Chapter 12
The Letter
The letter said three things.
First: his name. Not the name he'd given the Dustwalker Guild when Seff
hired him. Not the abbreviated version he used on his labor card. His
full name â€" the one the monks at the monastery had given him when he was
left on their steps as an infant, the one he'd stopped using at eleven
because it drew questions he didn't want to answer.
Second: an address in the Heartlands. A city called Valdren's Rest, four
days' travel north. And below the address, in smaller script, the words
Royal Academy of the Arcane.
Third: Provisional acceptance, pending arrival before the semester start
date. Fourteen days.
That was it. No explanation. No sender. No indication of how anyone knew
his full name, his location, or that he existed at all.
Cyan sat with it for two days before he did anything.
He went to work. He carried crates. He ate his meals in the boarding
house common room and listened to the other residents talk about their
days and didn't contribute much. He kept the letter in his jacket pocket
and took it out every few hours and read it again as if one of the
readings would produce a sentence he'd missed.
It never did.
On the third day he went to the guild's public records room â€" a small
office off the main hall where contract histories and official documents
were filed â€" and asked the clerk if he could look at the Academy's
public admission documentation. The clerk gave him a flat look but
produced the relevant pamphlet, which was two years old and probably
hadn't been updated since.
Provisional acceptance, the pamphlet said, was the lowest tier of
Academy admission. It was designed for students whose rank was
borderline or whose background couldn't be formally verified.
Provisional students had one semester to demonstrate capability or be
expelled. No rank minimum for application. Application required a
sponsorship letter from a registered guild, noble house, or Academy
faculty member.
Cyan read that last part twice.
He had no guild membership. No noble house. No connection to any Academy
faculty. He had a labor card and a bunk in a boarding house and a mark
on his palm that ate spells.
Someone had sponsored him. Someone with Academy standing. Someone who
had done it anonymously, which meant either they didn't want to be known
or they couldn't be.
He folded the pamphlet and handed it back to the clerk.
Outside, on the guild district street, he stood for a moment and did the
math.
Going to the Academy meant leaving the only stable employment he had. It
meant four days of travel with no guaranteed return. It meant arriving
at an institution that ran entirely on rank with a null result on his
Runestone record. It meant being, by every official metric, the least
qualified person in any room he walked into.
Not going meant staying exactly where he was.
He thought about the mana-lights dimming as he passed. The spells
fizzling. The Silver-rank mage's construct flickering.
He thought about the thing in the dark of the collapsed dungeon.
Patient. Waiting.
He thought about the seven lines on his palm and the way they pulsed
when he slept, slow and steady, like something that had made a decision
and was comfortable with it.
Whatever was happening to him was going to keep happening whether he
went north or not. The only question was whether he understood it when
it did.
He went back to the boarding house. He told the landlord he was leaving
at the end of the week. He found Seff at the dock and told her the same.
Seff looked at him for a long moment.
'The Academy,' she said.
'Provisional.'
Another pause. 'You'll be the lowest ranked person there.'
'Probably.'
She made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh. 'Don't get expelled in the
first week.'
'I'll try,' he said.
He meant it.