Page 64 of A Fae in Finance
At some point, I’d need to tell him I was left-handed so he could bodyguard on my right side instead.
Sahir and I turned at the front of the room.
“Hi, everyone,” I said. “How are you all doing?”
After a moment of confused glances, a new student spoke up.
“Do you mean,whatare we doing?” she asked. “We are attending your class.”
“Um, no,” I said. “And please raise your hand before asking a question here. As for your question…” I glanced at Kellen. “Kellen, what do I mean when I ask how someone is doing?”
“It’s a greeting!” Kellen exclaimed. Kellen was a fantastic student. “Humans use it as part of a formulaic exchange whenever they meet.”
He turned to Caraya, who joined him with increasingly feigned reluctance every class. “Caraya, how are you doing?” he asked, tilting his head.
“Thank you for asking, Kellen,” she replied, affecting a British accent. “I am well. And how are you, Kellen?”
The British accent was my only guilty pleasure.
“It is well that you are well,” Kellen concluded. Since they were mimicking me mimicking a posh London accent, he sounded like he had a mouth full of cotton. “I, too, am well.”
Kellen stopped and looked out at his bewildered audience. “After this exchange, you may discuss whatever you please,” he said in his normal voice. “However, humans will not be receptive to your communications if you do not begin in this way.”
Someone else raised a hand—a very tall woman wearing a dress made out of cobwebs: gossamer-thin and so gray it seemed to suck the light from her corner of the room.
“Please say your name when I point to you, and then ask your question,” I said, pointing to her.
“My name is Triathe,” she said. “What does this exchange mean, though?”
“Nothing!” Caraya said, exasperated. “Nothing the humans say means anything.”
“Well, no, it’s kind of like… an opportunity to let them tell you if something is wrong, before you start asking them questions.”
“But you said we have to say we are well,” Kellen interjected. “And if we cannot say that, we must say good, and if we cannot say good, because it is a lie, we must smile and nod noncommittally.”
“The humans do not want to know if you are not well,” Sahir added.
Several faeries nodded, as though that were expected.
“We do!” I said, feeling defensive. “Just not right away. We like to ease into it.”
This declaration set off a fierce storm of muttering.
“Why are all of you here today?” I asked. “It’s more crowded than usual.”
Caraya raised her hand and then spoke without waiting for me to call on her.
It had been such a battle to explain hand raising that I wasn’t inclined to belabor the point further.
“They want to know why you stopped the Gray Knight from killing Karame,” she said. A few feet away from her, the Gray Knight looked smug. She was probably just pleased that her performance this morning had made my life so much more difficult.
Seated next to her, the Princeling also looked smug, though he was doing a much better job maintaining a solemn expression.
Explaining humans to the satisfaction of seven querents had been painful enough. Another eighty were unlikely to simplify my task. I needed to talk to the Princeling; it had been a month. If he expected my class size to keep growing, he had to show me some sort of proof that he could help me find a way out of Faerie. As it was, the four hours I spent a week on this were already eating into my sleep. And, because he’d been unable to find any errors in my recent decks, Jeff had sent me several increasingly rude emails about my inability to create compelling PowerPoint footers.
I glanced at Sahir, who shrugged. He stood with his hands clasped in front of him, face expressionless. He still wore his suit from the workday.
“I… didn’t want someone to die because of me?” I said, but it was a question and not a statement.
