Daniel and Lillian were waiting for Esme halfway along Pier Two, by a pair of open doors. Lillian ushered her into an assembly hall that took up over a third of Pier Two’s warehouse. Cross bars and joists underpinned a soaring ceiling, beneath which ran a row of high windows. Their panes spilled bricks of light below, playing hopscotch on the student’s heads, all the way up to the teachers on stage. On both sides of the hall hung blue-and-gold banners emblazoned with Pierpont’s crest: an anchor, a ship at full sail, a coiled dragon, and a stack of books.
After Esme, Daniel, and Lillian found seats, the assembly started out much the same as back home. Someone dropped a book, someone scraped their chair back, someone sneezed three times, someone yawned.
A nearby first-former erupted into a
