Starrlings 1: House of Fire

chapter 5

A R I

Ari was fifteen years old, short for her age, but smarter than most in her classes. She and Bell had spent years tossed from foster home to foster home in New Hamilton, attending state education, until Ari had been able to enrol at Hilverton.

She'd spent a blissful first year at Hilverton cleaning the bath houses before breakfast and scrubbing the kitchens with a few other young winter wards. It was tough work, but it hadn't bothered her because she'd been excited to be at the school, and she worked alongside kids who came from a similar background.

Last year, she'd managed to excel in her classes and make friends and still find time to explore the extensive library, wander through the woods, punt a boat along the canal, and learn the first elements of her magical skill.

This year, she supposed, things would be very different.

On a brilliantly sunny morning, Ari was stretching her legs out over the back steps of the House of Winter. She had a text on Norrlish history open across her knees, but she was tired and the sunshine was making her too relaxed to read. She'd had a full week of learning about Princess Katja of Norrlund, and she was taking one morning of rest before the princess arrived and Ari's real work began.

The yard was closed in by firs, and contained the kinnhouses - the buildings where the wolves slept - as well as lines of washing hung to dry. As Ari sat, she watched the young boys laughing with one another as they hung bedsheets and uniforms out in the sunshine. Beyond the clotheslines, a wolf with a rusty red coat was rolling in the grass, wings stretched out in pleasure, paws reaching up towards the suns.

"Ari!"

Bell emerged through the gardens. She was still refusing to wear the dark green school dress, and instead was wearing trousers, like a child. She had a wicked grin on her face.

"What are you doing here?" Ari asked.

Bell glanced up at the tall house behind Ari. "What, am I forbidden from entering here now too?"

"Where else have you been where you're not supposed to be?" Ari asked.

"I just wanted to see the dragons. Apparently if I don't have a kinndragon of my own, I'm not allowed in the dragon kinnhouses. Which is obviously wrong because Marco goes in there every morning and he doesn't have a kinndragon!"

"But Marco works in the kinnhouses," Ari asked.

"So why shouldn't I be allowed in there too?" Bell asked. "Anyway, what are you doing reading? Want to come to the charging pitch? A few older students are playing and I want to watch. I haven't seen you all week! How was the training? Do you have to bow to the princess?"

"Do you want to see upstairs?" Ari asked, cutting off her sister's enthusiastic questions.

Bell's eyes lit up.

Ari's grin matched her sister's, and she led her inside, through the small kitchens, and up the servant stairwell, to the fifth floor.

"What is this place?" Bell asked in wonder.

"What do you think I've been doing training for a week for? This is the princess's chambers!"

Ari and Bell had left their foster home as soon as the school opened the dormitories, so that Ari could start her training as a maid to Katja. On the first day Ari had been given a tour of the princess's chambers, which had always been locked to her. She was also shown the small bedroom off the main chambers that was to be hers. For the first time in her life, Ari had her own bedroom. And now that her training sessions were over, the whole floor was empty, as if it was all hers.