Right now she was sitting in her first Artificers class, at the back of a classroom full of boys mostly in those standard blue uniforms. In this class at least, there were no girls. Some of the boys were ignoring her. Some, surreptitiously watching her. Some watched with curiosity, some with resentment. She completely understood the resentment. There was a waiting list to get in here, and a special place had been made for her, jumping her ahead of others who had been waiting, sometimes for years. Probably most of these boys assumed she’d gotten that place because her mother was King’s Own and both her parents were Heralds. The story of the collapsing bridge that had swept through Haven and Hill like wildfire had featured Kat as the heroine, not her.

People like things simple, and Kat is a Princess as well as a Herald Trainee, she thought, as she and the others waited for their instructor to arrive. They don’t like stories with two heroes or that involve a Gift no one has ever heard of.

And it wasn’t as if Kat hadn’t actually been a hero. She could have been killed out there; she’d done half of the saving and done it well. And it wasn’t as if Abi begrudged her the attention—it was attention that she hadn’t wanted for herself, and the story was doing good things for the popularity of the Royal children.

But it would have been useful if these boys had known why she’d gotten this special place before she turned up here.

That’s all right. Dealing with a lot of resentful lads is a whole lot easier than infiltrating a magic city taken over by a crazy cannibalistic magician. I’d rather be doing this than dealing with that.

The instructor, Master Morell, entered and immediately commanded the attention of the room. He was a short, balding man with a prominent nose and piercing green eyes. He had with him, curiously enough, a box that seemed to contain pieces of wood. “I assume that all of you are aware of the new student, Abidela. I also assume that all of you are making the assumption that she is here because her mother is the King’s Own.”

He waited for a moment, and some quiet murmurs made it clear that his assumption was correct.

“Rather than simply tell you why you are all wrong, I’m going to have Abidela demonstrate,” he said, as he began taking the pieces of wood out of the box and assembled them into what was apparently a bridge model. “You all already know the answer to this particular problem, but she does not. Abidela, come show me the weak spot on this model.”