The estate had disappeared behind them a long time ago.
Owen sat by the window and watched the countryside slide past. Open fields, a farmhouse with smoke rising from its chimney, a merchant’s wagon pulled over at the side of the road to let them by. Every so often they passed through a small settlement, and then the fields took over again.
It was a comfortable carriage. The seats were well cushioned, the wood panelling was polished to a soft shine, and there was room enough for both of them to stretch their legs without kicking each other. The Academy’s sword and laurel was set into the inside of the door as well, and their smaller bags had been strapped in securely beside them. Outside, the hooves kept up a steady clatter, and now and then the wheels rattled over a rough patch of road.
The Academy’s escorts rode alongside. They hadn’t said a word to either of them since the courtyard.
Gareth was sprawled in the seat opposite, completely at ease. Every so often he shifted to get more comfortable or glanced out of the window, but for the most part he looked as though he could happily do nothing for the rest of the day.
Owen had other plans.
Gareth had spent the last two weeks dodging every question about the Academy. But they were stuck in a carriage together now, and there was nowhere for him to go.
"Where is the Academy, exactly?" Owen asked.
Gareth looked at him with some amusement. "Nobody knows."
"You know."
"No. I mean nobody knows. Its location isn’t public."
Owen assumed he meant ordinary people. It made sense for a place like that to keep itself away from crowds. "Does that include the noble families?"
"It does."
"Even the Great Families?"
"Even them," Gareth said. "Father doesn’t know where it is. None of the family heads do." He paused. "Neither does the Emperor."
Owen turned away from the window and looked straight at him.
"The Emperor doesn’t know where the Imperial Military Academy is?"
"No."
"How is that possible? It’s called the Imperial Military Academy."
"It’s called that," Gareth said. "But it doesn’t belong to the Empire. It’s independent. The imperial family doesn’t run it, and neither do the Great Families. They have no say in who gets in, or how it’s run, or anything else that happens inside it."
Owen hadn’t expected that at all.
He had grown up in House Ferrers. He knew how much reach the great houses had, over their land and their armies and over who was given command of what. He had simply assumed that a school with the word Imperial in its name would answer to the throne somehow.
"So it just does whatever it likes," he said.
"More or less." Gareth stretched one arm along the back of the seat. "It’s one of the four great academies in Asteria. All four of them are like that. Independent, and nobody knows where any of them are." He shrugged. "Ours is the best of the four. Most people would tell you that, anyway. That’s why you get people trying to get in from every kind of family, big or small. But being the best doesn’t mean the Emperor gets to give it orders."
"And Father?"
"Father’s a Grand Duke," Gareth said. "To the Academy, that doesn’t mean much."
Owen looked out of the window again.
He thought about the hours he had spent in the library, going through book after book and finding almost nothing. At the time, he had thought the records were just incomplete. Now he wondered if anyone had ever been allowed to write the useful parts down.
On Earth, you had always known where a school was. You could look up where it stood and what it taught and how to get in, and even the military academies had their campuses and published their entry requirements for anyone who wanted them. A school hidden even from the people who ruled the country would have sounded like something out of a story.
He wondered how a place like that kept the great houses from forcing their way in.
But Gareth had already told him the part that mattered for now. The Academy ran its own affairs. Nobody outside it could simply demand to be let in.
"Then how does anyone apply?" Owen asked. "If nobody knows where it is."
"The families send in names," Gareth said. "Your details, your Awakening, whatever else the Academy wants to know. They look at everything that’s been sent in and decide who gets invited to the examinations." He held up a finger. "Invited. That’s not the same as accepted. All an invitation means is that you’ve been given a chance to prove yourself."
Owen thought about that, and then something came back to him.
When they had been at the Mowbray estate, just before they left, Duke Mowbray had asked their father whether Owen’s Academy letter had arrived. At the time, Owen had taken it as ordinary politeness, a family friend asking after his future.
Now he understood why the Duke had wanted to know.
"Duke Mowbray asked Father about my letter," he said. "When we were leaving the Mowbray estate. Father said my Awakening had made things complicated."
"I remember," Gareth said. "Father was handling all of that for you. Once your armament had been sorted out properly, and they knew what it actually was, there was enough to put you forward."
So that was how it had all fit together. His Awakening had been strange enough that his father couldn’t simply send in his name and wait.
"Does the Academy take everyone whose name gets sent in?" he asked.
Gareth snorted. "Not even close. They consider a lot of people, but only the ones they choose get an invitation. And not everyone who gets invited gets in."
Owen glanced at the bag beside him, where the letter was safely packed away.
Getting that letter had meant something. But it hadn’t won him a place. The examination was still ahead of him.
Gareth was watching him. "Having second thoughts already?"
"No," Owen said. "I’m just trying to work out what I’ve got myself into."
Gareth laughed.
Owen leaned back. "What’s it actually like, then? The place itself?"
Something in Gareth’s face brightened.
"It’s impressive," he said. "You’ll probably like it. If you get in."
"What makes you so sure?"
Gareth thought about it for a moment. "When I first got there," he said, "it felt completely different from anything I was used to. I’d been training here my whole life. I thought I was ready for anything. And then suddenly I was surrounded by people from all over the place. Families I’d barely heard of, places I’d never been."
He smiled a little at the memory.
"Some of them were easy to get along with straight away. Some of them wanted nothing to do with anyone. And a few of them were so competitive that they’d turn anything into a contest. Walking to dinner. Getting up in the morning. Anything." He shook his head. "It took me a while to get used to all of them."
"So you struggled to make friends?"
Gareth gave him a look of pure disbelief, as though Owen had asked him whether he knew how to hold a sword.
"Making friends was never the problem," he said. "Getting along with all of them was something else entirely."
Owen laughed.
"You’ll see," Gareth said. "People think because it’s the Academy, everyone there must be terribly serious all the time. They aren’t. There are places everyone gathers when there’s nothing scheduled. You spend time with your friends. People argue about the stupidest things you can imagine." His mouth twitched. "It’s still just a lot of young people who happen to be very good at fighting. They’ve all got their own habits and their own friends, and they all fall out with each other sometimes."
"And William?"
Gareth groaned. "William. Having William there has made everything much more entertaining. I still haven’t decided whether that’s a good thing."
Owen thought about the two of them at the Mowbray estate. "Does he cause trouble at the Academy too?"
"William has a talent," Gareth said, "for making perfectly simple things far more complicated than they need to be."
"Funny," Owen said. "Whenever he was making things complicated at the Mowbray estate, you always seemed to be standing right next to him."
"That’s a coincidence."
"Is it?"
"Entirely."