Spycraft Academy by B. Miles (little readers .txt) 📕

Sam rolled his eyes and nudged Mattie aside before collapsing on his bed with a huff. "No, mission aborted, I'm afraid."

"Ugh," Drina said, blowing a curl from her face.

Sam held his palms up in defense. "It was for a good reason, I promise."

"Well, let's hear it, then," Rosin said.

"I saw a man sneaking around the back of the school. He looked suspicious, so I followed him to Mode's office. He stole something, then ran off into the forest. It looked like a packet of some sort, documents. Or a leaflet book, I'm not sure. I tried to tail him, but I lost him pretty quickly."

Nobody had anything to say to that. Sam glanced at each one of them and they all looked troubled. They probably came to the same conclusion that he did—Mode was an elite soldier, retirement didn't make him any less dangerous, and whatever was stolen from his office was important enough to risk expulsion or worse. Those documents could be classified, they could be used as blackmail, they could be anything.

"I think it was Apelles," Sam said slowly. "He was covered up completely, but he had the same build, the same height, the same gait. He moved so fast I couldn't tell for sure, but I don't trust the bastard as far as I can throw him to begin with."

The spymaster was thin, prickly, and nondescript. If he deigned to look at one of the students when talking directly to them, he angled his body away and looked down his nose at them as if they were distasteful. His eyes were piercing, almost unblinking, and they belied his abnormally calculating mind. When he explained a concept, he broke it down until it was nothing but a series of minute fundamentals, and when he offered criticism, he knew exactly what to emphasize to make his students shatter under the harshness of it. Already, he'd made three noblewomen and one nobleman weep.

"Apelles . . ." Mattie muttered, glancing at Rosin.

The blonde chewed on her thumbnail softly, silent for a few moments before answering. "Apelles Rou, arrived in the capital as a child in . . . twelve-ten-o-two, I believe. Unknown birthdate, unknown birthplace, unknown birthparents. He was on an illegal slaver vessel bound for the southern isles and confiscated by the Varin Navy. He was adopted by a captain and enrolled in the navy at sixteen before being recruited into the Academy at age twenty. His classification is redacted. He received no discharge from the shadow unit, which suggests that his current post here is a military assignment. I would guess he is a sergeant at the very least. Nothing in his file suggests he has any motivation to work against the headmaster or the school, but files commonly don't tell the whole story."

Sam's eyebrows had already crawled high on his forehead.

"Ah." Rosin rubbed the back of her neck sheepishly. "I was recruited because I have a bad habit of breaking into restricted-access information centers. I like to know about people. I um...I may have read your files too?"

Sam shook his head, more impressed than anything. Every crew needed intel, and he happened to stumble upon an organic source. Rosin was so sweet-looking that he would never have pegged her for an actual spy, but he supposed she wouldn't be here if she wasn't inclined to spy craft.

At least she wasn't here because she was inclined to assassin work.

11

The next day was tense. Sam usually woke up before dawn, but that morning, he'd been woken up by a series of noises and a flurry of movements. A platoon of unfamiliar people had let themselves into the first-year dormitories before the sun had attempted any sort of ascension. They barged into the rooms simultaneously rather than one by one, and Sam knew this because he heard several girlish shrieks just as he bolted up.

Sam kept his knife under his pillow. He'd never been safer in his life while inside the Academy, but old habits die hard. When his door thundered open, his knife was spinning in the air before his eyes were properly cracked open.

The man who dodged it from the doorway did so with graceful ease, and it pinged off the stone wall behind him. Silently, he stalked into Sam's room and ordered him and Fletch into the hallway with the rest of the bleary-eyed first years.

Things only got odder after that.

The strange people searched the dorms—they might have been guards, they might have been military, but they could have easily been fifth years as well. Nothing was found. They left wordlessly and without apology for the sheared mattresses and pillows, the papers strewn across the floor, and the trunks that were raided.

The walk to breakfast was silent. The people dressed in black were stalking the hallways like prowling beasts and Sam could feel the eyes of dozens more hidden from view and watching. He hadn't taken anything from Mode's office, but he had information, and that was enough to make him feel like he had something to hide. He might have alerted somebody about what he saw last night, but he knew what happened to those who brought crimes to the attention of authorities. They were the first suspects.

Sam might be safer now than he ever was on the streets, but he didn't doubt a school full of military-trained assassins, thieves, and spies would have no qualms with torturing Sam to make sure he wasn't the perpetrator.

Walking through the eerily quiet halls felt like a march to the gallows. He kept his head down, they all did, and he didn't feel his heartbeat calm until he was in the wide mess hall at his usual table. Rosin sat with them for the first time that morning. She admitted she usually ate by herself in the library. She must have felt as on-edge as the rest of them to yank her pretty nose out of a book.

Rosin hadn't done anything wrong, but the soldiers or guards or whatever they were