the roof of the headmaster’s house, and then quietly slipped out of bed.

This was it: the first day that he was expected to learn from—rather than scrub—the blackboards. The thought carried Henry through morning chapel, where the other boys stared when Adam sat silently in his seat as everyone else rose for prayer. It carried Henry until breakfast, where he was too nervous to eat anything besides a piece of dry toast.

“Bacon?” Valmont simpered, pushing the plate across to Henry.

“No, thank you.” Henry shook his head, while Valmont shook with laughter.

“Didn’t I tell you?” Valmont hooted to Theobold, who sat by his side. “None of them will eat bacon. The other two are religious about it, but you know why the servant boy won’t?”

“Why?” Theobold asked, and Henry felt himself wondering the same thing.

“Because,” Valmont crowed, gasping for breath through his hysterics, “because he used to sleep in the barn with the pigs. Feels sorry for them.”

Theobold smiled nastily at this news.

“You know that isn’t true, Valmont,” Henry said, his cheeks burning.

“Now, now, Grim, there’s no need to be ashamed,” Valmont drawled, as though there were a very great need to be ashamed indeed. “You needn’t be embarrassed that you came to think of that old potbelly sow as your mother, seeing as how you haven’t got any parents.”

Henry banged his teacup down onto the table—hard. Despite the cup being mostly dregs, liquid poured over the side, soaking the tablecloth.

“Manners, manners, Grim,” Theobold said, “or we’ll send you back to the barn.”

“Blast!” Rohan said. He’d just upset the pitcher that sat between himself and Theobold, sending a tidal wave of pulpy orange juice onto Theobold’s half-full plate.

“You oaf !” Theobold sneered.

“Frightfully sorry,” Rohan said, calmly forking up a bite of eggs. “I’m just not used to having to serve myself at meals.”

At this, Adam snorted so loudly that Valmont asked if he were actually related to pigs, at which point a proper food fight might have broken out if the second-year monitor hadn’t come over to see what was the matter.

By first lesson, Henry was in a foul mood. Valmont and Theobold had nicknamed Henry and his roommates the Three Little Pigs, and sat in the row of desks behind them, alternately oinking and snickering.

Henry could hardly enjoy the sensation of sitting at the handsome wooden desk, or the way the latticed windows bounced sunlight onto the strange instruments that sat on the master’s table.

The other students whispered to one another:

“Do you think we’ll just use textbooks or also do practical lessons?”

“I heard they broke a boy’s leg last year for a demonstration.”

“I heard that too. Except it was his arm.”

“Rubbish. We’re going to learn to brew poisons.”

“That’s rot. Where do you think we are, magic school?”

“Yeah, I guess not poisons. But maybe antidotes.”

Suddenly, it dawned on Henry that his first lesson was medicine—with Sir Frederick! A sense of relief washed over him, and he was finally able to ignore Valmont and Theobold’s mocking.

“We’ve got Sir Frederick!” Henry told Adam.

“All right, of course we have. It’s on the schedule,” Adam said.

“No.” Henry shook his head, realizing that Adam and Rohan sat the exam with hundreds of others and hadn’t met the chief examiner as he had. “Well, I know. I mean, he’s brilliant. He’s the one who let me sit the exam even though—”

The room quieted as Sir Frederick burst through the door, carrying an armload of bedsheets.

“Good morning, boys,” Sir Frederick said kindly, his master’s gown swishing neatly behind him. The boys stared as their teacher made his way up the center aisle, deposited the bundle of sheets onto his lectern, and turned to face them, hands clasped behind his back.

“I am Sir Frederick, and welcome to Beginner’s Medicine. You might recognize me as chief examiner from last May, but as some of you know, I am also medicine master here and head of second year. So you’d best try to get on my good side, since the lot of you will be stuck with me for a long while.”

Sir Frederick began to pace, jumping right into that day’s lesson.

“Now. The Code of Chivalry requires you to ‘defend those in need.’ In this course, we will study science, and we will do so practically. I will lecture, and then you will roll up your sleeves and learn by doing.”

“Told you it was practical,” Henry overheard a boy whisper.

“Medicine concerns the assessment of and defense against disease and pain,” Sir Frederick continued. “Hundreds of years ago, the Knights Templar watched