A Civil Tongue

M Y HAIR WAS STILL wet when I made my way through a short hallway, then up the stairs onto the stage of an empty theater. As always, the room was dark except for the huge crescent-shaped table. I moved to the edge of the light and waited politely.

The Chancellor motioned me forward and I walked to the center of the table, reaching up to hand him my tile. Then I stepped back to stand in the circle of slightly brighter light between the two outthrust horns of the table.

The nine masters looked down at me. I’d like to say they looked dramatic, like ravens on a fence or something like that. But while they were all wearing their formal robes, they were too mismatched to look like a collection of anything.

What’s more, I could see the marks of weariness on them. Only then did it occur to me that as much as the students hated admissions, it was probably no walk in the garden for the masters either.

“Kvothe, Arliden’s son,” the Chancellor said formally. “Re’lar.” He made a gesture to the far right-hand horn of the table. “Master Physicker?”

Arwyl peered down at me, his face grandfatherly behind his round spectacles. “What are the medicinal properties of mhenka?” he asked.

“Powerful anesthetic,” I said. “Powerful catatoniate. Potential purgative.” I hesitated. “It has a whole sackful of complicating secondaries too. Should I list them all?”

Arwyl shook his head. “A patient comes into the Medica complaining of pains in their joints and difficulty breathing. Their mouth is dry, and they claim to have a sweet taste in their mouth. They complain of chills, but they are actually sweaty and feverish. What is your diagnosis?”

I drew a breath, then hesitated. “I don’t make diagnoses in the Medica, Master Arwyl. I’d fetch one of your El’the to do it.”

He smiled at me, eyes crinkling around the edges. “Correct,” he said. “But for the sake of argument, what do you think might be wrong?”

“Is the patient a student?”

Arwyl raised an eyebrow. “What does that have to do with the price of butter?”

“If they work in the Fishery, it might be smelter’s flu,” I said. Arwyl cocked an eyebrow at me and I added, “There’s all sorts of heavy metal poisoning you can get in the Fishery. It’s rare around here because the students are welltrained, but anyone working with hot bronze can inhale enough fumes to kill themselves if they aren’t properly careful.” I saw Kilvin nodding along, and was glad I didn’t have to admit the only reason I knew this was that I’d given myself a mild case of it a month ago.

Arwyl gave a thoughtful humph, then gestured to the other side of the table. “Master Arithmetician?”

Brandeur sat on the left-hand point of the table. “Assuming the changer takes four percent, how many pennies can you break from a talent?” He asked the question without looking up from the papers in front of him.

“What type of penny, Master Brandeur?”

He looked up, frowning. “We are still in the Commonwealth, if I remember correctly.”

I juggled numbers in my head, working from the figures in the books he’d set aside in the Archives. They weren’t the true exchange rates you would get from a moneylender, they were the official exchange rates governments and financiers used so they had common ground for lying to each other. “In iron pennies. Three hundred and fifty,” I said, then added. “One. And a half.”

Brandeur looked down at the papers before I’d even finished speaking. “Your compass reads gold at two hundred twenty points, platinum at one hundred twelve points, and cobalt at thirty-two points. Where are you?”

I was boggled by the question. Orienting by trifoil required detailed maps and painstaking triangulation. It was usually only practiced by sea captains and cartographers, and they used detailed charts to make their calculations. I’d only ever laid eyes on a trifoil compass twice in my life.

Either this was a question listed in one of the books Brandeur had set aside for study or it was deliberately designed to spike my wheel. Given that Brandeur and Hemme were friends, I guessed it was the latter.

I closed my eyes, brought up a map of the civilized world in my head, and took my best guess. “Tarbean?” I said. “Maybe somewhere in Yll?” I opened my eyes. “Honestly, I have no idea.”

Brandeur made a mark on a piece of paper. “Master Namer,” he said without looking up.

Elodin gave me a wicked, knowing grin, and I was suddenly struck with the fear that he might reveal my part of what we had done in Hemme’s rooms earlier that morning.

Instead he held up three fingers dramatically. “You have three spades in your hand,” he said. “And there have been five spades played.” He steepled his fingers and looked at me seriously. “How many spades is that?”

“Eight spades,” I said.

The other masters stirred slightly in their seats. Arwyl sighed. Kilvin slouched. Hemme and Brandeur went to far as to roll their eyes at each other. All together they gave the impression of long-suffering exasperation.

Elodin scowled at them. “What?” he demanded, his voice going hard around the edges. “You want me to take this song and dance more seriously? You want me to ask him questions only a namer can answer?”

The other masters stilled at this, looking uncomfortable and refusing to meet his eye. Hemme was the exception and glared openly.

“Fine,” Elodin said, turning back to me. His eyes were dark, and his voice had a strange resonance to it. It wasn’t loud, but when he spoke, it seemed to fill the entire hall. It left no space left over for any other sound. “Where does the moon go,” Elodin asked grimly, “when it is no longer in our sky?”

The room seemed unnaturally quiet when he stopped speaking. As if his voice had left a hole in the world.

I waited to see if there was more to the question. “I haven’t the slightest,” I admitted. After Elodin’s voice, my own seemed rather thin and insubstantial.

Elodin shrugged, then gestured graciously across the table. “Master Sympathist.”

Elxa Dal was the only one who really looked comfortable in his formal robes. As always, his dark beard and lean face made me think of the evil magician in so many bad Aturan plays. He gave me a bit of a sympathetic look. “How about the binding for linear galvanic attraction?” he said in an offhand way.

I rattled it off easily.

He nodded. “What’s the distance of insurmountable decay for iron?”

“Five and a half miles,” I said, giving the textbook answer despite the fact that I had some quibbles with the term insurmountable. While it was true that moving any significant amount of energy more than six miles was statistically impossible, you could still use sympathy to dowse over much greater distances.

“Once an ounce of water is boiling, how much heat will it take to boil it completely away?”

I dragged up what I could remember from the vaporization tables I’d worked with in the Fishery. “A hundred and eighty thaums.” I said with more assurance than I actually felt.

“Good enough for me,” Dal said. “Master Alchemist?”

Mandrag waved a mottled hand dismissively. “I’ll pass.”

“He’s good with questions about spades,” Elodin suggested.

Mandrag frowned at Elodin. “Master Archivist.”

Lorren stared down at me, his long face impassive. “What are the rules of the Archives?”

I flushed at this and looked down. “Move quietly,” I said. “Respect the books. Obey the scrivs. No water. No food.” I swallowed. “No fire.”

Lorren nodded. Nothing in his tone or demeanor indicated any sort of disapproval, but that just made it worse. His eyes moved across the table. “Master Artificer.”

I cursed inwardly. Over the last span I’d read all six books Master Lorren had set aside for Re’lar to study from. Feltemi Reis’ Fall of Empire alone took me ten hours. I wanted few things more than access to the Archives, and I’d desperately hoped to impress Master Lorren by answering whatever question he could think to ask.

But there was no help for it. I turned to face Kilvin.

“Galvanic throughput of copper,” the great bearlike master rumbled through his beard.

I gave it to five places. I’d had to use it while making calculations for the deck lamps.

“Conductive coefficient of gallium.”

I’d needed to know that to dope the emitters for the lamp. Was Kilvin lobbing me easy questions? I gave the answer.

“Good,” Kilvin said. “Master Rhetorician.”

I drew a deep breath as I turned to look at Hemme. I had gone so far as to read three of his books, though I have a sharp loathing for rhetoric and pointless philosophy.

Still, I could tamp down my distaste for two minutes’ time and play the part of a good, humble student. I am one of the Ruh, I could act the part.

Hemme scowled at me, his round face like an angry moon. “Did you set fire to my rooms, you little ravel bastard?”

The raw nature of the question caught me entirely off my guard. I was ready for impossibly hard questions, or trick questions, or questions he could twist to make any answer I gave seem wrong.

But this sudden accusation caught me utterly wrong-footed. Ravel is a term I particularly despise. A welter of emotion rolled through me and brought the sudden taste of plum to my mouth. While part of me was still considering the most gracious way to respond, I found I was already speaking. “I didn’t set fire to your rooms,” I said honestly. “But I wish I had. And I wish you’d been in there when it started, sleeping soundly.”

Hemme’s expression turned from scowling to astonished.

“Re’lar Kvothe!” the Chancellor snapped. “You will keep a civil tongue in your head, or I will bring you up on charges of Conduct Unbecoming myself!”

The taste of plum disappeared as quickly as it had come, leaving me feeling slightly dizzy and sweating with fear and embarrassment. “My apologies, Chancellor,” I said quickly, looking down at my feet. “I spoke in anger. Ravel is a term my people find particularly offensive. Its use makes light of the systematic slaughter of thousands of Ruh.”

A curious line appeared between the Chancellor’s eyebrows. “I’ll admit I don’t know that particular etymology,” he mused. “I guess I’ll make that my question.”

“Hold off,” Hemme interrupted. “I’m not finished.”

“You are finished,” the Chancellor said, his voice hard and firm. “You’re as bad as the boy, Jasom, and with less excuse. You’ve shown you can’t conduct yourself in a professional manner, so stint thy clep and consider yourself lucky I don’t call for an official censure.”

Hemme went white with anger, but he held his tongue.

The Chancellor turned to look at me “Master Linguist,” he announced himself formally. “Re’lar Kvothe: What is the etymology of the word ravel?”

“It comes from the purges instigated by Emperor Alcyon,” I said. “He issued a proclamation saying any of the traveling rabble on the roads were subject to fine, imprisonment, or transportation without trial. The term became shortened to ‘ravel’ though metaplasmic enclitization.”

He raised an eyebrow at that. “Did it now?”

I nodded. “Though I also expect there is a connection to the term ravelend, referring to the ragged appearance of performing troupes that are out at the heels.”

The Chancellor nodded formally. “Thank you, Re’lar Kvothe. Take a seat while we confer.”

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 724