Declan woke to someone knocking gently on his door, which was a shock because everyone everywhere treated it like the only way to summon him was to kick the door in. Then a light voice called, “Anyone need a hangover potion?”

  Eden Proctor.

  Declan sat up and tiptoed to the door, opening it still in his sleeping bottoms and stepping out. “You’re selling hangover potions? Brilliant! I didn’t drink. Or party. I came home and went to bed.”

  “Of course you did. Did you go to bed alone? Probably. Hangover potions!” Eden shouted louder “Five hundred rin!”

  “Five hundred?” Declan asked.

  Eden gave him a prim smile. “Alchemy is the best side investment I’ve made. Who’s got class and a hangover? Who doesn’t want the hangover? Five hundred rin and you’ll be dancing all the way to class.” She began to make exchanges, passing out golden vials and accepting coins.

  “How did you know we were having a party?” Declan asked as he removed someone’s dress from the couch.

  “They probably know in the slums,” Eden said. “I gave a potion free to Hayden. I want to steal him, he’s cooking breakfast and he’s too good for here. Much too good. He deserves a private kitchen.”

  The front door swung open and the bitter wind blew in along with the scent of rain. Lake Domine landed lightly, sailing in with a wind gust and then turned and motioned, shutting the door with a smaller gust. “Do I smell breakfast? I just got back via glint, I’m starved, and House Ariloch knows how to tear the house down!”

  “Rohan,” Declan said. “Apparently he decided to enjoy his leave and decided half the academy should enjoy it with him.”

  Lake nodded. “Sound about right. I want the breakfast. I need the breakfast and if I don’t get it, I will start pounding on a drum.”

  “No drums,” Declan said. “Let me grab a shirt and we can eat together.” He was quiet as he re-entered the apartment, but Tegan was already up, stretching like she hadn’t slept on the stone, and wandering out, bleary eyed.

  “Oh, fuck no,” Lake said from the doorway. She stepped inside, blocking the door, as Declan dressed. If it bothered her that he was in his underwear, she didn’t show it. “I almost love you, you know that? So listen to me when I say there is playing with fire and there is diving into a volcano. You, my friend, are volcano diving.”

  “Tegan?” he asked. “She was just looking for a place to crash.”

  “Right.” Lake waited patiently. “Right?”

  Declan kicked his covers, which lay on the stone. “She said the music and crowd was overwhelming. She slept on the floor.”

  “You’re supposed to offer the lady the bed and you sleep on the floor.” Lake tossed him his cloak. “That’s what you’re supposed to do.”

  “When a ‘lady’ shows up at my door, I’ll consider it.” Declan gently lifted Lake out of the way, turning her and putting her back down in the doorway after he passed.

  Eden stood in the commons, holding an empty tray of vials and a heavy bag of rin. And she was staring. “It worked! You used the company light! You still look really tense for someone who just had company all night.”

  “Doesn’t he?” Lake asked. “Hey, Chen, breakfast!”

  The kitchen was crowded, but Declan pulled House Arcanist privileges and claimed a table where he and Lake and Eden sat. “Hayden, joining?”

  The chef was having his own private dance party with a black woman in deep blue robes. “Later? Maybe much later, I hope.”

  Declan began explaining about his history lesson. “It was actually not boring. I expected boring. I thought I might need a potion to stay awake but I felt like we started and we were done in a blink.”

  “Brutus Scheffer.” Eden jotted the name down. “I’ve read his name in the thanks at the front of books but never on the spine. When you find a good teacher, you keep them in mind. What brings the ArCore to house Ariloch?”

  “Other than that Tegan and Rohan are crashing here? The barracks are where I stay when I’m on duty, but living there would make me nuts. House Domine accepts me now, though they also watch me like a hawk. ” She waved as Tegan passed by, headed to the stacks of food. “Sit!”

  “I need to get to my mana channel exercises,” Declan said. “You ladies have a good breakfast.”

  Eden caught his arm. “Rohan Taylor is passed out on the third floor with three women beside him. Anthony is asleep in the third floor shower and the shower is on. Unless you’ve got some other morning lessons, you don’t. Sit. Eat. Talk.”

  With Lake and Tegan sitting side by side, Declan could see the strong family resemblance. “How are you two related?”

  “She’s a bloodline Domine,” Lake said, leaning on Tegan. “I’m a third cousin? One of her uncles had a lot of bastards and one of them produced me. Eden…what’s the ArCore pricing special on those potions? Say I wanted to get really, really drunk and still function?”

  “Fifteen hundred rin,” Eden said without batting an eye. “ArCore special.”

  Declan kicked under the table. “Lake is a good friend. That doesn’t sound like good friend prices.”

  “You accept shards or just coin?” Lake handed over a chunk of rune-stone and took the vial Eden slipped from her breast coat pocket. “I’ll throw my own party tonight. A quieter one, Tegan. Speaking of which, what are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know, and I love that. Don’t ask me, I don’t want to plan a thing. No glint. No emergencies. If I kill a monster, I do. Maybe I want to go to medical and volunteer.” Tegan put her head down beside her plate. Then she looked up at Declan. “You were really close to binding that third stone last night. Also, your soul-casting is fucked up. When Brieze does it, I can’t feel the rune right up until they activate it. When you do, I can almost see the rune taking shape. I don’t get how that doesn’t kill you.”

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “Thanks for the encouragement,” Declan said. “I really do need to go see Instructor Skinner.”

  He headed off through the campus to Skinner’s classroom, which sat dark. That was unusual. With no better options, he headed to administration, asking for Keel Skinner. One of the office manager came out. “He was called to the capital, a Crown matter. He said you have an additional class day after tomorrow, a private appointment at third change today and if you can’t impress him, you’ll regret it.”

  So, business as usual.

  That was a relief.

  On the way out, Instructor Sherman spotted him and broke away from the group she was in. “Young man! I have a bone to pick with you.”

  “I didn’t do it, it was Roland Farwen,” Declan said. He didn’t try to sprint away. “What’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong is that while I have a stack of burning flame shields, I don’t have punishing flame shield.” She crossed her ams and waited. “I put out a bounty on the turtles. Statistically, we should have had at least one more drop. There have been zero. I was discussing the issue with Fana and they mentioned you were asking recombination questions, and I’m just curious about a few things.”

  “I have a bunch of repairs to make,” Declan said. “I’ll try to find time in my schedule—”

  “Four days from now, eight, private lesson, 28C.” She barked the orders out. “Keel Skinner is in the capital, but even if he wasn’t, if I said ‘private lesson’ he would say ‘go.’ I expect real answers this time.” She watched him as Declan retreated.

  It had been a good plan and he wouldn’t undo it. Having Harris modify burning flame shield into punishing flame shield. It had gained him a protect and Declan understood now the need to have runes that matched his tier.

  For now, he headed to the library to study, and for the first time, chose Bragg’s History of Arcane Crafts, Volume One of Seventy, a companion to the one he’d read for Skinner. It was less boring if he imagined what drove them to each discovery, even if the methods they used were so crude even Declan could do better.

  Second change came and he headed up and into the town around Ariloch, this time looking for craftsmen. Workmen weren’t proper craftsmen, not true carpenters or plumbers or any of that. He finally found a carpentry and woodworking shop at ring seven, not too distant from the slums that surrounded Ariloch, built up under the artifice towers.

  “How can I help you, Sir Arcanist?” the shop master asked, setting down his tools.

  “I’m the house arcanist for House Ariloch, and I have a peculiar problem. I have so many rooms missing doors. I can hang them but whoever ran the house before me had a real hatred of doors.” Declan studied the joinery work. “Nothing this fancy, I don’t need six-panel, I need solid and safe.”

  The shopmaster spat. “My brother was an arcanist in Hammerstein. Let me tell you what taking the door means. It means ‘You can choose to stay, but when, not if some blazed beast crawls its way in, you’re going to be trapped in small space with a terrifying monster. Burning the door was a warning. How many of these are we talking?”

  Declan did quick math and sighed. “Can we start with ten? No, that’s looking at it wrong. How much for the door? I can paint, I can hang, I can mount handles and locks. I just need the door.”

  “First off, you stain and seal. Second, it might look easy but you’re better off hiring it done. You’ve got the rin.”

  “Pop’s a workman, I am, too. Let’s talk numbers and time. See, I don’t need the highest quality wood. I don’t care if there are knots or it isn’t as pretty, I care that it’s thick and won’t break when a blazed beast tries to bash it in.”

  The shop master glared. “And I don’t build shit-work. Sit down. We’ll hammer something out.”

  ###

  Declan was sure he was getting robbed, and it wasn’t even something the other members would vote to repair with house dues. The problem was, surges would come, and with them, swarms. Having space meant saving lives. He’d settled on five doors and paid for it from his personal rin, not his tuition fund. He considered the tuition funds already gone and wouldn’t dip into them for anything.

  Technically, Eden Proctor had volunteered to act as steward and setup an actual account at an actual bank.

  Declan had never had enough rin to need one. Now he could count the fifty rin coins in his pocket and that was before buying hinges, handles and doors. But he had an idea for that, and it began with raking through the slush and dirt in front of House Ariloch until frustration set in and he returned to the commons. “I need someone with a fire rune for house duty, you’ll be done before next change.”

  A moment later, the man he’d settled the argument with poked his head over the second floor railing. “What do you need me to do?”

  “Ground’s frozen and I need to go through the bonfire ashes,” Declan said. “Your lover has Flame Tongue—”

  “She’s not my lover anymore,” he spat. “We both have Flame Tongue. It’s what made us mistake each other for human. She’s not. She’s a monster.”

  “Right. What’s your name? You know what? Get your cloak and meet me out front, we can talk while we work.” Declan headed out and waited for Geran, as it turned out the man was named, to join him. Flame Tongue allowed him to spew fire in a short arc but a wide swath of destruction. The snow melted and sizzled, and with a few more minutes, Declan had raked up lumps of still-frozen ashes, which were then melted, and began sifting.

  His fingers were frozen by the time he was done, but he’d sifted out fifteen sets of hinges, eleven handles, and the remains of several mana locks that were probably never going to function again. They were black and frozen, but Declan saw an opportunity. He thanked Geran and they both retreated.

  When the frozen pieces lay melting on his apartment floor, Declan headed up for lunch, where Eden was enjoying a not-commons-kitchen meal while Roland and Harris ate the shoveled slop with him. “How much did you make this morning?”

  “After I gave Rohan his cut? Ten thousand rin.” Eden stopped shoveling bits of steak into her mouth to explain. “It’s the same thing I always do. ‘You look tense. You haven’t relaxed in forever. You should throw a small party, invite some friends.’ And then I say it to sixty different people and a small party becomes a big opportunity.”

  Roland gave a small clap. “After all these years, you’re finally learning. They’re happy they had a party, you’re happy they needed potions.”

  “Rohan knew you were going to do this?”

  “Oh, no,” Eden said. “No, I told him ‘I want to do something nice for the ArCore. Let me buy the supplies, you just tell me what I owe tomorrow.’ And then I set to brewing.” She leaned in. “They love it, every time.”

  “Do you have any idea how much damage they did? You owe me for five doors,” Declan declared.

  She didn’t miss a beat. “Bill me, I’ll pay. It’s just the cost of doing business.”

  That led to a discussion about another aspect of Academy culture Declan hadn’t known. Removing the door was a subtle threat. Breaking it, a bold one, burning it essentially saying you’d kill the person or see them dead. It was one step short of challenging them to a duel and two steps shy of attacking them on the scab.

  “Skinner changed my classes again. Again,” Declan comiserated to Harris. “Some sort of private lesson coming up and another at eight tonight. And…he didn’t bother telling me where.”

  Eden raised her hand. “I know where your eight is, because I coordinated. I’ll be by to show you. And unless I’m wrong, which has happened before but isn’t happening now, I know where your additional class is. Or at least who it is.”

  “I have work to do on soul-casting and binding that third mana stone. I swear I need a private class on that. It’s a third tier skill, and I’m still zero.” Declan stood and headed back to the house. Chen was sleeping and now was as good a time as any.

  Declan shook the man awake. “Do me a favor, ok? Step out on the porch and see if the door handle works.”

  Chen did. “No, it’s broken. It shut but it won’t open now.”

  “That’s right.” Declan stood at the window as he spoke. “It’s not going to open for you.”