Ruby
an excerpt

Chapter two – circus school

My wakeup call was at seven; Opal apologised in what seemed like the politest way she knew, but the people in charge didn’t want me to miss the induction, especially given that I’d already missed the first communal dinner the previous night. I could have complained, but I decided against it and settled for pleading an extra fifteen minutes to wake myself up with a cold shower. I dressed in comfortable clothes, combed my hair back practically and neatly, decided against wearing makeup and was on my way through the labyrinth of rooms, halls and passages by twenty past seven. I tried this time to keep an eye on where we were going, but, even though the rooms were all shapes, sizes and decorations, it wasn’t that long before I was completely lost again. I mentioned it to Opal, who brushed off my concerns.
“We have signs from the dorm rooms to all the important places,” she said. “Once you’re out of the priests’ hide you won’t have to worry.” We took a few more twists and turns through the labyrinth of rooms. I started to get a sense of getting to the operational heart of the castle: while most of the previous rooms seemed unchanged from whatever had been the previous function of the castle, those we started to pass began to look redecorated, some with executive office equipment, others lined with mirrors, and still others full of strange contraptions I assumed were part of the circus. We passed through a high-ceilinged room full of gymnastics equipment, in which a tall, sandy-haired young woman was performing lazy backflips on a trampoline; she smiled at Opal and me and gave us an upside-down wave as we passed. “Showoff,” Opal muttered, as she steered me through the far door, but I thought I heard a note of affection in her tone. I peered backwards through the slowly closing door as we went on, watching the young woman effortlessly soaring into flips and turns on the trampoline, but before I could ask who she was, I slammed solidly into an enormous double set of heavy oak doors with wrought-iron bars; I caught my forehead on one of the bolts and yelped in pain, seeing stars momentarily.
“Watch where you’re going,” Opal snapped not entirely unkindly, grabbing my collar and pulling me back. She regarded my forehead. “That’s gonna hurt this afternoon,” she said bluntly, rubbing the spot and making me wince.
“It already hurts,” I pointed out, but she just snorted with amusement and grabbed a lever at the side of the door, cranking it down with an audible screech of machinery. The bars and bolts on the doors started to slide free, seemingly of their own accord, and the enormous doors themselves started to grind slowly open. The bruise on my head was still hurting, and the pain impaired my vision slightly, so as I squinted through the growing space between the doors, it took me a moment to assimilate what I was seeing. A brilliant shaft of light spilled through a high window on the far wall, making it still harder to take in the scene before me, and making it still more surprising when I finally did.
I was staring at an enormous banquet hall. It must have been the size of two football pitches, if not bigger, and it was full of tables, and every table was full. I’d never seen so many people in one place before. As I gaped, Opal took me by the arm and forcibly steered me into the banquet hall, weaving between the tables as she went and muttering gruff apologies as she knocked into people halfway through their breakfasts and sent racks of toast flying. “New blood?” someone – a man – called out as we passed.
“The newest and freshest!” Opal answered, with a rough note of glee in her voice. I gulped, catching my hip on the edge of a table as we passed and gasping sharply in pain. “Watch yourself, girl,” Opal hissed, catching me. “You’re gonna have fun on the trapeze if you can’t manage a level floor.”
I must have blushed: I felt my face heat up with embarrassment and I shrugged out of Opal’s grip, making my own way to the far door. I could tell very few people were paying any attention to me, though there was a long-haired Korean man near the door whose stare could have burned holes through me. I waited at the door for Opal, who had fallen a couple of steps behind me. She caught up and grabbed a lever very like the one at the other door, then stopped and looked at me with a wolfish grin.
“In case you hadn’t guessed,” she said, “this is the circus.”
She cranked the lever, and the doors swung inwards, bolts grinding as they slid open. I stepped back to avoid being hit by the huge oak panels. As the gap between the doors widened I saw a smaller banquet hall, still lined with tables but with far fewer people, maybe a hundred of them all gathered round the central, long table spread with breakfast food. Every head turned to look at me as the door opened.
“And this,” Opal continued, “is the school.”