Patrick Rothfuss - The Name of the Wind

“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.”