Half of him wanted a confrontation; he kept thinking of all the clever things he should have said, or how he should have stood up for himself. They wouldn't have dared start a fight in the middle of the school, would they? Surely the teachers would have stepped in—
Or would they?
The Sixth Formers seemed very, very confident that no one would stop them. Maybe the teachers already knew about this petty tyranny and didn't care.
After all, they could very well feel that their responsibilities toward the students ended at the classroom door.
That only made Lan angry all over again, and finally he took the only outlet he had for his emotions. He broke into a run, and much to the astonishment of those making their decorous or weary way home, he ran all the way to his own front door.
He paused long enough to catch his breath, then opened the door. One of the servants met him there and took his bag of books; the family was already at dinner, and Lan joined them without a word.
Sam had been in the midst of describing some experiments with new dyes, and took up the thread that Lan's entrance had interrupted. Lan was grateful to Sam for once, for taking all of the family's attention away from him. He concentrated completely on his food, driving all the anger and tension of the day out of his mind. And perhaps that was the only reason why, when he excused himself from the table and his mother asked him how his first day of lessons had been, he was able to look her in the face, and say calmly, "All right."
And before she could continue questioning him, he retreated upstairs to his room. Books had never been his friends, but tonight they were better and safer company than any other alternative.
THREE
LAN wondered if highborn children were as arrogant as Tyron and his coterie. The Sixth Formers certainly couldn't possibly be any more arrogant.
Now in the second week of his attendance at the school, Lan's strategy of avoiding his tormentors was having mixed success. By slipping into the Hall behind a clot of taller boys and keeping his head hunched over his food, he had managed to keep from being spotted at meals while the Sixth Form was busy stuffing their own faces. But in order to get out before they got bored and started really looking for amusement, he had to bolt his own lunch like a starving badger, which made for an uneasy stomach during the next class. They usually got bored with hanging about and left the entrance before he ventured out to go home, but he couldn't avoid them on coming in, without taking the risk of being seriously late. Tardiness brought its own set of problems, not the least of which was the humiliation and pain of having his hand caned by the teacher.
Lavan had made another major mistake in his first week; he'd tried, shyly, to make up to one of the pretty girls in Fifth Form. How was he to know that she was the girlfriend of one of Tyron's hangers-on?
She'd rejected him quite out of hand, and he'd overreacted by withdrawing from all the girls. Now the Sixth Formers had another name for him.
Shaych.
When he'd found out what it meant, he'd tried to disprove it, but of course by then it was too late. Now there was another reason for Tyron and his friends to bully him.
After being shoved around like a game ball and then thrown sprawling for three mornings in a row, he decided that his best protection was the presence of the other persecuted. So for the past week, he'd waited for a group of the underdogs to arrive for classes, and ducked into their midst. With so many available targets, no one person got excessive abuse. At least, that was the case so far.
But the whole situation made him so angry he sometimes thought he was going to choke. It didn't help that he always turned a brilliant scarlet with suppressed rage whenever one of the bullies so much as looked at him. They seemed to find that terribly amusing, and went out of their way to put him in that state.
This very morning he had arrived at his desk with his face still flaming, his skin feeling slightly sunburned and tender—and all from his own anger.
"You looked like you were going to have an apoplectic fit this morning, Scr—I mean, Lavan," Owyn whispered as they took their seats for the first class of the morning.
"Is that why you got between me and Loathsome?" he whispered back. Owyn had begun to warm up to him, since he had never once called him by the hated name of "Owly"—and since the one piece of cleverness he had managed was to come up with names of his own for their tormentors. "Loathsome" for Loman Strecker, "Tyrant" for Tyron Jelnack (that was really too easy), "Dimwit" for Derwit, and so forth. It gave the younger students a crumb of comfort to have contemptuous titles for their persecutors, though they took care that the Sixth Formers never heard those names.
Owyn nodded solemnly. "You went purple, almost, and your eyes had a funny look to them, like you weren't there anymore."
Lan didn't have to reply to that, because just then the teacher entered the room and all discussion stopped. That was just as well, because he realized that he didn't actually remember Owyn getting between him and his tormentor. He just didn't remember anything from the time that Loathsome had started shoving him repeatedly into the wall, and then to his partner, Dimwit—only that someone had taken his arm and was pulling him out of harm's way while Owyn distracted the Sixth Former with some questions about the work he'd been ordered to do. Between the moment that Loathsome and Dimwit began shoving him back and forth between them and the moment that he found his feet on the stair, there was a blank.
Or, not precisely a blank, but a passage of time filled with such fiery rage that he couldn't even see or hear, much less think. Whatever had come over him, had turned him briefly into something less than an animal, into pure anger and hatred.
Not that it made any difference, except that he suffered for it for half the morning with an aching head and irritated eyes, though the sensitivity of his skin faded as the morning passed.
And for once at lunch the attention of the Sixth Form was off him. One of the Fifth Formers had failed to obtain Golden Beauty apples for Tyron's luncheon pleasure as he'd been ordered; this wasn't a trivial task, as Golden Beauty apples were just going out of season. Tyron wouldn't hear any excuses, nor was he placated by the offer of a basket of Complin apples instead. Two of his henchmen seized the unfortunate by his arms and hustled him away.
Lan was now welcome to sit with Owyn and his friends, and he turned his head just enough that he could whisper to the younger boy, "Where are they going with him?"
Owyn's eyes were as big and round as those of his namesake, and his face was pale. "They're going to flog him."
Lan felt his own face and hands grow cold. When Tyron threatened him with flogging that first day, he hadn't really thought they would actually do such a thing! It was one thing for the teachers to flog a disobedient pupil, but this!
"They can't do that, can they?" he whispered back desperately, hoping that something or someone might intervene.
Owyn just shook his head. "You ought to know by now they can do anything they want."
Lan lost his appetite, all at once, and as soon as he thought he could slip away unnoticed, he retreated to the classroom and buried his nose in his book. He stared at the same page without bothering to turn it, since there was no one there to see him.
What he wanted, with the purest desperation he had ever yet felt, was to be out of this place, to walk out now and never return. But that was an impossibility... his mother had made it even clearer than Master Keileth that this year's tuition had cost a very great deal, and it would be forfeit if he left. If I were to run off, I'd better run all the way to Hardorn; if Mother ever caught up with me, I would be turning a spit in the kitchen of the worst inn in Haven for the rest of my life. And that would be if she was feeling generous.