The easy part of the plan was to skip class. The hard part was figuring out what to do with the short amount of time she had to prepare. Her spellbook was full of minor spells, basic spells, simple spells, and nearly useless spells. It was all novice stuff because, well, that was what she was, a novice. Until she graduated, there were certain spells she wasn’t even allowed to scribe.

She considered a few options. She wanted people to know about the spies, right? But going to the guards was worse than useless. What she needed was a bunch of eye-witnesses. Given that no alarms went off, these spies seemed to have keys to most of the doors.

Mirian went to the hall where the spy would later walk down. There was a notice posted: No admittance without a glyphpass, no trespassers. Dangerous animals beyond this door. It then showed a little stick figure getting eaten by a simply drawn bog lion. Pretty clear stuff. The door was solid wood, reinforced with steel rivets, each with a minor toughness enchantment. The most elaborate thing was the handle and lock. The door required a glyphkey, and only a key with both the matching glyphs and ridges would work. Otherwise, Mirian was pretty sure it would trigger an alarm. The nice thing about the stone corridor was that it was long, and there were no side doors.

She studied the lock. She needed a way to jam it without triggering the alarm. That last part was tricky; she wasn’t quite sure what caused that. Fortunately, she was an artificer. She’d looked at hundreds of designs, and Torres had had them figure out what glyphs were missing in various devices using just math and spell theory. She sketched out the glyphs she could see, then hurried over to the Artificer’s Tower.

There, she found one of the labs that wasn’t in use. All the supplies were locked away in cabinets, but what she was after were the books. There were design books that just were full of blueprints. She found one and flipped through it. Engine, basic. Flame cloak. Gauntlet, protective. Illuminations. Ah, here it is: Lock, magical. She carefully analyzed the mana channels, then flipped to the front of the book for ‘alarm.’ After careful analysis, she figured there were only a few cheap ways to fit the alarm to the lock. A lot of the glyphs in the device were flux glyphs, so they would change functions if paired together. That left a few options. The alarm was probably triggered magnetically, she decided. Most lock-picking tools were steel, and a fake key would be steel, so—hey, it made sense. The glyphs on the proper key would create a circuit that bypassed the thin flow of mana in the ward, while the other glyphs would match up with the proper symbols and create another mana circuit that magnetically unlocked the door.

Well, that was easy, then. She just needed a nonmagnetic metal. Brass would do the trick.

She went over to the Academy metal shop that she would be visiting in a few days to start on her spellrod and scooped up a pile of brass shavings from the shop floor. The steward there looked at her funny, but whatever. She pulled out her spellbook and cast phantom magnet to check the filings. It turned out to be a good idea, too. Small bits of steel had gotten mixed in. She discarded them, and hurried off with her prize.

By that time, class was close to getting out. She hoped no one else was trying to use the door, and that maintenance would forgive her for making yet another mess. She stuffed the filings into the lock with her hands, giving herself a nasty metal splinter in the process. It was worth it, though. She figured the wards also probably triggered if mana flows brushed them the wrong way, but it had no such safety for just physically shoving junk into the mechanism.

She felt a small burst of pride at her accomplishment. Then she ran off to hide just outside the ecology classroom.

Professor Viridian’s voice was droning on through the door. She could just make out that he’d just gotten to the positive feedback cycles of the ecosystem scenario he was describing, which meant the lecture was coming to a close. She moved closer to the stairs, stepping softly so her boots didn’t make any noise on the stone tiles. When she listened, she could hear someone coming up the stairs.

Mirian waited, heart pounding, until she heard the bell ring. She peeked around the corridor, and sure enough, it was the cloaked figure, heading for the door. “HEY!” she shouted, and the man jumped and did a sort of half-turn. His skin was pale, hair blond, and his features looked very Akanan. “What are you doing? That corridor is forbidden! Hey!” The man, though startled, ignored her and went for the door. No doubt he figured once he was through it, it would leave the stupid shouty girl behind looking stupid, and there’d be no alarms to give him away. He quickly stuffed his key in the lock—or tried to. Desperately, he tried three more times, before he whirled and turned, a look of fury on his face.

“Hey, someone! This guy is trying to break into the myrvite kennels! Hey!” Mirian called. And the timing was perfect: ecology class was just getting out. People were heading to the stairwell anyways. Dozens of students were gathering. “Someone get Professor Viridian!” she shouted.

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The spy reached into his cloak and pulled out a wand.

“Watch out!” Mirian called, and ducked around the corner. There was the roar, crackle, and flash of a lightning spell going off. Screams erupted as students pushed past each other to flee. One boy had gotten hit, and was convulsing on the ground.

Professor Viridian walked around the corner, spellbook open. He didn’t say anything, but the spy stopped his advance, hesitating.

“It’s a lightning wand,” Mirian said to him.

Viridian smiled and said, “Thank you, my dear, I know.”

The spy raised his wand, and another bolt of lightning cracked out, only to suddenly vanish.

Oh damn! Mirian thought. It was rare to watch anyone deploy counter-magic. Usually, it was stupid; there were so many spells out there, and you basically had to start casting the counter-spell version of their spell as they started casting theirs. But wands could only churn out the exact same spell over and over.

Another bolt fizzled into nothingness. Then a wave of force from Viridian bowled the man over, sending him, his key, his wand, and his cloak all flying backward.

“Get a healer,” Viridian said, bending over to check the boy who’d been hit. “And you,” he told the spy. “Don’t move. I’d rather not hurt you, but I will if I have to.”

Mirian felt a surge of triumph. She also felt bad for the boy who’d gotten hit and the two girls who’d been smashed into the wall as the crowd panicked and fled. But she’d done it. She’d stopped one of the spies, and done it in front of so many people that everyone knew. There was no covering that up.

She took her next risk then. Instead of rushing to Enchantments to go take the exam, she stayed behind. Professor Eld was a jerk, but with Viridian backing her up, she was sure she could get him to give her a makeup exam. It was, after all, Academy policy, even if Eld tried to weasel out of it. “I saw the whole thing,” she told Viridian. “I can tell the guards everything.”

And she did. The guards looked annoyed by the whole thing, but they took statements from both her, Viridian, and several other students who stayed behind. Viridian examined the glyphkey he had and said it was genuine and asked the guards to figure out how he’d acquired it.

The spy didn’t say anything as they searched him, but Mirian watched as they seized his wand and looked for any arcane catalysts that could help him spellcast. They took a knife off him and a scroll case, then shackled him with a force spell from their wands and marched him off to the prison.

“I wanted to stay and do the right thing,” she told Viridian after. “But… well, now I’ll have missed most of my Enchantments exam. It’s only a fifty minute class, and there’s no way—”

“Don’t worry,” he said kindly. “I’ll make sure Professor Eld schedules a makeup exam.” Then he rolled his eyes. “He hasn’t changed the format of it in a decade, he’ll just need to fill out a form. Spend some time in the garden. It’ll do you good to relax,” he said.

“Thank you, professor,” Mirian said. And she did just that. The gardens north of the building were well tended, and beautiful to walk through. Even as the winter solstice approached, the sigil bees were buzzing, and various hardier plants like the rosemary were flowering. A few of the less potent myrvites dotted the garden, like sparkleberry, though it didn’t have berries this time of year. Most of the brushes and trees were evergreens of some type, so it was still lush and beautiful.

It was exactly what Mirian needed. Time to breathe. Time to relax. When it was nearly time to start classes, she found a small bench beneath a pagoda. It was sheltered from view by the surrounding bushes, and there was no one around. She opened up her satchel and got out the second, smaller satchel she’d lifted from the first spy.

The scroll that had fallen out last time was in there. In a second pouch inside it, she found a string of coral beadcoins, twelve silver drachms, two decadrachms, and a gold doubloon. Her eyes ballooned. Forget taking out a loan, this was tuition, rent, supplies, and fine dining for the whole year! Heck, she could send money back to her parents. Well, if it mattered, she thought. She stashed it back in the small compartment, checking to see if anyone had seen. Carrying that kind of money made her nervous. It wasn’t much for someone like Nicolus, probably, but it was more than she’d ever had at once.

In another compartment was a set of glyphkeys and a lock-picking set. The keys were unlabeled, but it looked a lot like the one that went to Myrvite Studies. They certainly belonged to the Academy. In the final pouch was a rounded stone covered in glyphs. It was small enough to fit in a pocket. She peered at the glyphs. A lot of them had to do with location. Another had to do with electromagnetism, and—

Mirian paused. The pouch it had came from had a wire weave running through it. Oh shit, she thought. Suddenly, she knew what the stone was. It was a seeker-stone. They were used to track things. She panicked and hurled the stone as far into the bushes as she could, closed up the satchel, then hurried away from the area.

As she hurried toward the Artificer’s Tower for class, she realized the small metal weave probably prevented the tracking stone from being detected until it was deployed and that she could have just put it back in the pouch, but it was probably for the best she’d gotten rid of it. She didn’t know the spell that could locate it, but was sure the Akanan spies had a wand or artificer’s device that could home in on it. The field of divination had all sorts of tricks in it she didn’t know, so better safe than sorry. The last thing she wanted was to end up in a jail cell again. Four days was agony. Getting caught at the start of a cycle? She didn’t know if she could stand it. And given that Captain Mandez was willing to abuse prisoners by withholding water and blankets, she could imagine if she got imprisoned without the knowledge of the magistrate, a lot worse could happen to her.

She made her way into the building and headed for her class.