Prologue
When I left Thorncove looking for adventure, I knew one day I might find myself aboard a sinking ship in monster-filled seas.
I just didn’t expect it to bethisship.
“Nothing in there’s worth risking your life for,” I shouted after the short-haired elf woman storming down the corridor, salt water sloshing to the hem of her long dress,insistenton fetching some gilded knickknack.
“I do not require assistance, sir.” She stood easily a hand taller than I and strode with a fierce determination that said that the ship could have been on fire, sinking, and had kraken tentacles writhing through every porthole, and she’d tell the kraken to leave a message.
I glanced at the lower corner of the watertight hatch, where gurgling water crept toward the state-of-the-art clockwork trigger for the hatch. Empire clippers weren’t supposed to sink exactlybecauseof technology like this.
It would be idiotic to follow her into thesinkingsection of the ship.
I clenched my eyes shut.
I jammed the screwdriver of my pocket knife into the mechanism and stepped through. “Wait up, princess!”
Chapter One
Anyone who tells you shipwrecks are romantic is an idiot.
I flexed the toe of my boot to dislodge crusted salt,finallystanding at the Raloren Academy’s main hall.
Getting that snooty elven princess off the ship had been... interesting. ThenIwas delayed in port answering a bunch of questions while elven VIPs proceeded on their way. Probably went shopping for the latest local fashions. But I was done. Done with shipwrecks, done with mysterious dead bodies,especiallydone with elven princesses... didn’t someone call her baroness? It didn't matter! Done. And ready to start my new life at the academy.
I’d memorized the plan from the pamphlet, thinking that reality couldn’t be as grand.
It was.
In the century and a half since it opened, there were a million people like me. Slack-jawed provincials from small towns so terribly impressed by a campus spanning a city block. Sleek, unified architecture,harmonious in three dimensions with integrated terraces, fountains, buildings towering as high as ten stories. The damn thing was probably built to inspire awe and dedicated study. Yet like magic, just because you knew how it worked didn’t make it any less impressive. And magic was why I was here.
I lurched out of my stupor as the clock tower struck two. The orientation address!
Idiot! The courtyard was empty because everyone was in the main hall. Lugging two battered suitcases and a satchel of tools, instruments, and minerals, sprinting wasn’t exactly an option, so I settled for an energetic lumber.
Several sets of glass doors framed in decorative bronze faced the courtyard, flanked by floor-to-ceiling windows inset with stained glass…thatwas the luminous mosaic depicting the scene of Lord Raloren’s famous shipwreck. Got to take a closer look at that later. I set down my bags to push a bronze handle the shape of a seashell.
It didn’t budge.
I pulled.
Same result.
Oh, this is great, orientation address, and I’m stymied by a… or was this a test? Some kind of magic locking mechanism? I knelt to inspect the doors more carefully. A decorative circular cover neatly hidden within engravings slid away to reveal a lock. High quality, but there didn’tseemto be anything magicalabout it. I’d studiedso hardto pass all the…
A tiny placard inside the next door over caught my eye.
Lobby renovations.
Please use entrance on South Linden Street.
I clapped a palm to my face.
A quarter of an hour later, now out of breath and perspiring in a very un-gentlemanly fashion, I pushed through a set of side doors finer than the main entrance of any building in my hometown. I followed the lobby into an elliptical main hall where several hundred students formed a crescent around a speaker I couldn’t see.Uniforms.I winced. Students were all in uniform. It wasn’tsupposedto be required until classes started. I went from lumber to tiptoe, fighting with my every breath as I sought an inconspicuous place in the back row. Would the speaker admonish my tardiness or the crowd turn to glare at me?
“...and I urge you all to dedicate yourself not only to your studies, but to uphold the ideals of this academy. The illustrious Lord Raloren strove to create an egalitarian academy where students of all species and backgrounds could achieve their potential…”
No. They would not. First good news of the day. The term hadn’t even started and I’d already mastered the invisibility spell.
