Page 6

The girl turned, eyes hopeful, as she heard me approach from the dock. But I was clearly not a lady from the mainland waiting for acarriage. She gave me one glance from head to toe, taking in my rustic braids and homespun tunic, and turned her back on me, not even bothering to offer to sell me a flower.

Overhead, the globes of the streetlamps had been slathered with shining mercury paint to display the new governor’s silhouette, and green-and-black bunting decorated the posts and many of the windows. In the bay, a ship with three masts stood proudly, the Emperor’s flag flapping in the wind. Several other ships bore the insignias of nearby lands.

Already, I was composing a letter home in my mind.The Emperor was in the city when I arrived,I would tell Nessie.The new governor’s inauguration meant that the streets were decorated, and people from all different lands came to visit.I would leave out how the rich couple awaiting their carriage were so rude, just as I wouldn’t mention the stench of the docks, the hazy air from the smokestacks in the factories, the crowded throng of people that overwhelmed me.

I readjusted my bag and headed uphill.

“Out o’ the way, out o’ the way!” a man with a deep voice shouted, his wagon thumping on the cobblestones. I stepped off the main street. The man’s cargo was draped in white canvas. He drew his horses up short in front of a whitewashed building a block away. Curious, I drew closer.

“Hey!” the wagoner shouted, clanging his bell in the direction of the building’s door.

People rushed out, and the man turned, whipping the canvas cloth aside to reveal his cargo. About a dozen people sat in the cart. Their backs were hunched as if their heads were too heavy to bear, and two children lay on the floor of the cart, their eyes open but their expressions blank, as if they weren’t aware of their surroundings at all. A man about Papa’s age sat near the back of the wagon, weeping.

“We have no room here,” one of the women who’d come from the building said.

“Whitesides has always taken care of Mackrimmik’s workers,” the man driving the cart said, frowning.

I peered closer, noting the clammy sheen on the people’s faces, the hollowed shadows in their cheeks, the hopelessness in their eyes. The blackened limbs they tried to hide in their shirtsleeves and beneath the hems of their pants.

“The Wasting Death,” a bystander on the street hissed, his accent like my own. My hand flew to the knotted cord at my neck, and I instinctively took a step back.

“We’re full,” the woman snapped at the cart driver. She didn’t wear the dark blue robes of an alchemist, but she did have a crucible in the crook of her arm. “Take them to the quarantine hospital,” she ordered, pointing down to the bay and the hospital on the island. The man grumbled but clucked at his horses and turned the cart back down the road.

•••

By the time I arrived at Yugen, I was exhausted from the uphill climb, and sweat had made my hair stringy. I noticed the school’s gate first. It wasn’t like the village gates in the north. Its wrought-iron doors had three runes running down the side, one in gold, one in silver, and one in copper, with the wordsYUGEN ALCHEMICAL ACADEMYetched across the top. Through the iron bars of the gate, I could see a group of brick buildings forming a square with a grassy courtyard in the middle.

My battered trunk sat on the sidewalk, skewed and scratched on one side. Carso’s friend had delivered my belongings sooner than expected, but he had merely dumped them on the ground and left.

I dragged my trunk to the gate. “Hello?” I called.

No one answered.

I tried the handle.

Locked.

“Hello?” I said again, the word coming out as a question. Surelysomeonewould open the gate. I had been told to arrive today, but not given a precise hour.

My coin purse held sixteen silvers, the result of more than a year of saving. Would it be enough for a room at an inn for the night? I didn’t have to eat...

My stomach rumbled at the thought of food.

And what would I do with my trunk? It was too heavy to carry for long, and it would be too awkward to juggle it with the tube from Papa.

A wagon clattered on the cobblestones and I jumped, recognizing the driver from earlier, when his cart was filled with the sick and dying. Now, though, his bell was silent. The cart was empty of everything but a single child-size shoe, bumping along the floor of the wagon.

THREE

Nedra

“Hello?” i calledagain, more urgency in my voice.

“What’re you doing out there?” A gruff-looking man emerged from a small cubby built into the gate on the other side of the bars.

“I’m a student,” I said, sighing in relief.

“No, you’re not. I know all the students that go here. Go on with ya.” The guard started to turn away.