The classes in which the elites were separated from the dregs were the worst. James had nobody to sit with then.
Or perhaps the first class of every day was the worst, because James always stayed up late into the night reading to forget his troubles, and was late every day. No matter what time he rose, Matthew was always gone. James assumed Matthew did this to mock him, since he could not imagine Matthew doing anything useful early in the morning.
Or perhaps the training courses were the worst, because Matthew was at his most annoying during the training courses.
“I must regretfully decline to participate,” he told their teacher once. “Consider me on strike like the coal miners. Except far more stylish.”
The next day, he said: “I abstain on the grounds that beauty is sacred, and there is nothing beautiful about these exercises.”
The day after that, he merely said: “I object on aesthetic principles.”
He kept saying ridiculous things, until a couple of weeks in, when he said: “I won’t do it, because Shadowhunters are idiots and I do not want to be at this idiot school. Why does an accident of birth mean you have to either get ripped away from your family, or you have to spend a short, horrible life brawling with demons?”
“Do you want to be expelled, Mr. Fairchild?” thundered one teacher.
“Do what you feel you must,” said Matthew, folding his hands and smiling like a cherub.
Matthew did not get expelled. Nobody seemed quite sure what to do with him. His teachers began calling in sick out of despair.
He did only half the work and insulted everyone in the Academy on a daily basis, and he remained absurdly popular. Thomas and Christopher could not be pried away from him. He wandered the halls surrounded by adoring throngs who wanted to hear another amusing anecdote. His and James’s room was always completely crowded.
James spent a good deal of time in the stairwells. He spent even more time being called Goatface Herondale.
“You know,” Thomas said shyly once, when James had not managed to escape his own room fast enough, “you could pal around with us a little more.”
“I could?” James asked, and tried not to sound too hopeful. “I’d . . . like to see more of you and Christopher.”
“And Matthew,” Thomas said.
James shook his head silently.
“Matthew’s one of my best friends,” Thomas said, almost pleadingly. “If you spent some time with him, I am sure you would come to like him.”
James looked over at Matthew, who was sitting on his bed telling a story to eight people who were sitting on the floor and gazing up at him worshipfully. He met Matthew’s eyes, trained in his and Thomas’s direction, and looked away.
“I feel I have to decline any more of Matthew’s company.”
“It makes you stand out, you know,” Thomas said. “Spending your time with the mundanes. I think it’s why the—the nickname for you has stuck. People are afraid of anybody who is different: It makes them worry everyone else is different too, and just pretending to be all the same.”
James stared at him. “Are you saying I should avoid the mundanes? Because they are not as good as we are?”
“No, that’s not—” Thomas began, but James was too angry to let him finish.
“The mundanes can be heroes too,” James said. “You should know that better than I. Your mother was a mundane! My father told me about all she did before she Ascended. Everyone here knows people who were mundanes. Why should we isolate people who are brave enough to try to become like us—who want to help people? Why should we treat them as if they’re less than us, until they prove their worthiness or die? I won’t do it.”
Aunt Sophie was just as good as any Shadowhunter, and she had been brave long before she Ascended. Aunt Sophie was Thomas’s mother. They should know this better than James did.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” said Thomas. “I didn’t think of it that way.”
It was as if people didn’t think at all, living in Idris.
“Maybe your fathers don’t tell you stories like mine does,” James said.
“Maybe not everyone listens to stories like you do,” Matthew said from across the room. “Not everyone learns.”
James glanced at him. It was an unexpectedly nice thing for Matthew, of all people, to say.
“I know a story,” Matthew went on. “Who wants to hear it?”
“Me!” said the chorus from the floor.
“Me!”
“Me!”
“Not me,” said James, and left the room.
It was another reminder that Matthew had what James would have given anything for, that Matthew had friends and belonged here at the Academy, and Matthew did not care at all.
Eventually there were so many teachers calling in with an acute overdose of Matthew Fairchild that Ragnor Fell was left to supervise the training courses. James wondered why he was the only one who could see this was absurd, and Matthew was ruining classes for everyone. Ragnor could do magic, and was not at all interested in war.
Ragnor let Esme braid ribbons in her horse’s mane so it would look like a noble steed. He agreed to let Christopher build a battering ram to knock down trees, because it would be good practice in case they ever had to lay siege to a castle. He watched Mike Smith hit himself over the head with his own longbow.
“Concussions are nothing to be worried about,” said Ragnor placidly. “Unless there is severe bleeding of the brain, in which case he may die. Mr. Fairchild, why are you not participating?”
“I think that violence is repulsive,” Matthew said firmly. “I am here against my will and I refuse to participate.”
“Would you like me to magically strip you and put you in gear?” Mr. Fell asked. “In front of everybody?”
“That would be a thrill for everybody, I’m sure,” said Matthew. Ragnor Fell wiggled his fingers, and green sparks spat from his fingertips. James was pleased to see Matthew actually take a step back. “Might be too thrilling for a Wednesday,” Matthew said. “I’ll go put on my gear then, shall I?”
“Do,” said Ragnor.
He had set up a deck chair and was reading a book. James envied him very much.
He also admired his teacher very much. Here was someone who could control Matthew, at last. After all Matthew’s lofty talk about abstaining for the sake of art and beauty, James was looking forward to seeing Matthew make an absolute fool of himself on the practice grounds.
“Anyone volunteer to catch Matthew up on what you have all been learning?” Ragnor asked. “As I have not the faintest idea what that might be.”
Just then Christopher’s team of students actually hit a tree with their battering ram. The crash and the chaos meant there was not the rush of volunteers to spend time with Matthew that there would otherwise have been.
“I’d be happy to teach Matthew a lesson,” said James.