Not that he had anything anyone would want to steal, but Rolph did. Fine silk clothes, and books that Tor envied more than a little, as well as more gold than he'd had ever seen in one place before. To his surprise Rolph offered to let him read the books whenever he had spare time, not even worried that he might damage them or leave them smudged. It was nice to just kick back and peruse a history text every now and again, instead of spending all his time working on meditation or field work for building devices. Of course now that he could do his own fields instead of just copying other people's, building was looking to be even more interesting. A lot more actually. The simple fields they'd let him copy so far had been bland to work on.
Slapping the lock design, a simple hand print in worn paint, got the door to open easily, sliding open as if held in place by some unseen force. It looked pretty magical, but it was really just a clever swivel lock, a wooden privacy bar about the size of his forearm. It was counterbalanced so that the amount of energy it took to swing it in and out of place was virtually nil. The small effort of touching the plate did it, passed the energy of intent along to bump the bar in and out of the way. It was magic strictly speaking, but only the tiniest amount. He'd borrowed the field design from the lock on a chest that Rolph owned, a clever contraption that probably cost half of what Tor's entire family made in a year.
Rolph stood and just played with the door lock every now and then, sighing and asking him how it worked. Tor had to smile when that happened, since, as an accounting student, Rolph lacked a lot of the needed background to understand what he said. The guy tried to keep up and was bright enough, so Tor kept explaining. That willingness to try was one of the reasons he got along so well with the giant redhead. Even if his family was rich.
As it stood Tor kind of thought that the other boy was less baffled by the device itself, since he already owned basically the same thing on the chest, than just amazed that someone like him, only a third year student after all, could manage something that interesting. It made Tor happy to hear, and a bit proud, since he'd actually done it the year before. In second year.
Once in the room he looked around for the wash basket, the large wicker one that Rolph let him share, and picked it up without really looking inside. It felt heavy, but then both he and Rolph had gotten the weapons studies chief instructor for two years straight for some reason. None of the other accounting or field students had Kolb, or even any of the man's first tier trainers. Most of them didn't even have weapons or fighting classes at all. A few that were nobles did, sons and daughters of Counts and Barons that might have to fight to protect themselves someday, even if they were better at math or history.
Almost no one went into building, it was considered the hardest course of study a person could take at Lairdgren school, so those students normally didn't have more than some light exercise classes, dance or stretching normally. How they'd both “lucked” into the extra combat courses he didn't know. Rolph just shrugged it off the one time Tor had mentioned it, and suggested that maybe their parents had something to do with it.
Maybe his roommate's parents did, being wealthy people that could pull strings and get special privileges for their child. Tor's parents were wonderful people, hardworking and industrious in all things, including having children, but wealthy and influential they were not. Maybe it had been a paperwork error? That made a lot more sense really. Of course, when he'd mentioned that to Kolb the giant man had just laughed at him and patted him on the back, then told him that if it was, it didn't matter now, since too much time had been spent on him to give up over something as trivial as mis-signed documents.
Tor had pointed out more than once to Rolph that without the King's scholarship he'd be busily learning to be a baker in his parents' shop like his older brother, or possibly sneaking off to the docks to look for work as a fisherman's apprentice, not learning to build high powered spells and fighting from some of the best teachers in the land. While he could do without the bruises from training like a warrior, he didn't complain about it to anyone but his friend.
After all, he already knew how to bake well enough to open his own shop, he'd grown up doing it. That taught him enough about work to doubt that learning to fight was really any harder than, say, fishing on the ocean. Both fighters and fishermen had that hard look about them that spoke of something in particular.
Hard physical labor.
If he had to pick one to do, he'd take the one that also let him learn magic too. If he had to take beatings to be allowed to learn that, he'd do it with a smile, any day of the week. Well, not really with a smile, more like a lot of wincing and trying not to rub the sore spots, but he'd still do it, which had to count for something.
Building spells took work too, obviously, or everyone would be doing it, but it didn't do much for the body. At least this way he wasn't turning fat, or into a no muscle stick man like some of the other students had in the last years. That he'd paid for it in sweat and more than a little blood was inconsequential. At least Kolb always said so just before he assigned him some nearly impossible task. Generally things that hurt.
A lot.
There was only one other student, a first year by the looks of the boy, about as tall as Tor already and heavier set with muscle, doing his laundry at the outdoor washtubs when he got there. The poor kid didn't seem to be having an easy time of it, apparently not having any wash powder with him. Instead he tried to make do with elbow grease, scrubbing hard at the student browns in his hands. Having had to do that a few times himself in the past, Tor could sympathize. Setting up his own basket next to one of the wooden wash barrels he grabbed a corrugated metal board that didn't seem too dirty, glad that there weren't a lot of people out today. Some of the boards had rust on them, which didn't hurt the brown clothes too much, but could ruin the nice silks and velvets that some of the rich kids had.
The washing, something that he'd been tasked with since childhood, went quickly with only two people's clothes to get clean. At home it had always been an all-day project, one that he'd done at least once a week. They all took turns at it, since his parents were fanatical about them always wearing clean clothing. Fanatical for Two Bends. Here, he found, that level of cleanliness was actually normal. At least it didn't take him unaware like some of the other scholarship kids. The idea of only wearing clothing for one day at a time had been the regular thing for him and he hadn't had to bear ridicule for weeks before he'd figured it out.
He worked with a will, wanting to get to the drying as soon as possible, that was the point after all. The water made suds and nearly boiled as he worked the brown canvas on the board, excitement making the task more interesting, if only a tiny bit. The water was cold, of course, but the weather was warm enough so that his hands didn't freeze. It was early in the spring half, only a week into the new term, which meant first the nice, and then the way too hot, weather would be on them in the months to come.
Perfect baking weather. Or at least it would be in a week or so. Right now was just a bit too cool for dough to rise quickly without heating the room it was in or using a proofing box. Tor got a laugh from the fact that his mind had turned to baking of all things. He didn't hate the family business, actually he kind of enjoyed baking truth be told, but the shop really didn't need five or six bakers. Not in Two Bends, which only had about three hundred people.