4.72: Public Relations

“What’s going on?” Instruktanto Cooper asked.

“We’re being yelled at by teenagers,” Alania explained.

“Oh. Slow work week?”

“Taine, why are you here?” the Grand Master asked.

“I received an anonymous notification that my students were in a hearing. As their surveyanto, it’s my responsibility to be here.” He glanced at the initiates with some concern. They all looked away guiltily.

“Your students called this hearing,” Cheryl explained. “They’re not in any trouble.”

“Yet,” Lord Solus added testily.

“And their complaint is technically about you,” Alania said. “Given the justification they’re going with for escalating it this high.”

“Still,” Cheryl said, “he’s their surveyanto, and has legal right to be here for representation and guidance unless they don’t want him.” She looked to the initiates. “Do you want him to stay?”

The initiates looked at their surveyanto, then at each other, then at Cheryl. “What do you think?” Alan asked her.

“I think you should have him stay. It’ll make this all go a lot better.”

Alan nodded and raised his voice. “We want our surveyanto here.”

The Grand Master nodded. “So the situation as it stands is that you three claim you can’t continue with this school as long as you can’t trust us to commit to your safety and deal fairly with you, and you claim that you can’t trust in that because you think our ruling on Fionnrath’s Destiny is a betrayal to Miss Nic Fionn.”

“That’s not my name,” Kylie snapped.

“And to Kayden,” Helen said. “His curse doesn’t even do anything at all, and you’re still packing him off to Fionnrath, so it’s not like it’s even just inconvenient spells. Just, whatever gets you guys ahead, I guess.”

“And isn’t him being Kylie’s familiar dangerous for his health?” Jamil added. “And you’re gonna send him away from the world’s best doctor anyway?”

“An interesting point on its own,” Alania said drily. “One would think that a group might want to reevaluate the value of having the only human mage and familiar pair in the world, following events where the mage who knew how to create such bonds has been lost to us.”

“Acanthos was your student, Miratova,” Lord Solus said. “I’m sure you can fill any gaps in your notes and train another familiarist.”

“You vastly overestimate my involvement in that little project. Scientific skills aren’t political titles, I can’t just appoint a new familiarist for tasks requiring knowledge that no longer exists.”

“Kayden’s contract with us is still in effect,” the Grand Master assured Jamil, “at least until his apprenticeship starts, but that was his decision, not ours. Nobody’s packing him off anywhere. Given his unique circumstances, Refujeyo is making allowances and ensuring the resources so that he can continue his education while following his mage, but that, too, is his choice.”

“It’s not a choice!” Helen said. “He’s a familiar! Yeah, you can sound like you’re being generous and flexible and all that, providing for his ‘unique circumstances’ and letting him ‘choose’ to go with Kylie, but there isn’t a choice and you are sending both of them away. And it’s reasons like this why we can’t continue our schooling here.”

The Masters all looked at each other. There were a few brief whispered comments.

“Well then,” the Grand Master said. “That is of course your choice. We regret losing three promising young mages, but if you truly believe that you’ll have an easier time managing your curses either physically or socially without Refujeyo’s support, then that’s your decision.”

“So that’s it?” Helen asked. “You’re not even going to – ?”

“Your decision is your decision,” Demeter cut in. “And previous Council rulings certainly are not up for debate with initiates. Best of luck learning to control your curses on your own, especially to the two of you whose curses haven’t awakened yet.”

Well, I thought. This sucks. But the initiates didn’t look defeated. They looked perfectly calm. Anticipatory, even.

“Okay,” Helen said, with a shrug. “I guess we’d better go get packed, then. I hate packing.”

“Forget packing,” Alan said. “I am not looking forward to telling my mum I quit mage school.”

“She’ll understand when you explain why,” Helen assured him. “It’s not mums that are going to be the problem. It’s the reporters. Remember all the interviews and stuff for the ‘first witches going to mage school after the new laws’? I was so excited and supportive and now I’m gonna have to eat every single one of those words. I bet they play the old clips and the new clips side by side and I’m gonna look like an idiot.”

“Me too,” Alan groaned.

“I don’t know what you two are worried about,” Jamil said. “I’m twelve. I got all this stuff about ‘don’t you think you’re too young’ because the whole thing was about minimum ages and stuff and I was all like, ‘what, should they wait until I’m older and hurt someone?’ And I was really defensive of it. And my mum’s a reporter, so I got interviewed way more than either of you did.”

“Actually,” Talbot cut in, sounding like he was having the time of his life, “I don’t think any of you need to worry about having it worse than each other. You three are the entire batch of first new witches here after the Australian law change, right? If you all leave the school at once, they’re probably going to interview all of you together.”

“This isn’t really my area,” Hua added, “but I did hear that England and America were toying with adopting these laws in a couple of years, if Australia went well. So you’re probably going to get the attention of international reporters, too.”

“Oh, yeah,” Jamil said. “And trying to explain our decision is going to be the worst. My mum’s – ”

“Alright,” the Grand Master snapped, “You’ve made your point.” There was an edge to his voice that hadn’t been there before. For the first time, the whole Council didn’t look annoyed or bored or frustrated. For the first time, they looked like they were actually paying attention.

For the first time, they looked worried.

Instruktanto Cooper cleared his throat, and I remembered that oh yeah, the Australian law they were talking about had been his project. This must be why Cheryl wanted him here.

“It would appear,” he said, “that I have greatly neglected my duties as a surveyanto, and have failed to address the concerns of students under my care. I can only beg the forgiveness of this Council and, more importantly, of my students. I will be happy to address your concerns in – ”

“You can’t,” Helen told him. “You don’t have any control over their decisions. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Well, he did tell us we could trust the school,” Alan said, “so he did lie to us.”

“Yeah, but apart from that.”

“I’m sure there’s some way that we can resolve this,” Instruktanto Cooper said, looking to the Council.

“This Council cannot function if we allow its decisions to be held hostage by the whims of a handful of teenagers,” one of the Masters snapped.

“The Council isn’t functioning if you’re just gonna go back on contracts like this,” Jamil snapped back. “What, you make the rules, so you get to break them? That’s not how this place works!”

“In my experience, it is,” I said.

“Yeah, well, that’s stupid,” Jamil said.

The Grand Master leaned forward. “And did your friends explain to you why relinquishing our claim on Fionnrath’s Destiny was necessary? Did Miss Nic Fionn and Mr James explain that Fionnrath was willing to compromise, and sent a teacher of their own to train Miss Nic Fionn, only for them follow her to an isolated location and kill her?”

“That’s not what happened!” Kylie exclaimed. She said something else, too, but I couldn’t hear it because I was yelling.

“How dare you?!” I snapped. “How fucking dare you?! That bitch died because she tried to murder Kylie and you didn’t protect her, so M – so our roommate had to do your fucking job for you! He never got over it, he blamed himself for something she did and something you should have stopped. Don’t you fucking dare try to make it look like we did anything wrong. Don’t you dare accuse him of doing anything wrong. It’s your fault that that whole thing happened, you’re the one who failed to protect your students, and if you ever dishonour his actions like that again, I swear I’ll – ”

“You’ll what, Mr James?” Lord Solus asked. He met my eyes, and waited. Waited for me to openly threaten the Council.

I shut up.

“Kayden’s right,” Talbot said, an edge of fury in his own voice. “That woman was trying to kill Kylie, and you didn’t notice, and you want to smooth the whole situation over by sending her to the people who tried to kill her. That’s bullshit. And to try to blame Kylie and Kayden for ‘murdering’ her is reprehensible. You know what, I hope these kids do quit, and I hope they tell everyone every dirty little fucking secret they know about this school. I hope they put it on fucking youtube. Kayden, your friends have a youtube channel, ri – ?!”

“Talbot,” Cheryl said urgently. “Stop.”

“Was that a threat, Mr Ericson?” Lord Solus asked.

“It wasn’t,” Cheryl said quickly. “It was just an expression of sentiment. Talbot didn’t threaten to do anything, so unless thought crimes are suddenly a thing here now…”

“And I’m sure you all conspired to put together this meeting completely innocently, with no ill intent,” Lord Solus said. “Students of this school are under a contract with certain obligations, and yet here you all are.”

Ah. This was why Kylie, Talbot, Hua and I had been brought here with absolutely no prior explanation.

Hua realised it too. “Actually,” she said, “we had nothing to do with any of this. Talbot and Kayden and Kylie and me, I mean.”

Kylie nodded. “We didn’t know any of this was happening until this hearing started.”

“The only people who ‘conspired’ to set up this completely legal and aboveboard hearing,” Cheryl said, “were myself, and the three initiates who are airing their completely reasonable and innocent grievances. And none of us have a contract with the school or anyone who works in it. If you have any complaints over my behaviour or think I’ve broken any laws, my master is easily contactable. But your students had nothing to do with any of this.”

I glanced at Instruktanto Cooper, to see how he was taking this. He wasn’t paying attention. He was typing something furiously on his tablet.

“I find that difficult to believe,” another Master said. “Given their history of conspiracy against this school.”

“Given my history of conspiracy,” I corrected, “for which I was already convicted and sentenced.”

“And your friends were never investigated.”

“That’s right.”

“Perhaps, if we want to get to the truth of whether there is a history here, we should reopen for investigation – ”

I crossed my arms. “I believe that case was closed. I agreed to the summary conviction, it’s done, it’s over. If you want to go around poking into my friends’ lives and reopen it, then fine; I’ll call my lawyer. If you want a proper trial.”

“You have a disagreement to raise over your trial process, Mr James?” Lord Solus asked.

“No. I don’t. I’m happy to accept the sentence and let the whole thing lie. I’m just saying, if you guys want to go investigating Hua and Talbot over this anyway, if you want to dig this back up, then that kind of defeats the point in giving up the opportunity to defend myself, doesn’t it? I’d rather leave the whole thing behind, but if you guys decide to do this properly, then I’ll call my lawyer, and we can do a proper legal trial.  Where everyone can hear about our supposed crimes, and about what this Council did to me for them.” I grinned at the initiates. “You guys want to hear about what my big, bad, horrible crime was? You want to hear what this Council did to me?”

“Kayden,” Alania said, warning.

“Careful, Kayden,” Cheryl added. “You do have certain obligations to this school.” She grinned at the initiates. “I don't, though. You guys want to hear about what Kayden’s big, bad, horrible crime was? You want to hear what this Council did to him?”

“Hey Jamil,” Talbot added, “which news network does your reporter mum work for?”

“Okay,” the Grand Master snapped. “This has gone on far – ”

The door behind us burst open. Malas strode in.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said.