Steelhands - Jaida Jones [22]
“Just choose already,” Laure said, nudging me in the back with her books. “My legs are going to start cramping from standing around.”
“All right, if you’re going to be impatient,” I said, casting desperately about for a halfway-decent compromise. Perhaps somewhere in the middle would do, and next day we’d come earlier so that I might be completely satisfied with my choice: a seat that I could stick to for the rest of the term. “Though I have to say, I would expect you to have more strength in your calves.”
“We’re sitting here,” Laure said, stalking past me and plopping herself down in a seat near the middle of the class.
I supposed it could’ve been a worse selection.
More students filed in after us, alone or in groups of twos and threes, filling up the empty seats and setting out their books, ink bottles, and pens. I did the same for myself as well as Laure, to keep her from getting ink on her fingers and touching her face as she had proved prone to doing in our formative schooling years. Even worse would be spilling ink down the front of her dress. Seeing as how we were not studying to become artists, such a detail would be unforgivable.
I tugged my pocket watch from its hiding place, checking the time. It was only a few minutes until half past the hour; I did hope our professor wouldn’t be late. Then I arranged my pens in order from smallest to largest on the desk in front of me before deciding it would probably be better to group them by color.
At half past, the professor entered the room. He was on the tall side, with a ferocious red mustache that looked like the brush Gaeth had used to unstop my chimney. I could feel Laure staring at him, and under any other circumstance I might have done the same, were it not for the younger man he’d approached to confer with beside his lecturer’s podium—someone who’d been sitting there all this time, I realized, and I’d been too caught up in trying to choose a proper seat to notice him right away.
He had dark hair that fell into his eyes, and freckles all over his cheeks and nose—something I had always been disappointed that Laure had never exhibited, not even in the height of summer. (Laure did not freckle; instead, she burned.) The young man in question was clearly older than the rest of the first-years, though not so old as to be a professor, and when he turned his head to pick up a sheaf of notes I could see a darling thumbprint of ink against his pale neck.
Somehow, it was more endearing to me on him than it ever was on Laure. I could imagine him resting his hand there dreamily, and I tugged at the collar around my own neck at the very thought.
“Well, I see that most of you are here already, so why don’t we get started?” the professor with the red mustache said, wringing his large, meaty hands together and leaning back against his podium instead of taking his place behind it. “This here’s theory and history of the magicians, so if you’re in the wrong place, feel free to leave now. No harm done; I won’t take it personally. Nor will I even remember your faces as you file out, I’m sure. I’m Professor Ducante, and this is my lecturer’s assistant, Hal, and the answer to the question that’s burning in your fresh little minds is yes, I will be requiring you to take notes. I don’t care how good your mind is; memory’s no match for a pen and paper. I’d best hear you all scratching away mightily for the next hour and a half, and if your hand’s not cramping by the end of each session, you’re just not doing it right. I hope that’s clear.”
Hal, I repeated privately to myself, the name thoroughly unremarkable and somehow perfect all the same. He’d given a shy little wave upon being introduced, and I’d felt my pulse speed up in reply. It was a reaction he’d never know he’d inspired, of course, but it was there all the same, unmistakable to me. I drew in a deep breath, no longer prepared or even listening remotely to what