Iron & Ice #ONC2024

Chapter VII

 After History, we have our first Spycraft class, as the other students call it-more officially, Intelligence and Counter-espionage. From the moment the class begins, half of my classmates are obsessed.

Not so much with the class itself as with Miss Honora Grace.

Miss Grace, as she instructs us to call her, starts her class by teaching us how to pick a lock. I am amazed that most of my classmates have no idea how to do so. Where I grew up, it was an essential skill. All the good hidey-holes to play in or make out in were shut behind locked doors, after all.

I'm not surprised to learn that Victra is nearly as good at picking locks as I am, but everyone is shocked when Octavia does it in half the time it takes me. Miss Grace then sets the three of us to picking dozens of locks, each harder than the last, just to see what we can do. While the rest of the class learns how to get past a simple pin-and-tumbler, we take apart everything from combination safe locks to barrel bolt locks to compression locks, one after another.

It's good fun, and a good refresher. I haven't picked a lock in years; I haven't needed to. I was too old to play in locked rooms and too young to use them as snogging spots when I left Yorkshire, and there were no locked doors in Corvus House, at least, none that I had any need to get past. My skills have gone rusty, but over our hour-long class, I warm up. By the end, I can open any of the locks Miss Grace presents us with faster than anyone.

After Spycraft, we end the day with an hour of Princess Jessamine's Classics class. She will teach two of our courses, Classics and Strategy. We'll have Strategy in the mornings, so today we start with Classics.

By the time we get to class, we're all exhausted. Most of the others seem to be treating Classics as superfluous, as a class they don't need to take seriously.

I hear Gareth Augustus mutter, "Who cares what some old, dead man thinks of the world?" as we make our way to Princess Jessamine's classroom.

"I certainly don't," Amelia Caelius quips, cozying up to him.

Octavia, who walks with me, rolls her eyes.

I have to admit, I haven't been looking forward to Classics either. It was my worst subject on our exams, and the one subject I struggled with in my lessons with Alice.

But the moment Princess Jessamine starts talking, I find I can't look away. Most of my classmates whisper or stare distractedly out the window, but for the first time in my life, I find myself caring about old, dead philosophers. For the first time, I actually listen as someone talks about metaphysics and epistemology. For the first time, I think I actually understand what those words mean.

Who knew Immanuel Kant could be so interesting? I certainly didn't.

I'm not sure if it's the subject matter that's interesting-in fact, I'm almost certain that it's not-or if it's simply that Princess Jessamine is the greatest orator I've ever heard. Alice once told me that Princess Jessamine has won nearly every oration contest hosted at court since her marriage to the king's late brother. I believe her completely.

I'm almost disappointed when the class ends. Almost. I'm so tired and hungry that it's a relief to not have to sit on a hard, wooden bench for a moment longer, no matter how interesting the class is.

When Classics ends, we are told that we'll have an hour of leisure time which we can use as we please, so long as we stay in our House's quarters.

But we have been assigned so much additional reading already that, once we return to the Wolf House tower, everyone hunkers down in the common room to work. The only class that we haven't been assigned anything for is Combat.