Lunch was a bowl of steaming-hot potato soup, beans, narrow rashers of fatty bacon, and fresh brown bread. The room’s large plank tables were nearly half full, seating about two hundred students. The room was full of the low murmur of conversation, punctuated by laughter and the metallic sound of spoons and forks scraping against the tin trays.
Simmon steered me to the back corner of the long room. Two other students looked up as we approached.
Simmon made a one-handed gesture to me as he set down his tray. “Everyone, meet Kvothe. Our newest dewy-eyed first-termer.” He gestured from one person to the next. “Kvothe, these are the worst students the Arcanum has to offer: Manet and Wilem.”
“Already met him,” Wilem said. He was the dark-haired Cealdim from the Archives. “You really were headed to admissions,” he said, mildly surprised. “I thought you were dealing me false iron.” He reached out his hand for me to shake. “Welcome.”
“Tehlu anyway,” Manet muttered, looking me over. He was at least fifty years old with wild hair and a grizzled beard. He wore a slightly disheveled look, as if he’d only woken up a few minutes ago. “Am I as old as I feel? Or is he as young as he looks?”
“Both,” Simmon said cheerfully as he sat down. “Kvothe, Manet here has been in the Arcanum for longer than all of us put together.”
Manet snorted. “Give me some credit. I’ve been in the Arcanum longer than any of you have been alive.”
“And still a lowly E’lir,” Wilem said, his thick Siaru accent made it hard to tell if he was being sarcastic or not.
“Huzzah to being an E’lir,” Manet said earnestly. “You boys will regret it if you move any farther up the ranks. Trust me. It’s just more hassle and higher tuitions.”
“We want our guilders, Manet,” Simmon said. “Preferably sometime before we’re dead.”
“The guilder is overrated too,” Manet said, tearing off a piece of bread and dunking it in his soup. The exchange had an easy feel, and I guessed this was a familiar conversation.
“How’d you do?” Simmon asked Wilem eagerly.
“Seven and eight,” Wilem grumbled.
Simmon looked surprised. “What in God’s name happened? Did you punch one of them?”
“Fumbled my cipher,” Wilem said sullenly. “And Lorren asked about the influence of subinfudation on Modegan currency. Kilvin had to translate. Even then I could not answer.”
“My soul weeps for you,” Sim said lightly. “You trounced me these last two terms, I was bound to catch a break sooner or later. I got five talents even this term.” He held out his hand. “Pay up.”
Wilem dug into his pocket and handed Sim a copper jot.
I looked at Manet. “Aren’t you in on it?”
The wild-haired man huffed a laugh and shook his head. “There’d be some long odds against me,” he said, his mouth half full.
“Let’s hear it,” Simon said with a sigh. “How much this term?”
“One and six,” Manet said, grinning like a wolf.
Before anyone could think to ask me what my tuition was, I spoke up. “I heard about someone getting a thirty-talent tuition. Do they usually get that high?”
“Not if you have the good sense to stay low in the rankings,” Manet grumbled.
“Only nobility,” Wilem said. “Kraemlish bastards with no business having their study here. I think they stoke up high tuitions just so they can complain.”
“I don’t mind,” Manet said. “Take their money. Keep my tuition low.”
I jumped as a tray clattered down onto the other side of the table. “I assume you’re talking about me.” The owner of the tray was blue-eyed and handsome with a carefully trimmed beard and high Modegan cheekbones. He was dressed in rich, muted colors. On his hip was a knife with a worked-wire hilt. The first weapon I’d seen anyone wearing at the University.
“Sovoy?” Simmon looked stunned. “What are you doing here?”
“I ask myself the same thing.” Sovoy looked down at the bench. “Are there no proper chairs in this place?” He took his seat, moving with an odd combination of graceful courtliness and stiff, affronted dignity. “Excellent. Next, I’ll be eating with a trencher and throwing bones to the dogs over my shoulder.”
“Etiquette dictates it be the left shoulder, your highness,” Manet said around a mouthful of bread, grinning.
Sovoy’s eyes flashed angry, but before he could say anything Simmon spoke up, “What happened?”
“My tuition was sixty-eight strehlaum,” he said indignantly.
Simmon looked nonplussed. “Is that a lot?”
“It is. A lot,” Sovoy said sarcastically. “And for no good reason. I answered their questions. This is a grudge, plain and simple. Mandrag does not like me. Neither does Hemme. Besides, everyone knows they squeeze the nobility twice as hard as you lot, bleeding us dry as stones.”
“Simmon’s nobility,” Manet pointed a spoon. “He seems to do fine for himself.”
Sovoy exhaled sharply through his nose. “Simmon’s father is a paper duke bowing to a tin king in Atur. My father’s stables have longer bloodlines than half you Aturan nobles.”
Simmon stiffened slightly in his seat, though he didn’t look up from his meal.
Wilem turned to face Sovoy, his dark eyes going hard. But before he could say anything Sovoy slumped, rubbing his face in one hand. “I’m sorry, Sim, my house and name to you. It’s just…things were going to be better this term, but now they’re worse instead. My allowance wouldn’t even cover my tuition, and no one will extend me more credit. Do you know how humiliating that is? I’ve had to give up my rooms at the Golden Pony. I’m on the third floor of Mews. I almost had to share a room. What would my father say if he knew?”
Simmon, his mouth full, shrugged and made a gesture with his spoon that seemed to indicate that there was no offense taken.
“Maybe things would go better for you if you didn’t go in there looking like a peacock.” Manet said. “Leave off the silk when you go through admissions.”
“Is that how it is?” Sovoy said, his temper flaring again. “Should I abase myself? Rub ashes in my hair? Tear my clothes?” As he grew angrier, his lilting accent became more pronounced. “No. They are none of them better men than me. I need not bow to them.”
There was a moment of uncomfortable silence at the table. I noticed more than a few of the surrounding students were watching the show from the nearby tables.
“Hylta tiam,” Sovoy continued. “There is nothing in this place I do not hate. Your weather is wild and uncivilized. Your religion barbaric and prudish. Your whores are intolerably ignorant and unmannerly. Your language barely has the subtlety to express how wretched this place is….”
Sovoy’s voice grew softer the longer he spoke, until he almost seemed to be speaking to himself. “My blood goes back fifty generations, older than tree or stone. And I am come to this,” he put his head against the palms of his hands and looked down at his tin tray. “Barley bread. Gods all around us, a man is meant to eat wheat.”
I watched him while chewing a mouthful of the fresh brown bread. It tasted wonderful.
“I don’t know what I was thinking,” Sovoy said suddenly, getting to his feet. “I can’t deal with this.” He stormed off, leaving his tray on the table.
“That’s Sovoy,” Manet said to me in an offhand manner. “Not a bad sort, though he’s usually not nearly as drunk as that.”
“He’s Modegan?”
Simmon laughed. “You don’t get more Modegan than Sovoy.”
“You should not prod at him,” Wilem said to Manet. His rough accent made it hard for me to tell if he was rebuking the older student, but his dark Cealdish face showed definite reproach. As a foreigner, I guessed he sympathized with Sovoy’s difficulty adjusting to the language and culture of the Commonwealth.
“He is having a rough time of it,” Simmon admitted. “Remember when he had to let his manservant go?”
Mouth full, Manet made a gesture with
both hands as if playing an imaginary violin. He rolled his eyes, his expression vastly unsympathetic.
“He had to sell his rings this time around,” I added. Wilem, Simmon, and Manet turned to look at me curiously. “There were pale lines on his fingers.” I explained, holding up my hand to demonstrate.
Manet gave me a close looking over. “Well now! Our new student seems to be all manner of clever.” He turned to Wilem and Simmon. “Lads, I’m in a betting mood. I’ll wager two jots that our young Kvothe makes it into the Arcanum before the end of his third term.”
“Three terms?” I said, surprised. “They told me all I had to do was prove I mastered the basic principles of sympathy.”
Manet gave me a gentle smile. “They tell everyone that. Principles of Sympathy is one of the classes you’ll have to slog through before they elevate you to E’lir.” He turned back to Wil and Sim expectantly. “How about it? Two jots?”
“I’ll bet.” Wilem gave me a small, apologetic shrug. “No offense. I play the odds.”
“What’ll you be studying then?” Manet asked as they shook on it.
The question caught me off guard. “Everything, I guess.”
“You sound like me thirty years ago,” Manet chuckled. “Where are you going to start?”
“The Chandrian,” I said. “I’d like to know as much about them as possible.”
Manet frowned, then burst out laughing. “Well that’s fine and good, I suppose. Sim here studies faeries and piksies. Wil there believes in all manner of silly damn Cealdish sky spirits and such.” He puffed himself up absurdly. “I’m big on imps and shamble-men myself.”
I felt my face get hot with embarrassment.
“God’s body, Manet,” Sim cut him off. “What’s gotten into you?”
“I just bet two jots on a boy who wants to study bedtime stories,” Manet groused, gesturing to me with his fork.
“He meant folklore. That sort of thing.” Wilem turned to look at me. “You looking to work in the Archives?”
“Folklore’s a piece of it,” I hedged quickly, eager to save face. “I want to see if different cultures’ folktales conform to Teccam’s theory of narrative septagy.”
Sim turned back to Manet. “See? Why are you so twitchy today? When’s the last time you slept?”
“Don’t take that tone with me,” Manet grumbled. “I caught a few hours last night.”
“And which night was that?” Sim pressed.
Manet paused, looking down at his tray. “Felling night?”
Wilem shook his head, muttering something in Siaru.
Simmon looked horrified. “Manet, yesterday was Cendling. Has it been two days since you’ve slept?”
“Probably not,” Manet said uncertainly. “I always lose track of things during admissions. There aren’t any classes. It throws off my schedule. Besides, I’ve been caught up in a project in the Fishery.” He trailed off, scrubbing at his face with his hands, then looked up at me. “They’re right. I’m a little off my head right now. Teccam’s septagy, folklore and all that. It’s a bit bookish for me, but a fine thing to study. I didn’t mean any offense.”
“None taken.” I said easily and nodded at Sovoy’s tray. “Slide that over here, would you? If our young noble’s not coming back, I’ll have his bread.”
After Simmon took me to sign up for classes, I made my way to the Archives, eager to have a look around after all these years of dreaming.
This time when I entered the Archives, there was a young gentleman sitting behind the desk, tapping a pen on a piece of paper that bore the marks of much rewriting and crossing out. As I approached, he scowled and scratched out another line. His face was built to scowl. His hands were soft and pale. His blinding white linen shirt and richly-dyed blue vest reeked of money. The part of me that was not long removed from Tarbean wanted to pick his pocket.
He tapped his pen for another few moments before laying it down with a vastly irritated sigh. “Name,” he said without looking up.
“Kvothe.”
He flipped through the ledger, found a particular page and frowned. “You’re not in the book.” He glanced up briefly and scowled again before turning back to whatever verse he was laboring over. When I made no signs of leaving he flicked his fingers as if shooing away a bug. “Feel free to piss off.”
“I’ve just—”
Ambrose put down his pen again. “Listen,” he said slowly, as if explaining to a simpleton. “You’re not in the book,” he made an exaggerated gesture toward the ledger with both hands. “You don’t get inside.” He made another gesture to the inner doors. “The end.”
“I’ve just gone through admissions—”
He tossed up his hands, exasperated. “Then of course you’re not in the book.”
I dug into a pocket for my admission slip. “Master Lorren gave me this himself.”
“I don’t care if he carried you here pig-a-back,” Ambrose said, pointedly redipping his pen. “Now quit wasting my time. I have things to do.”
“Wasting your time?” I demanded, my temper finally wearing thin. “Do you have any idea what I’ve gone through to get here?”
Ambrose looked up at me, his expression growing suddenly amused. “Wait, let me guess,” he said, laying his hands flat on the table and pushing himself to his feet. “You were always smarter than the other children back in Clodhump, or whatever little one-whore town you’re from. Your ability to read and count left the local villagers awestruck.”
I heard the outer door open and shut behind me, but Ambrose didn’t pay it any attention as he walked around to lean against the front of the desk. “Your parents knew you were special so they saved up for a couple years, bought you a pair of shoes, and sewed the pig blanket into a shirt.” He reached out to rub the fabric of my new clothes between his fingers.
“It took months of walking, hundreds of miles bumping along in the backs of mule carts. But in the end…” He made an expansive gesture with both hands. “Praise Tehlu and all his angels! Here you are! All bright-eyed and full of dreams!”
I heard laughter and turned to see that two men and a young woman had come in during his tirade. “God’s body, Ambrose. What’s got you started?”
“Goddamn first-termers,” Ambrose groused as he headed back around to sit behind the desk. “Come in here dressed like rag piles and act like they own the place.”
The three newcomers walked toward the doors marked STACKS. I fought down a hot flush of embarrassment as they looked me up and down. “Are we still heading to the Eolian tonight?”
Ambrose nodded. “Of course. Sixth bell.”
“Aren’t you going to check to see if they’re in the book?” I asked as the door closed behind them.
Ambrose turned back to me, his smile bright, brittle, and by no means friendly. “Listen, I’m going to give you a little advice for free. Back home you were something special. Here you’re just another kid with a big mouth. So address me as Re’lar, go back to your bunk, and thank whatever pagan God you pray to that we’re not in Vintas. My father and I would chain you to a post like a rabid dog.”
He shrugged. “Or don’t. Stay here. Make a scene. Start to cry. Better yet, take a swing at me.” He smiled. “I’ll give you a thrashing and get you thrown out on your ear.” He picked up his pen and turned back to whatever he was writing.
I left.
You might think that this encounter left me disheartened. You might think I felt betrayed, my childhood dreams of the University cruelly shattered.
Quite the contrary. It reassured me. I had been feeling rather out of my element until Ambrose let me know, in his own special way, that there wasn’t much difference between the University and the streets of Tarbean. No matter where you are, people are basically the same.
Besides, anger can keep you warm at night, and wounded pride can spur a man to wondrous things.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Sympathy in the Mains
MAINS WAS THE OLDEST building
at the University. Over the centuries it had grown slowly in all directions, engulfing smaller buildings and courtyards as it spread. It had the look of an ambitious architectural breed of lichen that was trying to cover as many acres as it could.
It was a hard place to find your way around. Hallways took odd turns, dead-ended unexpectedly, or took long, rambling, roundabout paths. It could easily take twenty minutes to walk from one room to another, despite the fact that they were only fifty feet apart. More experienced students knew shortcuts, of course: which workrooms and lecture halls to cut through to reach your destination.
At least one of the courtyards had been completely isolated and could only be accessed by climbing though a window. Rumor had it that there were some rooms bricked off entirely, some with students still inside. Their ghosts were rumored to walk the halls at night, bewailing their fate and complaining about the food in the Mess.
My first class was held in Mains. Luckily, I had been warned by my bunkmates that Mains was difficult to navigate, so despite getting lost, I still arrived with time to spare.
When I finally found the room for my first class, I was surprised to find it resembled a small theater. Seats rose in tiered semicircles around a small raised stage. In larger cities my troupe had performed in places not unlike this one. The thought relaxed me as I found a seat in the back.
I was a jangling mass of excitement as I watched other students slowly trickle into the room. Everyone was older than me by at least a few years. I reviewed the first thirty sympathetic bindings in my head as the theater filled with anxious students. There were perhaps fifty of us in all, making the room about three-quarters full. Some had pen and paper with hardbacks to write on. Some had wax tablets. I hadn’t brought anything, but that didn’t worry me overmuch. I’ve always had an excellent memory.
Master Hemme entered the room and made his way onto the stage to stand behind a large stone worktable. He looked impressive in his dark master’s robes, and it was bare seconds before the whispering, shuffling theater of students hushed to silence.