By Tuesday afternoon, every student at Aldermoor had an opinion about the bet, and almost every opinion was the same."Eighty to one," Theo reported gloomily, collapsing onto the bench beside Alexander in the library. "That's the line in the East Tower. Some Silver kid is running a book. Eighty to one against you, and nobody's taking it.""Did you?""I put twenty euros on you." Theo shrugged. "Out of loyalty and stupidity. Mostly stupidity."Alexander didn't look up from the stack of papers in front of him. He had been in the library since six that morning, at a long oak table in the back corner where nobody ever sat, surrounded by printouts. Annual reports. Regulatory filings. Shipping manifests. Port authority records from Rotterdam and Singapore and Piraeus. He'd been reading them all day, page by page, with a pencil behind his ear and a cold cup of coffee by his elbow."What is all this?" Theo picked up a page and frowned at it. "Bulk carrier insurance claims? Reed, Damien's up el

The Iron wing threw a party that night, and for a few hours, Alexander let himself enjoy it.It wasn't much of a party by Aldermoor standards. Someone had smuggled in two crates of cheap beer from the village, and someone else had a speaker that buzzed on the bass notes, and thirty Iron students crammed themselves into the common room on the fourth floor, sitting on the radiators and the windowsills and each other's laps. But they were loud and happy in a way Alexander suspected the attic hadn't been in years, and every few minutes someone new came over to shake his hand or slap his back or just stare at him in disbelief."Nineteen hundred percent," a skinny Bronze-turned-Iron girl named Mila kept repeating. "Nineteen hundred percent. Do you know how much money that is?""About nineteen thousand euros," Alexander said."Half of which the school keeps," Theo added, waving a beer bottle. "Which leaves him nine and a half grand, which, in the Iron wing, makes him basically a Rothschild."

Theo spent two nights in the infirmary, and on the third morning, he limped back up the four flights of stairs to the attic with his nose in a splint and his left eye still swollen to a purple slit."I look like a raccoon that lost a bar fight," he announced, collapsing onto his new mattress. The school had replaced both of their beds and their wardrobes, and Chief Keller had personally installed a heavy new lock on the door. "Mila says it makes me look rugged. I think she's lying, but I've decided to believe her."Alexander smiled and tossed him a bag of the shortbread Zara had sent up from the kitchen. "How's the head?""Full of painkillers and regret." Theo tore open the bag and then stopped, staring at it. His face changed. The cheerful mask slipped, just for a moment, and what was behind it looked miserable."Reed," he said quietly. "I need to tell you something, and you're going to hate me."Alexander sat down on his own bed across from him and waited.Theo put the shortbread do

The punch missed by an inch, and Alexander felt the wind of it brush his cheek as he slipped to the left.Kurt stumbled half a step past him, caught himself, and spun around with a growl. The crowd roared. Up on the Gold cushions, someone shouted, "Kill him, Kurt!"Kurt threw a left hook. Alexander ducked it. Kurt threw a right uppercut, and Alexander leaned back from the waist and let it sail past his chin. Kurt threw a heavy combination, left, right, left, the punches coming so fast and hard that the air seemed to thump with each one, and Alexander moved around the edge of the circle like water around a rock, slipping and stepping and sliding, never more than an inch away, never quite there.For the first minute, the crowd cheered every swing. By the second minute, the cheering had become uncertain. By the third minute, the chamber had fallen almost quiet, except for Kurt's breathing, which had begun to come in harsh, heavy grunts."Stand still, you little shit!" Kurt roared, and lu

The young man with the whale pin led him up a staircase Alexander hadn't known existed.It began behind a tapestry at the end of the main corridor of the East Tower, a narrow spiral of white stone that wound upward for what felt like a hundred steps, and at the top of it was a small round landing and a single door of black oak with no handle. The young man knocked twice. The door opened from the inside, and he stood aside without a word.The headmistress's private study was nothing like the rest of Aldermoor. There were no portraits or tapestries or suits of armor. It was a bright, circular room near the top of the tower, with white walls and pale wooden floors and tall windows all the way around, and through them, the Alps rose in every direction, close enough to touch. A fire burned in a modern steel hearth. There were books everywhere, stacked on the floor and on the windowsills and on every chair except one.Dame Evelyn Sterling stood at the window with her back to him.She was ol