“The arcanist I learned from was named Abenthy, sir. But he never gave me a letter of introduction. Might I tell you myself?”
The Chancellor nodded gravely, “Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing that you actually have studied with an arcanist without proof of some kind. Do you have anything that can corroborate your story? Any other correspondence?”
“He gave me a book before we parted ways, sir. He inscribed it to me and signed his name.”
The Chancellor smiled. “That should do nicely. Do you have it with you?”
“No.” I let some honest bitterness creep into my voice. “I had to pawn it in Tarbean.”
Sitting to the left of the Chancellor, Master Rhetorician Hemme made a disgusted noise at my comment, earning him an irritated look from the Chancellor. “Come, Herma,” Hemme said, slapping his hand on the table. “The boy is obviously lying. I have important matters to attend to this afternoon.”
The Chancellor gave him a vastly irritated look. “I have not given you leave to speak, Master Hemme.” The two of them stared at each other for a long moment before Hemme looked away, scowling.
The Chancellor turned back to me, then his eye caught some movement from one of the other masters. “Yes, Master Lorren?”
The tall, thin master looked at me passively. “What was the book called?”
“Rhetoric and Logic, sir.”
“And where did you pawn it?”
“The Broken Binding, on Seaward Square.”
Lorren turned to look at the Chancellor. “I will be leaving for Tarbean tomorrow to fetch necessary materials for the upcoming term. If it is there I will bring it back. The matter of the boy’s claim can be settled then.”
The Chancellor gave a small nod. “Thank you, Master Lorren.” He settled himself back into his chair and folded his hands in front of himself. “Very well, then. What would Abenthy’s letter tell us, if he had written it?”
I took a good breath. “He would say that I knew by heart the first ninety sympathetic bindings. That I could double-distill, perform titration, calcify, sublimate, and precipitate solution. That I am well versed in history, argument, grammars, medicine, and geometry.”
The Chancellor did his best to not look amused. “That’s quite a list. Are you sure you didn’t leave anything out?”
I paused. “He probably would have also mentioned my age, sir.”
“How old are you, boy?”
“Kvothe, sir.”
A smile tugged at the Chancellor’s face. “Kvothe.”
“Fifteen, sir.” There was a rustle as the masters each took some small action, exchanged glances, raised eyebrows, shook their heads. Hemme rolled his eyes skyward.
Only the Chancellor did nothing. “How exactly would he have mentioned your age?”
I gave a thin sliver of a smile. “He would have urged you to ignore it.”
There was a breath of silence. The Chancellor drew a deep breath and leaned back in his seat. “Very well. We have a few questions for you. Would you like to begin, Master Brandeur?” He made a gesture toward one end of the crescent table.
I turned to face Brandeur. Portly and balding, he was the University’s Master Arithmetician. “How many grains are in thirteen ounces?”
“Six thousand two hundred and forty,” I said immediately.
He raised his eyebrows a little. “If I had fifty silver talents and converted them to Vintish coin and back, how much would I have if the Cealdim took four percent each time?”
I started the ponderous conversion between currencies, then smiled as I realized it was unnecessary. “Forty-six talents and eight drabs, if he’s honest. Forty-six even if he’s not.”
He nodded again, looking at me more closely. “You have a triangle,” he said slowly. “One side is seven feet. Another side, three feet. One angle is sixty degrees. How long is the other side?”
“Is the angle between the two sides?” He nodded. I closed my eyes for the space of half a breath, then opened them again. “Six feet six inches. Dead even.”
He made a hmmmpfh noise and looked surprised. “Good enough. Master Arwyl?”
Arwyl asked his question before I had time to turn and to face him. “What are the medicinal properties of hellebore?”
“Anti-inflammatory, antiseptic, mild sedative, mild analgesic. Blood purifier.” I said, looking up at the grandfatherly, spectacled old man. “Toxic if used excessively. Dangerous for women who are with child.”
“Name the component structures that comprise the hand.”
I named all twenty-seven bones, alphabetically. Then the muscles from largest to smallest. I listed them quickly, matter-of-factly pointing out their locations on my own upraised hand.
The speed and accuracy of my answers impressed them. Some of them hid it, others wore it openly on their faces. The truth was, I needed to impress them. I knew from my previous discussions with Ben that you needed money or brains to get into the University. The more of one you had, the less of the other you needed.
So I was cheating. I had snuck into Hollows through a back entrance, acting the part of an errand boy. Then I’d picked two locks and spent more than an hour watching other students’ interviews. I heard hundreds of questions and thousands of answers.
I also heard how high the other students’ tuitions were set. The lowest had been four talents and six jots, but most were double that. One student had been charged over thirty talents for his tuition. It would be easier for me to get a piece of the moon than that much money.
I had two copper jots in my pocket and no way to get a bent penny more. So I needed to impress them. More than that. I needed to confound them with my intelligence. To dazzle them.
I finished listing the muscles of the hand and started in on the ligatures when Arwyl waved me into silence and asked his next question. “When do you bleed a patient?”
The question brought me up short. “When I want him to die?” I asked dubiously.
He nodded, mostly to himself. “Master Lorren?”
Master Lorren was pale and seemed unnaturally tall even while sitting. “Who was the first declared king of Tarvintas?”
“Posthumously? Feyda Calanthis. Otherwise it would be his brother, Jarvis.”
“Why did the Aturan Empire collapse?”
I paused, taken aback by the scope of the question. None of the other students had been asked anything so broad as this. “Well, sir,” I said slowly to give myself a moment or two to organize my thoughts. “Partly because Lord Nalto was an inept egomaniac. Partly because the church went into upheaval and denounced the Order Amyr who were a large part of the strength of Atur. Partly because the military was fighting three different wars of conquest at the same time, and high taxes fomented rebellion in lands already inside the empire.”
I watched the master’s expression, hoping he would give some sign when he had heard enough. “They also debased their currency, undercut the universality of the iron law, and antagonized the Adem.” I shrugged. “But of course it’s more complicated than that.”
Master Lorren’s expression remained unchanged, but he nodded. “Who was the greatest man who ever lived?”
Another unfamiliar question. I thought for a minute. “Illien.”
Master Lorren blinked once, expressionless. “Master Mandrag?”
Mandrag was cleanshaven and smooth-faced, with hands stained a half hundred different colors and seemed to be made all of knuckle and bone. “If you needed phosphorus where would you get it?”
His tone sounded for a moment so much like Abenthy’s that I forgot myself and spoke without thinking. “An apothecary?” One of the masters on the other side of the table chuckled and I bit my too-quick tongue.
He gave me a faint smile, and I drew a faint breath. “Barring access to an apothecary.”
“I could render it from urine,” I said quickly. “Given a kiln and enough time.”
“How much would you need to gain two ounces pure?” He cracked his knuckles
absentmindedly.
I paused to consider, as this was a new question too. “At least forty gallons, Master Mandrag, depending on the quality of the material.”
There was a long pause as he cracked his knuckles one at a time. “What are the three most important rules of the chemist?”
This I knew from Ben. “Label clearly. Measure twice. Eat elsewhere.”
He nodded, still wearing the faint smile. “Master Kilvin?”
Kilvin was Cealdish, his thick shoulders and brisding black beard reminded me of a bear. “Right,” he grumbled, folding his thick hands in front of him. “How would you make an ever-burning lamp?”
Each of the other eight masters made some sort of exasperated noise or gesture.
“What?” Kilvin demanded, looking around at them, irritated. “It is my question. The asking is mine.” He turned his attention back to me. “So. How would you make it?”
“Well,” I said slowly. “I would probably start with a pendulum of some sort. Then I would bind it to—”
“Kraem. No. Not like this.” Kilvin growled out a couple words and pounded his fist on the table, each thump as his hand came down was accompanied by a staccato burst of reddish light that welled up from his hand. “No sympathy. I do not want an ever-glowing lamp. I want an ever-burning one.” He looked at me again showing his teeth, as if he were going to eat me.
“Lithium salt?” I asked without thinking, then backpedaled. “No, a sodium oil that burned in an enclosed … no, damn.” I mumbled my way to a stop. The other applicants hadn’t had to deal with questions like these.
He cut me off with a short sideways gesture of his hand. “Enough. We will talk later. Elxa Dal.”
It took me a moment to remember that Elxa Dal was the next master. I turned to him. He looked like the archetypal sinister magician that seems to be a requirement in so many bad Aturan plays. Severe dark eyes, lean face, short black beard. For all that, his expression was friendly enough. “What are the words for the first parallel kinetic binding?”
I rattled them off glibly.
He didn’t seem surprised. “What was the binding that Master Kilvin used just a moment ago?”
“Capacatorial Kinetic Luminosity.”
“What is the synodic period?”
I looked at him oddly. “Of the moon?” The question seemed a little out of sync with the other two.
He nodded.
“Seventy-two and a third days, sir. Give or take a bit.”
He shrugged and gave a wry smile, as if he’d expected to catch me with the last question. “Master Hemme?”
Hemme looked at me over steepled fingers. “How much mercury would it take to reduce two gills of white sulfur?” he asked pompously, as if I’d already given the wrong answer.
One of the things I’d learned during my hour of quiet observation was this: Master Hemme was the king-high bastard of the lot. He took delight in student’s discomfort and did everything he could to badger and unsettle them. He had a fondness for trick questions.
Luckily, this was one I had watched him use on other students. You see, you can’t reduce white sulfur with mercury. “Well,” I drew the word out, pretending to think it through. Hemme’s smug smile grew wider by the second. “Assuming you mean red sulfur, it would be about forty-one ounces. Sir.” I smiled a sharp smile at him. All teeth.
“Name the nine prime fallacies,” he snapped.
“Simplification. Generalization. Circularity. Reduction. Analogy. False causality. Semantism. Irrelevancy… .” I paused, not being able to remember the formal name of the last one. Ben and I had called it Nalt, after Emperor Nalto. It galled me, not being able to recall its real name, as I had read it in Rhetoric and Logic just a few days ago.
My irritation must have shown on my face. Hemme glowered at me as I paused, saying. “So you don’t know everything after all?” He leaned back into his seat with a satisfied expression.
“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think I had anything to learn,” I said bitingly before I managed to get my tongue under control again. From the other side of the table, Kilvin gave a deep chuckle.
Hemme opened his mouth, but the Chancellor silenced him with a look before he could say anything else. “Now then,” the Chancellor began, “I think—”
“I too would ask some questions,” the man to the Chancellor’s right said. He had an accent that I couldn’t quite place. Or perhaps it was that his voice held a certain resonance. When he spoke, everyone at the desk stirred slightly, then grew still, like leaves touched by the wind.
“Master Namer,” the Chancellor said with equal parts deference and trepidation.
Elodin was younger than the others by at least a dozen years. Cleanshaven with deep eyes. Medium height, medium build, there was nothing particularly striking about him, except for the way he sat at the table, one moment watching something intently, the next minute bored and letting his attention wander among the high beams of the ceiling above. He was almost like a child who had been forced to sit down with adults.
I felt Master Elodin look at me. Actually felt it, I suppressed a shiver. “So-heketh ka Siaru krema’teth tu?” he asked. How well do you speak Siaru?
“Rieusa, ta krelar deala tu.” Not very well, thank you.
He lifted a hand, his index finger pointing upward. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
I paused for a moment, which was more consideration than the question seemed to warrant. “At least one,” I said. “Probably no more than six.”
He broke into a broad smile and brought his other hand up from underneath the table, it had two fingers upright. He waved them back and forth for the other masters to see, nodding his head from side to side in an absent, childish way. Then he lowered his hands to the table in front of him, and grew suddenly serious. “Do you know the seven words that will make a woman love you?”
I looked at him, trying to decide if there was more to the question. When nothing more was forthcoming, I answered simply, “No.”
“They exist.” He reassured me, and sat back with a look of contentment. “Master Linguist?” He nodded to the Chancellor.
“That seems to cover most of academia,” the Chancellor said almost to himself. I had the impression that something had unsettled him, but he was too composed for me to tell exactly what. “You will forgive me if I ask a few things of a less scholarly nature?”
Having no real choice, I nodded.
He gave me a long look that seemed to stretch several minutes. “Why didn’t Abenthy send a letter of recommendation with you?”
I hesitated. Not all traveling entertainers are as respectable as our troupe, so, understandably, not everyone respected them. But I doubted that lying was the best course of action. “He left my troupe three years ago. I haven’t seen him since.”
I saw each of the masters look at me. I could almost hear them doing the mental arithmetic, calculating my age backward.
“Oh come now,” Hemme said disgustedly and moved as if he would stand.
The Chancellor gave him a dark look, silencing him. “Why do you wish to attend the University?”
I stood dumbfounded. It was the one question I was completely unprepared for. What could I say? Ten thousand books. Your Archives. I used to have dreams of reading there when I was young. True, but too childish. I want revenge against the Chandrian. Too dramatic. To become so powerful that no one will ever be able to hurt me again. Too frightening.
I looked up to the Chancellor and realized I’d been quiet for a long while. Unable to think of anything else, I shrugged and said, “I don’t know, sir. I guess I’ll have to learn that too.”
The Chancellor’s eyes had taken on a curious look by this point but he pushed it aside as he said, “Is there anything else you would like to say?” He had asked the question of the other applicants, but none of them had taken advantage of it. It seemed almost rhetorical, a ritual before the masters discussed the applicant’s tuition.
“Yes, please,”
I said, surprising him. “I have a favor to ask beyond mere admission.” I took a deep breath, letting their attention settle on me. “It has taken me nearly three years to get here. I may seem young, but I belong here as much, if not more, than some rich lordling who can’t tell salt from cyanide by tasting it.”
I paused. “However, at this moment I have two jots in my purse and nowhere in the world to get more than that. I have nothing worth selling that I haven’t already sold.
“Admit me for more than two jots and I will not be able to attend. Admit me for less and I will be here every day, while every night I will do what it takes to stay alive while I study here. I will sleep in alleys and stables, wash dishes for kitchen scraps, beg pennies to buy pens. I will do whatever it takes.” I said the last words fiercely, almost snarling them.
“But admit me free, and give me three talents so I can live and buy what I need to learn properly, and I will be a student the likes of which you have never seen before.”
There was a half-breath of silence, followed by a thunderclap of a laugh from Kilvin. “HA!” he roared. “If one student in ten had half his fire I’d teach with a whip and chair instead of chalk and slate.” He brought his hand down hard on the table in front of him.
This sparked everyone to begin talking at the same time in their own varied tones. The Chancellor made a little wave in my direction and I took the chance to seat myself in the chair that stood at the edge of the circle of light.
The discussion seemed to go on for quite a long while. But even two or three minutes would have seemed like an eternity, sitting there while a group of old men debated my future. There was no actual shouting, but a fair amount of hand waving, most of it by Master Hemme, who seemed to have taken the same dislike of me that I had for him.
It wouldn’t have been so bad if I could have understood what they were saying, but even my finely tuned eavesdropper’s ears couldn’t quite make out what was being said.
Their talking died down suddenly, and then the Chancellor looked in my direction, motioning me forward.
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