"Oh, we know better than to get in trouble around the barn. He's taken to beating us all with a cane now," she said. "Sometimes just for the fun of it." Which was completely untrue, and she trusted that Relic knew that if he knew Jacob from before. The man hadn't changed much, according to people who'd been around to know him longer than her.
Clara nodded. She had only the most basic idea of how magic worked, and most of what she knew was through Griffin anyway. She guessed the principle was the same regardless of the element, so they probably could do something like what Relic was saying. "I know he sent out a lot of birds, and messengers," Clara admitted. "The King I mean, to recruit people. He didn't expect half of them to respond, according to the gossip mill. Be funny if they all did and we wound up with a school full of teachers and not so many students."
She frowned. "Not like ha-ha funny, but the other kind." Then again, the gossip mill was half made up anyway, and not everything had been heard from a reliable source. Some of it had even been sixth-or-seventh hand, so there was that to consider, too. Messages warped that far down the line.