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CHAPTER 10: INTO THE HOLLOWWOOD
The Hollowwood did not look dangerous from the gate.It looked like a very old forest that someone had taken good care of. The path ran between oaks wide enough to hide a wagon, and the early light came down through the canopy in soft gold shafts. Birds were singing. Somewhere ahead, water ran over stone.“Pretty,” said Tobi, in the voice of a man who did not trust it.Eighty-eight students stood in a loose crowd before the iron gate, divided into teams of four. Every team had a beast. Wolves, hawks, a pair of armored badgers, something with six legs that kept licking its own eyes. Instructors in gray coats walked the line checking collars and handing out signal flares.“One flare per team,” Instructor Dane said, stopping in front of Team Nineteen. “Fire it and the run ends. Your instructors will retrieve you. You fail, but you live.” She looked at each of them in turn. “The Hollowwood is managed. The wards hold nearly everything above D-rank out. Nearly. I would like to see all four
CHAPTER 9: THE LEFTOVER TEAM
Team Nineteen was posted last, on a separate sheet, pinned a little crooked below the others.Adrian read it twice in the crowd outside the main hall. The laughter started somewhere behind him before he’d finished the second line.TEAM 19: CROSS, A. / MARSH, T. / VALEN, K. / HOLT, B.Supervising instructor: M. Dane“That’s the leftovers,” a boy said, not quietly. “That’s where they put the ones they can’t use.”“The F-rank, the appraiser who can’t fight, the girl whose guild folded, and the one who doesn’t talk.” Another voice, delighted. “Brilliant. Someone’s got a sense of humor.”Tobi, beside him, let out a long breath. “I’d like it noted that I’m not offended. I’m only extremely, extremely nervous.”Adrian said nothing. He was looking at the three names under his own.Valen. Holt. He knew them both by sight. Everyone did. Kira Valen had been the daughter of a minor guild house until it collapsed two years ago, and now she was at Halcyon on a scholarship with a sharp tongue and a k
CHAPTER 8: TWO WEEKS
“Again,” said Tobi.Adrian rolled onto his stomach, spat sand, and got his palms under him. The Training Grounds of Halcyon Academy were a ring of packed earth behind the east wing, walled in old brick and lit by the last orange of the afternoon. Access had come with the registration reward, and for eleven days he’d used every minute of it.Across the ring, a gloam rat the size of a terrier shook itself out of the net he’d dropped on it, snapped the cord with one jerk of its jaws, and came straight at him.“Nyx!”The bond pulled. Black smoke ran across the sand ahead of the rat’s feet, and Nyx stepped out of it two yards to the left, small and sharp-eared, and bit the rat’s flank. The rat shrieked, swung around, and Adrian hit it across the skull with a weighted training staff he’d bought secondhand for six marks.It folded. He stood over it, wheezing.[ DING! ]Gloam Rat defeated.Experience gained. System Level 4 → 5 progress: 88%“That’s the fourth one,” Tobi said from the wall, wh
CHAPTER 7: THE REGISTRY
Harlan told him almost nothing.“The Threshold is what the Wardens guarded,” he said, closing the black ledger with both hands, like a man shutting a coffin. “Your father believed something would come through it one day. I never asked what, and he never said. That’s the truth, boy. It’s the whole truth, and it isn’t enough.”“That’s not an answer.”“No. It’s a door.” Harlan slid the ash-iron collar across the desk. “You can walk through it later. Tomorrow you walk into the Registry, and you put this on your fox, and you say pup every time anyone asks.”Adrian had wanted to argue. He had held the ledger until his knuckles ached. But the old man’s eyes were so tired that he’d set the book down instead, and picked up the collar.It was lighter than it looked.The Registry Office occupied the east wing of Halcyon Academy, a long marble hall with high windows and a queue that wound twice around the room.Four days had passed. Four days of dull, careful routine: school in the morning, Daily
CHAPTER 6: THE NIGHT BOOK
Harlan didn’t say another word until Mina was asleep.He stayed on the landing with the mop bucket while Adrian got her water, checked her breathing, and tucked the blanket back under her chin. Nyx had refused to leave the bed. It lay across her ankles with its eyes half open, the way a guard dog lies when it has decided the job is its own.[ Companion essence: 18% ]Two points gone, just from hiding under that blanket. Stabilized didn’t mean safe. It only meant the bleeding had stopped.When Adrian finally came out and shut the door, the old man was sitting on the top stair with his bad hand wrapped around his knee.“Tonight,” Harlan said. “The Hall. After the cleaners leave. Bring the fox.”“Mina can’t be alone.”“Then bring the girl’s neighbor. Or the girl. I don’t care.” He rubbed his face. “Kessel’s going to read that book before sunrise. I need to write three years of it before he does.”The Awakening Hall at night was a different building.The crystal Pillar stood dark in the c
CHAPTER 5: THE ASSAY LENS
Adrian ran the last two blocks with the inhaler in one fist and the poster still burning behind his eyes.He’d torn it off the lamppost without thinking. Now it was crumpled in his coat pocket, and the sound of crisp cloth against his ribs seemed loud enough to carry. At the corner of Cutler Row he slowed, because someone had parked a black-and-crimson wagon outside the tailor’s shop.Two men stood on the pavement. A third was knocking on the door of the building next to his.They’re going door to door.Mina was upstairs with Nyx, and the building had one staircase.He didn’t run. Running would look like a reason. He walked past the wagon at a pace he hoped was bored, nodded at the nearest hunter, and slipped through the shop’s side entrance and up the stairs two at a time the moment he was out of sight.[ Warning: Hostile scan detected nearby. ]The System’s pane flickered to life in the corner of his vision, faint and blue, and under it the bond hummed with sharp, wary attention. Ny
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