Chapter 3 Basque - Fucking Natt
A few students followed Basque back into the main building, but many others, including the two girls, stayed out on the training field. The students seemed intent on following him, and he could hear them whispering to each other, trying to get one of them to ask Basque something.
He didn’t want to be their focus. He wanted to go back to observing their normal interactions, so he went into the teachers’ hall in the east wing. It’d been explained to Basque that students weren’t allowed in there without permission, and as he did not give them permission, they stopped following him.
Worried that Krill might have gone into the teachers’ room, Basque ducked into one of the guidance rooms to kill time and wait for the kids who’d followed him to disperse. Basque was disappointed to find the guidance room occupied.
Natt lay sprawled out on the student’s sofa with her head on the armrest, one leg on the sofa, and the other dangling off the edge. One arm gripped the sofa’s back, and the other grasped a cup that was resting on the table. A bottle of alcohol sat on the table next to the cup.
Her one good eye was closed, and she snored the snore of drunks. Her striking, blue-tinted, lily white hair was in its matted state, Basque didn’t think he’d ever seen it cared for. Vicious black scars, scars that could only have been left by a Yani, ran from her ear and vanished beneath the eye patch that covered her left eye. Saliva drooled out of the corner of her mouth as she snored. Despite all of that, she was stunningly beautiful.
Just as he entered, gravity won out over her arm holding the cup, causing Natt’s arm and the cup to slide off the table and onto the floor. Her eye fluttered open. She raised her hand to look at the empty cup.
Basque tried to retreat, hoping that she wouldn’t notice him, but it was no use. “You shink I’m pathetic, don’chew?”
When she spoke, he could smell the fumes of alcohol across the room.
He turned to her. “No, I don’t.”
“Don’t lie.”
“I’m not lying.”
She glowered at him. “Eve’one shinks I’m pathetic. Do you know what a ‘fallen’ is, outwaller?”
“I do not think you are pathetic. I think you are a danger to the students.” He knew what a fallen was and what she was getting at, but as he wasn’t part of their society, he didn’t care to respond to the point she was trying to make.
“You didn’t answer me!” She threw her other leg off the sofa and sat up, at least tried to.
“A ‘fallen’ is a Kruamian noble who has lost their status due to an inability to fight against the Yani. While their title is revoked, they maintain the rights and privileges of the nobility as long as they provide a service to the kingdom.”
“You sound…like a goddamn dictionary.”
“And you don’t sound like a fallen.”
Basque could hear the sound of her grip tightening on her glass. “What da fuck are you on about? Look at my face. I’m fuckin’ fallen”
“Oh, I am quite aware of your lack of a title. The other teachers won’t stop talking about it. No, what I was referring to was the last part.”
Her eye narrowed.
“I don’t think you provide a service.”
She slammed her cup on the table and stood, only to fall back onto the couch.
“What service do you provide besides emptying any bottle of alcohol in the vicinity? I can’t believe you are a teacher. How can you teach if you cannot stand?”
With less of a rush, she stood but wavered on her feet. “I’ll stand when I need to stand,” she slurred, then fell back onto the couch.
Basque turned to leave.
“I’ll kill myu.”
He turned back. “Pardon?”
“I said’ll fucking kill you.”
He tilted his head. “Why?”
“If amything happens do doze mids, I’ll skin you alive…and mail each layer of your body back to your country.” She held up her hand and pointed at her fingers as she spoke. “First your skin, then your muscles, then your organs, and then your bones.” She looked at her thumb as if she was trying to figure out what to do with it. “Your clothes. Yeah. your clothes last. I’ll send you back naked.” She cackled.
“Very lovely.”
Once again he turned to leave, and once again she called out to stop him. “Pomise me?”
He sighed and looked at her again. “Promise you what?”
“That you’ll take care of them.”
“Madam, unlike you, I am a teacher. The education and protection of those in my charge are primary and foremost in my mind. Unlike you—” He cut himself off. He didn’t want to get into a fight with her about a school that, in its commencement speech, warned that two-thirds of the student body would die before graduation. Two-thirds of his class wasn’t going to die. If he had anything to say about it, not a single one would, and he had everything to say about it.
If she was bothered by what he’d said, Natt didn’t show it. She just picked up the liquor bottle, shook it, and then turned it up into her mouth. It was empty.
Basque looked at her, waiting to see if she would stop him again. She instead looked at the bottle as if she were confused as to why it was empty. Turning towards the door again, he placed his hand on the handle.
“I wasn’t always like this.”
Basque didn’t turn around. He had no interest in the self-pitying ramblings of a drunk woman. “Most humans aren’t born with a bottle of whiskey in their hand.” Before she could respond again, he opened and stepped through the door.
Going back to the entrance to the teacher’s hall, he cracked the door open and peeked out. No one was there. But not only were they not there waiting for him, they were also no longer in the Grand Entrance Hall. As there were no longer any students for him to effectively spy on, he decided to head to his class’s dorm hall.
As he was already in the Grand Entrance Hall, he walked to the grand stairwell at the north end and up to the second floor. He walked along the wrap-around balcony to the last set of stairs in the west wing and took them up to the third floor.
Unlike on the second floor, the balcony was only an outcropping, not a full wrap-around. There were lounges at both ends of the outcropping. Some students sat around in the lounges chatting, but fell silent when they saw Basque. He waved at them and they waved back.
He went into his class’s dorm hall, and once again, the students who were in the hallway fell silent and just stared at him. He waved again. Only one kid waved back. Sighing, Basque stepped into his room.
“Welcome back, Master Gerenet,” said a woman with long, vivid violet hair that was tied up in a bun. She wore a black dress that had a long loose skirt and long sleeves. Here and there, the dress was laced with white accents, and she wore a white apron that covered most of her chest and legs. Her beauty rivaled that of Julvie.
"Hello, Sophia." She was the maid assigned to him upon his arrival and had been an invaluable resource over the past two weeks. The level of detail she provided on the running of the school had been vast. “How are the move-ins?”
“As this is the…Class E rooms, most of the children have been moving themselves in, but as Master Gerenet has requested, available servants at the school have been helping them.”
While he’d not known Sophia that long, he knew her well enough that her pause was on purpose.
“You don’t approve of Class E?”
She didn’t say anything.
“Thank you for aiding them, Sophia.”
“Will that be all, Master Gerenet?”
“What’s your impression of the students?”
“I’m sorry, my lord, I’m not at liberty to comment on those above my station.”
Basque sighed. This was going to be a lonely five years. So far, he had only two people he could get along with—Harnel and Julvie, but even then, he had to be careful around Julvie as she wanted something different than he did.
“Sophia, I know I’ve explained this before, but I’m not from here. You don’t have to be so formal with me, and you don’t need to worry when we’re alone like this.”
“I know, my lord, but as I explained to you, I quite like being able to live and work here. The walls have ears and I like to pay my respects, especially to those I actually respect.”
Basque looked at the wall. He rubbed his hand up and down it. “I can’t find any ears.”
Sophia pulled a pad of paper and a pencil out of her apron. It means people can overhear us.
It was always like this. It felt like the conversations with her could go deeper and he could find out more, about the school, about the country, about…her, but she always pulled up short because she was afraid of being overheard. An idea went off in Basque’s mind, and he was angry with himself for not thinking of it sooner. If others didn’t know what they were saying, it wouldn’t matter if they were overheard. “Sophia, starting tonight, I’m going to teach you Hianb.”
“My lord?”
Pulling out a pen and paper, Basque jotted down, That way we can talk without worry.
She stared at him for a few seconds, then nodded. “If that is what my lord wishes. I will do as commanded.”
Basque tossed the paper into his storage space to burn later. “Excellent. I still have some of the files I used to learn Kruamian in my interface. I’ll send them to you now.”
She nodded.
Basque’s mind’s eye scrolled through his interface, and he selected the files that he had left, then looked at Sophia, establishing a connection. She accepted his transfer request and copied the files over.
“You can look through it whenever, but I’m going to need to teach you the Hianb alphabet before you can read it.
“I look forward to it, my lord.”
Standing, Basque gestured towards the door. “Well, let’s head back out.”
Sophia shook her head. “If it’s alright with you, my lord, I’d like to head back and work on my other tasks since you are here to watch your students.”
“Oh, how inconsiderate of me, by all means.”
She bowed to him.
“I’ll see you tonight, then.”
“My lord.” She bowed again and took the servants’ entrance out of his audience room.
Basque followed suit, only he took the main door, the one that actually looked like a door, out into the hallway. Just as he exited, he bumped into a familiar face. “Fawna!”
“Oh! Gerenet-Shr!” The young girl stumbled back from him.
“Coming to check out your room?”
She nodded. “Yes, sir. I was going to look in and then head out to get my stuff. The servants will only move Avali’s stuff. It’d be fine if we shared a room, but we can’t. I’m sad that the dorms are also divided by class because that means Avali and I have to be apart, but she’s only up on the 8th floor, which is great because that means I just have to run up a few flights of stairs or she could come down to me and we can see each other. It could have been much worse and she could have been in a different wing, which would have made seeing each other much more difficult…”
She trailed off as she looked at the expression on Basque’s face.
“I’m so sorry, sir! Have I said something that I shouldn’t have?”
Basque shook his head. “No, it’s just that, well, earlier you didn’t talk anywhere nearly as much as that.”
“Oh…well, since Avali and I have been such good friends for so long, she and I usually think alike, and it’s just easier for me to let her talk, otherwise, I might start talking and never finish my sentence or let the other person get a word in edgewise.”
“I see. Well, I’m not a man of too many words, so if you would like to speak for me when we’re around…”
She covered her mouth. “Oh no! How could I presume to speak for a man of your stature? You were so right when you scolded Deputy Headmaster Krill about his actions. Avali and I were beside ourselves watching that. But oh my god, you were just so cool! And that tattoo on your back! Eek!”
Her face turned beet red, and she covered her mouth. She turned her head away from Basque.
He laughed and prompted her to start walking again. “No worries. I remember the first time I watched my mother spar. I think I reacted the same way you did. Which room is yours?”
Fawan pulled a piece of paper out of her storage space and looked at it. “It says I’m in three-oh-seven.”
“Hey, that’s not too far from my room, just a couple doors down here.”
She flushed again. “You-you-you’re staying here in the student dorm?”
He nodded. “They asked me to be the Resident Advisor.” Initially, Natt was supposed to have been just the RA after being demoted from the Class E teacher after Basque’s arrival, but after seeing and meeting her, Basque asked to be allowed to be the RA as well. Headmaster Yasher had been more than willing to agree.
“Oh my god, this is so cool! Avali is going to be so jealous! I’m going to have to tell her at dinner tonight! She’s totally going to come down here to this floor now! Though I was kind of looking forward to exercising by going up and down the stairs all the time.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll get plenty of exercise in my class. Here we are,” Basque said and stopped in front of her door.
He waited for the girl to open the door, then followed her in and closed the door behind him. Like the layout in his room, it was a suite setup; there was a central audience room and doors leading off to the two bedrooms and shared bathroom. The only difference was that his was slightly larger as there was only one bedroom. All the first-year students had roommates, and Fawna’s was sitting in the audience room reading a book.
The bespeckled, silver-haired girl looked up at their entrance, then her eyes fell back into her book.
“Hello,” Fawna said.
The girl nodded.
“I’m Fawna Arstep.”
“Reianna Santi.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“Door on the left is mine.”
“Oh.” Fawna looked at Basque, and he gestured to the door on the right.
While she went in and checked her room, Basque stared at Reianna. The fact that she was in here meant that she was one of his twenty-four students. Her dress was obviously of a lesser quality than Fawna’s and much lower quality than the ones the daughters of higher-ranked nobles wore. Her short-cropped hair was pinned back from her face by plain black clips that stood out against her snow-like hair. Her ice-blue eyes were locked on Basque.
“Are you going to stare at me forever?”
Before Basque could respond, Fawna burst back out of her room.
“Oh my goodness, Reianna! Thank you so much for having your servants bring my things up here! But how did they know what was mine?”
The girl relaxing on the couch slammed her book closed. “Why the Yani would I have servants for, rich girl?” She stood and crossed the room to her door. She entered and slammed the door behind her.
Fawna looked at Basque with tears in her eyes.
“Don’t worry, Fawna, you’ll win her over in no time. We’ve just met and I’m already a huge fan of yours.”
The tears threatening the corner of her eyes dried up as her face went red and she covered her mouth again. Just then, a loud thud came from the hallway.
Fawna lowered her hand and looked towards the door. “What was that?”