Every teacher Walden knew had occasionally resorted to the three-step lesson plan, which was to say, the lesson you planned in the three steps it took you to walk into the classroom. It was just a fact of the job: there was never enough time to do everything right. She’d comforted her share of overwhelmed perfectionist trainees, up all night working on six full lesson plans for the next day. She’d been that person, well into her NQT year. But it was unsustainable. You had to forgive yourself for imperfection. You had to teach the lessons, let them go, do better next time if you could. Ultimately, some lessons got the full minute-by-minute detailed plan that you learned in teacher training. Some, with experience, you pulled out of your pocket based on a half-remembered activity you’d cooked up years ago. Some you begged colleagues to lend you their PowerPoints for. And some you just had to make up on the spot.

Walden had never walked into a critical incursion before. She didn’t have a plan. No one could. No risk assessment would help her now.

Three steps took her through the ruined front door of School House.

She felt raw demonic magic descend around her, greasy and claustrophobic. The air smelled of sulphur and gunpowder smoke. When she glanced back, the doorframe was still there, but the world beyond was gone. There was nothing but a louring darkness. Getting out of here again was not going to be straightforward.

“Stay behind me,” said Kenning. “You do realise we’re basically in the demonic plane here?”

Walden obviously knew that. She caught herself before she snapped about it. Kenning wasn’t tense because of her; this wasn’t the moment to restart what they’d both agreed were really just childish squabbles.

Kenning was ignoring her anyway. Her focus was on setting up the cast for a magical shield: not a pale sphere like Reverend Ezekiel’s, but a shifting and layered shimmer in the air which hooked into one of the runes on Kenning’s left bracer for support, so it would self-sustain for a few moments if she was distracted. It was very neat work, especially since Kenning took an extra moment or two to get it precisely balanced, with an attention to detail that Walden didn’t usually expect from a non-academic magical practitioner. She had written about Marshal magic during her MThau, but the Marshals she’d interviewed had been suspicious and unwilling to give away their secrets. Academic invocation specialists like Walden were, traditionally, their enemies. She’d never seen the spell Kenning was using before.

“What beautiful shielding,” she said.

Kenning glanced at her. She seemed to think she was being patronised. “I’m not a trained magician. We use what works for us.”