The Drowned Stacks

Below the Academy's east wall, a drainage tunnel opens onto the cliffside with a stone staircase leading down into black water. Far below the surface, waterproof mana lamps are still burning—and something large moves through the water between them.

One pitch-sealed cabinet stands above the waterline. Inside sit eleven plain first-year magic primers—from the days before the Academy charged licensing fees—and a brass surveyor's sighting frame in a fitted case. A library loan card inside bears the name of a scholarship boy from the docks.

The Academy porter who sold you the tip waits at the tunnel mouth with a lantern. He whistles when he sees the brass sighting frame.

"That's a surveyor's rangefinder. The head librarian will pay handsomely to put it back under lock and key—or you can mount it on your ship's Lookout rail and I'll never say a word."

The salvaged primers teach foundational spellcasting in plain language: how to sense mana, hold it safely, and cast without burning. The Academy banned them the year it started charging tuition for licensed courses.

The library loan card lists the last borrower's name and a street address down in the dock district.

The address is a crowded one-room schoolhouse above a supply shop, warmed by a coal stove and packed with forty children. The schoolmistress reads the loan card and sits down heavily.

"Pell Ansom was my brightest student," she says. "He won the Academy scholarship, went up the Mountain, and came back a year later broken, his name back on the Lowborn rolls. He teaches the youngest children in the back room now." Through the doorway, a young man stares nervously at your oilcloth parcel.