Patrick Rothfuss - The Wise Man's Fear

Fela smiled at that, reaching out to run her knuckles across the front of the cloak. “I’m glad you like it. But as far as I’m concerned, I still owe you.” She bit at her lips nervously, then let her hand drop. “Promise me you’ll let me know if you change your mind.”

“I promise.”

She smiled again, then gave a half-wave and walked off across the courtyard. Watching her stroll through the crowd was like watching the wind move across the surface of a pond. Except instead of casting ripples on the water, the heads of young men turned to watch her as she passed.

I was still watching when Wilem walked up beside me. “Are you finished with your flirting then?” he asked.

“I wasn’t flirting,” I said.

“You should have been,” he said. “What is the point of me waiting politely, not interrupting, if you waste such opportunities?”

“It isn’t like that,” I said. “She’s just friendly.”

“Obviously,” he said, his rough Cealdish accent making the sarcasm in his voice seem twice as thick. “What did you draw?”

I showed him my tile.

“You’re a day later than me.” He held out his tile. “I’ll trade you for a jot.” I hesitated.

“Come now,” he said. “It’s not as if you can study in the Archives like the rest of us.”

I glared at him. “Your empathy is overwhelming.”

“I save my empathy for those clever enough to avoid driving the Master Archivist into a frothing rage,” he said. “For folk such as you, I only have a jot in trade. Would you like it, or not?”

“I would like two jots,” I said, scanning the crowd, looking for students with a desperate wildness around their eyes. “If I can get them.”

Wilem narrowed his dark eyes. “A jot and three drabs,” he said.

I looked back at him, eyeing him carefully. “A jot and three,” I said. “And you take Simmon as your partner the next time we play corners.”

He gave a huff of laughter and nodded. We traded tiles and I tucked the money into my purse: one talent and four . A small step closer. After a moment’s thought, I tucked my tile into my pocket.

“Aren’t you going to keep trading down?” Wil asked.

I shook my head. “I think I’ll keep this slot.”

He frowned. “Why? What can you do with four days except fret and thumb-twiddle?”

“Same as anyone,” I said. “Prepare for my admissions interview.”

“How?” he asked. “You are still banned from the Archives, aren’t you?”

“There are other types of preparation,” I said mysteriously.

Wilem snorted. “That doesn’t sound suspicious at all ,” he said. “And you wonder why people talk about you.”

“I don’t wonder why they talk,” I said. “I wonder what they say.”

The city that had grown up around the University over the centuries was not large. It was barely more than a town, really.

Despite this, trade thrived at our end of the Great Stone Road. Merchants brought in carts of raw materials: tar and clay, gibbstone, potash, and sea salt. They brought luxuries like Lanetti coffee and Vintish wine. They brought fine dark ink from Arueh, pure white sand for our glassworks, and delicately crafted Cealdish springs and screws.

When those same merchants left, their wagons were laden with things you could only find at the University. The Medica made medicines. Real medicines, not colored stumpwater or penny nostrums. The alchemy complex produced its own marvels that I was only dimly aware of, as well as raw materials like naphtha, sulfurjack, and twicelime.

I might be biased, but I think it’s fair to say that most of the University’s tangible wonders came from the Artificery. Ground glass lenses. Ingots of wolfram and Glantz steel. Sheets of gold so thin they tore like tissue paper.

But we made much more than that. Sympathy lamps and telescopes. Heateaters and gearwins. Salt pumps. Trifoil compasses. A dozen versions of Teccam’s winch and Delevari’s axle.

Artificers like myself made these things, and when merchants bought them we earned a commission: sixty percent of the sale. This was the only reason I had any money at all. And, since there were no classes during admissions, I had a full span of days to work in the Fishery.

I made my way to the Stocks, the storeroom where artificers signed out tools and materials. I was surprised to see a tall, pale student standing at the window, looking profoundly bored.

“Jaxim?” I asked. “What are you doing here? This is a scrub job.”

Jaxim nodded morosely. “Kilvin is still a little . . . vexed with me,” he said. “You know. The fire and everything.”

“Sorry to hear it,” I said. Jaxim was a full Re’lar like myself. He could be pursuing any number of projects on his own right now. To be forced into a menial task like this wasn’t just boring, it humiliated Jaxim publicly while costing him money and stalling his studies. As punishments went, it was remarkably thorough.

“What are we short on?” I asked.

There was an art to choosing your projects in the Fishery. It didn’t matter if you made the brightest sympathy lamp, or the most efficient heat-funnel in the history of Artificing. Until someone bought it, you wouldn’t make a bent penny of commission.

For a lot of the other workers, this wasn’t an issue. They could afford to wait. I, on the other hand, needed something that would sell quickly.

Jaxim leaned on the counter between us. “Caravan just bought all our deck lamps,” he said. “We only have that ugly one of Veston’s left.”

I nodded. Sympathy lamps were perfect for ships. Difficult to break, cheaper than oil in the long run, and you didn’t have to worry about them setting fire to your ship.

I juggled the numbers in my head. I could make two lamps at once, saving some time through duplication of effort, and be reasonably sure they would sell before I had to pay tuition.

Unfortunately, deck lamps were pure drudgery. Forty hours of painstaking labor, and if I botched any of it, the lamps simply wouldn’t work. Then I would have nothing to show for my time except a debt to the Stocks for the materials I’d wasted.

Still, I didn’t have a lot of options. “I guess I’ll do lamps then,” I said.

Jaxim nodded and opened the ledger. I began to recite what I needed from memory. “I’ll need twenty medium raw emitters. Two sets of the tall moldings. A diamond stylus. A tenten glass. Two medium crucibles. Four ounces of tin. Six ounces of fine-steel. Two ounces of nickel . . .”

Nodding to himself, Jaxim wrote it down in the ledger.

Eight hours later I walked through the front door of Anker’s smelling of hot bronze, tar, and coal smoke. It was almost midnight, and the room was empty except for a handful of dedicated drinkers.

“You look rough,” Anker said as I made my way to the bar.

“I feel rough,” I said. “I don’t suppose there’s anything left in the pot?”

He shook his head. “Folk were hungry tonight. I’ve got some cold potatoes I was going to throw in the soup tomorrow. And half a baked squash, I think.”

“Sold,” I said. “Though I’d be grateful for some salt butter as well.”

He nodded and pushed away from the bar.

“Don’t bother heating anything up,” I said. “I’ll just take it up to my room.”

He brought out a bowl with three good-sized potatoes and half a golden squash shaped like a bell. There was a generous daub of butter in the middle of the squash where the seeds had been scooped out.

“I’ll take a bottle of Bredon beer too,” I said as I took the bowl. “With the cap on. I don’t want to spill on the stairs.”

It was three flights up to my tiny room. After I closed the door, I carefully turned the squash upside down in the bowl, set the bottle on top of it, and wrapped the whole thing in a piece of sackcloth, turning it into a bundle I could carry under one arm.