Chief Keller's office was a cramped stone room on the ground floor of the gatehouse, with a scarred wooden desk, a wall of security monitors flickering in black and white, and a single small window looking out at the iron gates where Alexander had stood bleeding on his first night.Keller sat him in a hard chair in front of the desk and laid the emerald necklace on the blotter between them, coiled in a gleaming green heap. Then he sat down heavily on the other side, folded his thick arms, and looked at Alexander for a long time without saying anything."I've worked at this school for twenty-two years," he said finally. "I've caught Gold kids selling cocaine out of the chapel. I've caught Silver kids blackmailing professors with photographs. I caught a Bronze girl once who'd stolen six Rolex watches from the boys in the East Tower and was selling them to a fence in Milan." He paused. "In twenty-two years, I've never caught an Iron kid stealing anything. Do you know why?""Because we do

Damien Ashcroft was not expelled.Conrad Ashcroft flew in from London the next morning in a private helicopter, landed it on the lawn in front of the East Tower without asking anyone's permission, and spent four hours behind closed doors with the board of governors. When he came out, his face was gray and his son had been suspended for two weeks instead of expelled. The police, after a long conversation with a very expensive Swiss lawyer, had decided that a necklace that was returned unharmed to its owner within a few hours did not amount to grand theft after all. Hugo Lisle was sent home to Edinburgh for the rest of the term."Two weeks," Theo said in disgust, reading the board's notice in the corridor outside the Great Hall. "He frames you for a four-million-euro robbery and gets a two-week holiday. If I'd done that, I'd be in a Swiss prison breaking rocks.""Money doesn't buy innocence," Alexander said. "It just buys time.""That's very wise. Did you get that from a fortune cookie?

For a long moment after she said his name, Alexander didn't move.He stood in the cold attic in his T-shirt and sweatpants with the little stone whale closed in his fist, and he looked at Lena Voight, and she looked back at him with her gold eyes glowing in the lamplight, and the radiator under the window gave a long, sad clank and went quiet again."I don't know what you're talking about," he said."Yes, you do." Lena sat down on the end of Theo's bed again and crossed her legs. "But I understand why you have to say that. It's what I'd say too." She tilted her head. "Would it help if I told you that I've known since the night you fought Kurt Brenner, and I haven't told a single living soul?""Why not?""Because the person I'm hunting would love to know it," she said simply. "And I don't give that person anything they want."Alexander turned the whale over in his fingers. Then he sat down on his own bed, facing her across the narrow room, and slid the whale into the pocket of his swea

The teams had to be registered with the student council by Friday at five, and by Wednesday, Aldermoor had turned into a marketplace.Gold students were offering Silver students money to join their teams. Silver students were offering Bronze students introductions to their fathers. Bronze students were trying to recruit the cleverest Silvers they could find and getting laughed at. The library was full of whispered negotiations, the Market Floor was full of recruitment pitches, and someone had set up a betting book in the East Tower on which team would finish first.Nobody approached the Iron table at all."It's simple maths," Theo explained gloomily at lunch on Wednesday, stabbing at his potatoes. "Gold kids want Gold kids, because they've got the biggest trading accounts for the Market Trial. Silver kids want Gold kids, because that's how you rise. And nobody wants Iron kids, because we start with a thousand euros and our parents can't make phone calls." He sighed. "We're the kids pi

Knowing the answer was one thing. Using it was something else entirely."We can't just tell my father," Theo said, pacing up and down between the library shelves at one in the morning while the others watched him. "If he goes to Ashcroft and says, 'By the way, my network's worth a hundred and eighty million,' Conrad will just keep the debt, call it in, and take the whole company himself. And if my father tries to sell the spectrum to pay off the loan, Conrad will tie it up in court for years. We've got twenty-six days.""So we take the debt away from Conrad," Alexander said."How? He owns it.""He owns it today. But Ashcroft Maritime's biggest subsidiary is under a fraud investigation in Greece, its bonds are worth a third less than they were in September, and its banks are getting nervous." Alexander leaned back in his chair. "Companies like that need cash. They sell whatever they can. And Conrad thinks the Lang debt is junk, a loan against a corpse that he's only holding to hurt you