Last day before Tomorrow

Clerk Vane returned to the freezing corridor alone, offering a brisk gesture to follow.

"The paperwork is in order," he said, turning sharply down a narrow, limestone-vaulted passageway. "I will show you to your quarters."

The North Wing was a cold, echoing throat of stone. Every footstep seemed to announce our arrival to an audience that didn't care to listen. Oil lamps, spaced too far apart, cast islands of weak amber light that did little more than emphasize the depth of the shadows between them.

Rounding the first hard corner, I miscalculated the sharp turn and collided directly with someone stepping out of the gloom.

A heavy leather-bound book hit the floor with a hollow smack.

I stepped back instantly, kneeling to retrieve the fallen text. When I looked up to offer an apology, the words died in my throat.

She was a study in sharp angles and severe elegance—a blade of gold wrapped in black silk. Her hair—a torrential cascade of platinum gold—was framed by perfectly symmetrical, spiraling sidelocks. She wore a high-gloss, double-breasted military jacket with brass buttons polished to a blinding shine.

Her glacier-blue eyes looked down at me, blazing with cold, aristocratic anger. She didn't see a person; she saw an obstacle that had dared to inconvenience her.

"Watch where you are walking," she snapped, her voice carrying the absolute, unquestioned authority of high nobility.

Clerk Vane paused, a smooth, impossibly convenient smile spreading across his face.

"Ah, Lady Valcrest," the Clerk said smoothly, claiming a coincidence that felt entirely calculated. "I was just delivering the newest intake for the Support Pool. Given the recent... vacancies in your personal cohort, I've decided to assign him directly to you."

Catherine Valcrest stiffened, her eyes darting from the Clerk down to me with furious disbelief. "To me? Clerk Vane, I expressly requested a competent replacement, not some—"

"Show him around!" Vane interrupted brightly, already turning his back and walking away down the corridor. "Get him settled in!"

Catherine stood frozen in the amber light for a long moment, watching the Clerk vanish into the shadows. Then she turned her piercing gaze back to me.

She looked me up and down. The assessment was swift, brutal, and entirely vocal.

"A southern peasant," she said, her tone dripping with elegant disdain. She sneered at the frayed collar of my shirt. "You look poor and entirely unfinished. If you are to be my servant, I will not tolerate this pathetic slouching."

She didn't take the book I held out to her. Instead, she thrust the rest of her heavy burden—a stack of leather cases and thick, gilded texts—into my chest.

"Carry these," she ordered, her voice cold and absolute. "And stay exactly two paces behind me. Do not speak unless I address you."

I adjusted the heavy, leather-bound stack in my arms without a word. Every instinct from the road told me to walk away, but there was a strange, undeniable peace in simply following the command.

I fell two paces behind, carrying her heavy burdens as she led the way.

We didn't go straight to the dormitories. Catherine led me deeper into the North Wing, through a set of double iron-reinforced doors that opened into a cavernous, dark-timbered library. The air here was still and smelled of ancient dust and drying vellum. Thousands of volumes, their spines glinting with faded gilt, rose toward a vaulted ceiling lost in shadow.

She led me to a high, secluded desk near the back.

"Put them there," she pointed, not looking back.

I set the stack down with careful precision.

"Follow me," she commanded, not waiting for a response as she marched out of the library. The rhythmic bounce of her sidelocks was the only compass I had in the gloom.

I followed her back toward the entrance of the wing, descending toward the lower levels until the air grew damp and heavy with the smell of old stone. She stopped abruptly at the entrance to a drafty hallway lined with identical wooden doors.

"Your quarters are down that hall," she stated, finally turning just enough to look at me out of the corner of her eye. "Do not be late for the first bell, or I will have you scrubbing the courtyard stones until your hands bleed."

She walked away without waiting for a reply, the sharp click of her boots fading into the distance.

I adjusted the grip on my satchel and turned down the hall. The boys' dormitories were alive with the low hum of activity. A pair of students had commandeered a crate near a window recess for a quiet card game, sorting coppers in the dim light.

As I walked past the card game, one of the boys looked up, grinning over his hand.

"Looks like the Ice Princess took a liking to you," he teased.

"A liking?" My voice cracked, genuinely surprised.

The other guy laughed quietly, shaking his head. "Mate, usually she wouldn't lower herself to even look at the boys in this wing. For Catherine Valcrest to actually speak to you? You're basically her favorite toy already."

I shook my head, deciding the exhaustion of the day was catching up to everyone.

My assigned room was number thirty-seven. Third door on the left.

It was small and possessed a chill that had nothing to do with the summer evening outside. The window faced a blank stone wall. The furnishings were strictly functional: a narrow bed, a wooden chest, a writing desk, and a wardrobe. I unpacked in about four minutes.

"Thirty-seven?"

I turned. My neighbor's door was open. He was leaning against the frame with his arms crossed, watching the hallway with practiced, weary amusement.

"Just arrived," I noted. "Caleb, of Arundel," I added, extending my hand.

"Thought so. Marek." He shook my hand, then nodded toward the door across from mine. "Only you?"

A sudden, loud curse roared from the next room.

"This is insulting!" The unmistakable voice echoed through the corridor. "This room is an insult. My family's hunting dogs sleep better than this!"

"Unfortunately not," I replied, tilting my head toward the noise. "Damian, Viscount's son. House Volkov. For some reason, we signed the contracts practically together."

Marek whistled low, his eyebrows climbing toward his hairline. He scanned the corridor as if seeing it for the first time through expensive eyes. "A Volkov? In the North Wing? He must have really crossed someone to end up down here with the scholarship rats and second sons."

"He's... adjusting," I said dryly.

"He'd better do it fast," Marek said with a shrug. "If his pride makes the instructors run us until our legs fall off, it won't end well for him."

He retreated into his room, and Volkov's complaints eventually settled into a muffled, rhythmic grumble. I stood in the corridor for a moment longer than I needed to, remembering Janine Twardowsky's instructions.

Looking at the low light filtering through the high windows, I realized curfew was rapidly approaching.

***

The way to the administrative block was easy enough to find. A student near the stairwell pointed me toward the East Wing without looking up from his book. I passed a glass case containing ceremonial weapons and followed the scent of old ink and dry parchment.

Instructor Twardowsky's office was at the very end of the hall. The door was heavy oak. I knocked once and was told to enter.

Janine was seated behind a desk that was losing its battle against paperwork. She wore wire-rimmed reading glasses low on her nose, not looking up when I entered. She finished the line she was writing before setting her pen down with deliberate care.

"Sit," she said.

I sat.

She reached into the lower desk drawer and produced a small, worn notebook. She slid it toward me with two fingers.

"What is it?" I asked.

"It belonged to your aunt," Janine said, her voice devoid of ceremony. "She left it in my keeping a long time ago, with the understanding that it should eventually reach an Arundel."

I took it. The pages were a dense thicket of cramped handwriting and diagrams I couldn't orient. I closed it.

"It's full of nonsense, but nonetheless," Janine said.

She removed her glasses and set them on the ledger. She looked at me with the assessing stillness of someone who had already formed most of an opinion and is verifying the remainder.

"Do you know what you signed up for?" she asked.

"No," I admitted.

"No," she repeated. "Of course not."

She leaned back in her chair, her eyes moving to the middle distance. Not the wall, not me-somewhere that exists behind me. The look of a person running a calculation they have run many times before and do not particularly enjoy. The silence stretched until I began to wonder if I had been dismissed without words.

"Tell me, Arundel," she said finally, her gaze snapping back to mine. "Are you good at following orders?"

I didn't answer immediately. I considered the weight of the ink on the contract I’d signed. "I've always known how to stay within the lines, ma'am," I said. "I know my place."

A beat. She looked at me a fraction longer than the answer seemed to warrant. "Is that a feature, or a complaint?" she asked.

"I haven't decided yet," I replied.

Something in her expression shifted. It was not a smile. It was more precise than that-a notation made. She picked up her pen again. The audiences were over.

"For now, I'll give you only one piece of advice," she said, looking back down at her ledger. "Be a good boy, and you have a chance here."

"That is all," she added, her voice dismissing me before I could even stand.

The East Wing hallway was quieter on the way back, the lamps already turned low. My room was exactly as I had left it. Through the wall, the low murmur of conversation in the hall faded and eventually stopped. Doors clicked shut. The North Wing settled.

The crazy day was finally over. Tomorrow, the actual programme begins. I sat on the edge of the narrow bed and looked at the notebook, wondering exactly what kind of nonsense my family had been involved in.