That morning, Simon was offered a feast, but he forced himself to eat sparingly. He’d starved before, and the body did not like to switch from famine to feast too quickly. Still, he felt bad for leaving so much of his tiny banquet untouched. He was given a sweet porridge with dates and plums, nut-encrusted honey breads, and every other treat that seemed appropriate for breakfast.

He was given watered wine, too, which was something he hadn’t been given before now. Even a few sips of that were hard on his young body, though, and he was halfway to drunk by the time they gave him a tour of this side of the compound. It wasn’t so much of a plaza as the other side had been. It was more like a series of stone footpaths between oases of flowers and trees.

Whereas the other side of the pyramid had been dominated by initiates and acolytes, as well as the tightly packed buildings that supported them, this side was closer to a garden. It wasn’t claustrophobic, but the area was still ringed with two- and three-story buildings and the wall was still behind them.

The pyramid still dominated the skyline, of course, but it was like the other side of the compound was a no-frills military school, and this one was a luxurious college campus, even if they both shared the same design cues. One thing they didn’t share, though, was the people. There were no brown-robed students anywhere, and precious few black or gray robes to be seen either.

This was a place of color and very nearly the sole domain of the Magi, which made Simon that much more interested in it. He wasn’t sure if this tour was supposed to be a carrot or if he’d be taking the next step of his training here, but either way, this felt like progress, and it mollified him slightly.

As they crossed the grounds, his minder told him what most of the buildings did, but he was tipsy enough that it was hard to give her his entire attention, but he got the gist of it. This was a research facility, that one was a temple, and those two buildings were libraries for the initiated. Even though he didn’t ask, she also explained that the Magi didn’t live in the district the same way that the acolytes did. They owned homes in the Noble Quarter or other fashionable parts of the city.

Simon didn’t need her to tell him that, of course. He’d already figured that out through his own research efforts when he was still a merchant. Still, even if that was something a street rat like Nijam might have known, Simon didn’t interrupt her. He was eager to learn all he could before they reached their destination, and she didn’t disappoint.

She was trying to make him feel special, and along the way, she explained many things, like the way he should address those Magi he happened to cross paths with and the fact that acolytes were forbidden from most of those buildings, except for those who had reached the apprenticeship stage of their journey and were running errands for their masters. That was interesting, but Simon doubted he’d be getting a master for a good long time.

At this rate, I’ll be an adult again, he thought petulantly.

Simon was escorted for several minutes until they finally walked into a large yellow building. There, he was handed off to another minder after a brief conversation where they spoke in a tongue he wasn’t supposed to understand.

“This one can only barely read. He’s not the fastest learner, but not the slowest either,” the woman who had been escorting him explained as they talked about him like he wasn’t there. “I don’t think he’ll give you any trouble, but I don’t think he’s one you’ll be able to trade for any favors either.”

“Pity,” the man said, regarding Simon with a jaundiced eye, “there’s many a Magi looking to claim the rights to a talented apprentice, but there are so few to go around.”

“Well, I understand this one was raised on the street, but he’s learning to read and write as quickly as the rest,” she answered with a shrug. “Maybe you can speed his progress.”

“Well, if he’s any slower than the last one you brought me, I’ll beat him until he has to be healed again,” the man in gray said with a laugh.

That was a bad sign, but Simon focused on the bookshelves and the writing desks of this place. It wasn’t quite a classroom or a library. It was more like a scriptorium. The Unspoken had a whole wing of their library just set up to copy a few of the more important books, so the existence of one here didn’t surprise him.

Still, he didn’t think he’d be allowed to read and copy anything interesting. He didn’t really even understand why this was the next link in the chain of becoming a Magi. Fortunately, the new minder didn’t leave him in suspense long.

“Do you know why you’re here?” the man asked almost as soon as his previous minder departed.

“To be a Magi?” Simon ventured in an unsure voice.

“Broadly correct, but still useless as an answer,” the man sneered. “You have learned the basics of reading and writing, and now you are here to practice both until you are no longer a danger to yourself or to those around you.”

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“Why would reading or writing be dangerous to—” Simon’s question was cut short as he was cuffed across the face. He’d known it to be a stupid question, but he hadn’t quite expected the slap.

This is probably how some of the acolytes die, he told himself as he stood there trying to act unsure. They piss off assholes like this.

“Magic is as powerful as it is fickle,” the man said with exaggerated slowness as if Simon was hard of hearing. “One wrong syllable, one wrong gesture, or one incorrect line, and it might well be the end of you, do you understand?”

Simon nodded hastily, but only because he wanted to keep the joy from his voice. Gesture-based magic was something he definitely wanted to learn. He hadn’t been completely sure that the Murani even knew it since it was something he’d only seen a few Magi use, but if that was something he could finally unlock the secrets of here, well, then this guy could go right on treating him like dirt for as long as he wanted.

Even as Simon tried not to beam, the man proceeded to explain just how important precision was. Simon didn’t fault him for that. That was something he’d learned well during his time in the Whitecloak’s black forge. “We won’t even be learning with true words of power!” the man insisted as if Simon had asked a question. “If I gave you a single word to transcribe, you might well blow yourself to pieces!”

Simon let the man rant as long as he wanted, adding in a yes sir and a no sir where it made sense to do so as he spelled out the details. He’d had his moment in the sun, and now he was stuck here along with the other two dozen students that were already here, and his job was simple: to learn to write with precision and read with clarity.

The bruises on some of the other students told Simon everything he needed to know. Either they were getting violent with each other, or Master Dollen, as he insisted Simon call him, was every bit as short-tempered as he seemed to be.

Simon was set up on his own writing desk, and another student showed him how to sharpen a quill. Then, he was left with paper, ink, and his own devices. It seemed a poor set-up for learning anything, and judging by peeks at the students nearest to him, it was, but Simon was sure there was a reason for that, too.

Do they want us to feel inadequate? He wondered, or let the cream rise to the top.

Simon wasn’t sure. Judging by the unfamiliar faces, some of the people in this stage of the education process had been here for some time. While Simon recognized a few of the people as he should, there were many that he did not. Mentally, he tried to calculate how long Ajeem had been here and decided that it was probably a month or a month and a half.

So, some of these people have been here longer than that, Simon decided. That made sense, he supposed. It wasn’t like the Magi were running an IQ test to select candidates for their bizarre little cult. They were choosing bad eggs with every reason to be loyal to the God-King.

It was the opposite of how any decent army or university would be recruiting. So, it wasn’t surprising at all that there were some incompatible candidates that got stuck at various stages. Simon didn’t even want to think about what would happen to them eventually. It was an ugly thought, and he couldn’t imagine it would end well for people who disappointed the Magi for too long.

That left Simon with a conundrum. Should he try to push through this quickly and risk getting the wrong sort of attention? Or should he blend in and take a few beatings for failing to derperform as he pretended not to know what he was doing. Truthfully, he would love nothing more than to spend a month practicing fine Murani calligraphy. They had such a lovely, flowing style to their letters compared to the languages of the south. He would love to practice it, but that would definitely blow his cover.

That first day, all he did was scribble a bit and make a few half-hearted attempts at the letters that were displayed on the far wall. He was too busy looking at everything else to make much progress. No one seemed to expect too much of him that day, and that night, there wasn’t much in the way of bullying even, which surprised him. He remembered why very quickly as he lay there listening to crying children and the sound of other people’s nightmares.

That’s right, he reminded himself. Everyone here thinks they’ve just died recently. No wonder they have no fight in them.

The fact that at least one part of his life was going to be easier should have made Simon’s life that much easier. Instead, it made him want to leave even more. It was just too depressing, and thinking about all the trauma they’d inflicted on all these kids with a lie just made him want to blow up this whole deranged system that much more.

Simon didn’t sneak out of the place where they slept that night, but he did on almost all the nights that followed. He told himself it was a bad idea, but the combination of temptation and outrage proved far too potent for him. What was he supposed to do if they didn’t even bother to lock the door?

At first, Simon thought that part was a trap, but given that they slept in the attic and the privy was on the first floor, any of them had a perfectly reasonable explanation to leave the room at night. Simon was careful those first few nights, but the longer he stayed in this new place, the more he lingered at night in places he shouldn’t.

Soon, he was going to sleep right away, then waking up during the night and spending hours downstairs looking through books by city lights that came in through the windows. Master Dollen’s room was on the second floor, and most nights, that’s where he was, snoring away, but sometimes, when he was out, Simon would sneak in and dig through his things as well.

This made Simon very drowsy during the day and earned him a sound trashing when he fell asleep sitting up once, but mostly, this new minder left Simon alone because he was making better progress than anyone else under his tutelage. His letters were improving, but he could read whole sentences whenever he was prompted to do so without a little bit of carefully added stammers and pauses. “The Gohhd-King w-w-watches ov-ver us e-even when we slum… slum-ber, so long as we p-pray to him al-ways…” Simon sounded out one day, not even earning a smile from the dour gray-robed man.

“Better,” was all he barked before moving on.