pushed the door open.

Professor Stratford’s suitcase sat on his bed, and the professor stood over it, folding an armload of shirts and trousers.

“Hallo, Henry,” Professor Stratford said, trying to smile cheerfully although he had just lost his job. “What did I miss?”

“I’ve been fired too,” Henry said glumly, staring at his shoes.

“But what about Knightley?” the professor urged.

Henry looked up and allowed himself to smile. “I begin in August.”

Professor Stratford let out a cheer, his armload of clothing tumbling into the suitcase in a wrinkled heap. “That’s wonderful! Fantastic! Henry, you’re going to be a knight!”

“I know,” Henry said, closing the door. “But I’ve nowhere to go until the term starts, and Sir Frederick’s worried that I won’t get on with the other boys once they find out about my background.”

“That’s easily solved,” Professor Stratford said, piling an armload of books into his suitcase.

“It is?”

“Certainly. I’m leaving on this afternoon’s train bound for Hammersmith Cross Station to try and find work as a tutor. You could, er, I mean, you’re welcome to join me.”

Henry’s face broke into a huge grin. Go to the City with Professor Stratford? Perhaps the next few months would not be so dark and doubtful after all!

“Let me just call a servant boy to pack my trunk and we’ll depart directly,” Henry joked, imitating a ridiculously posh accent.

But even though he’d meant it in jest, Henry couldn’t help thinking that his new classmates would have accents just like the one he had mocked and that, at the start of next school term, he would be in a position to order around servant boys.

Everything in his life was about to change—no, not about to; it already had. And so Henry climbed the rickety old stairs to his attic room and packed his few belongings into his falling-apart suitcase without a second thought to Sir Frederick’s peculiar forecast.

ARRIVALS AND DEPARTURES

Henry stared out the window of their compartment, watching the grass-covered Cotswolds wobble past. Clutched in his fist was a rumpled ticket labeled Midsummer Station–Hammersmith Cross Station. He’d been on the train for two hours, and in just an hour more, he and Professor Stratford would reach the City.

Eight years had passed since Henry last left the town of Midsummer, and indeed, this was the only route he’d ever traveled. When Henry was six, his orphanage had taken a day trip to visit some museums and monuments in the City, and Henry, fascinated by a famous painting he’d once seen in a book, had been left behind.

A gentleman had mistaken Henry (with his threadbare coat and worn-thin shoes) for a beggar and given him a penny “so he mightn’t go hungry.” Embarrassed, lost, and afraid, Henry had sat down on the curb outside the museum and cried.

When Henry had looked up, a police knight stood over him, wearing a coat with buttons made of brass, a gleaming peacekeeper’s sword at his side. The knight had bought Henry a hot cider to warm him up and helped him find the orphanage matron.

And now, eight years later, Henry was heading back toward the same city, no longer just a grubby orphan boy who lagged behind in the museum and got mistaken for a beggar but a soon-to-be student at Knightley. Perhaps one day he would be the kind face that comforted a lost boy, the honest police knight who settled a dispute between customer and shopkeeper, or the trusted guard of a member of the royal family. Perhaps even King Victor himself.

Next to Henry in the cramped train compartment, Professor Stratford dozed, chin tucked against his chest, a thick and scholarly book pages-down across his lap.

Henry turned his gaze back toward the passing landscape, watching the fields become smaller and the houses clump together as though they were afraid of open spaces. He watched the roads become more trafficked and the churches grow grander, with spires that seemed to stand on tiptoe, reaching toward the heavens like children stretching for the top shelf.

It was nearly six o’clock when the train shuddered into the station and Henry gently shook Professor Stratford awake.

“Kumquats or hobgoblins, please,” Professor Stratford mumbled sleepily, and Henry bit back a laugh.

“Professor? We’re here.”

As if in agreement, the train’s shrill whistle blew and a conductor out in the hall yelled, “Hammersmith Cross Station, end o’ the line. All passengers alight here.”

Professor Stratford gave an enormous and rather loud yawn, then lurched to his feet, eyes still half closed. In a sleepy stupor, he groped blindly in the air for