a beginning of...something?

I was looking for something else, and stumbled across this, which was obviously meant to be the opening of a...short story? something longer? I think I have a vague idea of where it might've been going, or at least the relationship in question, if not the plot! I actually rather like it. I wonder what I could do with it...

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The envoys from all six neighboring countries had begun arriving for the Winter Banquet. Therefore, of course, the youngest prince of Tenebrae was dead again.

 

Cinnabar Flint glared at the royal messenger, grumbled, “I’m only a journeyman, let me call Master Horatio—” and tried to shut the door to the College of Necromancers in the young woman’s face. The messenger, being experienced at this, stuck her foot in the crack before he could.

 

“Cinn,” Master Horatio observed, appearing in the corridor behind him, “you know you’re only a journeyman because you keep avoiding your final masterwork, now go and help the nice young person.” In casual black—trousers, robe with rolled-up sleeves, silver master’s pin crooked as usual at his throat—he had a pencil and a small bag in one hand, and lifted both eyebrows Cinn’s direction, only lightly grey over cheerful brown amusement.

 

“You go,” Cinn said. “I’m busy. Testing the first-years on Caelian funeral runes this afternoon.” Most of the first- and second-year apprentices remained in awe of the masters and their supposed power. Cinn, who’d grown up on the grounds and who’d deliberately remained a journeyman for three years and more, had once seen Master Horatio consume an entire Renewing Day fruitcake sculpture in one sitting, and had acquired a rather different form of awe in that direction.

 

“No you’re not,” his Master said. “I’m taking your class, and you’re waking up our recalcitrant prince.”

 

“Soon would be nice,” said the messenger, to Cinn. “The banquet’s in two hours.” Her expression suggested fast-eroding patience regarding collegiate bickering, balanced with the awareness that the College felt similar emotions regarding Prince Hyacinthe’s penchant for escape from uncomfortable social obligations.

 

“You just don’t want to deal with him,” Cinn said to his Master, accurately.

 

“True, which is why I’m sending my favorite and most skilled journeyman,” Horatio agreed serenely. “Young person, would you like a roasted pumpkin seed? They’re delicious.”

 

The messenger’s expression now contained quite a lot of doubt about the casual consumption of pumpkin seeds in a hallway that almost certainly led to dead bodies. Cinn felt this was rather unfair; the College had excellent kitchens and brilliant cooks.

 

He inquired, “What happened this time? Riding accident, doing a terrible job at fighting an ogre, impressive ability to drown in his own new shower-bath twice?”

 

“Boar hunting, I think.” The messenger ran a hand through her blonde curls, above royal livery. Rain dripped, desultory, over cobblestones outside. “Something about tripping over his own spear. Er…you are good at this, aren’t you?”

 

“The best,” put in Master Horatio, beaming. “Naturally gifted. Quite rare, really, that level of innate talent.”

 

Cinn sighed. Heavily.

 

He knew perfectly well that he did not precisely fit traditional assumptions about necromancers. He’d never been tall or imposing, and he looked even younger and distressingly thin in formal black robes, so he mostly didn’t bother with them. His hair, fortunately, tended to look good in messy pale strawberry-gilt waves, but it was the sort of good that attracted men and playful hands, rather than intimidating them in rooms of power. Cinn did not mind the former, but occasionally, especially when faced with ingredients on tall shelves, he wondered what having actual height and breadth and shoulders would feel like.

 

At least announcing his profession generally helped as far as being taken seriously. Assuming the person looking at him actually believed him, of course. If they did, they looked at him differently; he wasn’t sure yet whether he enjoyed that.

 

That morning, given the cool rainy promise in the air, he’d thrown on battered but comfortable grey trousers and a deep indigo-dyed shirt and a knitted crimson jumper he’d picked up in the market, decent enough for teaching. He had chipped rose-pink nail varnish on because he hadn’t got around to either properly removing or touching up the color, because he’d been busy with fellow journeyman Melody’s birthday celebrations and the pubs, plural; and then he’d been sticking his hands into various bodies and recuperative ingredients and magic and student ritual-language quizzes all week…

 

He knew how the current argument would go. He sighed again. “You owe me.”

 

“They’ll likely invite you to stay. All those visiting nobles, Court fashions, the wine and the food…it’ll be quite splendid.”

 

“You could do this one.”

 

“Oh, dear, no,” Master Horatio said hastily. The specters of polite aristocratic small talk, of dealing with banquet etiquette—and also talking to the youngest reckless embodiment of royal privilege—rose behind the words. “I’ve been to the palace so many times, you know. It’s getting quite dull for me, you see. All yours. Go on. Stay for the banquet. Enjoy the valuable opportunity. You might even meet the King and Queen.”

 

“I don’t want to stay for the banquet. I want to come home and mark exams and read that latest romantic novel by Verena Rose. I want hot cocoa. It’s raining.”

 

“I’m certain you can find a lovely young courtier to romance, if you’d like the non-literary version.”

 

“Just for that,” Cinn announced, “I will, and it’s your fault if I cause a diplomatic incident. Necromancer and visiting duke caught in stairwell. Forming intimate alliances. Naked. I’m taking these with me.” He plucked the sack of roasted pumpkin seeds out of his Master’s startled grip, grabbed a spare weatherproof cloak from behind the door, and found one of the usual travel kits on the shelves: herbs, thread, coins, cypress rods, all neatly packed.

 

He wouldn’t need most of it. Horatio hadn’t been wrong about him.

 

Naturally gifted. Innately talented. Able to hear, to touch, to speak to the dead more clearly than anyone else he’d ever met. Not always, not every time, but most times.

 

He’d stood in old guildhalls and centuries-worn pubs, and he’d felt the whisper of ghosts at his shoulders: too light for even fellow apprentices to hear, but present. All around. Murmuring to him. Never silent, unless he drowned them out. He had good mental walls, though sometimes the scratching grew interminable, relentless, flickering on the edge of pain.

 

At least the prince, being newly dead—again—would be loud and bright. Unmistakable. Easy to find. After all, this was very nearly routine: Prince Hyacinthe, golden and feckless, avoiding responsibilities and failing at heroic quests by, quite literally, dropping dead. Causing anxiety; causing more work; in general being a decidedly royal pain.

 

Still, the College would send someone. They did every time. They did not dislike the King and Queen, who after all had been good rulers for Tenebrae; they did not dislike the Crown Prince, or the sprawling prolific and goodnatured royal family in general.

 

Prince Hyacinthe in particular, though…

 

Cinn tossed a pumpkin seed up and caught it in his mouth just to watch his Master’s mournful expression, and picked up the travel bag. The messenger got visibly relieved.

 

“Have fun,” Horatio said. “I’ll go and find your first-years. Which classroom was it, again? There are so many.”

 

“Thank you for this valuable opportunity,” Cinn told him, utterly deadpan, and went out in the direction of the palace, over puddled streets, in the rain.