The dead librarian's quarters smelled of leather-bound secrets and slow decay.
Moonlight bled through the leaded glass windows, fracturing into jagged sapphire shards across the oaken desk where the ledger lay open. Sam touched the most recent entry with a gloved finger, the ink still faintly damp beneath his fingertip. Professor Halric, Argent Academy. Replacement completed on the night of the crescent moon. Subject exhibited 97% neural compliance during final calibration.
Edward leaned over his shoulder, his breath warm against Sam's neck. "That's dated yesterday." His usual playful lilt had vanished, replaced by something hollow.
Sam turned the parchment page carefully, the vellum whispering like a dying man's last confession. Thirty-six other names stared back at them in meticulous script, each accompanied by clinical observations that made his stomach tighten:
Lady Celine de Montfort - Vocal replication at 92% accuracy. Recommend additional practice with familial idioms.
Bishop's chief steward - Motor functions require monthly recalibration. Left hand tremors persist.
Gatekeeper Henrik - Memory integration successful but emotional affect too flat. Scheduled for rework.
Then Edward's hand clamped down on his wrist hard enough to bruise.
Edward Locke - Memory integration incomplete. Awaiting final component. Prime candidate for Crowning.
The accompanying sketch showed a figure in a crow-feather mantle holding up a gear-shaped key, its teeth precisely rendered. The artist had captured Edward's exact smile—but the eyes behind the mask were all wrong. Too still. Too empty.
Sam's forensic mind automatically catalogued the discrepancies: *Ink slightly faded compared to adjacent entries. Paper fibers disturbed here—page reread often. Sketch added later, different hand.* But all his training couldn't explain why Edward's face had gone the color of spoiled milk.
"That's impossible," Edward whispered. "I've never—"
A floorboard creaked in the hallway.
Sam snapped the ledger shut just as the door groaned open. Headmaster Orlan stood silhouetted against the torchlight, his shadow stretching like spilled ink across the floor. "The library is closed to students after midnight." His gaze lingered on the ledger in Sam's hands. "Especially to those who haven't yet learned which secrets are worth the cost of knowing."
The Sword Lesson
Dawn found them in the training yard, where Master-at-Arms Galric's blade came down like a headsman's axe.
Sam sidestepped, his muscles screaming from yesterday's bruises. He focused on Galric's stance—the slight favoring of the right leg, the barely perceptible hitch in his swing when he pivoted. *Old injury. Left knee. Poorly set.* He feinted high, then swept low where the armor joint gaped.
Steel rang against cobblestones as Galric's sword clattered to the ground.
"Lucky guess," the master-at-arms spat, rubbing his shoulder.
Across the yard, Edward wasn't faring as well. His borrowed sword described frantic arcs through the morning mist as he backpedaled from Ser Aldric's onslaught. The nobleman fought with the cruel precision of someone who'd been killing since childhood, his blade flickering like a serpent's tongue.
Edward's sword hit the stones for the third time that hour, earning jeers from their assembled classmates.
"You fight like a concussed poet," Aldric sneered, pressing the tip of his rapier to Edward's throat.
Blood welled around the steel as Edward grinned up at him. "And you smell like a concussed poet's laundry."
The laughter that followed was severed by the deep, resonant tolling of the academy's great bell.
One. Two. Three.
Sam's pulse stuttered. The same measured cadence that had marked Lord Gregor's death.
The Servant's Key
She came to them in the scriptorium as evening bled into night, her modern glasses catching the candlelight in fractured halos. Without a word, she pressed something cold and metallic into Sam's palm—a gear-shaped key, its teeth a perfect match for the sketch in the ledger.
"The heart chamber," she whispered, her voice fraying at the edges. "Below the old alchemy wing. They're building something that shouldn't exist."
Then the candle guttered out.
When light returned, she was gone, leaving only the scent of lavender and something acrid beneath it—gunpowder