Spycraft Academy by B. Miles (sites to read books for free .txt) 📗

and to the right, and like him, nobody else was truly taking stock of the rest of the group.

"I said look at the group!" Hilda's loud voice dropped to a deep, menacing octave.

Sam jumped and swiveled his head, looking at the others without truly peering close at them. He was pretty sure that every one of the fifty people he was standing with jumped as well.

"It seems to me that we are already having trouble following directions. Well, I'll beat that out of you in the next month!"

His eyes scanned past Delcan, and when he realized that the other man was staring at him, his eyes flicked back. Under normal circumstances, he would have never looked a noble in the eye, but being lumped in with all of them made it seem like everybody was on a level playing field. But he didn't look away either, something like a dare clawing at his stomach.

Sam should have ignored Delcan. He still didn't know how strict the school was against things like harassment of a little nobody, perpetrated by a big somebody. After a moment, Delcan looked away. There had been nothing particularly hostile in the man's gaze, but there was something there that wasn't friendly, either. He'd been sizing Sam up.

"Good, good, yes. Very good. Now! Sit down, all of you!"

"In the sand?!" One of the girls huffed.

"Would you rather sit in a pool of your own blood, heathen?!" Hilda's eyes blew wide open, and she stabbed toward the ground with her finger. "Sit your skinny ass on the ground now!"

It was then that Sam noticed the scars on her hands. They were so faded that they must have been incredibly old—thin lines on the sides of each palm, traveling up her wrists, her forearms, her triceps, and disappearing under her armored tunic.

They were too symmetrical to be battle scars. Ritualistic, then. Her accent was too foreign for him to pinpoint, which meant that her people didn't often travel to the capital. She might have been from the forbidden North, but the people across the border had white hair, like Mode. She was dark-featured and judging by her general lack of clothing in the middle of autumn, probably from somewhere far more north than where Mode hailed from.

Sam obeyed her orders and got on the ground with the rest of his class, folding his legs under him. Hilda couldn't have been a very good spy with the way she stomped along the sand, her voice bouncing off every surface in the room. Then again, maybe not every teacher was specialized in the art of subtlety.

"I will tell you a truth, and it is not up for discussion," Hilda said, pacing in front of the group like an eager bear. "You are first years. Untrained. Scrawny. Ignorant. In need of protection from all that might harm you. Useless, unworthy, and weak."

Sam bit his tongue. She was talking to the whole group, he reminded himself, not just him.

"To my people, you are not worthy of any sort of consideration until you reach the age of twenty-five. Then, you would prove yourselves ready for battle before you are acknowledged as a true adult. All of you are about five years away from that, which means that you are children. Children need to be directed, honed, given instruction, and above all, if they wish to survive, they must listen to those who are charged with their care. They must be nurtured before they're allowed to act as if they are grown."

Somebody in the group muttered and Sam looked over to see Delcan bending his head to speak quietly in another girl's ear. Hilda was still talking, much too loud to be able to hear him.

"I, Hildralitum lo bek Morgat, have been charged with nurturing you. Which means that if you die, I will find a necromancer to summon you from the dead so that I may kill you again. It means that if you do not obey me, I will drag you into the quad, kicking and screaming, and then cane you bloody in front of the whole damn school. It means that I will force you to work as a unit to better your chances of survival. And it also means that if any harm comes to any of you, it will be by my hand or my command, and not anyone else's. If you pledge to follow my instructions, then you will have my protection and my favor. One toe out of line, and it's the cane for you."

She stopped pacing and faced the group fully, her hands on her hips and her legs spread wide. "Do you agree?"

The group echoed an affirmative answer and Hilda growled—actually growled like an animal. "Do my ears deceive me?! Am I addressing a bunch of milky-eyed, loose-lipped, lowland whores, or am I addressing warriors?!"

Drina giggled beside him and whispered, "I like her."

The group shouted 'yes!' at her that time, and she seemed to be satisfied, for she continued.

"Rule one: When I put a weapon in your hand and point you at something or someone, you attempt to kill it. Rule two: You are not actually allowed to kill anyone, so I will stop you in your bloodlust before you actually succeed. Rule three: You will not use that magical hoo-ha in this class—if you have to rely on something you were given in order to succeed, then you will have nothing to rely on when it is taken away. As the great General Omathson once said, the swiftest path to defeat is strategizing for a knife fight when the enemy has brought a bow. And rule number four: If I am speaking, you will shut your whore mouth and listen to every word I say as if I were one of your imaginary lowland spirits. If I am speaking of the shit I took this morning, I expect you to hang onto every word of my glorious recounting. You!"

She whirled on the group and pointed right