Page 30 of Winterveil

Klaudia had been thinking the same, not that she had any intention of publicly agreeing with him.

Mikhail ducked his head and lowered his voice. “I did do a little digging on Satow,” he said. “Nothing official, of course.”

“Oh, don’t!” Jane cried. “You’re going to get in trouble for hacking the servers again.”

“It’s all right,” Mikhail assured her. “This time I won’t get caught. But I found some Russian- and German-language message boards on the dark web talking about Satow. They said he was actually the head of the KGB lab. Why would someone so high up on the food chain defect?”

“Maybe because America has better booze,” Julian suggested.

Mikhail let out an amused breath. “I mean, I don’t know. It could all be bullshit, too. I wouldn’t stake my reputation on anything I learned from the dark web.”

“Probably a good general policy,” said Julian.

“The boards claimed he was involved in something called Projekt Traum. But I couldn’t find anything else related to that name. So, yeah. All signs point to bullshit.”

“You have to stop,” Jane said, in her most serious voice. “Dr. Iver said he would expel you.”

“Dr. Iver sent us all the article,” Mikhail said. “Clearly he wants us to look into it.”

Since the firewalls prevented Valeran students from accessing most websites, Dr. Iver sometimes forwarded them important news items—anything he thought might change the global landscape or that might be relevant to their studies. There was a cost to spending four years or more isolated from general society. All their theoretical training would fail if they were incapable of applying it to reality.

But Klaudia didn’t think Mikhail was accurately reading Dr. Iver’s intentions. He didn’t want them to search for answers—a fruitless task anyway, given the firewalls. Strategy was not about answers; it was about ideas. Julian was most likely right that the circumstances around Satow’s disappearance were irrelevant. Dr. Iver wanted them to predict what would happen next. Or maybe even consider how to get Satow back.

Klaudia didn’t like that Julian had spoken her opinion aloud before she could. She liked even less that they were aligned in their theories. As much as it pained her to admit, Julian Joyce-Young III was not stupid. Vain and indulgent, yes. But not stupid.

The conversation continued, Julian, Mikhail, and Jane arguing back and forth while Klaudia observed in silence. The ease with which Julian had settled in occurred to her again. It felt vaguely like a threat. If she was the superior strategist, how had she allowed Julian to invade her friend group uncontested—almost displacing her?

She watched him for several moments. He had conventional good looks and a politician’s glib smirk, but his eyes flashed with subtle cleverness. Klaudia glanced pointedly away when she thought he might notice her staring.

Abruptly, Mikhail rose to his feet and gathered his things. “I have to go,” he said.

“Why?” Jane frowned. “You don’t have a morning class.”

“I have to put the finishing touches on my extracurricular project.” Mikhail smiled in a cryptic way. “You know.”

“Just keep everything aboveboard, okay? Please.”

“I will,” said Mikhail. He slung his bag over his shoulder. “I promise. Hey, I’ll send it to you all tonight for playtesting.”

After her classes, Klaudia went to the reading room. It was empty, as she figured it would be, given that the weather was far too warm for anyone to want to light the fireplace. Admittedly, she was also thinking about Julian. He would never show his face here again. She didn’t have to worry about another chance encounter, and so she tried to put him completely out of her mind.

But she had only just settled into one of the armchairs when the door to the reading room swung open.

Carter Egan’s shadow fell over her book as he approached. Klaudia quickly snapped it shut.

“I thought I might find you here,” he said. Lit from behind by the sun pouring in from the window, his red hair looked even brighter than usual.

“How perceptive of you.”

Carter was accompanied, as always, by two lackeys. They stood on either side of him like his personal bodyguards, arms folded across their chests. Irrelevant third-year admirers, drafted into Carter’s private war.

At Valeran, Carter had a reputation that rivaled her own. But, unlike Klaudia’s, it was a reputation earned mostly outside the classroom. He and his lackeys tormented first years, staged smear campaigns against their fellow students, and viciously sabotaged anyone who might threaten their place on the rankings board.

Carter held a particular grudge against Klaudia, which she supposed was understandable. For the entirety of their time at Valeran, she had been number one to his number two. Lately, his frustration seemed to be building.

“You must not eat or sleep at all,” he said. “I always thought your kind weren’t quite human.”

By your kind Carter could have meant any number of things, among them the passport that still marked her birthplace as Leningrad. Klaudia got to her feet.