Spycraft Academy

for Outstanding Young Adults. You've both caught our attention, and I must congratulate you on passing the final assignment of the entrance exam."
"I don't understand," Sam said. He didn't dare look back at Mattie to gauge her thoughts. One second was all it took to get stabbed in the neck.
"We've been watching you for sixty days—a customary period for these sorts of things—and my superiors liked what they saw. I am here to formally extend an invitation to you both. A surprising coincidence to find so much talent in the slums."
Sam knew what the Varin School was. Everybody did. While it was only one of the many colleges in the vast Varin Empire, it was the only college that trained its students in the art of espionage. They took only the best of the best, which was necessary considering wars depended on how good their spies and assassins were.
Sam had wanted nothing more than to go there when he was young. Besides joining the military or lucking out with a rich lover, it was the only feasible way to move up the stringent economical castes. He'd dreamed of being as strong and dangerous as Theodorien the South Wind, or as wealthy and suave as the Grinning Gentleman—darlings of the Varin Kingdom in the gilded age, legends of children's stories, and some of the first Varin Graduates. Sam wanted to be them, he wanted respect, confidence, money, food—he wanted to be exceptional enough for a special name. That was when he was a child, though, and he hadn't been one of those in a long time.
He was an adult, this was reality, and his ambitions usually only went so far as a pair of shoes every two months and a roof every night. This man might have fooled Sam ten years prior; he must have thought Sam and Mattie were complete idiots to fall for a lie as ridiculous as what he was spitting out.
The man spread his hands, "Samson Croft, Mattison Terra, do you accept our invitation?"
Hearing his full name coming from this stranger's mouth put his nerves on edge. He said he'd been watching them for sixty days, maybe that part was true. But the rest... Why would he lie about something so specific as the Varin School? He could have said anything else and it would have been more believable. And how did the Varin school recruit their students, anyway?
Tension crowded the room like a thick fog, pushing and squeezing against Sam as if the shadows themselves were cowering away from the faceless man.
"Wait a minute." Mattie put a hand on her hip and her shoulder dropped, her voice cracking through the static in the air with her unimpressed scowl. "Sam, don't tell me you're buying this."
Was he? Maybe so. The man seemed so authentically sinister. He knew their names, he left them a clue.
Sam's brain was trying to catch up with the idea of doing the very thing he stopped hoping for long ago.
"Sam?" Mattie sounded shocked. "You've got to be joking."
Mattie was right, this was too perfectly odd. It was suspicious. But then, why would anybody go out of their way to set them up, much less trick both of them into believing that a prestigious school accepted them, a school that was notorious for recruiting from nobility?
What was the point of it, and how likely was it that somebody from a place like the school would take any special interest in either him or Mattie? They were just slum thieves. Orphans. Children from nobodies who were children from more nobodies.
Sam stared at the man for a moment and wracked his brain for a way to confirm the truth. "I'm not sure," he muttered, never tearing his eyes away from Lebert. "But if he is telling the truth, if he really was watching us, he'd be able to tell us what makes us qualified, in his observations, for any Academy, much less Varin."
Sam couldn't remember ever seeing him, nor anyone else, tailing him. He's sure he would have noticed.
Lebert didn't show any signs of being annoyed that they weren't mindlessly agreeing. Instead, he shrugged. "Shadow and sound magic are both once-in-a-generation talents. You could have been cobblers and we would have wanted you. As for the rest of your qualifiable traits, I'm afraid that you'd be fishing for compliments."
"All the same," Sam crossed his arms, "anybody could have watched me and seen my abilities. If you were watching us that closely, you'd surely have more to say than that."
Lebert paused for a moment before reaching into his coat. Both Sam and Mattie moved back a few inches, but instead of the blade Sam expected, Lebert held out a scroll. Sam hesitated for a moment before he snatched the paper and unrolled it. Mattie shuffled closer and read over his shoulder.
'This letter gives Lebert Yaxley, an agent of the Varin Academy for Outstanding Young Adults, undisputed authority to arrest, restrain, or make formal report of any Varin citizens perpetrating a crime. Perpetrators will be released from custody upon judgement of the accused crime in favor of release. If such a judgement is made in favor of the court, said perpetrator shall be judged guilty of the accused crime and be subject to the sentence of the court.'
On the bottom of the document was a royal wax seal, and three signatures below it. A capital magistrate, Lebert, and . . . the emperor?
Sam looked up sharply and leaned away from Lebert. Surely this was a joke.
Lebert sighed and held out a hand for his scroll. "Essentially, you two have a choice. You may either come with me to the school, or you may go to prison for breaking and entering with the intention of thievery."
That put things into perspective. Sam looked at Mattie, whose eyes were wide and disbelieving. If Lebert had forged that document and they went with him, then they would be vulnerable to whatever tricks he had up his sleeve. If they refused and he