Thardwin Everheart nailed the sign to his tower door before dawn. It read: FREE SCHOOL OF WIZARDRY. ALL WELCOME. NO COIN REQUIRED. He stepped back and looked up at the blue stone walls, the runes he'd painted himself, the narrow windows already warm with lamplight. Inside, thirty small desks waited. He had built them from scrap pine. He had spent his last silver on chalk and slates because he remembered being twelve years old and turned away from a paid academy for being the son of a candlemaker. By noon, no one had come. By dusk, he understood why. He found the first note pinned to a market post. The handwriting curled like smoke. "Any child who enters the blue tower will rot from the inside out." He tore it down. Two streets over, he found another. Then a third, tacked to the baker's shutter. A woman he knew by name pulled her son close when Thardwin passed, and crossed the street. He knew the hand. He had seen it once before, scratched into the dirt above a fresh grave. He walked to the red tower at the far edge of town. Its black spikes cut the sky. He knocked once. The door opened on its own. Madness Everthorn stood at the top of a stair of dark stone, sorting dried roots into a jar. She did not look up. She was smaller than he remembered, and prettier, and that was the trick of her. Purple eyes. A child's mouth. A voice like a knife dropped in water. "You're the wizard who thinks poor children deserve spells," she said. "How sweet." "Call off the whispers." "I only tell the truth." She capped the jar. "A school full of untrained commoners? One of them will burn a house down by winter. I'm sparing their mothers the grief." "You're afraid of them." Her hand stilled. She came down two steps. "I am afraid of nothing you can name. But I remember what the last person did who crossed me at a grave." Thardwin did not move. "So do I." She smiled. "Then we understand each other. Close your doors, candlemaker's boy. Or I'll close them for you." He walked home through empty streets. The sign was still on his door. Someone had drawn a black X across it in tar. He did not scrub it off. He went inside, lit every lamp in every window, and dragged the thirty desks out onto the cobbles. He set his slates on top. He sat down on the front step with a lantern between his knees and waited. By morning, one child stood at the edge of the square. Barefoot. Holding her mother's hand. The mother would not step closer. "Is it true?" the woman called. "About the curse?" Thardwin stood up. He had his answer to give, and he knew it would not be enough.