Iron & Ice #ONC2024

Chapter III

 The new term at the Academy begins on the first day of autumn, September 21st, exactly one month to the day after I receive my results.

By the twentieth, my trunk is packed. I'm not bringing much. I will not need clothes, for students are required to wear a uniform, so I bring only the essentials. Undergarments, wool thermals, the like. The rest of the space in my trunk is taken up with a small library of books, and enough weapons to start and finish a war in a small country. According to Lord Corvus, I cannot do without the weapons. It would look bad if he sent me without them.

Before they are packed, though, I catch a glimpse of the insignia that has been moulded into the metal just beneath the hilt of each blade. Anderson Armory. The finest weapons-makers in the empire. Even a single whetstone from them costs enough to beggar a lower-caste family.

When I try to protest the extravagance to Lord Corvus, he tells me cooly that a man in his position would provide no less for his heir, and if I do not take them, it will make him look cheap.

So, I take the weapons. It is hardly a hardship to wield them. They are the finest things I have ever seen or touched.

Into my trunk, I also slip my meager personal belongings–the blown glass writing set Teacher gifted me before our first lesson, the pressed flower Alice has given me to take with me, the jeweled dagger that was Meadow's gift to me, and the small collection of things I have brought with me from home. They have come with me all the way from Yorkshire, from the mines where I was raised.

There is the lump of crystal that Agnes found when we were playing in an abandoned mine shaft when we were little. It isn't worth anything; we tried to sell it when we found it. But no one wanted it, so we kept it. Agnes polished it until it shone, and it used to catch the light from our little fire and sparkle like it was something valuable. If the light hit it exactly right, it cast prisms on the walls and floors.

Then, there is the little, knitted bear my mother made for Davina when she was a baby. Davina has slept with it ever since–right up until the day they took her and sold her. Someday, I vow, I will give it back to her.

There are several locks of hair stored in a plain, wooden box. One belongs to Davina, one to Agnes, one to Agnes's late husband, one to my father, one to my mother. They used to hang on the wall above our fireplace, a reminder of the family we'd lost, and the family we still had. I'd left mine hanging there and kept theirs close.

My only other treasure is a slim volume of poems for children. My mother had taught us all to read from that book, and aside from our copy of the Scriptures, which we rarely remembered to read, it was the only book we'd owned.

Next to the veritable library that has been compiled for me by Lord Corvus, Teacher and Alice, it seems paltry and worn, but I treasure it anyway. Of everything I have, it is the thing I cherish the most.

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On the day of my departure, we leave early. The train to the Academy will leave at eight o'clock sharp. If we miss it, then I lose my spot at school or something. I don't know. But missing it is not an option.

Lord Corvus insists on accompanying me, and Alice comes to help the footman with my trunk. She is, after all, pretending to be my maid, although we both know she is no ordinary ladies' maid.

We ride in the House Corvus sleigh, rather than Lord Corvus's plain, black coach. The sleigh is open, as most are, designed so that Patricians can see and be seen by the very best of London society. We all are dressed accordingly, in warm, winter clothes. Lord Corvus, as always, wears all black, and he favors wool rather than velvet. His only allowance to fashion or excess is the black fur pelt draped over his shoulders.