"The sphere of domestic life is the sphere in which female exertion is chiefly occupied. A young lady's tender sensibilities are simply more suited to embroidery than sword-fighting."

-Andrew Hamilton in 'A Treatise on the Duties of the Female Sex' (1797)

The punching bag split with a sickening crack.

Clara watched as rice spilled out of the wound, falling like drops of blood to the floor. The bag crumpled in on itself, shrivelling into a prune, and it was only then that her fingers gave a painful throb. She swore under her breath, holding them up to the light spilling through the rose window. The knuckles were raw and splitting.

Damn.

She'd have to put antiseptic on the wound when she got home. Unless Emma had used all of it again, Clara thought uncharitably, which meant that she would have to kick her younger sister's ass. A shame. She didn't really fancy beating anyone up the night before her final exams, but alas; these things had to be done.

She unwound the black fabric wrapped around her hand, being careful to avoid her bloodied knuckles. Just as she was loosening the final knot, applause echoed through the training room. Clara spun around, scrambling instinctively for a throwing knife, and then relaxed as she took in the young man standing in the doorway.

"Christ, Jack." She scowled. "Do you want a knife to the shoulder?"

"Just the shoulder?" Jack Ogilvy raised an eyebrow in amusement. "I hope you can do better than that, Eaton."

He leaned against the doorframe, crossing his arms over his chest. An anchor tattoo flashed on his forearm — the result of a lost bet, after Jack failed to hotwire a boat on the Thames as fast as Clara had — and Jack scratched at it absently. His sandy hair was slick with sweat; he must have been training, too.

"If I wanted to kill you," Clara said, chucking her hand wraps into her rucksack, "you'd be dead by now. Trust me."

Jack winked. "So violent. I love it."

They fell into step, navigating through the twisting underground corridors. It was eerie to be in the Headquarters at night, Clara thought; it was a hub of activity during the day, with people scurrying down the hallways, speaking into earpieces and carting Victorian dresses and togas behind them. And there were always first-year students getting sick in the toilets from their first jump. Always. But was the thing about time travel: you had to have a strong stomach for it.

Not that Clara ever got sick as a first-year.

She would have never lived it down.

Clara skirted around a coatrack. The difficulty, she thought, about being the child of the two most famous time travellers in the world was that people were always watching you. Had been watching since she joined the training programme eight years ago, really. She'd worked twice as hard as every other student to prove that she deserved it, pushing herself until her body was bruised and her brain felt like it might explode. She'd made the A-team in her first year, and even though Clara's parents had reassured her they would love her equally if she was on the B-team or C-team, she could tell they were secretly relieved.

"Penny for your thoughts?" Jack asked.

He ducked through a sloped doorway, being careful not to step on the orange tabby curled at the base of it. They were getting deeper underground now, Clara thought; the air had a heavy, damp quality to it, like washing left in the machine for too long.

"That urn," Clara said, "is incredibly ugly."

Jack followed her gaze to where a squat white vase rested on a pedestal. Blue paint swirled around the ceramic base to form a screaming woman's face, her eyes wide with terror. A large dragon appeared to be snacking on her chin.

"Portuguese," Jack announced. "Seventeenth century."

Clara poked him. "It's so creepy when you do that."

"I like the urn," Jack said, tilting his head. "It has character."

"And you have no taste."

"I know," Jack said. "That's why I'm friends with you." He pushed open another door, resting a hand on the frame. "You know, if I fail my exams tomorrow, I can always become a historian. Live with the mundanes."

Exasperation filled her. "You're not going to fail."

Jack wrinkled his nose. "I could rent a small flat in Clapham. Live about a kebab shop and spend my days studying dusty manuscripts and gluing together old vases."

"You hate kebabs," Clara said, trailing him into the next corridor. "And anyway, you'd last two weeks before you got drunk at a pub and told everyone the truth about time travel."

Which would be... well. Not brilliant, Clara thought wryly. Dozens of British children were born with the gift of time travel, but there were only five families that the gift consistently appeared in. The POWER families: Pemberton, Ogilvy, Winchester, Eaton and Rutherford. The families worked for the British government in a secret six-story building under London streets. As far as Clara was aware, nobody else knew they existed.

And the government intended to keep it that way.

Jack pressed a hand to his chest. "You wound me, Eaton."

"Fine," Clara said airily. "Three weeks, then."

"How generous."

Clara bumped his hip. "Seriously, Jack. You need to pick a speciality soon. If you wait much longer, all the good ones will be taken." She squinted up at him. "You are staying in the History department, aren't you?"

With Jack, you just never knew; he changed his mind more often than most people changed clothes. He'd considered the Carolingian Empire. Ancient Greece. Venice in the sixteenth century (largely, Clara suspected, because he'd thought there would be swashbuckling pirates). Hell, he'd even considered the Futures department, which dealt with time travellers visiting from the future. At least, Clara assumed it did; the agents in the department were notoriously tight-lipped about their work.

"I'm staying," Jack said. "I just don't know what I want to specialize in." He ducked to tie his shoelace, pausing to give her a significant look. "Unlike you."

Clara smiled. "Unlike me."

But she was the exception. Most students in the History department went on a variety of missions throughout their training before they decided what to do. Missions ranged from the mundane (asking the renowned philosopher Hobbes for his thoughts on climate change) to the bizarre (gathering an extinct medicinal plant) to the dramatic (killing a politician from an earlier time period who was on the verge of blowing up the world – the earlier British government would write a letter to the future British government explaining that a time traveller from 2020 had killed the politician which meant that, of course, someone had to travel back and complete the mission; it was a self-fulfilling prophecy).

But Clara had known since the first day what she wanted to do. Hell, everyone in the Headquarters knew what she wanted to do.

Ancient Greece.

It was the trickiest (and most dangerous) time period to travel to. Even her mother – the most supportive person in the world – had attempted to dissuade her. "There's so much disease," she'd said. "And you'll have to learn to speak a dead language, darling. Wouldn't you rather speak something more useful? Like French?"

But Clara had been stubborn. And, eventually, even her mother had come around to the idea of Clara jumping into ninth-century BC.

She came to a halt outside a white door with a keypad near the handle. Loud explosions echoed from inside the room. The sign on the door said 'Occupied', and she turned to Jack, raising an eyebrow. "He's not still in there, is he?"

Jack sighed. "Unfortunately, yes."

"He knows that the exam is tomorrow, right?"

"Well," Jack said, "he likes to live dangerously."

They exchanged a look. Jack shifted closer, moving to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with her. The explosions grew louder.

The door flew open.

A young man with dark hair tumbled into the hallway. There were red indents around his eyes – an unhappy effect of the simulation goggles – and he was breathing heavily, his chest pumping up and down.

"I hate Romans," he announced. "They're so bloody violent."

"Ah," Clara said mildly. "But just think of all the things they gave us. Modern plumbing. Newspapers. The Pantheon."

"Fair play," he sighed.

Clara bit the inside of her cheek to hide a smile. Liam Pemberton had always been better at written exams than both herself and Jack combined, but what Liam exceeded at in books, he made up for by continuously failing simulations and combat. It was a good thing that Liam wanted to become a teacher, because Clara was pretty sure that any real Roman gladiators would have turned him into a human shish kabab.

"You're bleeding," Liam observed as he fell into step beside them, cleaning his glasses on the hem of his t-shirt. He didn't look concerned by the fact; only amused. "Why are you always bleeding?"

"She's dying," Jack offered.

"I'm dying," Clara confirmed.

"We're all dying," Liam pointed out. "Slowly, and without a cure." He must have seen the identical horrified looks on their faces, because he crossed his arms over his chest defensively. "What? It's not like you didn't know already."

Clara decided not to dignify that with a proper response.

"I'm going home," she declared. "I want a proper meal. And a bandage." She paused beneath an arch, jabbing the button for the lift to the tube station. "And a break from you two before our big day tomorrow."

Liam looked almost proud. "An excellent idea. I know you don't normally take the exams that seriously, Clara, but since it's our final year—"

"You muppet," Jack said, ruffling his hair. "She's not talking about the exams. Isn't that right, Eaton?"

Liam looked so horrified that Clara couldn't help but smile. Jack was right, of course; she hadn't been talking about the exams. She was pretty sure she could do all the exams right now, and probably blind-folded as well (except for the written one). What Clara had been talking about was their muck-up day. They had been planning it since their first year in the programme, and the prank that Jack had come up with was legendary. Genius, actually.

If they could pull it off, that was.

"For god's sake." Liam rested his head against the wall. "We're not actually going to go through with it, are we?"

Clara frowned. "Of course we are."

"But—"

"Ah, ah." She waggled a finger at him as the lift dinged, the doors sliding open to let them pass through. "Don't be so wet. I already have the fireworks." She smiled. "We're going to make history, Pemberton."

Liam looked at her dubiously.

A few months later, Clara would look back at this moment and remember her exact words. And she would wonder whether, in retrospect, it might have been better to join the Futures department after all. Then Clara might have at least received a warning about what the consequences of their prank would be.

But now, Clara smiled and waggled her fingers.

"Night, boys," she called. "I'll see you tomorrow."