The last thirteen times Benji had taken the entrance exam, he had dressed in his finest jacket, had polished his boots, and even taken the time to tame his usually frizzy strawberry-blond hair with the help of a quarter bottle of hair grease. Today, he arrived twenty-five minutes late, covered in dirt, with hair standing straight on end from running all the way from the eastern end of Thelspoint.

  His prospects of being allowed to take the test didn’t look good. The stone steps to the exam hall were deserted. Inside the waiting room—white columns flanking rows of uncomfortable wooden pews, and a line of registration tables running along the far wall—there was a lone administrator sitting by the wide doors to the exam hall. He ran up to her.

  “No late entries,” the woman said without looking up. She was in her early twenties, most likely a student in her final years, running the registration table as a work study job. Even in her impressive robes—a high collar atop a flowing cowl that bled into a wash of slate gray that was accentuated with clothworkings to make them flash as they moved—she looked completely over it.

  “Please, I got hung up at work. I can still make a passing grade if I start now.”

  She blew a strand of blonde-highlighted hair out of her face. She had intense eyes and the whitest eyelashes Benji had ever seen.

  “My name is Benjamin Piccadilly.”

  “You’re one of the Piccadillys?” the woman asked, suddenly interested. “Like from the town of Piccadilly, that you own?”

  “No. I’m one of the Thelspoint Piccadillys. Like from the apartment, that we rent.”

  At least this got the woman to chuckle. She looked down at her list of registrants. “The rules are very clear, Benjamin. I can’t let anyone in once the written portion has begun. When the doors close, they stay closed.”

  Benji wasn’t above pleading. Yet based on this woman’s tone, he was fairly certain even pleading wouldn’t help. She was just doing her job.

  The waiting room and the hall beyond were so silent that the sound of two people walking toward them down the adjoining hallway echoed thunderously. They were two men, one stooped over a gnarled staff that was either a necessary walking aid or a source of dangerous magical power. The other was slightly younger. They both wore professor’s robes, and carried themselves with the surety of those whose powers are unquestioned by those around them.

  Probably tenured, Benji thought.

  The two men approached. The younger one was fully bald. A line of what appeared to be rivets protruded from the ridges along his skull. Benji had heard about metalworkers who used magical workings to augment their bodies and grant themselves additional powers. Despite the jarring headwear, his bearded face took on a kindly expression as he approached.

  “Natalie, is this another late arrival?” he asked.

  “Yes, Professor Tasman. A very, very late arrival.” She looked him over again, as if just for the first time realizing he was tracking dirt onto the entryway’s aquamarine rug.

  “Have you told him the rules?” Tasman pulled up short. “Give me just a moment,” he said to his older companion. The man waved and shuffled by, heading toward the offices at the far end of the hall. Benji wondered if he was somehow in further trouble than he already had been for being late.

  “You’re familiar,” Professor Tasman said.

  “Was he late last year too?” Natalie asked.

  “In a manner of speaking,” Tasman said, sending a shiver through Benji. “This isn’t your first time taking this exam, is it?”

  Benji shook his head. “No, professor.” He hadn’t been able to meet the man’s eyes. Under different circumstances he might have been worried about stopping himself from staring at the metal poking out of the professor’s head, but right now Benji couldn’t get his eyes off the floor.

  A smile of recognition blossomed over Tasman’s features. “Ha! Well come on then, let’s get on with your test.”

  Natalie and Benji both looked at him with utter confusion.

  “We’re not supposed to tell anyone their scores, but I think it can’t hurt in this case.”

  Benji’s heart sank further. Natalie leaned forward, hungry to hear about Benji’s failing grade.

  “He’s the only person to come close to a perfect score on the written portion of the exam in recent years. He’s been one question away three years in a row. Come on, let’s skip to your practical.”

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  “Skip to the practical?” Natalie spluttered. “The exam regulations clearly state that—”

  “I’ve just decided that, for the sake of expediency, three near-perfect scores on the written portion of the exam is good enough. He’ll still need to pass the practical.”

  As he followed Tasman down the hall, Benji looked back to see understanding shrouding Natalie’s surprise. She understood what it meant that he’d scored so well for so long and still not been accepted. Her look changed to pity as she marked his name off on the sheet, and made a note of his late arrival in letters that surely didn’t need to be quite as bold as they were, or cover as many lines as they did.

  “Don’t worry, this will be harmless,” Tasman said. “You go by Benji, right?”

  “Yes, professor.”

  “I don’t require that level of formality. Please, refer to me as Doctor Tasman, Metalworker First Order, Dean of Admissions, emeritus.”

  “Doctor . . .”

  “I’m joking. Call me Tasman. Or Tas.”

  Benji didn’t know how much space to leave between them as he followed the professor. The hall’s high ceilings loomed, its recessed lights throwing shadows over the carpet. The walls looked like they had been freshly painted—probably due to a paintworking that kept the color true and prevented dirt from accumulating.

  “I reviewed every exam submitted by those who didn’t make it last year and are trying again this year. The vast majority were fourteen-year-olds who previously failed the written portion. That’s why we have it, you know, to make sure they’re mature enough to handle the course load. Most come back and do okay after another year. Of those who failed the practical, you’re the only one to come back.”

  “The only one?” Benji didn’t mention the fact that he’d now been failing the practical for just as long as the new applicants had been alive.

  “The only one. The practical is a very binary test. As long as the applicant demonstrates that they possess magical resonance, that at least one path of working is open to them, we pass them. If you demonstrate resonance in one area, it’s more than likely we can coax it out of you in another. So if you pass the written portion, and show you’ve got greater than zero magic, you’re in. Not many people believe they can go from zero to not zero.”

  Benji knew how it worked, generally, but hadn’t known the bar was quite so low. His past performances must have been truly embarrassing.

  “Here we are.” Tasman led him through a door near the end of the hall, and into a professor’s office. At least it felt like a professor’s office, with a central desk flanked by bookshelves and an odd assortment of magical trinkets in the back by the window. These were arranged in a row along a low credenza. But the objects lacked a specificity, any personal touch that would tell you this was the office of any professor in particular.

  Tasman directed him to the chair pulled up close to the desk on the near side. Benji knew the drill.

  He took a seat, and prepared to fail.

  And he did fail. Tasman produced three separate tasks designed to test his magical abilities. First was a bed of sand with a metal marble at its center. Tasman asked him to roll the marble in any direction. Next was a bucket of water with a tealight floating on top. Tasman asked him to put it out however he saw fit. Then came a piece of hardtack. Tasman asked him to pull out the sweet flavor.

  During each task, Benji focused as much as he could, remembering every magical concept he could think of. Metalworking was a process of gentle liquefication and reshaping, wasn’t it? Fire required one to see the heart of the flame. He had no idea how to approach the food one.

  “This is your fourth and final test,” Tasman said. He had not reacted to the failures, only calmly collecting the testing instrument each time and returning it to the shelf behind him. As the final test approached, Benji thought he could make out a divot of anxiety on his brow. “Everyone gets three, chosen at random. But as a courtesy we allow applicants to pick the final test, if they so desire. Take your time.”

  He leaned back in his chair so Benji could see past him. There weren’t many other options. A wooden die that he would probably have to flip with a woodworking, a cage filled with chittering insects, a top-heavy succulent in a pot it had outgrown.

  In the rushed haze of the afternoon—now evening—Benji’s mind had only focused on one thing: making it to the exam on time. That hadn’t left much room for other impressions, like did Grenn seem a little lonely? or wasn’t it exceptionally weird that a plant ratted out the location of the enfuser? Huh. Not for the first time, Benji wondered if his fixation on gaining admission to the university might in fact, in itself, be an impediment to gaining admission to the university.

  “I’ll try the plant one,” he said, before he could convince himself that he might just be validating a stress-induced hallucination.

  “A future plantworker, eh?” Tasman asked, little to no hopefulness in his voice. “One of the most complex disciplines.”

  If this was meant to dissuade Benji, he almost let it. Tasman set the succulent down in front of him and leaned back in his chair once more. Benji appreciated that the professor was trying to set him at ease, or would have if his anxiety were allowing him to have appreciative thoughts at the moment.

  “What do I need to do?” he asked.

  Tasman shrugged. “Make anything happen. Just one thing.”

  Benji remembered the way the plants had pushed him toward the correct urn at Grenn’s house. He tried to match their shape in his mind. He stared at the plant, at the fibers turning upward into an imitation of leaves, at the pale stem that looked like it could go for years without water. He pictured the flow of nutrients from root to stem to leaf, the slow, steady movement of everything that was vital to this plant’s being.

  The plant twitched. The movement was so small that it easily could’ve been caused by either man blowing on it. It twitched again. Benji put his hands up to show Tasman that he hadn’t been shaking the desk with them. Something whirred. Benji started as he realized it was the rivets in Tasman’s skull plate turning. Benji didn’t speak rivet, but he was pretty sure they were moving with excitement. Tasman’s facial expression didn’t betray much. He only shrugged again, and extracted a sheet of paper from the drawer beneath the desk.

  “I guess this is the part,” Tasman said flatly, “where I welcome you to this year’s first-year class at Thelspoint University.”