I was trying to think up a polite response when my eye was drawn to something over our heads.
Kilvin followed my gaze up over his shoulder. When he saw what I was looking at, a grin split his great bearded face. “Ahhh,” he said with fatherly pride. “My lovelies.”
High among the high rafters of the workshop a half hundred glass spheres hung from chains. They were of varying sizes, though none were much larger than a man’s head.
And they were burning.
Seeing my expression, Kilvin made a gesture. “Come,” he said, and led me to a narrow stairway made of wrought iron. Reaching the top, we stepped out onto a series of slim iron walkways twenty-five feet above the ground, weaving their way among the thick timbers that supported the roof. After a moment of maneuvering through the maze of timber and iron, we came to the hanging row of glass spheres with fires burning inside them.
“These,” Kilvin gestured, “are my lamps.”
It was only then that I realized what they were. Some were filled with liquid and wicking, much like ordinary lamps, but most of them were utterly unfamiliar. One contained nothing but a boiling grey smoke that flickered sporadically. Another sphere contained a wick hanging in empty air from a silver wire, burning with a motionless white flame despite its apparent lack of fuel.
Two hanging side by side were twins save that one had a blue flame and the other was a hot-forge-orange. Some were small as plums, others large as melons. One held what looked like a piece of black coal and a piece of white chalk, and where the two pieces were pressed together, an angry red flame burned outward in all directions.
Kilvin let me look for a long while before he moved closer. “Among the Cealdar there are legends of ever-burning lamps. I believe that such a thing was once within the scope of our craft. Ten years I have been looking. I have made many lamps, some of them very good, very long burning.” He looked at me. “But none of them ever-burning.”
He walked down the line to point at one of the hanging spheres. “Do you know this one, E’lir Kvothe?” It held nothing but a knob of greenish-greyish wax that was burning with a greenish-greyish tongue of flame. I shook my head.
“Hmmm. You should. White lithium salt. I thought of it three span before you came to us. It is good so far, twenty-four days and I expect many more.” He looked at me. “Your guessing this thing surprised me, as it took me ten years to think of it. Your second guess, sodium oil, was not as good. I tried it years ago. Eleven days.”
He moved all the way to the end of the row, pointing at the empty sphere with the motionless white flame. “Seventy days,” he said proudly. “I do not hope that this will be the one, for hoping is a foolish game. But if it burns six more days it will be my best lamp in these ten years.”
He watched it for a while, his expression oddly soft. “But I do not hope,” he said resolutely. “I make new lamps and take my measurements. That is the only way to make progress.”
Wordlessly he led me back down to the floor of the workshop. Once there, he turned to me. “Hands,” he said in a peremptory way. He held out his own huge hands expectantly.
Not knowing what he wanted, I raised my hands in front of me. He took them in his own, his touch surprisingly gentle. He turned them over, looking at them carefully. “You have Cealdar hands,” he said in a grudging compliment. He held his own up for me to see. They were thick-fingered, with wide palms. He made two fists that looked more like mauls than balled hands. “I had many years before these hands could learn to be Cealdar hands. You are lucky. You will work here.” Only by the quizzical tilting of his head did he make the gruff grumble of a statement into an invitation.
“Oh, yes. I mean, thank you, sir. I’m honored that you wo—”
He cut me off with an impatient gesture. “Come to me if you have any thoughts on the ever-burning lamp. If your head is as clever as your hands look….” What might have been a smile was hidden by his thick beard, but a grin shone in his dark eyes as he hesitated teasingly, almost playfully. “If,” he repeated, holding up a finger, its tip as large as the ball of a hammer’s head. “Then me and mine will show you things.”
“You need to figure out who you’re going to suck up to,” Simmon said. “A master has to sponsor you to Re’lar. So you should pick one and stick to him like shit on his shoe.”
“Lovely,” Sovoy said dryly.
Sovoy, Wilem, Simmon and I were sitting at an out of the way table in the back of Anker’s, isolated from the Felling-night crowd that filled the room with a low roar of conversation. My stitches had come out two days earlier and we were celebrating my first full span in the Arcanum.
We were none of us particularly drunk. But then again, none of us were particularly sober, either. Our exact positioning between those two points is a matter of pointless conjecture, and I will waste no time on it.
“I simply concentrate on being brilliant,” Sovoy said. “Then wait for the masters to realize it.”
“How did that work out with Mandrag?” Wilem said with a rare smile.
Sovoy gave Wilem a dark look. “Mandrag is a horse’s ass.”
“That explains why you threatened him with your riding crop,” Wilem said.
I covered my mouth to stifle a laugh. “Did you really?”
“They’re not telling the whole story,” Sovoy said, affronted. “He passed me over for promotion in favor of another student. He was keeping me back so he could use me as indentured labor, rather than raise me to Re’lar.”
“And you threatened him with your crop.”
“We had an argument,” Sovoy said calmly. “And I happened to have my crop in my hand.”
“You waved it at him,” Wilem said.
“I’d been riding!” Sovoy said hotly. “If I’d been whoring before class and waved a corset at him, no one would have thought twice about it!”
There was a moment of silence at our table.
“I’m thinking twice about it right now,” Simmon said before bursting into laughter with Wilem.
Sovoy fought down a smile as he turned to face me. “Sim is right about one thing. You should concentrate your efforts on one subject. Otherwise you’ll end up like Manet, the eternal E’lir.” He stood and straightened his clothes. “Now, how do I look?”
Sovoy wasn’t fashionably dressed in the strictest sense, as he clung to the Modegan styles rather than the local ones. But there was no denying that he cut quite a figure in the muted colors of his fine silks and suedes.
“What does it matter?” Wilem asked. “Are you trying to set up a tryst with Sim?”
Sovoy smiled. “Unfortunately, I must leave you. I have an engagement with a lady, and I doubt our rounds will bring us to this side of town tonight.”