Many somebodies had.


    I heard snatches of conversation about her at the dining hall that night. I sat at the table, tense and miserable, trying my best to eavesdrop without seeming to do so. Barti kept casting anxious glances at me as I focused on everything but the conversation at hand: …landed on the Observation tower… drive it off… migrating?... seen one before… birdshot…


    “Birdbath!” The wallop between my shoulderblades was painful.


    I closed my eyes. “Hello, Paffuto.”


    Paffuto threw himself down on the chair next to me and helped himself to the roll on my plate. “I say, did you get a look at the Winged One earlier?”


    “No,” I replied shortly.


    “He was sick,” Barti supplied. “We think it might be contagious.”


    Paffuto put the roll back on my plate, looking as though he regretted committing to swallowing the bite he had already taken. “Ah, that’s a shame. Quite the spectacle. Naked as a jaybird, muscles like a greyhound. No tits whatsoever.”


    My hand clenched around my fork.


    “We know what Winged Ones look like, Paffuto,” Barti said, voice as serene as always.


    “You would, wouldn’t you, Barti? I’ve seen your books.” Paffuto leered. “Your biology books. Very educational, they are.”


    With his brother under fire, Otto turned his attention to the situation. “I’m surprised you had any time to read Barti’s biology books, Paffuto,” he said, matching tone for tone. “I don’t know if I ever saw you crack one of your own. If you did, your marks certainly never reflected it.”


    “My goodness,” Paffuto said, feigning distress. He placed a hand over his heart, fingers splayed. “We are snippy tonight, aren’t we? What’s gotten into you, lads?” He looked from face to face, his own a comical parody of concern. “Going all tender-hearted over the vermin?”


    “Excuse me?” The words were out before I could stop them.


    “Half the students have their knickers in a twist over the thought of the Winged One getting driven off next time. Soft-hearted sots, going all misty-eyed over a little birdshot.” Paffuto snagged Barti’s roll next. Barti didn’t see it; he was looking at me, face wan with warning. My chest was too tight to speak.


    “As if any animal,” Paffuto went on obliviously, mouth full of bread, “would even have the capacity to—”


    I stood up so suddenly I knocked my chair over. Several people ceased their conversion and looked over.


    “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said, voice low. My heartbeat thundered in my ears. “None.”


    Paffuto looked genuinely startled for a moment. But as he set the pilfered roll down, his expression twisted to one of condescension. “Leo,” he said, voice dripping with false heartiness, “don’t tell me you’re an Aliist? A right-thinking man like yourself?”


    “He might not be,” Prince Uzoma cut in, cheerful as always, “but I am.” He stood, grinning broadly. “What do you say to that, Paffuto?”


    Paffuto stood as well, very slowly, and looked down his nose at the Prince. “I don’t believe I was talking to you, n—”


    Prince Uzoma moved so fast, I barely saw him. There was a blur of motion over the top of the table, and suddenly Paffuto was flat on the floor, howling, blood streaming from his nose. There were exclamations all around, and a scraping of chair legs as other students surged to their feet and crowded around.


    Prince Uzoma ambled around the table, still smiling, and bent over Paffuto’s writhing form. He cupped a hand to his ear. “What was that?” he asked pleasantly. “Were you about to say something?”


    Paffuto brayed incoherently on the floor.


    “It sounded to me,” the Prince continued, straightening up again, “that you were about to apologize. Isn’t that right, Otto?”


    Otto and Barti were the only two students still seated. Otto took a languid sip of wine. “Now that you mention it,” he said, “it did.”Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.


    “Well then.” Prince Uzoma gestured expansively. “We’re all waiting, Paffuto.”


    Paffuto finally scrambled to his feet, his face and necktie a bloody mess. I couldn’t tell what he spluttered in response, but it very clearly wasn’t an apology.


    “Oh dear,” Otto said mildly.


    Thirty seconds later, the entire dining hall was in an uproar, Paffuto was fully unconscious on the ground, and Prince Uzoma was standing over him, both fists clenched. “Anybody else?” he called, grinning maniacally. “Any other bigot here care to grace us with his opinion?”


    A few isolated imprecations were audible above the hubbub, which then immediately devolved into a flurry of side-scuffles. Chairs overturned. Plates crashed to the floor.


    And I just stood there in shock, taking deep gulping breaths, feeling as though something should be happening—as though my back should be burning, as though I should be sprouting feathers of defiance on the spot—but nothing did. I just stood and breathed.


    ??


    Paffuto’s nose was broken, and his parents were very upset. They were also outranked. They wanted Prince Uzoma expelled, but he was simply made to write an apology letter and pay a fine. The Prince wrote his letter during the three days of his in-suite suspension, in excellent humor, with a bottle of wine and fresh tin of cashews by his elbow. He would shout out occasionally, asking for synonyms for “egregious” and “unwarranted” and “asshole.” We obliged, most unhelpfully, with the various adjectives we felt most aptly described Paffuto.


    On the final evening of his suspension, I finally had a chance to thank him. He was sitting in front of the fire, reading a book, while Otto and Barti were in town entertaining a visiting cousin. I perched awkwardly in the chair opposite him and took a deep breath. I wasn’t sure how to do this.


    Without looking up from his book, he spoke first: “You’re welcome.”


    “I—how did you know what I was going to say?”


    “It was on your face.” Uzoma set his book down on his knee and peeled off his spectacles. “So: you’re welcome. And thank you, for providing me with a righteous excuse to fight.” He smiled, gently this time. “But there is something I want in return.”


    I tensed uneasily, but all I said was, “Of course.”


    Uzoma polished his spectacles on the sleeve of his shirt, looking surprisingly like my father. “I would like to know,” he said, voice no more than a murmur, “whether it is you that is part Winged One, or someone you love.”


    I went absolutely rigid. “I don’t—”


    The Prince put his spectacles back on. “I have known you but a short while, Leo,” he said kindly, “but I have never seen you respond to anything like that. If I hadn’t hit him, I think you might have. And I’ll wager you never hit anyone in anger before. Am I wrong?”


    “I—perhaps.”


    “So?” He looked up at me mildly. “Which is it? You, or a loved one?”


    My heart was in my throat. “Queen’s University doesn’t admit—”


    Prince Uzoma laughed. “They do, though. Everybody knows it. Everybody’s willing to look away, especially when money is involved.” His smile widened into a grin. “Or a Prince.”


    I gaped. “Are you—?”


    Uzoma’s grin was feral now. “My great-great-great-great-grandfather was Bes. I’m one sixty-fourth. To look at me though, you’d think it was more.” Uzoma flexed proudly. “Are these not the muscles of a lion? And I have the stature to match! No tail, alas. Nor mane. Too bad; I’m sure I would look magnificent with a mane. I hear my great-great-great-grandfather’s was spectacular.” He stopped flexing and sobered. “One sixty-fourth is supposed to be prohibitive for Queen’s, but fund a new administrative office, and suddenly, you’re just adding a touch of cultural je ne sais quoi to the student body, not tarnishing it.” Uzoma shrugged. “I didn’t lie on my admission forms. Did you?”


    “I didn’t read mine very carefully,” I mumbled, then clamped my mouth shut.


    Uzoma grinned, delighted. “It is you! I thought so! What are you, one thirty-second? One sixteenth, like dear Francesca?”


    I looked away. “Does Otto know? About you?”


    “Of course,” Uzoma replied instantly. “I hope everybody knows. I make no secret of it, and I am a vocal Aliist to boot. I shall be most put out if Paffuto doesn’t know by now himself. But you didn’t answer the question.”


    He could just look it up. There was no sense in hiding it. It was right there in the peerage, screamingly obvious in omission. I looked down at my clasped hands and whispered, “One quarter.”


    “Eh?”


    “One quarter!” My knuckles were white.


    “One quarter?” Even Uzoma, it seemed, had not been expecting that. He took his spectacles off again and scratched his head. He did not speak for a while, and he did not smile. “You must have to be very careful in the bath,” he said at last.


    “Not if everybody already knows,” I replied miserably. I put my face in my hands. “At this rate I’m going to be expelled in a month.”


    “Does Barti know?”


    “Yes.”


    “Good man,” Uzoma said heartily. He put his spectacles back on. “I knew I liked him.”


    “You’re not worried about being expelled?” I asked.


    Uzoma shrugged. “After they went through all the trouble of admitting me in the first place, knowing what they know? Not really. And so what if they do? Their loss.” He leaned over to peer at me. “You really are worried though, aren’t you?”


    “Yes!”


    “Why?”


    I took my hands away from my face. “Because they don’t get to take this from me.”


    “Hm.” Uzoma sat back again. “Very well. We’ll see to it that they don’t.”


    “How?” I asked bleakly.


    “Easy.” Uzoma’s leonine smile had returned. “I’ll be sure to finish any fights you start. I have, quite literally, got your back.”