‘Oh, I’m sure we could find better things to do together than fight,’ said Aronzo, looking at Clariel and smiling. He was very handsome, and his teeth were very white, so white that Clariel found herself wanting to smack him in the mouth with her teacup, for his assumption that she would swoon and lie back when he paid attention to her.

‘I doubt it,’ she replied, through gritted teeth. ‘I doubt I shall see you at all outside of this ridiculous Academy.’

‘Of course you will,’ soothed Aronzo. ‘We are both goldsmiths, and your mother and my father are working so closely together, we’re practically family already.’

‘What do you mean “practically family already”?’ asked Clariel. Her fingers were tightening on the teacup, knuckles almost white. She could feel the anger growing as she thought about what he was implying. Her mother and his father … it was an insult that could not be borne. She half rose out of her chair, the teacup shattering in her hand. She held a jagged segment of china, and then Denima was calling out.

‘Clariel! Don’t react! Aronzo likes to tease and cause trouble. He likes people … women in particular … to get upset.’

Aronzo chuckled and deliberately leaned past to say something to Yaneem, who laughed in turn. Clariel, standing above, for a brief, white-hot moment of anger considered punching down with the sharp ceramic shard, straight into his neck, but the moment passed as quickly as it came. Frightened by the intensity of that sudden emotion, Clariel slowly subsided into her chair and let the fragment drop onto the table.

‘It’s true. Aronzo is like a troublesome thorn in the foot,’ said Belatiel. ‘A little prick –’

‘Shut up, rat-catcher,’ said Aronzo. He leaned back in his chair and smiled again at Clariel, this time more easily, showing less of his ever-so-white teeth. ‘I apologise, Lady Clariel. It is true that I like a jest or jape, sometimes too much. I most humbly beg your pardon.’

‘I accept your apology,’ said Clariel shortly. Inwardly she decided to keep away from Aronzo. She just didn’t understand this stop-start behaviour, or what his true intentions were.

‘Where is it you have come from?’ asked Yaneem, apparently politely returning to the proscribed small talk for a tea party.

‘Estwael,’ said Clariel, with a pang. What she would give to be there now, and be able to walk out through the town gate, and leave the high road a hundred yards south and take the track that wound up into the hills, into the Great Forest –

‘I’m not even sure where that is,’ tittered Yaneem. ‘Do you know, Aronzo?’

‘Of course I do,’ said Aronzo. ‘Haven’t you ever looked at a map?’

Yaneem flushed again, and was silent.

‘Another delightful lesson,’ murmured Belatiel.