“Surely you haven’t admitted defeat already.”

  Benji hadn’t been expecting fanfare when he returned to the OPMI office, but he might’ve anticipated at least a hello from his former boss before she implied he’d already failed out of the university. Reena sat behind the desk. Most people who worked the front desk treated it as something between their own kitchen table and an ottoman—Benji himself had put his feet up on more than one occasion—but Reena sat with perfect posture, her eyes on the door as if a monster might burst through it at any moment. Instead she was confronted by her vaguely disappointing former employee.

  “I’m not here to ask for my job back,” Benji said. “Why are you working the desk, anyway? I thought replacing me would be—how did you describe it?—as easy as finding a dragon in a field of sheep?”

  “Because the dragon would be the only thing there, having eaten the sheep. Yes, that was rather a clever image on my part.”

  Benji was still terrified of this woman. Thankfully, the feeling lacked teeth now that he no longer worked for her.

  Reena sighed. “Apparently during their exit interview, a former employee told our department head that I ‘lacked empathy’ and ‘was scary.’ They thought I could benefit from seeing the job through my subordinates’ eyes, as it were.”

  “It might help if you stopped calling them your ‘subordinates,’” Benji said, feeling bold, and instantly regretting it as Reena’s gaze pierced his flesh.

  “What do you need?”

  Benji tried to remember exactly how Simon and Lucy had described the device. As much as he hated helping with their scheme, the twins had been shockingly useful with their languageworking homework. They promised to tutor him any time he needed it, which was both completely patronizing and much appreciated.

  “It should be from the lowest clearance section. I don’t remember the exact name, but you know those creatures, fibbetts? I need a device that attracts them.”

  “Working on a fibbett infestation, eh? Is this for class?”

  “Independent study.”

  Reena was in no way convinced by this explanation.

  “You know what happens when you get too many fibbetts together in one place, don’t you?” Reena asked. “The device itself is a copper a dozen, but you should be aware what you’re getting into.”

  “Is it bad?”

  “They’re swarm creatures, capable of forming themselves into a single entity if they’re not carefully controlled. A single entity can consume animals the size of horses.”

  Despite his lurching heart, Benji decided he had already shaded the truth, so what was one more lie? “I’m working with a fibbett expert on this. They’ll keep them from swarming.”

  Reena muttered something about never hearing of a fibbett expert who didn’t possess a basic attracter, but she didn’t fight him further, and went back into the storeroom.

  Benji stood awkwardly, feeling the strangeness of being on this side of the desk. The odor of the magic-protecting cleaner they used on the artifacts was so familiar, Benji could’ve conjured a memory of the whole room with the barest whiff of it. The way the light didn’t so much stream in from the leaded windows, but instead seemed to linger in the air like one giant dust mote. The squeal of the storeroom door as it opened and shut.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  He thought about Jurni’s recent revelation that her brother’s magic was also late-emerging. He still didn’t know how to feel about this similarity being the source of Jurni’s concern for his wellbeing at the university, and whether that meant anything for what he’d believed was a new friendship.

  Out of place as he was, Benji wasn’t in a position to pass up kindness when it came his way.

  Reena returned with a wooden box. She noted the item number, his name, and scrutinized his identification more than was perhaps necessary for someone who had previously sat on the opposite side of this desk. Then she handed it over to him.

  “All yours. You have this for two weeks, at which point you can renew it for an additional week, provided no one else has requested it.”

  Benji took the box. It was heavier than expected, the device within probably set into some kind of depression to keep it from moving.

  “And Benji,” Reena said before he could turn for the door, “don’t think that your past employment here gives you latitude not to follow the rules. I will be just as willing to send Khris out on a collection as always.”

  Khris was the only employee in the office whose full job description involved collecting unreturned items. He was usually only called in for cases where some sort of physical violence was required.

  “I like my kneecaps too much to risk that,” Benji said. “Don’t worry, you’ll have it back on time.”

  Benji left the office before Reena could threaten or belittle him further.

  How had he let a couple of teenagers convince him to lie to his old boss on the way to conjuring a swarm of potentially carnivorous creatures?

  That’s the price of scholarship, I guess, Benji thought as he tucked the box under one arm and began the trek back to his dorm before his first metalworking class.

  The beginning of the school year always marked a transition point, as the weather changed and Thelspoint returned to its normal rhythms after a sleepy summer. On this fall day, the weather had finally caught up to the changing season, and the wind scattered leaves through the streets of the University Quarter. As built up as Thelspoint was, its plantworkers had free rein to make the city as green as possible, engineering plants that could grow between cobblestones or out of the sides of buildings, their roots folding into slate walls and roofs. These trees tended to drop their leaves at the first sign of cold, before transitioning to their hardier brown winter leaves.

  The green leaves whipping up past the hem of Benji’s robes were as much a sign of the changing season as the packs of students cramming into teahouses. Benji still wasn’t used to the robes—his had been purchased at a secondhand store, and he couldn’t tell if the fit was right or not—especially the high collar that scratched against his neck’s stubble. He did like the robes’ massive interior pockets, into which he tucked the fibbett attracter.

  This was surely a bad idea. Simon and Lucy were the human—he hoped they were human—embodiment of “up to no go.” Was there a penalty for supplying magical items to people who happened to use them for nefarious purposes? Maybe he could claim ignorance of the twins’ intentions.

  To that end, he decided he wouldn’t ask them any further questions about what they wanted the item for. As long as he didn’t have to know about it, and no one ended up being carnivorized by a swarm of fibbetts, all was well.

  Benji took a peek in each teashop he passed, looking for one he might enjoy later. Though from the outside they didn’t look all that different, students often fiercely debated their merits, and he tried to pick up on the subtle differences. Some were obviously quieter and better suited for studying, while others sent forth a potent smell that could only be a plantworking on the tea, designed to improve the level of conversation. Others were too loud, or served tea on the cheap from giant jugs rather than individual pots. There seemed to be a teahouse on every corner and in every alley, some even tucked into the first floor of student dorms. While plenty of taverns also spilled out onto the streets, the ratio of establishments where the primary drink was tea to businesses pumping out mead probably spoke well of the university’s populace in general.

  From one anxiety to another, Benji’s attention turned from the likely impending fibbett-related disaster to his first metalworking class. The class didn’t have a textbook, which meant they would either be overloaded with practical lessons, or expected to take frantic notes as the professor scrawled concepts on a blackboard.

  He wished all his classes could be like plantworking. Nella had spent the better part of five minutes complimenting his tubers’ growth when he brought them in for evaluation in his second class. Hearing from a classroom assistant that he wasn’t a complete failure felt like a single brick in the foundation of his new confidence.

  He was almost positive that this brick would be pulverized as soon as he got into metalworking and molten iron started flying around.