“Scores,” Feng said to Glain. She briskly unhooked the small waterproof box on her belt and snapped it open. Inside lay a Blank, a book connected to the Great Library’s vast archives, though this was one whose cover shimmered with the Library’s gold seal and the feather of Ma’at—her recording journal, which copied itself daily into a mirroring Blank on the shelves somewhere in the distant bowels of the High Commander’s offices. Military issue.

Glain presented it to Feng with both hands, and he took it the same way—a sign of respect for the book itself, not for her. He paged through, reading her reports and notes, and then handed it back with the same care. “Well done, Sergeant Wathen,” he said. “Well done, squad. Take ease.”

That was a relief, and Jess heard a quiet sigh as they all spread their feet and relaxed their spines a bit. That was a mistake, as Feng continued, “You lead the roster in points, and, as such, we have decided to issue you a special test today, one that will challenge you to the level we wish you to achieve. Are you ready to excel, recruits?”

“Yes, sir!” they all responded at once and as one. Nobody had to feed them that response. Every member of Glain Wathen’s squad was driven to excel, and their gods preserve them if they weren’t. Glain added her own voice. She stood even taller, even straighter. She was in her element here.

Jess envied that. Right now, he desperately missed the quiet comfort of his books. This, he thought, is going to be hard. Feng hadn’t set up a special challenge for them for the fun of it, and Jess had no doubt at all that it was going to be a brutal affair.

“Squad!” Glain called, and they all gave back a deep-chested “Sir,” in response. Even Jess. “We lead by two points in the rankings. This is not enough. We will bring in this exercise with a comfortable five-point lead, and we will finish with the top score! Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir!” Jess barked, in unison with the rest. He wanted to finish this bloody training in first position as much as Glain did, but having attracted the attention of Captain Feng was a mixed blessing at best.

Feng walked slowly up and down the row, but he looked into the blank middle distance as he said, “Your assignment today is a confiscation. Your job will be to enter and search a home for contraband books, and, if found, tag and recover them for the Library. You may meet resistance. Be ready.”

That sounded deceptively easy. Glain and Jess had been on real book-confiscation missions as postulants competing for their current positions; every person in the squad had qualified on situations much harder than this. In fact, it sounded so remedial that it was utterly out of place, given where they were in their training.

Jess shot a look to his right, where a Scandinavian girl named Helva stood at rigid attention. Helva’s glancing look told him his unease was shared. Not right at all. If Glain thought the same, she gave no indication of it, but, then, she’d always had the best face for secrets that Jess had ever seen.