1
The man from the Council, Linden, hadn’t spoken since we’d left the city. His silence had made it quite clear that he’d rather be anywhere in the world than in the driver seat next to me.
Not like I’d chosen this arrangement.
Three days ago, a Council notice had found me at the shop, congratulating me on my recruitment. I’d never applied, so I assumed it was a mistake and tossed the letter in the trash.
Then Linden had arrived to prove notices could grow legs and ruin lives.
There was no debate. A girl like me couldn’t debate a Council man. He’d given me ten minutes to gather my things, and then off we went.
The road we’d turned onto an hour ago was gravel that ran between fields that grew nothing I could name. Flat land. Dark soil. No fences.
I’d never been on this road in my life. All I knew was that Zenith Hall sat at the end of it.
For a while, there was nothing to see except the plains and the road and the gray sky pressing down on both.
Then we crested a steep hill, and the academy appeared.
Black stone. Tall lintels. A building so out of place with the rural landscape around it that it looked as if something too old to care where it landed had dropped it there and moved on.
Linden didn’t slow as we approached. Up the hill, the motorcar climbing at the same speed it had been traveling since I got in the passenger seat.
The closer we got, the more uneasy the academy made me. Something about it was disturbing in a way I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
Maybe it was only the difference between that much stone and the paper thin walls of the tenements I was accustomed to.
Stone could keep more secrets.
We finally came through the gate at three in the afternoon and followed the topiary-lined drive to the front doors, where a woman waited on the steps.
She inclined her head at Linden. They didn’t speak and he didn’t get out of the motorcar after it came to a stop.
“Ms. Verita,” the woman said, approaching the passenger window.
“Astra,” I corrected.
She waited with her arms crossed. Like I had misunderstood the rules, but they would become clear to me eventually.
“Ms. Verita,” she tried again, “come along. You’ll want to bring your bags.”
I only had one bag, and it was barely holding together. When I shrugged it over my shoulder and got out, the woman glanced at it like its very existence offended her.
Linden put the motorcar in reverse the moment my door shut and was gone before the woman turned to lead me inside.
Welcome to Zenith Hall,I thought, since no one had bothered to say it.
She led my up the steps and through a set of large doors. Inside, the air smelled strange. Not bad or chemical. Just odd in a way I had no word for. Greener than lavender. Deeper than sage. A third thing similar to but beneath both that the corridor was breathing out from somewhere overhead.
The woman walked without speaking and I followed. Stone floor, stone walls, a stone ceiling painted in some pattern of constellations I didn’t have time to take in. The sound my boots made on the floor didn’t sound like my footsteps. The air didn’t taste like air I had any right to breathe.
I don’t belong here.
That was my first real observation upon entering Zenith Hall.
The woman, who still hadn’t bothered to introduce herself, led me to Room 114 on the ground floor. She opened the door without using a key and stepped aside.
“You’ll find we have provided the necessities. First reading will be at the bell in the morning.”
