Page 5 of Silvercloak

Auria, a bright-eyed bookworm, a rule follower, with lofty ambitions of becoming a Grand Arbiter someday. Uncommonly gifted with three mage classes—Enchanter, Brewer, and Healer—her work was precise, if not especially imaginative, and she had an encyclopedic knowledge ofModern Potions & Tinctures: Volume IV.

Nissa, the elemental powerhouse of a Wielder. She was smoking hot and smoked alot,but only so she could wield fire at any given moment, and certainly not because she was in any way addicted to achullah. Her dragonesque command of smoke and flame was revered by everyone in the Order—even Captain Aspar.

Sebran and Gaian, each of whom held a single classification—Brewer and Enchanter respectively—but made up for their moderate magic with unfaltering bravery in Sebran’s case and a sharp, almost frightening intellect in Gaian’s. The latter had the uncanny ability to spot lies; his interrogations always yielded confessions, even without truth elixir. And yet he still couldn’t beat Saff at cards.

“You’re the competition, pure and simple,” said Sebran, stoppering a dark purple tincture that smelled of aniseed. He was broad and brawny, with dark brown skin and a close-shaven head. He never spoke of his family, his home. Nobody quite knew where he had come from, other than the military academy. “I’ll get that Pons Aelii posting even if it kills me.”

“Not a chance,” Gaian said coolly, tying his long blond hair neatly out of his face. “It’s mine.”

Nissa ran her forked tongue over her bottom lip. “Or they could give it to theactualhalf-Eqoran.”

The graduate assignments had been posted on the noticeboard the previous week—and there had been only five vacancies listed for six cadets.

Three were run-of-the-mill detective postings here in Atherin.

One was a stationing at a border outpost in Carduban, guarding the ascenite-rich Mountains of Promise from the lustful eyes of the neighboring Eqora. (None of them wanted this posting, since the Eqorans hadn’t made any meaningful moves toward the mines in decades, thus the mission would largely involve mediating disputes between mountain goats.)

The last was an undercover field intelligence operation in Pons Aelii, the capital of Eqora itself. Nissa, Sebran, and Gaian had waged war over the posting for days.Going undercoverheld a certain level of prestige—if they performed well on such a high-stakes first assignment, they’d likely go on to great things in the Order of the Silvercloaks. (Plus, it just sounded sexy.)

But Saff wasn’t interested in Pons Aelii. If she wanted to destroy the Bloodmoons who’d stolen her childhood, she had to be in the city where their roots were laid—here in Atherin.

“Are you alright, Saff?” Auria asked. “You’re quiet. More so than usual.”

Saff peered through the wide double window. The pale-stoned Academy was perched on a hill just on the outskirts of Atherin, and the capital’s skyline blurred with heat, smudging together the purple sapphire domes of Augurest temples, the towering crimson-and-gold obelisks honoring the patron saints, the carved marble pantheons with sapphire spires, the gleaming emerald tiles and pale sunbaked walls of the slouching townhouses. A sultry, jewel-toned riot of a city, built upon pleasure and violence in equal measure.

Lunes, the quaint northern village she’d grown up in, had never felt farther away. Her heart panged at the memory of overgrown wildflowers and cobbled courtyards, shabby cloaks and warm faces, the scents of rosemary and honeywine.

“Fine,” she replied vaguely. “Just mentally preparing.”

As though she hadn’t spent two decades doing just that. As though she hadn’t spent two decades planning and calculating, scheming and rerouting, overcoming every obstacle thrown at her by nature or circumstance, biding her time with the bigwhyalways in the forefront of her mind.

“That’s what’s driving me mad.” Tiernan’s teeth worked at his bottom lip. “Wecan’tprepare when we have no idea what the assessment entails.”

“Like real life.” Sebran had a soldier’s gruffness; there was little emotion behind his hazel eyes. “You’re hardly going to get a detailed memorandum before every dangerous situation, are you?”

“As long as I get a job at the end of all this …” Tiernan fiddled nervously with the strings of his tunic. “My father will decapitate me if I come home without a posting. Even Carduban would be preferable.”

“I’ll let Aspar know you volunteer,” smirked Nissa, stubbing out her achullah on the stone windowsill.

Deep down, Saff shared Tiernan’s sentiments. Though she’d rather not be a glorified border control officer, she’d still take that over missing out on a posting altogether.

After everything she’d done to claw herself here, she couldn’t fail now.

Twelve years of mage school. Four years at the Northern University of Novarin, earning her Knight’s Scroll in Modern History. Five years of patrolling Atherin on the streetwatch, as all prospective Silvercloak candidates had to do, acting as first response to gory crime scenes, rounding up robbers and crooks and killers and hauling them off spitting and cursing to Duncarzus, accumulating injuries and trauma and hard-fought wisdom, knowing all the while that whatever innocence had survived her parents’ slaughter was being slowly eroded, maturing into the understanding that evil was everywhere, so commonplace it was banal, and now that she knew this, she could never unlearn it.

And then there was the simple fact that all this experience was built on a foundation of lies and illusions.

She only had to maintain the fallacy for one more day.

One more hour.

The six cadets stoodoutside the Grand Atrium, staring at the words levitating over the threshold.

Candidates only—assessment in progress.

Beneath the sign stood a pale, raven-haired professor who had drilled them endlessly in the art of combat, leaving their flesh bruised and their muscles sore. When they’d protested that they wouldn’t have to use physical strength with a wand at their fingertips, Professor Vertillon had retorted that unless their wands were surgically attached to their palms, they had to be prepared to lose them. A disarmament spell could be thrown at them at any moment, or in the heat of the skirmish, they might simply drop it out of sheer nerves and ineptitude.

Professor Vertillon gave Sebran a terse nod—the professor had trained him at the military college before accepting the teaching post at the Academy—then pressed his lips into a flat line to greet the others.

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