Spycraft Academy

good wash, not that Sam would ever tell her that. She'd get a big head and tease him about how fair he thought she was until the end of time.
Not that she wasn't fair. He just didn't want her to know that he thought as much—he hadn't wanted her to know since they were eight.
They crested the hill and kept walking, always following Lebert at no more than ten paces. It didn't take long for them to make it down the avenue and to the docks proper, where shirtless men with cracked and darkened skin hefted and pulled at crates and ropes.
"Oh wow." Mattie stopped short and Sam unconsciously did the same, whipping his gaze to see what she was staring at.
His eyes widened.
There, tied to the very last port dock, was a sleek teak vessel that was so freshly scrubbed that it looked brand new. It dwarfed all the other boats around it, rising three cabins tall from the water and at least three times as long. The sails were tucked in, but a small flag flapped and snapped from the crow's nest. It was a black flag with a curling V. That had to be it.
They must have been standing there a long time because Lebert appeared from nowhere to hustle them along.
"Honestly, it's like you've never seen a ship before," he muttered, steering them forward with a hand on each of their shoulders.
This was really happening, then. Lebert shoved them toward the loading plank.
Sam didn't pay attention to the walk from the dock to the ship, he was too busy trying to come to grips with the fact that yes, this was really happening, and no, it wasn't a trick or a dream. One minute he was far away and the next, his hand was gliding over the ship's fine wooden railing. Mattie slowly ascended as well, clutching her pack tight to her chest and looking from side to side as if somebody might jump out and arrest them.
Sam's threadbare shoes flopped against the deck. He was vaguely aware that he was tracking mud onto the spotless wood, but he didn't worry about it much. There were a couple of deckhands, but they were adjusting some cranks and knots and didn't look up. Their uniforms were dark and spotless, almost military but not quite. They looked more like groomsmen than sailors. One approached Sam and Mattie, and Sam stepped aside so he could pass, but then the man stopped right in front of him, bowed shallowly, and held out his hand.
Sam stared at the man but he just stared at the floor. Sam looked at Mattie, who shrugged in return.
"Uh . . . can I help you?" Sam tried. The man didn't look up. Hesitantly, Sam placed his palm in the man's hand. Maybe it was customary.
There was a sigh from somewhere behind them and Lebert stepped forward, grabbed Sam's pack, and thrust it at the man.
"They're mute," he said, seizing Mattie's pack as well.
Ah.
Sam snatched his hand back from the man and held it to his chest with a sheepish grin. "Sorry."
The man received the packs, bowed again, then strode away with silent, measured steps. Eerie.
"Your cabins will be through that door," Lebert pointed at the entrance to the lower deck, on the right side of the ship, "on the second level. The dinner cabin, lounge, and recreation cabins are all on the first level."
When they didn't immediately move, Lebert gave them both a gentle push forward. "That was a polite way of saying 'get out of the way and go make nice with the other recruits.'"
Sam stumbled mindlessly toward where Lebert wanted them to go. The world around him dulled and muffled like he was swimming underwater, and even though the cabin door was looming closer, even though he was touching the knob and turning it and walking through the open portal, none of it felt real.
Things like this didn't happen to people like Sam. He hadn't done anything to earn it, hadn't gone out of his way to get it, had never thought that he could come anywhere close to an opportunity like this in this lifetime. The Academy was where nobles sent their children, where prodigies nurtured from birth went. It was where the fingers of fame and fortune stretched wide.
This place wasn't for Sam. Whoever created him, be it the Wisps, the Four Watchers, the Spirits, or the Stone Men, had not made him for things like this. Sam was meant to be a faceless pebble, forgotten by the world as soon as the river washed over him. He was a creature of mud and salt, he was a ladder for a ribcage and a pity for a face, he was something that lived past infancy only to breed and die when the next vicennial blight came.
"Sam?"
"Hm?"
He blinked and everything came into sharp focus, like he'd been transported from a dream to the land of the waking. They were in a softly lit hallway, the walls paneled with thick teak wood and the floors covered with fine wine-colored carpet. The candles on the wall gave off a soft, spicy scent like air from a noble's open window on the winter solstice.
Mattie was pointing at a door. A tack held a thin piece of paper with their names on it.
Sam looked at Mattie and she opened it, a little smile quipping her doll-like mouth. "I can't believe they're letting us bunk together. You'd think it would be segregated like how the nobles do everything."
"Yeah." That was weird. The Academy was probably segregated by gender, and any person with a shred of respectability to their names would never dream of bunking with the opposite sex if they weren't married. Sam and Mattie weren't respectable by any means, but the nobles might assume they were. Very, very irregular. Too irregular. Maybe an overlooked detail. Maybe a set-up.
"Sky's mercy, Sam," Mattie sauntered into the room, "when are you going to get it into your thick skull