I nudged Mailyn with my palm. She sighed, stretched, and hopped from her bunk without word, scooting in next to me on my own bunk directly below hers.

"Which lesson're we at?" she asked with a yawn.

"Twenty-two." I showed her the page.

"A ree… rhilu mu cinnealyi mis… um. A rhilu mu cinnealyi mis. A trip with my family?"

I nodded. "The lesson note says… de tisch… uh… this lesson introduces the, um… priu-congrekatif… past-compound tense? And geography."

"Oh goodie," she said with a yawn. "Geography."

Unlike many incoming Scamps, Mailyn and I had both already known how to read coming into the Collegium. Fortunately for us, Perditalog and Gionian use the same alphabet, though the Perditans use five different accent marks and Gionians only have the one. Still, that four accents was a pretty minor change, and the two of us worked our way through the worn Perditalog workbook that otherwise sat unused at the library nook. Aldo was still catching up, but it would be unfair to say he couldn't read. The only reason he wasn't advancing faster was because he refused to partake in early morning studying in our bunkroom.

Mailyn still had most of her rustic brogue when speaking Gionian, but her Perditalog accent was, if anything, a bit better than mine. After just three weeks, we were capable of simple conversations and could understand most sentences when spoken slowly. I had the benefit of the three spoken languages I already knew to rely upon, whereas Mailyn was just freakishly smart…

It probably comes across as ludicrous that two children could become mostly conversant in a language in three weeks. To be sure, it took me longer to pick up Kronojic when I was tutored in that, but the full-immersion experience accelerated things. I also like to think that Mailyn and I pushed one another along, beyond the already-ludicrous pace that Scamps were expected to learn at.

This isn't an idle boast. Assuming that you haven't attended the Collegium or one of the 'big three' academies for thaumaturgy, assuming you're a reasonably well-educated merchant or tradesperson, I want you to imagine the smartest person you ever met in school. If you don't come from the city, imagine the smartest kid in your whole town. Now realize that they would be, at best, an average student at the Collegium - and quite possibly lower. And Mailyn Watt, the daughter of itinerant Wext farmers, a girl sold to the Collegium for five octavos, was smarter than that. Much smarter. And I'm not so bad, myself.

Mailyn and I made our way through the next two lessons in the book, going through them twice, applying our memory techniques on our second go-through so we wouldn't forget the vocabulary. When I practiced mnemonics, I used an 'imaginarium' (as Mrs. Varizelli called it). It was fashioned after the only suitable place I knew of when I first received instructions in memory - my mother's library, with its several mahogany bookshelves, neat brassy labels, and ornamental Kronojic vases. Mailyn's apparently, was like a well-stocked general store with row upon row of tidy pine shelves - presumably, the place grew more spacious, complex, and ornate over time, as mine did. Once committed to memory, Mailyn never once forgot a word and could tell you the exact page she remembered a sentence from. Some of the finer concepts of language didn't come as naturally, though…

"How come Gionian don't got a past-compound tense?" she asked.

I scratched my chin in thought. "I think it does," I said, and translated the first three sentences of the lesson: "I went with my family. We saw the city. I bought some candies."

"Oh…" she giggled. "Yeah, I reckon it does."

We took the book back to its nook, stowed our sleep mats in our lockers, and changed into our day clothes just in time for the rush of awakening Scamps that accompanied the morning bell. Soon enough, we were all fed and Solomon, the Greycloak who served as our bunk's proctor, came in to see that the room prepared for morning classes.

"Bunks up, kids! Class starts in five minutes!"

It was the beginning of our third full week of classes and, as happened every few weeks, Solomon announced a bevy of promotions and demotions as classes got shuffled to match our progress.

Our proctor waved a small stack of paper for us to see. "If I call out your name, come up and get your new class assignments! Vix Altorelli… Aldo Carnoffi… Glory Garnet… Reya Morol… Ubuqa Myse'ni… Shanah Pendrake… Ilean Serne… Hilde Unsman… Mailyn Watt… Tor Xenis. Now… get moving!"

I skipped up to Solomon, snatched the papers for the three of us, and skipped back to them, barely missing Nima's leg as she tried to trip me. Oltzen and his trio of goons hadn't stopped bullying me, but they wouldn't do anything overt in front of Solomon or any of the teachers, and I avoided the Tetrad of Terror like shamblers whenever I was outside of Scamp Hall #5. I figured they couldn't bully me if they hardly ever saw me. I was still waiting for the day they tried to get me during lights out, but I slept less than just about anybody else. I usually stayed up after lights out, mending my clothes by moonlight, and woke up with the dawn to practice my Perditalog with Mailyn.

My dedication had paid off - I was advancing to higher tiers in most of my classes.

"Looks like somebody's getting princess classes," Oltzen snorted as I darted past Nima.

"Yeah, because I'm smart!" I snapped back.

And, sure enough, I scanned my assignment and was pleased to see I'd gone up in tier in most of my classes and hadn't gone down in anything. Of the three of us, Aldo was doing the least well, and that was only because he wasn't quite smart enough to be able to skip morning study and still advance as quickly as Mailyn and me… Aldo loved his sleep.

"Perditalog & Composition tier two… Arithmetic tier four… Culture & History… tier two… Religion…" I frowned. "Religion still tier one… Memorization… wow!" I hopped up and down. "Tier five! Yes! And Languages… tier four! Not bad!"

"I'm also four in Languages," Mailyn said happily. "I'm two… two… two… two… five… four. So we still have four of the same classes…"

"How come I didn't get tier two in religion?"

"'Cause you still hardly know anything 'bout religion," Aldo said. He looked at his sheet, glumly. "How come I went up one in Culture & History, Memorization, and Religion and nothing else? My memory's pretty good, and I'm picking up Perditalog…"

"Going up in three things is really good," I pointed out. "But I do so know things about religion. I memorized all the saints and their histories and aspects…"

"Church of the Avatar or Church of the New Circle?" Mailyn asked.

"Um… shoot…" I only vaguely recognized that there was a difference between the two major sects that followed the Avatar of Old Turia. So I supposed I did still have a lot to learn about religion. "Um… both?"

"Not quite," Mailyn said, before turning to Aldo. "As to why you ain't progressing in Perditan… your lazy bum's sleeping when me and Vix're studying from the work book every morning…"

"Most mornings," I corrected. I studied every morning, even when we had breakfast duty. Mailyn occasionally didn't want to wake up in the mornings, especially on breakfast duty days, since that meant waking up even earlier to get anything done. She was pretty good about getting together every evening and drilling our memorization practice, though. Aldo only ever joined in the evenings, and only when the fancy struck him. "Mai's right, though. Do you want to be a Shadow or not?"

Aldo shrugged. "Not if I got to wake up early. Besides, I'm a better sneak than either of you."

"Because we ain't had classes in it yet," Mailyn observed.

"You can't teach that in a class, Mai," Aldo said, making his arms go shadowy. "It's got to come natural."

The bell rang again, signaling time for classes. I scampered toward the door - toward my tier two(!) Perditalog & Composition class in bunk one. Half-way to the door, I found myself suddenly airborne and then sprawled out on the floor, my palms burning as they scraped across the brick floor. Wincing, I rolled over to see Tizzy Drake and Nima - I wasn't sure which of the girls had tried to trip me, but they both sure thought it was hilarious.

"Hey! What in the holy hells is wrong with you?" Mailyn shouted. Suddenly, she was there, squaring off against Tizzy nose to nose.

"Amiri ni longo Gionisch," Tizzy chortled - I don't speak Gionian, princess! They usually called me princess because I still had the telltale mannerisms of a privileged early childhood. Apparently, though, Mailyn was a princess via association - being good friends with the Gionian princess was close enough. "Retravik de ye kastil!" - Go back to your castle!

Mailyn lost her cool and took a swing at Tizzy… who, if I haven't mentioned it already, was quite tall and sturdy for a seven-year-old. Probably close to ten kilos heavier than Mailyn, who was every bit as lean as me. And Tizzie also knew how to scrap - Mailyn discovered as much when Tizzy stepped just out of range of Mailyn's inexpert haymaker (in Mailyn's defense, she was a yet-untrained seven-year-old) before stepping in and shoving my friend to the floor. Mailyn went stumbling, sprawling on top of me and falling to the side, smacking the floor hard enough that I was worried she'd been seriously injured.

Apparently, Tizzy thought so, too. "You saw that! She swung first!"

Mailyn rolled to a sit, quietly crying to herself. Aldo helped her to her feet, and as I pushed myself back up, I could see there was a smear of blood on the floor - she'd scraped her elbow enough that it was trickling blood… but probably not badly enough that she could miss class. And, if we went to Solomon and told him what happened? Tizzy could claim I'd tripped on her accidentally, and Mailyn had thrown the first (and only) punch of the fight. We might well get a harsher punishment than Tizzy did.

"Guess they don't teach fighting in princess school," Oltzen snorted. He nudged Tizzie's shoulder in approval and the Tetrad of Terror ambled off to their classes.

"Hey, don't worry about them," Nate said. He tried to help comfort Mailyn, but she was still inconsolable, weeping into Aldo's shoulder. "They'll eventually get bored and pick on somebody else."

I doubt he got through to Mailyn, and he certainly didn't get through to me. I got to my feet, little fists clenched and staring daggers into the four oblivious bullies as they departed. And, as I imagined the vengeance I would extract on those four, I remembered the advice on bullies I'd once overheard father counseling to my older brother Chansone:

"They're just jealous of you."

And, in that moment, I decided that it was true. Speaking fluent Gionian and having proper manners wasn't a weakness. Knowing how to arrange high tea or properly walk and dress wasn't a weakness. Those four were jealous because Mailyn and I had advanced in our classes and, even if those four were still ahead of us in most of theirs, they were worried it might not stay that way. They were worried that we were better than them. And you know what? You're damn right - we were better than them. And I was dead-set on making sure they knew it.