Spycraft Academy

by B N Miles

  Without warning, the man bolted away like a hare.

  Sam knew he should stay out of whatever was going on. Following suspicious, cloaked men to unknown locations has never worked out in his favor. He had plenty of scars to attest to that.

  He looked at Delcan's window.

  But what if the man had malice in mind? If he hurt somebody and Sam had a chance to stop him, could he live with the knowledge of his cowardice and inaction?

  What would Mattie think of him if she knew? Worse, what would his mother think?

  Don't do it. You'll get hurt. Just close your eyes and pretend it didn't happen. Everything will be okay when you open them. He told himself that many times over, but the voice had been so much younger the last time he heard it.

  The sound of the crashing water, just yards away, dulled until it was lapping against the rocks. No, not rocks, wood. A woman's scream. An old man's rasp. A loud splash. The cold stone against Sam's back, the burning tears smeared across his cheeks and the hard press of his hands to his eye sockets. That voice, telling him to close his eyes and stay still, telling him not to try.

  Sam thumped his head with the heel of his hand and screwed his eyes shut as his stomach lurched. He didn't know that memory. He'd never seen it before. Everything was blurry, but he knew that if he pushed hard, the blurs would take form and he couldn't let himself see them because it would hurt too much.

  His stomach rolled and bubbled, upupup his throat. He took a shuddering breath and focused on the present, yanking himself from cloudy memories. He thought about what that man could be up to, he saw him twisting a knife into somebody's gut, saw him pushing a woman off the sea cliff, saw him snapping a man's neck.

  "Damnit," he hissed and took off after the man.

  The man kept to the shadows, which wasn't difficult on a moonlit night.

  He led Sam along the back of the campus, around the side, and then he stopped.

  The campus as a whole was cradled in the protective arms of the heavily reinforced towers and ramparts, every small building and stall within the walls. That is, every building save for the administrative building squatting a short distance away. It must have been built after the school, almost as an afterthought, and positioned as if it were a comma separating the first clause of the forest from the second clause of the campus castle.

  That was the instructors' primary offices. Nobody save for staff was allowed to go near it. If a student was required to meet with the headmaster, it would be in his secondary office in the north tower.

  The man ran across the valley floor, toward the building. Sam pressed his back tightly to the wall, watching him. He was not about to follow the strange man any farther when he had a fine view from the safety of the castle.

  The man collided with the squat building and stood utterly still, probably waiting to see if an alarm was raised. When nothing happened, he took a long step before he took three more. He turned and Sam could see the vague outline of his arms moving. He was probably fiddling with a window.

  When it swung open, Sam's fists tightened. The man lifted himself to the sill before he disappeared into the darkness of the building.

  Sam took off, following the man's path through the lush valley grass. He wound down to a gentle trot when he neared the building, and when he was close enough, he walked heel-toe. He hugged the building wall and kept his shadows against him.

  He waited, resolving not to move until the man came back out, which was nearly twenty minutes later by his estimation. The man was clutching something to his chest, like a stack of documents, when he slid from the building. The hairs on the back of Sam's neck bristled and a sensation of wrongness settled into his body like impending doom.

  Instead of going toward the school, the man turned to the forest and took off again.

  Sam growled to himself. This is what he usually needed Mattie for, but she was in the dormitory, eagerly awaiting him to come back and report the mission complete. Instead, he was tailing some nefarious thief into the woods, hopefully without meeting any assassin associates in the process.

  He followed the thief.

  Foliage and twigs snapped, crunched, and rustled beneath the man's swift feet, but it wasn't enough to drown out Sam's footfalls. He tried to be careful and step where the man stepped to eliminate any extra noise, but even with outdoors training, Sam was nowhere near practiced enough in navigating forest terrain to be able to stay hidden.

  The man stopped in the shallows of the wood and glanced over his shoulder. There was no way he'd be able to pick out Sam's cloak of shadows from the pitch black of the forest veil unless he had some talent to help his sight.

  Even so, he knew he was being followed.

  Which was probably why he took off again, this time zig-zagging around trees and rocks and thickets like a fleet-toed deer. He dashed far from Sam's sight and even though his loud footfalls were still evident, the forest was an echo chamber and there was no telling where they were actually coming from.

  Damn.

  Sam leaned against a tree and stared into the shapeless black of the woods. He'd lost the man so easily it was a wonder it didn't happen sooner. Now what?

  He could keep going, try to catch onto a sound or a movement, but the man was far ahead by now. Sam could be wandering around in the dark long after the man had concluded his business and departed.

  There was no use looking now. He would just be wasting time. But at least nobody had gotten hurt, which was the reason he followed to begin with. Even so, something suspicious and clearly dangerous was afoot. That man had stolen something from the administration. Something important, given how much trouble the man went through to get it.

  With a final glance at the pitch of the deep forest, Sam turned around and made his way back to the administration building.

  It wasn't a long walk, but Sam was careful in making sure he didn't get turned around. By the time he made it back to the squat stone office, the sky had darkened even more. Sam snuck toward the window that the thief slipped through and glanced inside.

  At first, the private office looked plain. Neatly stacked papers, a small bookshelf, a couch, a desk, paintings on the walls. But a small, hand-painted likeness of Loredena on the desk made it clear whose office this was.

  Their mathematics and science instructor was beautiful and ridiculously intelligent, her features lush and dark rather than phantom white like her father’s. Most of the male students had a soft spot for her, and apparently many of the male instructors did as well. Unfortunately for them, she inherited Mode’s harshness and had no affection for them.

  Mode was one of the most, if not the most, deadly assassins alive. He might be too old for military fieldwork, but he wasn't too old to orchestrate strikes or run private jobs if he so chose. Nothing in his office would be harmless or banal, especially not something valuable enough for somebody to risk going into such a forbidden place to begin with.

  Sam would have to keep an eye out and an ear peeled tomorrow morning. Nothing crazy was going to happen tonight. Stolen things were rarely used right away, especially when it seemed like the thing the man stole was a packet of papers, not anything pointy.

  The girls were probably wondering where he was anyway. Best to get back now so they didn't go looking for him and get caught for their troubles.

  He tried not to worry about it as he walked back to the dorm, but he couldn't quite shake the uneasy sensation that settled in his chest like lead.

  "By the spirits, Sam, took you long enough."

  "Did you have a roll in the hay with the twat or something?"

  "Where are the clothes?"

  That was the greeting he got when he walked into his dorm. Mattie, Drina, and Rosin were strewn out on his bed like tossed outfits. At least Fletch was sitting on his own bed quietly, his eyes relaxed and absent of judgement of Sam's tardiness.

  Fletch grinned, "Did you catch a peek of him coming from the shower?"

  Sam rolled his eyes and nudged Mattie asi
de before collapsing on his bed with a huff. "No, mission aborted, I'm afraid."

  "Ugh," Drina said, blowing a curl from her face.

  Sam held his palms up in defense. "It was for a good reason, I promise."

  "Well, let's hear it, then," Rosin said.

  "I saw a man sneaking around the back of the school. He looked suspicious, so I followed him to Mode's office. He stole something, then ran off into the forest. It looked like a packet of some sort, documents. Or a leaflet book, I'm not sure. I tried to tail him, but I lost him pretty quickly."

  Nobody had anything to say to that. Sam glanced at each one of them and they all looked troubled. They probably came to the same conclusion that he did—Mode was an elite soldier, retirement didn't make him any less dangerous, and whatever was stolen from his office was important enough to risk expulsion or worse. Those documents could be classified, they could be used as blackmail, they could be anything.

  "I think it was Apelles," Sam said slowly. "He was covered up completely, but he had the same build, the same height, the same gait. He moved so fast I couldn't tell for sure, but I don't trust the bastard as far as I can throw him to begin with."

  The spymaster was thin, prickly, and nondescript. If he deigned to look at one of the students when talking directly to them, he angled his body away and looked down his nose at them as if they were distasteful. His eyes were piercing, almost unblinking, and they belied his abnormally calculating mind. When he explained a concept, he broke it down until it was nothing but a series of minute fundamentals, and when he offered criticism, he knew exactly what to emphasize to make his students shatter under the harshness of it. Already, he'd made three noblewomen and one nobleman weep.

  "Apelles . . ." Mattie muttered, glancing at Rosin.

  The blonde chewed on her thumbnail softly, silent for a few moments before answering. "Apelles Rou, arrived in the capital as a child in . . . twelve-ten-o-two, I believe. Unknown birthdate, unknown birthplace, unknown birthparents. He was on an illegal slaver vessel bound for the southern isles and confiscated by the Varin Navy. He was adopted by a captain and enrolled in the navy at sixteen before being recruited into the Academy at age twenty. His classification is redacted. He received no discharge from the shadow unit, which suggests that his current post here is a military assignment. I would guess he is a sergeant at the very least. Nothing in his file suggests he has any motivation to work against the headmaster or the school, but files commonly don't tell the whole story."

  Sam's eyebrows had already crawled high on his forehead.

  "Ah." Rosin rubbed the back of her neck sheepishly. "I was recruited because I have a bad habit of breaking into restricted-access information centers. I like to know about people. I um...I may have read your files too?"

  Sam shook his head, more impressed than anything. Every crew needed intel, and he happened to stumble upon an organic source. Rosin was so sweet-looking that he would never have pegged her for an actual spy, but he supposed she wouldn't be here if she wasn't inclined to spy craft.

  At least she wasn't here because she was inclined to assassin work.

  11

  The next day was tense. Sam usually woke up before dawn, but that morning, he'd been woken up by a series of noises and a flurry of movements. A platoon of unfamiliar people had let themselves into the first-year dormitories before the sun had attempted any sort of ascension. They barged into the rooms simultaneously rather than one by one, and Sam knew this because he heard several girlish shrieks just as he bolted up.

  Sam kept his knife under his pillow. He'd never been safer in his life while inside the Academy, but old habits die hard. When his door thundered open, his knife was spinning in the air before his eyes were properly cracked open.

  The man who dodged it from the doorway did so with graceful ease, and it pinged off the stone wall behind him. Silently, he stalked into Sam's room and ordered him and Fletch into the hallway with the rest of the bleary-eyed first years.

  Things only got odder after that.

  The strange people searched the dorms—they might have been guards, they might have been military, but they could have easily been fifth years as well. Nothing was found. They left wordlessly and without apology for the sheared mattresses and pillows, the papers strewn across the floor, and the trunks that were raided.

  The walk to breakfast was silent. The people dressed in black were stalking the hallways like prowling beasts and Sam could feel the eyes of dozens more hidden from view and watching. He hadn't taken anything from Mode's office, but he had information, and that was enough to make him feel like he had something to hide. He might have alerted somebody about what he saw last night, but he knew what happened to those who brought crimes to the attention of authorities. They were the first suspects.

  Sam might be safer now than he ever was on the streets, but he didn't doubt a school full of military-trained assassins, thieves, and spies would have no qualms with torturing Sam to make sure he wasn't the perpetrator.

  Walking through the eerily quiet halls felt like a march to the gallows. He kept his head down, they all did, and he didn't feel his heartbeat calm until he was in the wide mess hall at his usual table. Rosin sat with them for the first time that morning. She admitted she usually ate by herself in the library. She must have felt as on-edge as the rest of them to yank her pretty nose out of a book.

  Rosin hadn't done anything wrong, but the soldiers or guards or whatever they were left a most unsettling impression. Sam wouldn't want to be caught in a room with one of them, that was for sure. Especially not the library during breakfast—nobody but Rosin would have been there.

  The mess hall was quiet even though it was full. The loudest people in the room were Delcan's, though that was no surprise; they acted like nothing strange was happening.

  Sam might have been more annoyed by the grating sound of the blonde's booming, exaggerated laughter if he didn't remember what he witnessed last night. He wished Delcan would have just gotten out of the shower and got dressed like a normal person instead of obsessing with his reflection. Sam wanted to be able to hate the other man for his arrogance and cruelty, and it would have been much easier if he knew Delcan was an empty-headed narcissist.

  He wasn't though. A narcissist wouldn't stare at their own reflection with such loathing. Maybe he was such an arrogant pig to cover up just how much he disliked himself.

  Fletch slid into the chair between Rosin and Mattie, his face free of its usual carefree smile. He leaned in and whispered, "I think I know what was stolen from Mode's office."

  Sam carefully laid down his spoon and folded his arms on the table, giving Fletch his undivided attention. "How?"

  "I heard two of the third-years talking about it in line."

  "How would they know?" Sam asked.

  Two people's hearsay was hardly worthy information.

  Fletch shrugged, "One of them said they heard Loredena talking to Apelles about it."

  That gave the claim a bit more weight, but it still had to be confirmed.

  If Loredena claimed something particular was stolen, then Sam would believe her. The question was whether the third-years in question were telling the truth.

  "What did you hear, specifically?" Sam asked.

  Fletch's eyes shifted, then he scooted his chair in close and whispered, "The Varin Cipher."

  Rosin sucked in a gulp of air and sputtered, coughing up the water she'd been drinking and drawing more than one pair of eyes to the table. Sam thumped her on the back. Mattie and Drina looked just as confused as he felt.

  When Rosin recovered, she dabbed at her lips with her kerchief and said, 'excuse me,' flushing a pretty pink color.

  Interesting. Sam had assumed she was middle-caste at most from her behavior and open demeanor. She hadn't told him much about where she was from outside of the actual location—a small port city to the east—but he'd never seen a merchant or artisan woman blush so furiously from a coughing fit. That was noble behavior. They
were odd like that, thinking that basic human functions such as a sneeze were improper in polite company.

  Sam watched the blonde girl closely and took note of the way she crossed her wrists on her lap. He didn't notice that before, either. Was she a noble, like Fletch? Sam didn't think it mattered much if she was a decent person, but it was still unsettling to know that he'd been so negligent in observing his new crew member. The sense of safety this school gave him was making him slack off.

  "The Varin Cipher...do you not know what that is?" Rosin looked at the girls, then Sam, who shrugged.

  "I can't believe you don't know about it!" Her light voice was lowered into a whisper. "That's the cipher to every coded document used by the Varin military."

  "If it's so important, why would Mode have it?" Drina didn't look convinced, carelessly leaning back in her chair as she was. She was right to be skeptical; it didn't sound feasible to him, either.

  "And why would every document be encoded the same way?" Sam added. "That would be dangerous to begin with. If somebody cracked the cipher, they'd be able to read every piece of classified information in the country."

  Rosin shook her head. "I don't know why Mode would have it, and I don't know why they use one code for everything, but the cipher has been around since the war started. Maybe the Grand General wanted to put it somewhere nobody would think to look. It would be too obvious if he had it, or the king, or a commander. Mode is elite, so he'd have the security clearance for the job, and he's one of the most powerful spellcasters alive, so he could kill anybody who's after it rather easily."

  "And yet he kept it in his office?" Drina scoffed. "Right."

  Rosin deflated. "Okay, yeah, it sounds unlikely, but still. If Loredena told Apelles it was the code, then I believe her."