True Magics (29 page)

Not what we need to worry about today,
thought Thomas as they left the square.

“There you are!” said Mark, pouncing on the three of them as soon as they got through the gate. “Dump your blades and come on! Today’s the big day!”

“We know,” said Henry. “Eileen’s been obsessing on it all morning.”

“And most of last night,” said Eileen. “I couldn’t sleep at all. Then I couldn’t wake up. Then I couldn’t get out of bed.”

“Well, now you’re here and everything is ready!” said Mark. “Today we deliver your petition to the Headmaster. We’ve got six hundred signatures!”

Eileen’s mouth fell open, and for a few moments all she could do was stare. At last she managed to repeat, “Six hundred?”

“And three masters and a dozen professors as well!” said Mark. “You are really well-liked!”

Eileen stared at him. “I… I…”

“She is stunned,” supplied Henry. “Overwhelmed and full of heart. She does not know what to say. She may have to kiss you.”

Eileen hit Henry without even looking. Henry grinned. “Oh, good. She’s back.”

“We’re meeting after class in the commons,” said Mark. “We’re getting as many students as we can to march with us to the Headmaster’s house to present the petition. The whole company will be there!”

Except the ones we’re missing,
thought Thomas. “Thank you, Mark. You did great.”

Mark smiled. “It’s the most fun I’ve had in months. Now off we go, and see you after class!”

By noon, the Academy had been transformed. The grey buildings were festooned with banners. “Let Eileen in!” “We Want Girls!” and “Yes! For Eileen!” vied with “Keep Tradition!” and “Girls are a Distraction!” and “Women OUTSIDE the walls!” Students were running around with sheets of paper, cajoling last-minute signatures on petitions and exhorting others to march at the Headmaster’s house at the end of the day.

“Remember!” Thomas heard a dozen times from both sides, “No missing classes! No violence! Let them know what we think!”

By the afternoon, the level of rambunctiousness in class was growing ever higher and the masters were giving stern warnings about proper behaviour.

Thomas finished his last class and stepped out into the late afternoon sun. Water was in the air again and the wind was just strong enough to rob warmth from flesh. Despite that, no one was heading for shelter. Some students were chanting, others were arguing, others were trying to gather everyone together. Thomas dodged through them all to the law building, where Eileen had been sitting in on a class with Henry. A dozen Traditionalists were standing outside.

“Oh, look,” said one, pointing at Thomas. “It’s the one who wants his girlfriend to destroy the Academy!”

“WRECKER!!” shouted the Traditionalists. “WRECKER! WRECKER! WRECKER!”

“Really?” said Thomas. “That’s the best you could come up with today?”

“They are incredibly unimaginative,” said Henry, coming out of the building with Eileen right behind him. “I think they ran out of anything interesting to say about noon two days ago.”

Eileen nodded, “I agr…”

“HOUSEWRECKER! SCHOOLWRECKER! SHAME SHAME SHAME!”

Thomas held out his hand to Eileen. “Ready?”

Eileen took Thomas’s hand and kissed his cheek. Henry stepped up beside them, and Eileen reached out and grabbed his hand as well. “Together,” she said, putting on her bravest smile.

“HOUSEWRECKER! SCHOOLWRECKER! SHAME SHAME SHAME!”

“Oh, shut up.”

Outside of the library, the twelve remaining members of the Student Company joined them, forcing the Traditionalists back. They shook Eileen’s hand and followed her to the commons. All over the grounds, students saw her and fell in behind. They had banners and flags, made of strips of cloth or sheets of paper glued together. The conversations around them grew into a steady, excited buzz. “What do we do?” asked Eileen when they reached the commons.

“Speeches first,” said Mark, pointing to a pile of crates stacked to make a podium, “Then we march to the Headmaster’s house to present the petition.”

“Who has the petition sheets?” asked Henry.

“I do,” said William, holding up a very thick sheaf of papers.

“Will…” Eileen wallowed convulsively. “Will the Headmaster see us?”

“Oh yes,” said Henry. “We have an appointment.”

Thomas nearly tripped over his own feet in surprise. “We do?”

“Aye,” said Henry. “I made it before the debate. Didn’t want to give him any excuses.”

“Very clever,” said Thomas.

“Thank you.”

The common was now a sea of black robes, signs, banners and flags. There were flags for Law, Philosophy, Physicians and the Engineers. Even the Theology school had a small contingent, much to Thomas’s surprise. And in front of all of them, Evan raised the flag of the Academy’s Expeditionary Company—a black square with the coat of arms in red, and crossed swords underneath.

“Right,” said Henry. “Thomas gets their attention, then Eileen speaks. Then we march. Ready?”

“Oh, no,” said Eileen.

“You’ll be fine,” said Thomas, wishing he’d had time to make up a speech. He took a deep breath to force his stomach out of his throat and stepped onto a pile of crates. There were two hundred of them at least, and there were masters interspersed with the students.

Another deep breath. Then Thomas called out, “Fellow students!”

The crowd fell silent.

“A week ago, we debated the simple idea that young women are as capable of learning as anyone else.” Thomas found himself smiling. “And I must say, after the debate, we weren’t sure if we would still be students!” A chuckle rolled through his audience. “Four days ago we began a petition that any girl who passes the entrance exams should be admitted to the Academy! And today, in keeping with our traditions, we will formally present our petition, along with our request to change the laws of the Academy, to the Headmaster!”

The cheering was louder than Thomas thought the speech deserved. He raised his arms, and shouted over it, “Students of the Royal Academy of Learning, I present to you the young woman we hope will be the first to attend the Academy in two hundred years! The Academy’s honoured guest, a Lieutenant of the Student Company, and as brave a person as any I have known, Miss Eileen Gobhann!”

The audience clapped and yelled their approval as Thomas stepped down and Eileen stepped up. She had to call “Students!” three times before they were quiet enough to hear her. “Five years ago, when I learned that Thomas was going to the Academy, all I could think was, ‘Why not me?’ And when I asked, I was told it was because I was a girl.” Eileen’s finger stabbed at her chest. “And I am here to tell you, that is not answer enough!

“She’s better at this than you,” Henry said to Thomas as the students cheered. Thomas elbowed him but didn’t disagree.

“I study hard!” Eileen yelled. “I work hard! And those of you who faced me on the fencing floor know I fight hard!” A round of laughs went up. Eileen smiled back at them. “You don’t have to be a boy to learn! All you have to do is be willing to work hard and I am here to prove it!” The students applauded again. Eileen let it die down before she spoke again. “I am not asking for a free place at the Academy, I am asking to be forced to study harder than I ever have, to learn more than I ever have, and to sit the exams. And when I have passed those exams, when I have earned my place here, I am asking for the right to come back and say to you not, ‘students’, but ‘my fellow students!’”

Eileen bowed and stepped down from the podium. The audience clapped and shouted their approval. Thomas called out, “Student Company! Fall in!” He and Henry took places beside Eileen at the front. Eileen grabbed both their hands and began marching towards the Headmaster’s house. A sea of students followed. Someone started singing the school song, and two hundred voices joined in.

“Look there!” said Mark, pointing. Another group was marching in from the front gate, in nearly the same numbers as they had. Less than half of them wore black robes. The rest were older, and wore the clothes of merchants and craftsmen. All of them were marching behind a large banner that declared “UPHOLD TRADITION!”

Lords Cormac, Anthony and Ethan were marching at the front.

“They can’t be serious!” Eileen fumed. “They have nothing to do with this! With any of this!”

“Now we know why they were here yesterday,” said Henry. “Don’t kill them on school grounds.”

“No promises,” Eileen said through clenched teeth.

Thomas gauged the distance to the Headmaster’s house. “At least we’ll get there first.”

“We’d better,” said Eileen. “I’ll not have Keith stealing our thunder, and certainly not those three idiots!”

“Master Brennan is marching with them as well,” said Mark.

“Of course.” Thomas sighed.
I used to admire him.
“Sing louder!”

They raised their voices higher, and marched a little faster. The Headmaster was standing on the porch, watching with eyebrows raised, as the two groups grew closer. Some words were tossed back and forth between the groups, and a scuffle nearly broke out as one student marching in the Idealist group was grabbed by the scruff of his neck and given a thorough tongue lashing by his father, who was marching with the Traditionalists. A dozen others from the Idealists managed to pull the young man back into the crowd where his father couldn’t reach him.

“Shame!” shouted the Traditionalists.

“Change is good!” shouted the Idealists.

“Tradition!”

“Girls!”

“No Girls!”

“Yes, Girls!

“TRADITION!”

“CHANGE!”

“SILENCE!”

That last word came from the Master of Rhetoric who, with the Master of Laws, was standing on the porch beside the Headmaster. He had to repeat it a dozen times before both groups quieted down enough to hear.

“We are very glad to see such a healthy spirit of debate,” said the Master of Rhetoric. “And we are even more pleased to see it occur in an atmosphere of benign fraternity, instead of acrimonious conflict.”

The glares from either side suggested otherwise, but both groups held their peace.

“And now, since both sides have come to meet with the Headmaster, and since both sides are equally weighed in members, I think it best that both sides should be able to speak their piece to all those assembled. Does that not seem reasonable?”

“It does not,” said one of the burghers in front of the Traditionalists. “Though our numbers may be equal, make no doubt our importance is not. I stand before you as a representative of the merchants of our city, whose children attend your Academy, and as a member of the city council and advisor to the Lord Mayor. And I have with me here a dozen other men of standing. We are not to be treated on the same level as these boys.”

Henry stepped forward. “I am the brother and heir of the Duke of Frostmire, and by his leave, ambassador to the king. And behind me are the sons of a dozen nobles whose importance, according to custom, is a great deal higher than yours.”

“The young lord does have a point,” said the Master of Rhetoric.

“We have spent our lives working for the betterment of this city and all those who are in it!” snapped the burgher, who was growing rather red.

“We represent the majority of students in this Academy and therefore have a vested interest in this matter,” said Henry.

“We are the parents of the students of this Academy!”

“We are acting in accordance with Academy tradition and law!” said Thomas.

“We pay the tuition that allows your Academy to exist!”

“We have an appointment,” said Henry. “You don’t. So in accordance with the rules of courtesy, business, nobility and the Academy, we take precedent.”

“Headmaster!” appealed the burgher, “Please! This farce of letting girls into the Academy has gone on quite far enough!”

“Farce?” repeated Eileen, but before she could say another word, the Headmaster raised his hand.

“I am afraid that Lord Henry is right,” said the Headmaster. “He does have an appointment.”

The Headmaster waited until the laughter from the Idealists died down before continuing. “And while I will most certainly hear your views,” he said to the Traditionalists, “nonetheless, Lord Henry’s appointment does take precedence in this matter.” He looked down his nose at Henry. “Step up, young man, and speak.”

“Oh, I’m not our speaker. I just made the appointment.” He pushed Thomas and Eileen forward. “Have fun.”

“Always,” muttered Thomas. “William, with us, please.”

The three mounted the stairs and stood before the Headmaster.

“Headmaster,” said Thomas, making his voice loud enough to carry over the crowd. “On behalf of the majority of the students of the Academy, and in accordance with the traditions and laws that govern our beloved school, we are pleased to present you with the following petition.” He turned to William. “If you please?”

William held up the sheaf of papers. “Whereas it was once the case that women were a part of our Academy, whereas, through trial of battle, through power of intellect, and through strength of will, Miss Eileen Gobhann has shown herself to be as worthy as any man; and whereas, though she would be a most worthy addition to the ranks of students, she is prevented from doing so because of her sex, we hereby petition that the Academy change its laws so that Miss Eileen Gobhann, and any other girl or woman who has the necessary skills and recommendations, may sit for the Academy entrance exams and, upon achieving the marks necessary to pass those exams, be granted entrance to the Academy!”