"So"—her hand glided out, her finger tracing a vein along his firm shoulder—"I've wasted a journey here."

"Wasted?" He gave her a wry, mock-injured look.

"An unhired mercenary is somebody walking about with a sword and nowhere to stick it."

"Where is your sword?"

"Public Armory." She felt a yawn overtake her. The bed was ethereally soft and comfortable.

"You'd better go retrieve it, then." Deo's gaze pulled her drifting eyes back open. "I wish to hire you. I should also tell you who I am."

"Someone with the money to afford a mercenary, I hope."

"Yes. That. I am also Na Niroki Deo." He hadn't expected her to recognize the full title. "I'm the nephew of the premier of Petgrad."

"WELL, GO ON. Walk through it."

Raven recognized the bullying tone even before she identified the voice's owner. This wasn't the first time she'd been harassed.

The mocking command was followed immediately and inevitably by a firm hand backed by a strong arm that shoved her face-first into the corridor's stone wall. The stone was cold. It was always cold, even in summer. This was Felk, after all, the Isthmus's northernmost city, and its climate wasn't as gentle as it was rumored to be in the south.

There was nothing gentle about this place in particular. This was the Academy.

Raven didn't try to turn her head. She heard laughter and counted at least three among her assailants.

"I can't," Raven said, slowly and deliberately. She knew it did no good to show either fear or defiance.

"Of course you can," said the girl who now had her tightly pinned. The girl was called Hert, and she certainly lived up to her name. "You're a wizard, aren't you?"

"She sure thinks she is," said one of the others. More laughter followed.

"I'm not," Raven said, as steadily as before, keeping control over her fear. Discipline was key to everything. "I'm in training. Just like you."

"Oh, but you're so smart," said Hert. "So talented. You're the one who always wants the toughest exercises. If it was up to you, we'd all spend every watch studying and practicing. No sleep, no food. Not even a piss break."

It wasn't true. But Raven didn't expect the others to share her zeal. Many of the Academy's students behaved like undisciplined children. She behaved like a student who meant to graduate to greater things. Much greater things.

The hand pressed her harder. Raven's forehead and nose were now being mashed against the wall.

"I said, walk through the wall."

"I can't." Raven could barely get the words out. She tasted the wall's stone on her lips.

"Oh, come on," Hert said. "It's just a transport spell. You can do it. And we want to see." The

laughter that followed was louder and crueler.

Raven sighed. She didn't have time for this. The long day's lessons were done, but she had studying to do in her room.

Just a transport spell. That was laughable, though Raven certainly didn't join in the laughter. The Far Movement magic that opened the portals through which people and even military equipment (so the gossip went) could be moved was very powerful. Only highly skilled and specialized mages could work it, and it required more than one wizard to do it. A mage had to be present at both ends of the transport corridor; the two had to be working in perfect harmony; they had to call upon powers far beyond Raven's present abilities. And even with all these efforts, they could only open portals that were very narrow—just enough, say, for a wagon to get through—and those portals could only be sustained for a limited time.

There was no point in mentioning any of this to Hert, however.

"Do it," Hert was saying, and now her tone turned darker with the promise of impending violence. "Do it!"

There were monitors who patrolled the corridors, but none were nearby at the moment. Of course.

Raven was going to have to do something.

She sighed again, then started gathering herself. She focused her mind and reached for those forces that aided in the acts of magic. Those forces, she'd been taught, were natural and always present. It was just a matter of tapping them, though it required a certain inherent talent and a great deal of discipline. Raven possessed both those ingredients.

She felt the power move through her in a kind of giddy rush.

Suddenly a discharge of sparks burst around her head. Her unbecoming dark hair rose up on end.

The hand left her back. Someone gasped sharply.

Raven let the minor spell dissipate. At last she turned, being careful to wear an apologetic look on her somewhat homely face.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I tried but I couldn't get through the wall."

Hert, who was as large as Raven but far more muscular, retreated a step, then caught herself. It wouldn't do to show any weakness in front of her cronies. Probably she would punch Raven now, just for good measure.

But luck, finally, was on Raven's side. A monitor came around the corner at that moment, waving one of those paddles they so generously used on students' backsides. Everyone scattered. Raven made straight for her quarters.

RAVEN LEANED BACK on her stool and rubbed her burning eyes. She had no idea what time it was or how long she had been poring over her studies, and she really didn't care. She was determined not to sleep until she had mastered the lesson they'd spent the day studying.

Though there was no test scheduled for tomorrow, that was no guarantee that there wouldn't be one. Unannounced tests were the norm, not the exception for magicians in training. What was more, since the tests were often of a practical rather than a theoretical nature, failing one could be injurious, if not actually fatal.

Rising to her feet, Raven stretched and walked a few steps, all the movement her cramped cubicle would allow. Students' cubicles were designed to be utilitarian, not comfortable. Hers was barely large enough to accommodate a sleeping pallet, her study desk and stool, and a chamber pot.

There was no mirror. The Academy didn't provide one, and Raven had seen no point in purchasing one for herself. She already knew what she looked like.

Her mother had named her Raven in hopes that the girl child would grow to match her own grace and beauty. The truth was, her mother had always been very proud of her own good looks. It was her beauty that once caught the eye of a rich and powerful man of the city of Felk and moved him to relocate her from her small village home into his bed as his mistress.

She had fulfilled that role willingly and with enthusiasm for many years, until she had become pregnant. At that time, her lover "retired" her, but with a stipend that enabled her to return to her old home and set herself up comfortably without having to work.

As her looks began to fade at last, she had hopes that her daughter would blossom and follow in her footsteps.

Unfortunately, it was not to be. Raven had been a chubby baby, and rather than melting away when she matured, her baby fat solidified and grew. Despite her mother's admonishments to "stand up straight" and "arch your back, don't sit there like a lump," Raven grew from being a plump, awkward girl to being a plump, awkward young woman with stringy dark hair. She had also never grown beyond a very modest height.

Friends might have made her situation bearable, but she didn't have any. Her mother always held herself aloof and apart from the other villagers, feeling her years among the rich made her better than the rustic, rural folk she had grown up with.

The villagers responded to this attitude with undisguised scorn, which their children emulated in their own fashion by taunting, teasing, and socially debasing the young Raven every chance they got.