Mina decided that the best thing to do was avoid the guy who thought she didn’t belong. But unfortunately for her, the guy who thought she didn’t belong did not want to be avoided.
She saw him the moment she arrived, as she struggled up to the enormous gates with two suitcases and several bags in her hands and under her arms. He was just beyond the wrought iron spirals and spikes, directing students to where they needed to be. Face obscured still, but that shape unmistakable.
His shoulders looked like an enormous yoke, of the sort someone might use to carry a preposterous amount of milk. And then his body arrowed down to a narrow waist, narrow hips, impossibly long legs.
He had to be well over six foot.
Maybe even close to seven, she thought, and wished she hadn’t. It made her drop one of her bags. She had to chase it down the hill to her left, instead of going through into the grounds. And by the time she’d retrieved it—her best and only boots now muddy and her face pink with the effort—they were almost closing the gates.
Those tangled swirling metal arches started swinging inward of their own accord, as she clambered back to where she’d been. She only snuck through by turning sideways and sort of scrambling. And just as she thought she’d managed, she felt her skirtsnag on a curl of wrought iron. There was the sound of something ripping; she tried to stop.
But it was too late.
She walked up the endlessly long cobblestone driveway with the hem hanging in tatters. People stared, someone turning to a friend to whisper. And every one of them looked so different to her. None of them had slightly crooked incisors. Or hair too wavy and unmanageable to style into anything decent. Or thighs and waists and chests thicker than a sheet of paper.
Their clothes weren’t drab, secondhand, torn.
They all wore what looked like a uniform—but obviously wasn’t.
It was just the right style, the sort only rich people knew. Shirts that looked thick and yet also near transparent, jeans that seemed like they were made of something other than denim, chunky sandals that appeared ugly to her untrained eye but probably weren’t. And beads everywhere—around necks in loops, on arms almost up to the elbow, strung about waists like belts.
Beautiful, she thought.
But not as beautiful as what she was supposed to be paying attention to.
There it was. The source of all her dreams and nightmares. Harrowhall, in all its glory. So tall she couldn’t see the top of the many towers from where she stood. So wide it seemed to touch the tangled forests that surrounded it on either side. And all of it put together so haphazardly you could hardly believe the place stayed standing.
It was like looking at a monster made of stones in the middle of sinking into a slump. She almost felt afraid to stay standing there.Any second now and the whole place is going to collapse on topof your defenseless body, a little fearful voice in her head said. But that fearful voice couldn’t win.
There were too many other incredible things to take in.
Like the shadows that didn’t seem to belong to anything, beneath windows that winked out when she looked at them twice. Or the lettering above the archway, sometimes in a language she could read and sometimes in one she couldn’t. Some sort of Underneath thing, she assumed, but couldn’t be sure.
The guidebook they had sent her hadn’t really explained any of that sort of business in detail. It didn’t name the creatures that lived in that shadowy place, or give an alphabet she could learn. A lot of things were just left for her to guess or fumble her way through. Like some of the doors she could see, set way too high up for anyone to safely use. Mystifying to her, at first.
But then she realized.
She thought of that whistling sound even ordinary people could hear, in the dead of night. The way she used to rush up to the roof of their block of flats, just to try to catch a glimpse of what that whistling meant. Once she had even thought she’d seen something through the darkness—some hint of a broomstick, a flutter of material, the gleam of dark eyes looking back at her.
But nothing like she would get here.
Here someone could fly out of one of those doors right now. She even tensed, breath held, heart beating like a bird in her chest, thinking they just might. And only let that glorious idea go when someone pushed past her. She watched them disappear through the great red doors beyond the archway, half hurt, wanting to say something to them. But they spoke before she could. “The Brawl is in ten bloody minutes,” they spat over their shoulder, and the words dropped down inside her.
Mostly because she knew what he had to be talking about. Placement, he was talking about placement—that was the thing they were all doing in ten minutes’ time. She even got her guide out and frantically flicked through it to make sure. And found it, in chapter 1.At the start of every new year, each student is assessed and placed accordingly, in either novice, intermediary, or advanced classes, within their respective years. However, it should be noted that a particularly talented new student may find themselves taking the place of a student of long-standing, in some advanced classes, and vice versa for any long-standing student who falls short of the faith the school has previously put in them,she read, the words as polite as she remembered.
But less polite seeming, now that she’d heard someone call it that.
A fight, he had called it; it was a fight of some kind. And one that also prompted the guide to say something else. A single line detached from the previous paragraph, which she now traced with one slightly shaky finger.
Many unfortunately find the rigors of placement a trifle too much.
Death, they mean you can die doing whatever the challenge might be, she thought, and for the first time in her life actually considered running away from this place, instead of toward. Even though, of course, she had already known the risks involved. She was aware that sometimes students didn’t come back from Harrowhall. It was the reason for the liability waivers, and the memory erasures, and the constant refrain of sacrificing for the greater good of humanity.
It just felt a little different now she was here.
And someone was already out to get her.People probably kill each other for places in the advanced classes,her mind whispered,as she stepped up to the door and stared into the strange empty darkness beyond. Everything silent, so silent, despite all the people she’d seen pour into the building.
Until she took a steeling breath and stepped inside, and the riot of sounds hit her. As if you could only hear it all when you chose to be a part of it. And after you had, there was no going back. She was in the maelstrom of bustling, rushing bodies now. The cries of “I think you go this way,” and the crowing of those who already knew just what to do. Like she was in some sort of fancy train station at rush hour.
