A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

The room reminded him of a church, or a temple. He'd never truly been inside one, but he'd seen them from the outside, and he'd seen ceremonies done out in the open, from a distance. He'd even seen the Elder stand upon his podium on the Winter Solstice, and offer sacrifice to Ingolsol.

The room reminded him much of that. All the seats facing towards a single man. But instead of the man – for it was a man – being raised up on a podium, instead, the room was on an incline, so that each row of wooden benches gradually rose up higher than the other, so that all could see over the heads of those in front of them, no matter where they sat.

He afforded a brief nod to the quietened room, before he continued to glance around, and assert to himself that it did indeed appear to be much like a church.

Behind the man that had been teaching, there was a wall of slate, made up of several square blocks of the stuff. The man had been scribbling diagrams of battle on it, with all sorts of arrows, and all sorts of scrawling notes on it. At a single glance, to Oliver, it seemed like an awful lot of information.

After observing it for a moment, he looked for a place to sit, not particularly wondering why it was that the room was still caked in silence, nor why it was that every single head was turned to face him.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

As he glanced around, he noticed something else. The presence of women. There were at least fifty people, and to that group of men, there were at least ten women. He was unable to help raising an eyebrow at that. He caught the glare of a particularly stern-looking young woman as he looked around. He held her gaze for a moment, more harshly than he had intended to.

Her stern mask broke, and she looked away, embarrassed.

There was the sound of a loud cough, a cough that was clearly not a cough, but more of a signal derived to attract attention.

This time it was the professor's turn to raise an eyebrow. He was a man of middle age, tall, and wiry, with thick eyebrows, and a pair of glasses that sat on his long nose, and a rather grey professor's gown slung over the top of an equally grey tweed jacket.

"Well?" The man asked.

Oliver did not understand particularly what the question was in regards to, so he merely continued to hold the man's gaze, and remark how odd he found his clothing to be.

He'd expected a certain flair from the nobility, with frills on their shirts and their like, and these extravagant jackets – but this man's appearance, somehow, was more reserved than theirs, but without really changing any of what they did.

Maybe it was the colours, Oliver thought. With the dark green, and grey, and the dark brown moleskin of his trousers. But there was certainly still a waistcoat there, and a tie, and a jacket to tie it off. It was a fashion style that he was unfamiliar with, but he found himself fascinated with it. Under the guise of holding the man's gaze, he merely studied it more.

"Boy," the man said irritably, cutting through the silence. "You have interrupted my class. Do not merely stand there. You wear our Academy's colours, but I do not recall seeing a face such as yours. Are you merely a stray pup? Or am I simply a forgetful old man?"

"I am Oliver Patrick," Oliver said. "I overheard that there was a study of Advanced Strategy being taught here. I came because I was interested."

There was a stir at his words. The Patrick name, and the pin of an owl on his chest, those scars on his face as well. They were all topics of discussion. Amongst the nobility, much was known, for there were not so many of them. For a son of Oliver's age to merely spring up out of nowhere through the mist was a great rarity.

"Ah," the professor said, his tone softening. "I had heard rumour. I did not expect your attendance to be quite so soon. Nor did I expect to find you within my class."

It was Oliver's turn to be surprised at that. "Why would I not find myself in your class… ser?"

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His mistitling of the professor caused a few chuckles of amusement. There was a particularly wolfish grin that Oliver caught from a gangly youth in the front row. He regarded him with narrowed eyes.

The professor waved his hand, as though the laughter was no more than a bad smell, and he was wafting it away. "'Professor' will do well enough, Patrick. We may discuss what was expected and what was unexpected later, as well as the proper enlistment for classes. For now, sit, and allow me to finish my lecture. I find a lecture unspent is liable to lead to stomach ache."

There were a few more amiable smiles at the professor's last line. Oliver guessed that it was a common phrase of his. Taking the man's advice, he shifted to the bench nearest him, at the back of the room.

A small boy had been occupying the wooden bench's armrest, his chin cupped by his hand, as he watched the world with distant eyes, but as soon as Oliver made a pointed step towards him, he seemed to snap out of his revelevery, and return to reality, as he awkwardly tried to make space.

He ended up moving too far to the left too quickly, nearly falling on top of the girl that she had been sat next to. He managed to regain his balance as he knelt against her. She shot him an icy look, and the boy immediately went red, as he hastened to apologize.

"S-ssory, Madame Nina…" he spluttered. She turned her head away from him in a pompous gesture, as she folded her arms under her chest. Watching them, Oliver was quickly reminded that even amongst the nobility, there were strict hierarchies.