Varice elbowed her companion. “I told you it was him.” She smiled at Arram. “When they said a boy was being advanced, I told Ozorne, ‘Depend on it. That’s the one I met.’ This is your new roommate, by the way. Ozorne Tasikhe, this is Arram Draper. Arram, this is my best friend, Ozorne.”
Ozorne offered his hand with a crooked smile. “How do you like the place? Unless Cosmas produces another child wonder, we should be safe with the whole thing to ourselves.”
“I’m not a child wonder,” Arram retorted, stung. “I’m eleven!” Then he gulped, recognizing the name. This was the member of the imperial family called the leftover prince. He had just snapped at the emperor’s nephew!
Ozorne’s crooked smile changed into a real one. “Are you? And I am thirteen, and Varice is twelve and a half. We shall take the world by storm, see if we don’t.”
Varice sat cross-legged on one of the empty beds across from Arram’s, while Ozorne dragged his desk chair over and slouched in it, smiling. “You’ll get used to her,” he told Arram, who sat gingerly on his own bed. “Once she’s decided you’ll be her friend, she assumes command.”
Varice sniffed at him. “You’ve never complained.” To Arram she said, “Ozorne and I are in the same classes most of the time. We’ve been friends for two years, I think.”
“So, what horrible thing did you do to end up in classes with us?” Ozorne asked. “Varice said I had to hear it straight from you.”
Arram gulped. “I flooded my classroom.” He got to his feet and looked out the window. “I didn’t do it on purpose! It just happened….” He faced the two older students again. “I still don’t understand why Master Cosmas is promoting me instead of sending me home.”
Ozorne smiled. “What was my misdeed, Varice?”
The girl tapped her forefinger against her chin. “We were in one master’s gardens, stealing cherries, and you saw a bird you didn’t recognize. You called to it, and called, and—well, I saw a great flood of your Gift roll from your hand, and the next thing I knew, the garden and every tree and plant in it was covered in birds! And then the master came, the one who managed the garden. He wanted us thrown out of the school for its ruin, because the birds refused to leave. I was laughing so hard I was crying by then, and Ozorne wasn’t even listening because he was able to hold any bird he wanted….”
“All I had to do was point and call, and the bird would come to sit on my hand,” Ozorne said, dreamy-eyed. “Even the hawks!”
Arram sat back down on his bed, fascinated. “I’ve never heard of such a thing. In The Magic of Birds by Ayna Wingheart, she writes that the magical nature of birds is such that only the most powerful mages can control more than ten or so, and that even she could handle no more than twenty-three or twenty-four at a time.”
Ozorne smiled at him. “What’s this? A fellow bird scholar?”
Arram chuckled and drew a pattern on the coverlet. “Oh, no, it’s just for fun. I can’t say I’ve studied.”
Ozorne got to his feet. “Well, study or no, let’s have a look at the bird enclosures in the menagerie! Varice?”
She stood and shook out her skirts. “I never turn down a visit to the menagerie.”
The two older students were at the door when they stopped to look back. “Aren’t you coming?” Ozorne asked.
“I wasn’t sure you meant it,” Arram explained.
“Anyone Varice likes is fine with me,” Ozorne said. “And you still didn’t tell me how you flooded your class, the Gift of it. We’ve both done that stupid spell, but we didn’t get those results!”
When she saw Arram had a tendency to lag behind, Varice tucked her arm in his and forced him to keep up. To his delight, Arram discovered that the students who cared for the menagerie animals were well acquainted with his companions. Ozorne in particular was a favorite in the areas set aside for the birds. Once he had vouched for Arram—which Arram thought was taking a great deal on trust—the three young people were admitted to the big enclosure that housed the birds who could get along. When the students handed each of the young people a cloth bag, birds flew down from their perches to land on their arms, shoulders, and heads, just as the pigeons did in the city squares.
The bags contained the food specially made up for the birds: small bits of vegetables, fruit, and fat, as well as seeds of all kinds. Arram ended up scattering his to the birds that swarmed around his feet while he watched Ozorne and Varice. They knew the animals so well that they could get them to do tricks for a bite of something.
One large golden peacock strutted over to Arram. To the boy’s surprise, the other birds backed away from him. A student attendant who had been keeping an eye on them all hurried over. She passed Arram another bag of feed. “This is his,” she said, nodding to the bird. “His lordship doesn’t like to share with the others.”
Arram poured the bag’s contents into his hand to find it was mostly brightly colored food: melon, squash, orange, and bits of small golden fish. “He’s very particular, isn’t he?” he asked.
Ozorne wandered over. “One day I’ll have a menagerie of my own, and I’ll have all of them,” he announced. “They’re called goldwings. They come from all the way across the Emerald Ocean.”
“I only see this one,” Arram said, looking around.
“We have two here, and the emperor has the other four. Now, come, have you seen ordinary peacocks before? I’m sorry, your lordship,” added the prince, bowing to the goldwing, “but you have to admit they’re pretty, too. Or at least the males are.” Ozorne hooked Arram’s arm and dragged him off to view birds with more colors in them than he’d ever seen in his life.
They barely made it to supper on time. Varice had refused to go until she’d changed her gown. Boys might be happy enough simply to dust themselves after birds had shed all over them, she informed her two friends, but she was not. They made it to the dining hall just before the monitors closed the doors.
“Close one,” a monitor chided as they skidded into the huge, noisy room.
Ozorne grinned at the older boy. “Close still counts!”
Arram had thought they might have trouble finding a table, particularly with him in tow, but it seemed that Varice was as confident in the dining hall as Ozorne was in the menagerie. She swept through the lines of serving plates and dishes, not only making sure of her own choices, but seeing to it that the boys took proper foods as well. Then she led the way to a small, shockingly empty table near one of the doors that led to the outdoor tables and a garden. The door was open, but no one took advantage of the tables outside: the air was cooling off. Instead Varice and Ozorne sat at that empty little table and pointed Arram’s new seat out to him. Only when everyone had eaten at least half of their dinners did Varice allow Ozorne to open the subject of water magic.
It was the best evening Arram had enjoyed at the university. Ozorne had some clever ideas on how to harness the power that had gone wrong that morning. Varice gave Arram some spells and charms for the manipulation of water she had learned from cooks and cook mages. If he worked hard he’d have them memorized by the end of the week. The water spells wouldn’t get away from him anymore!