The Old Lighthouse hadn't been lit in a hundred years, but on days like today, when the fog hung so heavy that it felt like you were walking through soup, Sabine wondered if she might be able to tempt some of the more adventurous students into lighting it again as a prank, or if push came to shove, persuade the Dean that it was worth spending money on.

  The new semester was looming ominously, and most were enjoying the last few days of quiet before the hoards descended. Unfortunately, Sabine was not able to be one of the lucky ones. Instead, she was storming over the bridge into the Lighthouse District, and aiming herself like an explosive arrow at the overly ornate Air Carriage station that stood on the edge of a cliff.

  "Of-bloody-course Cytheria's girl managed to get into trouble before even setting foot on the island. Why am I not surprised," Sabine, known to most on the island as the frosty Head Librarian, thought as she stormed across the bridge. She was a tall spindly looking woman, with dark brown hair and amber skin. Dressed in an old fashioned gown, with a stern unmoving face, she looked rather like the kind of unflattering portrait that gets shoved in an attic for a hundred years, only to be found immediately after rumours of a haunting start. "Here I've been thinking about her as a young woman raised by Leonora, good, dutiful, and responsible Leonora. I should have remembered that blood will have its due."

  Two upper year students ducked out of the way as she passed, one not quite cowering enough to avoid catching her eye. "You owe me a book, Warren, get it back to my library by dawn or I'll bind a new copy in your hide!" She called out the words, barely slowing for a second before continuing.

  The student went white and then nodded rapidly, "Yes, ma'am, I'm on my way there to do it right now, so sorry, ma'am, won't happen again."

  She snorted. Not likely, Miranda Warren had the attention span of a mayfly and the reading ambitions of one of Sabine's own spawn (she pushed down the grief and memories, no time to worry about that. If they lived they would know to look for her in the libraries of the mortal world, if they didn't...) the fines for her overdue books last year had paid for the entirety of the Librarian's Tea and Cake Budget. And Librarians were ravenous beings.

  Her mind leapt back to the thought of Cytheria's girl, wracking her mind over what might have happened. She was a clever girl, her transcripts had shown that, but book knowledge could hide a host of faults, she knew personally. But Leonora wouldn't have raised a fool, so it couldn't be as simple and terrible as her revealing herself to the gods and everyone else on the air carriage and being struck down by some over ambitious paladin.

  Maybe she'd gotten into a fight? Or seduced someone? Or seduced someone into getting into a fight for her? Those were all things that she could imagine Cytheria doing as a laugh. But as she rounded the side of the station building she really had no clue what the girl could have done to have the Station Master send an emergency bulletin to all the higher roles of the school.

  That sort of thing was only supposed to happen in case of, well, disasters.

  The island’s station was a grandly appointed, but very small building. Someone had wanted to show off, but there was only so much gilding an acorn could take before you started to look around you and wonder if, perhaps, the acorn had actually fallen out a while ago and rolled under a table.

  So every window was made from stained glass, the ceiling was painted with a fresco of sea birds, and the walls were panelled in a herringbone of light and dark coloured woods. And all for a building people walked through as quickly as possible to get to somewhere else.

  Or at least, that was its usual purpose.

  Sabine rushed through the doors, eyes on the single platform. There was a small knot of people by the ruby veined oak that held the chains of the air carriage, and, like a rhinoceros, put her head down and charged over with all the speed she could muster.

  Her shoes clicked loudly against the wooden floor, so much noise that she would have been furious if it had been heard in her Library, but as it was she did not give a damn. She wanted them to know she was coming, she wanted to kindle a little dread, and since she lacked thunder and brimstone, she would make do with the echoes of leather and against wood.

  She came up to the knot of worriers and saw that it was the Station Master, a mortal in his fifties, in the smart and many buttoned uniform of the Railway, the Dean, stern and severe, who turned to look at her like she was a misbehaving soldier, and the Deputy Dean, a busybody with a nose for blue blood. None of them were her favourite people.

  Though to be fair she had few opinions on the Stationmaster. She travelled as little as possible and so encroached on his domain rarely. He could be the kindest and most noble hearted man on the island for all she knew. But she doubted, he was wilting under the Dean's flat icy state like a plucked dandelion.

  That lady was an retired soldier, imposed on the island by the Thaumaturge Council who wanted eyes on the students. She was not a great theoretician, no discussion of the higher arts over port like with some of the previous holders of the title. The first time they met, they had each sized the other up, recognised that they would find no friendship in the other, and moved on with their lives. But Sabine could respect the ironlike grip she kept on the reins, she knew what she was doing about the logistics of keeping the students fed and watered, at least. She wore her scholar's robes like suit of plate, and when she turned to look at Sabine you could tell she had not forgotten the habits born of wearing a face covering helmet. Instead of just moving her head, she moved her whole body.

  The Deputy Dean, on the other hand, was as soft as pillow and as smothering. Not that she was kind, far from it. She had a nose for blue blood and a hunger for recognition, if she thought you had power she would follow you around like a wasp at a picnic. She was fluttering today, papers held in one hand and waved about like a windmill. Whatever had happened clearly did not fit with her view of proper procedure. But that hardly narrowed down the options. For a woman in charge of the daily lives of hundreds of young folk it was hard to imagine she had ever had much excitement.

  Sabine swept to a halt at their circle, taking it for granted that the Deputy Dean would step out of the way for her.

  She did, but as she did so she stared at her in shock. With her small features and long nose, she looked like a mouse surprised in the middle of liberating cheese.

  Sabine knew what she looked like probably startled the others. She was used to being seen as the cold and aloof Head Librarian, not so much apart from the main culture at the school but running parallel in her own little world.

  Worry was a new look on her. She had never shown this much of any emotion aside from anger and impatience. She crossed her arms across her chest and tried to look blank, not terrified out of her mind.

  "Well, what happened?" She asked, not caring to shield the bite from her words.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  The Dean nodded a welcome to her, and then turned back to the Stationmaster. "He was just about to tell us," she said briskly.

  The buttons on the military style uniform of the Stationmaster trembled as he took in a breath, "The air carriage should have departed at 30 minutes past 10 of the clock, and we are awaiting confirmation from the Mainland Station as to that effect. At approximately, 17 minutes to 11, flares were seen. It is possible that these were set off accidentally, but there are protocols for such an event and those have not been completed."

  "You have protocols for what to do when someone sets off the flares by accident?" Said the Deputy Dean.

  He nodded, "It was apparently a surprisingly common student prank at one point, so steps were taken to prevent misunderstandings."

  The Dean raised an unimpressed eyebrow, and Sabine watched with some considerable satisfaction as the pair were yanked back from their meander.

  The Station Master continued in a rush of flushed cheeks and bluster, "If flares were released accidentally then the matching number of the opposite colour would have been released soon after wards to negate the first ones. If it was a technical issue then the conductor would have released the blue flares. Only the red ones have been seen. That is the signal for an attack, and there have been no more flares released since, to negate it or inform us otherwise," he said this awkwardly, almost apologetically. “And then,” he paused, “And then a short while ago, this arrived.”

  He turned and pointed to the contraption hanging sadly from the chain. Sabine had missed it entirely, compared to the entirety of an air carriage the moving parts were really quite small. A sad puff of steam trickled out, and she gazed up at it.

  The joints where it had once been attached to the air carriage were torn, most were entirely missing, but one lonely one hung onto a strip of metal that waved sadly like a flag.

  However, even more noticeable, was the blood splatter that lightly ran across it. And Sabine was knowledgeable enough with how mortal blood flows to know that it would not have been possible for it to have come from one of the passengers inside the air carriage.

  It must have come from something outside. The attackers’, presumably.

  Sabine hissed a breath in through her teeth. An attack? An outside attack, not merely a stabbing or wrestle gone wrong? Did that mean it was something to do with their lot? Not a human problem at all, but something godly woken up after 20 years of quiet?

  The others had continued jabbering, and Sabine had to tear her concentration away from the dried blood on the brass cogs and whirls, to pay attention again.

  “Do we have any idea who was on board? Their luggage should have come through, we can at least get an idea from tags and name slips,” the Dean asked.

  “Very little to go on that front, I am afraid, as you say the luggage came through before, but there must have been some kind of delay. The carriage was fully booked this morning, but there is only sufficient luggage for perhaps 6 individuals. So we will have to wait for more information.” The Stationmaster reported.

  "Unfortunate,” Said the Dean, “I believe there are several students with flying familiars, and we keep note of that for this kind of emergency, do we not? Send them out and see what we can find."

  "We do ma'am, but it is not term time, they may not have returned to the island," The deputy pointed out. "And if this is an attack . . .” She very carefully did not say, do we want to send more victims out to face whatever this thing might be, but everyone heard the words, anyway.

  "This is a school for potential thaumaturge’s, there is bound to be someone who can fly or with an appropriate creature as familiar. And this fog can be useful for something for once, whoever we send out can hide in it, but we must find out as much as we can about who was on the air carriage this morning." The Dean speared the Stationmaster and her Deputy with a look, "You two have your orders, now get to it."

  "Yes ma'am!" They both squeaked and ran like rabbits.

  The Dean turned to Sabine. "And now you."

  "Me?" Sabine asked, rather startled to be under the suddenly fierce attention of her employer.

  "Yes. When the emergency bulletin went out it said only those who had a reason to be here should come to the station. What are you doing here, Head Librarian?" She seemed genuinely curious about her presence.

  Sabine had not expected the question, and honesty being simpler than lies, she huffed out a breath and said, "One of the students who was supposed to be travelling today. I knew her mother, I know her aunt, I gave her my recommendation," she stopped, it was hard to exactly quantify how this girl she had never met was related to her. Godly relations were convoluted. "We are distantly related."

  In one of those quicksilver changes that made dealing with the Dean so difficult, her expression changed from suspicious to sympathetic. "I am sorry, your family has already suffered a loss?"

  Sabine did not like the word "already" it implied there was more to come. "Yes."

  The Dean nodded. "Well, I cannot imagine that it will be worth your while to stay here. If you like, you may accompany me until we find out something more?"

  Sabine shook her head, "I would just get in the way." She said it bluntly, "I shall go to the Library and see if I can find anything about flying monsters from this part of the world."

  "I was under the impression that there weren't any," The Dean said.

  It was true. This far North the creatures had been born of the sea and few had taken to the air, but, as with all things, the Cataclysm to the South had made everything more difficult and complicated. Perhaps something had migrated.

  "Yes, well, the alternative is that it is something new. Which is never a preferred option, something old and forgotten would be better," She hoped it was just some mindless beast, “That is if it is not a targeted attack. If so I shall leave all research in your hands, Dean.” Politics was a hopeless tangle she had no interest in. At least, not until it had been written about by someone sensible who could tidy it up into something that could be understood.

  The mortal winced, she rubbed a hand across her forehead with all the exhaustion of someone who had to worry about politics more than they liked. "Yes, well, we all hope it is something simpler than that. As it is I had no reports that anyone particularly important was coming this early, so we will have to wait for the names to come over from the Mainland Station from the tickets. Perhaps your relative was on a later carriage?”

  The Dean paused, then, tentatively, reached over and patted Sabine lightly on the arm. Sabine looked at her like she was a pot of petunias that had suddenly grown legs and asked for directions to the tavern.

  That was enough to halt the Dean in her attempt to express sympathy, she gave a cough and said, "You may have to ready yourself for bad news." She said it sincerely, which was the only thing that stopped Sabine from cursing her, before she gave a shallow nod and walked away.

  Her face had already slid back into the stoic mask she wore at all times. She stared out the large glass doors towards the platform. Soleil would almost certainly be fine. She knew that. But what about the secret she carried in her very being?

  And of course, she pitied the mortals. Dying sounded very unpleasant, she was glad she had never had to do it.

  She turned to go back to her Library, back to where things were under her control.