"Mmhmm. Urtho pays for it."

"Oh. Huh. Is he just so rich he doesn't even care?" 

"He might be. He gives off that impression. He's also building a sizable base of loyalists, right, all his former students who are in his debt - informally, but quite powerfully - who he can ask to run errands and Gate anywhere in the world and tell him first about all their magical discoveries and presumably do concert casting and so on with him. Feeding a bunch of children is a cheap price for a bunch of devoted well-trained adult mages. Or in our case, for lessons in Golarion magic."

"That makes sense." Ma'ar looks thoughtful. "It'd be - nice. To be so powerful and rich that you don't need to be scary, you can just be - good to work for." 

"Yes. People will sometimes do better work that way, if they feel allied with you not scared of you."

"Mmm." 

After he's done eating, Ma'ar gets out his penmanship homework and spreads the paper on the table, staring at it in fierce concentration as he traces letter shapes. He's been supplied with a cleverly-designed pen that doesn't need a separate inkwell. 

Huh. Neat. She goes back to work on his headband. She's going to have just enough material for the least nice kind but she's somewhat optimistic about talking Urtho into letting her mine some.

The days fall into a routine. 

Ma'ar goes to magic lessons in the morning and remedial everything-else-lessons in the afternoons, though he's making very rapid progress in the latter and Lady Cinnabar thinks he'll be ready for placement into the standard classes for the winter semester. He learns to read and write, and do basic arithmetic with pen and paper; after that lesson he comes home bubbling with delight about the concept of numbers, and how suddenly things like money are a thousand times less mysterious! (The clanspeople literally do not have words for numbers above three; they know all of their cows and children and tents individually, by name.) He picks it up with astounding speed given the lack of exposure and spends the next week wanting to do math on everything, counting windowpanes and tiles and spoons in the cupboard; he's even more delighted by the later introduction of multiplication and division.

He gets his proper fitted robes, which don't need to be held up to avoid tripping when he climbs stairs. The hertasi had them made with generous room to grow, which is good because he's definitely putting on weight and seems likely to go right into a growth spurt now that he reliably has enough to eat.

His magic lessons spend three weeks just on shields, which Ma'ar finds frustrating, he's best with fire and lightning-bolts and he doesn't get to do those at all. Maybe it makes sense, though, since they're worried about the children hurting each other when they practice. Most of the students in the beginner class haven't done nearly as much solitary practice as Ma'ar has.  

Urtho is very busy, and also incapable of keeping track of a schedule, but his hertasi seem to know this and help patch this with fond exasperation, and he squeezes in meeting with Carissa a couple of times a week and interrogating her about Golarion's magic. 

When she finishes the headband for Ma'ar, he agrees in a heartbeat to try to help her obtain more spell materials - obviously she should have everything she needs for her work here! It seems very important! 

Leareth does not show up to rescue her. 

Ma'ar gradually seems more at home here. He's slow to make friends with the other children, it never feels like he knows what to say to them and he's never learned most of the games they play together, but he's not an ongoing target for bullying. He tells Carissa that he just looks at them every time they try anything, and waits for them to get detention when a teacher notices, and then they usually don't try again. 

...

And then one day about a month after their arrival at the Tower, Ma'ar comes pelting back to their rooms midway through his lunch break, with a black eye and his nose bleeding. He bursts through the door and flings himself onto the sofa, curling up.

- she closes the door behind him and locks it with magic and - it is not worth a healing spell, she's saving those for when someone is literally dying -

"- what happened?"

"I'msorryI'msorry I was stupid it's my fault I'm sorry -" 

"How sorry you are seems really unlikely to be relevant to what we should do now! What happened?"

He takes a deep breath and lets it out and his expression goes very controlled. "I got in a fight and they said it was my fault and now I have detention and they're going to tell Urtho," he says, toneless. "And the teacher - didn't let me win - so I'm scared they're going to - wait for a time when there's not a teacher..." 

"Why'd you get into a fight?"

"I tried not to start it, I tried just talking, but - so there're some older boys who - like being bullies, I guess. They left me alone after the first week but there's this girl and they - think it's funny to make her cry. So they do things like tell her all the ways that she's ugly, or - talk about doing nasty sex things to her sister, I don't even know if she has a sister but it upsets her. Or they sneak up and make loud noises so she'll jump and then they laugh, but they usually don't get in trouble 'cause that's not fighting. And today they surprised her and made her drop her diary and they grabbed it. And were reading it out loud in funny voices and laughing and then tearing up the pages, and - there was a teacher over at the end of the dining hall but they weren't doing anything because they weren't breaking the rules by fighting or doing magic. And - and I was just so mad that they were going to k-keep hurting her because she's too scared of getting in trouble to fight back. So I tried just telling them to stop, but they laughed and said I couldn't do anything and even if I tattled they wouldn't get in trouble. Which was obviously true, and - just - I was so mad... I guess I did start it, I wasn't the first one to use magic but the teacher didn't care." 

Hug. "Oh, sweetheart. So - two problems, right? One is that you have detention. Do you know what detention is?"

"No. Everyone seems to think it's really horrible though." 

"Have you seen any kids the day after they got detention?"

He scrunches up his face. "I - think so? Or I don't know for sure, no one in my classes's gotten detention, but I heard someone in the dining hall talking about how they'd been up until midnight because of it the night before and were so tired and it wasn't fair the teacher was so mean. They - didn't look badly hurt, I guess." 

"I haven't seen anyone in the halls who is limping or not sitting at lunch or holding their robes clear of their back or missing any fingers. That's not to say they can't hurt you, but my best guess is that there's a policy against hurting you in a way that causes lasting injuries. Which means - hurt when there's no injury is just your body being confused, and giving you bad information because someone tricked it."

Ma'ar nods, pulling his knees in to his chest. 

"I will try to learn more about it. But it will probably be scary and awful, and you will be okay, and we can talk about what things you want to be learning and practicing from it and they'll be important things to learn and practice, because life's not going to never hurt. And the other problem you have is - you're worried about retaliation from the other boys?"