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Sure, he’d maybe saved my life and we’d spent a pleasant hour crossing the Lethe, but I didn’t even really know this guy.
    “I’m sure you will,” he said and smiled. Then he turned around and walked in the opposite direction of where I was headed.
    I watched him for a while, wondering if I’d made a mistake. I’d had Hyrke flings before. He might be a welcome distraction from all the stress St. Lucifer’s was sure to heap on me. On the other hand, it was more likely the guy would become an unwanted complication. I turned away. I walked for a while and then couldn’t help myself. I glanced over my shoulder. Ari was gone. I could see our ferry though, tied up and loading passengers bound for Etincelle. Its name was as faded as the rest of it, but I could just make out the lettering:
First Light
.
    So much for the augury idea. A boat named after its arrival time told me nothing about my future. I turned my back on it and kept walking.

Chapter 4

    M y boots squished with every step so I took a cabriolet from the waterfront instead of walking. My cabbie, a polite nontalker who expressed zero reaction to my destination, dropped me at a courtyard in front of what appeared to be the main building. I tipped him extra for his reserve on the way over. He looked at the money, grunted, and sped off. I turned to face my new home.
    My first reaction was that it looked like a bigger version of some of the Etincelle estates. Lots of heavy, clunky, gothic architecture with an emphasis on pointed arches, flying buttresses, and gargoyles. But there were a lot more people milling around here than there would be on a private estate. And there were more buildings. The campus took up at least five city blocks. That seemed about right, I thought, mentally checking off the buildings I’d read about in the orientation materials—Megiddo, Abaddon, and Infernus (dormitories), Marduk’s (eating hall), Corpus Justica (library), Lekai Auditorium, and Rickard Building, where the main classrooms were. There were probably a few I’d forgotten. On the otherside of the courtyard from where I stood was the Joshua School, where Peter went. But he wouldn’t be arriving for a few weeks so, for now, I was on my own. I trudged into the Warenne Tiberius Rhaetia Administrative Building in search of the student affairs desk. Someone there would be able to tell me where my dorm room was and who I’d be sharing it with.
    On the way, I checked out my new surroundings. For the most part, everything was exactly how I’d imagined it. The lounge at student affairs looked pristinely comfortable, with deep couches, overstuffed chairs, and large tables. The walls were a freshly painted beige and the furniture had been recently reupholstered in tastefully coordinated patterns of honey, russet gold, and burgundy. Thankfully, there were no plants. I hadn’t expected to see any in a school where they trained future Maegesters but I was relieved nonetheless. Students were milling about in small groups. More than half of them seemed to be paying more attention to the people around them than the group they were with. I hurried through the room, wanting a hot shower and a dry pair of shoes more than anything.
    The Hyrke working the student affairs desk had a cold. A box of tissues, a bag of throat lozenges, and a bottle of aspirin lined her desk like charms. If the charms were supposed to ward off students, it wasn’t working. The line was at least six students deep when I took my place. The woman in front of me mumbled something under her breath to the man in front of her. He turned around to reply and caught me staring. I didn’t want to be rude and was just about to look away when he winked at me and then said to the woman in front of me, “Ivy, she’s
ill
, for Luck’s sake. Give the woman a break.”
    “Like Hell,” Ivy muttered. “That bottle of aspirin has been sitting there since summer and those lozenges look so old they’re probably from the