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slowly, “did that gargoyle have secondary cognition all along?”
    Shannon paused and then put down his manuscript. “My boy, I don’t want to raise false expectations again.”
    Nicodemus frowned. “Expectations about what?”
    “The gargoyle had primary cognition until you misspelled her.”
    “But how is that possible?”
    “It shouldn’t be,” Shannon said before rubbing his eyes. “Nicodemus, for this convocation we are hosting delegates from the North: Astrophell wizards, some of my former colleagues. Some of them belong to the counter-prophecy faction and so will distrust cacographers even more than other Northerners do. It would be exceedingly dangerous if they learnedthat your touch both misspelled a gargoyle and elevated her freedom of thought.”
    “Dangerous because they would want me censored?”
    Shannon shook his head. “Dangerous because they would want you killed.”

CHAPTER
Three
    On the way to Magister Smallwood’s study, Nicodemus looked at his candle. It was quavering in time to his hand’s fine tremble.
    He had never known Shannon to betray even a hint of anxiety. But when the old man had mentioned the Astrophell delegates, his tone had been strained, his words clipped. The danger the Northerners posed must be real indeed.
    Worse had been Shannon’s statement about not raising “false expectations.” Nicodemus shivered; the old man could only have been referring to Nicodemus’s lost hope of fulfilling the Erasmine Prophecy.
    “Fiery heaven, don’t think on it,” Nicodemus muttered to himself, as he had done countless times before.
    A row of arched windows, all filled with ornate tracery, ran along the hallway. Nicodemus stopped to peer between the flowing stone beams to the starry sky beyond. He slowed his breathing and tried to soothe his frayed nerves.
    But his hands still trembled, and it wasn’t Northern delegates or unful-filled prophecies that made them do so.
    It was the memory of Shannon’s face when the old man had stepped into the moonlight—his white eyebrows knitting together in disapproval, his lips narrowing in disappointment.
    The memory made Nicodemus feel as if something were tightening around his heart. “I’ll make it up to the old man,” he whispered. “I will.”
    He turned from the window and hurried down the hall to an open door spilling candlelight into the hallway. “Magister Smallwood?” He knocked on the doorjamb. The grand wizard looked up from his desk.
    Smallwood was a thin, pale spellwright with a tousled wreath of gray hair. His eyes, though beginning to cloud over, still held black pupils within brown irises.
    Nicodemus cleared his throat. “Magister Shannon sends his compliments and asks that you join him in his study.”
    “Ah, good, good, always happy to see Shannon,” Smallwood said with an absent smile. He closed his book. “And who are you?”
    “Nicodemus Weal, Magister Shannon’s apprentice.”
    Smallwood leaned forward and squinted. “Ah, Shannon’s next cacographic project?”
    “I’m sorry?”
    “I don’t remember the last boy’s name. And I’ve never seen you before.”
    In fact, Nicodemus had been bringing Smallwood written messages for nearly two years. However, this was the first time Nicodemus had spoken directly to him. “I’m sorry, Magister, but I don’t understand about the cacographic project.”
    Smallwood stretched his arms and adjusted his hood, which like Shannon’s was lined with white. “Oh, you know, Shannon takes his work with the Drum Tower boys so seriously. And he’s always got a pet cacographer. It’s ridiculous the rumors that go round about him; he’s so proud when one of you earns a lesser hood.”
    “Yes, Magister,” Nicodemus said, trying not to frown. He had heard rumors about Shannon’s former career in Astrophell but never a rumor about the old man’s current position as Master of the Drum Tower.
    “So, what exactly does Shannon have you doing to earn that hood?”