Spycraft Academy

that we aren't being set up?"
Was he talking out loud? Spirits, he needed to eat. Maybe he was having a nutrient deficiency again. The Goodsister from the worship house that made free visits to the slums every month had treated Sam for such a thing before. He'd been laid out with shivers and stomach cramps and visions of things that weren't there. She had to close her eyes and push her senses into his blood to see what was ailing him. Too much brown food, not enough green and red, she said. His body was failing, and sickness was invited in because he didn't eat the things he needed to function at peak condition. She said that, of course, after confirming that he was dying and before curing him.
"After they don't kill us, I suppose." Sam closed the door behind them.
Mattie huffed a quiet laugh and stepped toward one of the two beds. She ran her hand along the cream-colored quilt. They both went quiet as they took it all in. The quilt looked like it was made of cotton, not burlap, and there wasn't a single hole or stain anywhere to be seen. There was a pillow at the head of the bed, plump and white as snow and almost wide enough to fit three heads on it. A small table was next to it with a small round window above it, and an identical bed sat on the other side of the table. There was a plush chair in the corner and a rug between the beds. It was small, but it was warm, and it was more luxurious than any room they had ever slept in.
Sam sat on the far bed and didn’t speak a word, refusing to break the quiet of the cabin. There was a lot left unsaid about all of this, but right now he couldn't conjure the words and frankly, he didn't care to. This was a perfect moment in time, a thing he could remember always as a moment where his world had changed and become bigger, brighter, and so full of magic and beauty that it was set to choke him.
Suddenly, a shrill shriek shot through the wood of the door. Sam startled, sitting drawn and tense long after the shout died.
"Oh my." A second voice came closer to the door, smooth and smokey like a hushed promise. "I hope those weren't expensive."
The voice that shouted moments before shouted again, followed by a solid kick to the wall. "What kind of filth do they let in this spirits-damned boat?!"
"Well, if footprints are to be believed, the kind that is staying in that room."
Sam clenched the quilt beneath his hands and swallowed. He didn't know for certain that they were talking about him and Mattie, but they'd said footprints. They'd tracked mud on the boat.
After a long stretch of silence, their cabin door was struck with a sharp pair of knuckles three times. "You owe me a new pair of shoes. Next time you decide to walk from the Tasmin Bog to the capital, be sure to wipe your feet and have a shower on the way in."
The girl banged on the door a final time before the tromp of her heavy footsteps moved away from the cabin. Sam heard her voice once more before they left the corridor proper, far away but still audible, and it was enough to make him cringe away from the door.
"Honestly, you'd think they let in one of those disgusting poppy-addicts from the blushing district, or worse, one of those diseased beggars on Hookman's Square."
Their flat was on the south end of Hookman's Square.
After the incident with the mud, Sam and Mattie kept well away from the others. They didn't go to the rec room or the lounge. Lebert didn't drop by. Nobody talked to them. Instead, when some of the others passed by their cabin, they'd talk very loudly about how the hallway smelled, or that they hoped they didn't catch anything from being so near the 'blighted.'
The others called them 'blighted' because now they knew that he and Mattie came from the quell sector. All it took was one little appearance at dinner and that was it, everybody somehow knew. If Sam was being honest with himself, it was probably because he and Mattie were skin and bone. They didn't even try to eat in the dining area with twenty sets of eyes on them. Instead, they took their food and promptly walked back to their cabin.
Now that everybody knew what they were, Sam and Mattie would have to be careful. Nobles liked to hurt gutter rats like them, and they got away with it every time. Sam didn't know the rules of the Academy, so he didn't know if they'd look the other way if he and Mattie were harassed . . . or worse.
Sam had never been able to get the money or connections needed to live anywhere but the quell sector, and he had seen his fair share of cruelty from the nobles. All they had to do was lodge a complaint on a quell-dweller, and that person was either hauled off or flogged in the streets. The little kids didn't have to worry about it as much but the adults certainly did. That's why people didn't venture near the mid-section, much less past it, not even for a stroll. If a merchant or a noble knew your face, then you were bound to be dragged off for something, someday.
Once, when Sam was staying with the Widow Baker and a few other orphans, he had lived next door to a very pretty girl. Pretty girls didn't live where he lived, they either fled long before anybody noticed them, got the soul sucked out of them by working the whorehouses, or they ended up dead, but this one was sixteen and alive and always smiling.
Fiera. He'd never forget her. She had a long, thick braid of cornflower yellow hair and