numbers and ledgers and everything about banking. He’d taken the Knightley Exam without telling his parents, and when he got in, they’d had no choice but to let him go.
“The way I see it, Grim,” Adam said cheerfully, “is that you’re at Knightley to find your life, and I’m here to run away from mine.”
Henry didn’t deny it. And when the train pulled into the Avel-on-t’Hems station an hour later, the boys had become fast friends.
Knightley Academy didn’t look like an elite school for young aristocrats. In fact, it rather reminded Henry of a ramshackle country estate built by a slightly eccentric duke. The buildings were a mishmash of styles: flying buttresses topped with thatch, turrets on innocent-looking wooden cottages, mansard roofs, and ivy-covered brick, all connected by a series of cobblestone paths that threaded through a grassy quadrangle complete with an absurd hedge maze that came only waist high.
Henry and the other first years were crowded together in an echoing, tapestry-hung chamber outside the doors to the Great Hall. Servants wearing Knightley school livery had met them at the station and taken their bags, and Henry had felt disoriented playing the role of the student for the first time in his life. The disorientation, Henry noted, staring nervously at a bleak battle scene depicted on one of the centuries-old tapestries, still hadn’t fully left.
“Hey, Grim,” Adam said, nudging Henry in the side. “What do you think is going on?”
“Haven’t a clue,” Henry whispered nervously, and at that moment, the vast carved doors were flung open.
A tall, pallid gentleman in an impeccable tweed suit surveyed Henry and the other first years, his enormously bushy eyebrows knitted together in a frown. The man wore a master’s cap and gown, and his jaw was peppered with dark stubble. This was a man, Henry thought, who wouldn’t be caught dead believing anything printed in a tabloid magazine.
“I am Lord Havelock,” the man barked, his voice stern and deep, as if daring any of the boys to whisper. “I am master of military history, and head of your year. If there are any problems, you will be dealing with me. I trust you boys won’t be too much trouble, but then again, I am often accused of being an overly optimistic man.”
Lord Havelock clasped his hands behind his back and once again glowered at the first years in what Henry was already starting to think of as the Havelook of Doom.
“Now,” Lord Havelock continued, “I am about to ask you to step into the Great Hall and sign the school’s Code of Chivalry. This is a code of honor that you must not break without expecting to suffer great consequences. If you do not wish to sign, simply hand me your pen and you will be sent home on the next train. If you do wish to sign, your signature is a solemn vow to live your life here at Knightley according to the Code. Stealing, lying, cheating, wandering the corridors after curfew, and dishonoring schoolmasters are grounds for instant expulsion. As first years, you are also restricted from having female visitors other than members of your direct family, especially in your rooms. Do not test me, gentlemen. I have excellent powers of deduction.”
With a final Havelook of Doom, Lord Havelock snapped for the boys to follow, and turned on his heel, gown billowing behind him as he strode away.
Henry shuffled along with the crowd of students, his stomach a reservoir of nerves. Lord Havelock was not a man whose bad side Henry ever wanted to see. And yet, something told him it was inevitable.
But Henry’s misery was quickly forgotten once he got a look at the Great Hall. The hall was incredible, at least twice the size of the Great Hall back at the Midsummer School. The walls, made of thick wooden paneling, held flickering gaslight sconces and ancient shields that bore the liveries of legendary noble lineages. An immense fireplace almost as large as the doorway loomed at the far end of the hall, with two jousting lances crossed above the mantle. And carved into the mantelpiece was the inscription: A true knight is fuller of bravery in the midst, than in the beginning, of danger.
The quotation sounded like something Professor Stratford would have said, and the thought of him so close by, settling into his rooms in the headmaster’s manor house, lessened Henry’s anxiety.
“Hey, Grim,” Adam whispered. “Spot your family’s crest on the wall yet?”
Henry rolled his eyes. “No, but I’ve