I crouched down and rested my fingers on the tin bands. The right-hand one was warm, meaning the half on the inside would be correspondingly cool. But the one on the left was room temperature. I craned my neck to get a look at the sygaldry and spotted a deep scratch in the tin, scoring through two of the runes.
That explained it. A piece of sygaldry is like a sentence in a lot of ways. If you remove a couple words, it simply doesn’t make any sense. I should say it usually doesn’t make sense. Sometimes a damaged piece of sygaldry can do something truly unpleasant. I frowned down at the band of tin. This was sloppy artificing. The runes should have been on the inside of the band where they couldn’t be damaged.
I rummaged around until I found a disused ice hammer in the back of a drawer, then carefully tapped the two damaged runes flat into the soft surface of the tin. Then I concentrated and used the tip of a paring knife to etch them back into the thick metal band.
Anker emerged from the kitchen with a plateful of eggs and tomatoes. “It should work now,” I said. I started eating out of politeness, then realized I was actually hungry.
Anker looked over the box, lifting the lid. “That easy?”
“Same as anything else,” I said, my mouth half full. “Easy if you know what you’re doing. It should work. Give it a day and see if it actually chills down.”
I finished off the plateful of eggs and drank the milk as quickly as I could without being rude. “I’ll need to cash out my bar credit today,” I said. “Tuition’s going to be hard this term.”
Anker nodded and checked a small ledger he kept underneath the bar, tallying all the Greysdale mead I’d pretended to drink over the last two months. Then he pulled out his purse and counted out ten copper jots onto the table. A full talent: twice what I’d expected. I looked up at him, puzzled.
“One of Kilvin’s boys would have charged me at least half a talent to come round and fix this thing,” Anker explained, kicking at the iceless.
“I can’t be sure. . . .”
He waved me into silence. “If it isn’t fixed, I’ll take it out of your wages over the next month,” he said. “Or I’ll use it as leverage to get you to start playing Reaving night too.” He grinned. “I consider it an investment.”
I gathered the money into my purse: Four talents.
I was heading toward the Fishery to see if my lamps had finally sold when I caught a glimpse of a familiar face crossing the courtyard wearing dark master’s robes.
“Master Elodin!” I called as I saw him approaching a side door to the Masters’ Hall. It was one of the few buildings I hadn’t spent much time in, as it contained little more than living quarters for the masters, the resident gillers, and guest rooms for visiting arcanists.
He turned at the sound of his name. Then, seeing me jogging toward him, he rolled his eyes and turned back to the door.
“Master Elodin,” I said, breathing a little hard. “Might I ask you a quick question?”
“Statistically speaking, it’s pretty likely,” he said, unlocking the door with a bright brass key.
“May I ask you a question, then?”
“I doubt any power known to man could stop you.” He swung open the door and headed inside.
I hadn’t been invited, but I slipped inside after him. Elodin was difficult to track down, and I worried if I didn’t take this chance, I might not see him again for another span of days.
I followed him through a narrow stone hallway. “I’d heard a rumor you were gathering a group of students to study naming,” I said cautiously.
“That’s not a question,” Elodin said as he headed up a long, narrow flight of stairs.
I fought back the urge to snap at him and took a deep breath instead. “Is it true you’re teaching such a class?”
“Yes.”
“Were you planning on including me?”
Elodin stopped and turned to face me on the stairway. He looked out of place in his dark master’s robe. His hair was tousled and his face was too young, almost boyish.
He stared at me for a long minute. He looked me up and down as if I were a horse he were thinking of betting on, or a side of beef he was considering selling by the pound.
But that was nothing compared to when he met my eyes. For a heartbeat it was simply unsettling. Then it almost felt like the light on the stairway grew dim. Or that I was suddenly being thrust deep underwater and the pressure was keeping me from drawing a full breath.
“Damn you, half-wit.” I heard a familiar voice that seemed to be coming from a long way off. “If you’re going catatonic again, have the decency to do it in Haven and save us the trouble of carting your foam-flecked carcass back there. Barring that, get to one side.”
Elodin looked away from me and suddenly everything was bright and clear again. I fought to keep from gasping in a lungful of air.
Master Hemme stomped down the stairs, shouldering Elodin roughly to one side. When he saw me he snorted. “Of course. The quarter-wit is here too. Might I recommend a book for your perusal? It is a lovely piece of reading titled, Hallways, Their Form and Function: A Primer for the Mentally Deficient.”
He glowered at me, and when I didn’t immediately jump aside he gave me an unpleasant smile. “Ah, but you’re still banned from the Archives, aren’t you? Should I arrange to present the salient information in a form more suited to your kind? Perhaps a mummer’s play or some manner of puppet show?”
I stepped to one side and Hemme stormed by, muttering to himself. Elodin stared daggers into the other master’s broad back. Only after Hemme turned the corner did Elodin’s attention settle back on me.
He sighed. “Perhaps it would be better if you pursued your other studies, Re’lar Kvothe. Dal has a fondness for you, as does Kilvin. You seem to be progressing well with them.”
“But sir,” I said, trying to keep the dismay out of my voice. “You’re the one who sponsored my promotion to Re’lar.”
He turned and began climbing the stairs again. “Then you should value my sage advice, shouldn’t you?”
“But, if you’re teaching other students, why not me?”
“Because you are too eager to be properly patient,” he said flippantly. “You’re too proud to listen properly. And you’re too clever by half. That’s the worst of it.”
“Some masters prefer clever students,” I muttered as we emerged into a wide hallway.
“Yes,” Elodin said. “Dal and Kilvin and Arwyl like clever students. Go study with one of them. Both our lives will be considerably easier because of it.”
“But . . .”
Elodin came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the hallway. “Fine,” he said. “Prove you’re worth teaching. Shake my assumptions down to their foundation stones.” He patted at his robes dramatically, as if looking for something lost in a pocket. “Much to my dismay, I find myself without a way to get past this door.” He rapped it with a knuckle. “What do you do in this situation, Re’lar Kvothe?”
I smiled despite my general irritation. He couldn’t have picked a challenge more perfectly suited to my talents. I pulled a long, slender piece of spring steel out of a pocket in my cloak, then knelt in front of the door and eyed the keyhole. The lock was substantial, made to last. But while large, heavy locks look impressive, they’re actually easier to circumvent if they’re well-maintained.
This one was. It took me the space of three slow breaths to trip it with a satisfying k-tick. I stood up, brushed off my knees, and swung the door inward with a flourish.
For his part, Elodin did seem somewhat impressed. His eyebrows went up as the door swung open. “Clever,” he said as he walked inside.
I followed on his heels. I’d never really wondered what Elodin’s rooms were like. But if I’d guessed, it wouldn’t have been anything resembling this.
They were huge and lavish, with high ceilings and thick rugs. Old wood paneled the walls, and tall windows let in the early morning light. There were oil paintings and massive pieces of ancient wooden furniture. It was bizarrely ordinary.