you haven't."
Mason looked a bit put out with himself. "That's a shame. Everyone should know about Violet. Lovely girl, though Mother always says she took too much after the Jotunn on her side of the family."
"The what?" I asked.
Mason gave me a rather disappointed look. "Jo-Tunn, my mother's family comes from Scandinavia, you know."
I was about to ask Mason what a Jotunn was, and presumably go down yet another ill-fated voyage into the Allbright's family lore, when Sylas chose that moment to save me from myself. "I've always wanted to go to Scandinavia," Sylas said. "Have you ever been?"
Mason beamed.
"Why yes I have. Mother often winters there and she used to bring the lot of us along when we were younger."
"I always wintered in the Alps growing up," Rosamund said. "Lovely little skiing village there with manor houses you can rent out. It's so peaceful and remote there, and would you believe some of the nulls there can still actually speak German? Rather poorly, of course, but still—"
"I do not understand this desire to go elsewhere when the seasons change," Iroha said as she picked over her plate of biscuits and sausages. "To me, snow in one place is the same as snow in any other place."
"My grandmother has an estate in Crete," Sylas said. "I usually spend the winter months there with her."
Crete. That name sounded familiar. I didn't think it was anywhere in old Albion. It would probably look suspicious if I asked where it was, though, but it would look even more suspicious if I offered nothing to the conversation.
"Are you and your grandmother close, then?" I asked Sylas, thinking it was likely a safe road for conversation.
It evidently was.
"Yes, I suppose we are," Sylas said. "I grew up mostly with her and my grandfather."
Sylas seemed to relax as he talked, clearly treading back onto familiar ground.
"Are you close to your grandparents, Theo?" Mason asked me. "I haven't seen mine in an age, aside from my mother's parents, of course. Father says they seem to constantly be underfoot."
What a delightful segue into a topic that I very much didn't wish to discuss. "They're dead," I said. And that was fairly true, both in the case of my actual grandparents, who died in a diptheria outbreak long before I was born, and the fictional ones Lord Woodman had me memorize who had apparently been killed by savages in the Americas also well before I was born.
I had hoped being curt would discourage any follow-up questions, and thankfully, it did.
"Say Sylas," Rosamund said. "If you have a hand for alchemy, like Iroha says, would you mind helping me out a bit with some homework? We have a study group going with the four of us," she gestured around the table, "but none of us has a real knack for alchemy."
"I do," Iroha said primly, neatly whipping at her face with a napkin.
"Yes," Rosamund agreed. "But you don't write any of your notes in English."
Iroha shrugged and bit into another sausage.
"I find your written language wholly inadequate to express the subtle nuances of alchemical formulae."
"Hmm," Rosamund said, slitting her eyes at me in a catlike manner that I didn't particularly enjoy.
"I'd be happy to help," Sylas said. "If that's okay, that is."
And then the bastard had the gal to look at me like some sort of hopeful puppy. Like I was the one who would determine if he'd join our little study group.
"We'd love to have you," I almost growled at him.
"Wonderful!" Mason said, clapping his hands loudly. "Oh, it will be fun to have someone else in our group. We like to meet in the library after classes end."
As Mason prattled on, I couldn't help but notice more upperclassmen shooting looks our way. I watched them from the corner of one eye and saw a flashing golden feline face embroidered on the back of one of their jackets. Lion Hall. Probably curious why Sylas was sitting with us as opposed to being one of the Freshman jockeying for a position with them.
One of the Lion Hallers whispered something to another and smiled, showing a too-wide and too-white smile that I didn't particularly like. This, I thought. May not be such a great thing.