I did.
Devi swabbed the bottle’s stopper with a clear substance and slid it into the mouth of the bottle. “A clever little adhesive from your friends over the river,” she explained. “This way, I can’t open the bottle without breaking it. When you pay off your debt, you get it back intact and can sleep safe knowing I haven’t kept any for myself.”
“Unless you have the solvent,” I pointed out.
Devi gave me a pointed look. “You’re not big on trust, are you?” She rummaged around in a drawer, brought out some sealing wax, and began to warm it over the lamp on her desk. “I don’t suppose you have a seal, or ring or anything like that?” she asked as she smeared the wax across the top of the bottle’s stopper.
“If I had jewelry to sell, I wouldn’t be here,” I said frankly and pressed my thumb into the wax. It left a recognizable print. “But that should do.”
Devi etched a number on the side of the bottle with a diamond stylus, then brought out a slip of paper. She wrote for a moment then fanned it with a hand, waiting for it to dry. “You can take this to any moneylender on either side of the river,” she said cheerfully as she handed it to me. “Pleasure doing business with you. Don’t be a stranger.”
I headed back to the University with money in my purse and the comforting weight of the lute strap hanging from my shoulder. It was secondhand, ugly, and had cost me dearly in money, blood, and peace of mind.
I loved it like a child, like breathing, like my own right hand.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Tar and Tin
AT THE BEGINNING OF my second term, Kilvin gave me permission to study sygaldry. This raised a few eyebrows, but none in the Fishery where I’d proven myself to be a hard worker and a dedicated student.
Sygaldry, simply put, is a set of tools for channeling forces. Like sympathy made solid.
For example, if you engraved one brick with the rune ule and another with the rune doch, the two runes would cause the bricks to cling to each other, as if mortared in place.
But it’s not as simple as that. What really happens is the two runes tear the bricks apart with the strength of their attraction. To prevent this you have to add the rune aru to each of the bricks. Aru is the rune for clay, and it makes the two pieces of clay cling to each other, solving your problem.
Except that aru and doch don’t fit together. They’re the wrong shape. To get them to fit you have to add a few linking runes, gea and teh. Then, for balance, you have to add gea and teh to the other brick, too. Then the bricks cling to each other without breaking.
But only if the bricks are made out of clay. Most bricks aren’t. So, generally, it is a better idea to mix iron into the ceramic of the brick before it is fired. Of course, that means you have to use fehr instead of aru. Then you have to switch teh and gea so the ends come together properly….
As you can see, mortar is a simpler and more reliable route for holding bricks together.
I studied my sygaldry under Cammar. The scarred, one-eyed man was Kilvin’s gatekeeper. Only after you were able to prove your firm grasp of sygaldry to him could you move on to a loose apprenticeship with one of the more experienced artificers. You assisted them with their projects, and in return they showed you the finer points of the craft.
There were one hundred ninety-seven runes. It was like learning a new language, except there were nearly two hundred unfamiliar letters, and you had to invent your own words a lot of the time. Most students took at least a month of study before Cammar judged them ready to move on. Some students took an entire term.
Start to finish, it took me seven days.
How?
First, I was driven. Other students could afford to stroll through their studies. Their parents or patrons would cover the expense. I, on the other hand, needed to climb the ranks in the Fishery quickly so I could earn money working on my own projects. Tuition wasn’t even my first priority anymore, Devi was.
Second, I was brilliant. Not just your run-of-the-mill brilliance either. I was extraordinarily brilliant.
Lastly, I was lucky. Plain and simple.
I stepped across the patchwork rooftops of Mains with my lute slung across my back. It was a dim, cloudy twilight, but I knew my way around by now. I kept to the tar and tin, knowing that red tiles or grey slate made for treacherous footing.
At some point in the remodeling of Mains, one of the courtyards had become completely isolated. It could only be accessed by clambering through a high window in one of the lecture halls or by climbing down a gnarled apple tree, if you happened to be on the roof.
I came here to practice my lute. My bunk in Mews was not convenient. Not only was music viewed as frivolous on this side of the river, but I would only make more enemies by playing while my bunkmates tried to sleep or study. So I came here. It was perfect, secluded, and practically on my doorstep.
The hedges had gone wild and the lawn was a riot of weeds and flowering plants. But there was a bench under the apple tree that was perfectly suited to my needs. Usually I came late at night, when Mains was locked and abandoned. But today was Theden, that meant that if I ate dinner quickly, I had nearly an hour between Elxa Dal’s class and my work in the Fishery. Plenty of time for some practice.
However, when I reached the courtyard tonight, I saw lights through the windows. Brandeur’s lecture was running late today.
So I stayed on the rooftop. The windows to the lecture hall were shut, so there wasn’t much chance of my being overheard.
I put my back to a nearby chimney and began to play. After about ten minutes the lights went out, but I decided to stay where I was rather than waste time climbing down.
I was halfway through “Ten Tap Tim” when the sun slipped out from behind the clouds. Golden light covered the rooftop, spilling over the edge of the roof into a thin slice of the courtyard below.
That’s when I heard the noise. A sudden rustling, like a startled animal down in the courtyard. But then there was something else, a noise unlike anything a squirrel or rabbit would make in the hedge. It was a hard noise, a vaguely metallic thud, as if someone had dropped a heavy bar of iron.
I stopped playing, the half-finished melody still running through my head. Was another student down there, listening? I put my lute back in its case before I made my way over to the lip of the roof and looked down.
I couldn’t see through the thick hedge that covered most of the eastern edge of the courtyard. Had a student climbed through the window?