Academic Exercises (30 page)

Comitissa Aureliana, though; that was a hell of a name. I looked up.

You know what students tend to look like. There’s a general rule-of-thumb formula, quite reliable in my experience, which states that if you add together the age of the student and the age of his coat, you get exactly one hundred. The Lady Aureliana was definitely an exception. An awful lot of time, money and wool had gone into making her coat, and I have to say, there were worse things you could have done with all three. As well as the coat, there was a hat and a skirt, both constructed on the same principles. Holding the components of all this splendour together was a thin-faced woman, about thirty-five, of the kind that my mother used to describe as being prettier than she looks. Not, of course, that stuff like that had any relevance to me, given the nature and requirements of my calling. But you can’t help noticing.

“You’re it?” I asked.

She nodded. “Afraid so,” she replied. “I’m in my second year at the Lusso academy. We have to do a two months’ practical before we take our diploma.”

Once the surprise had worn off a bit, I came to the conclusion that it could have been a lot worse. I’d been expecting a seventeen-year-old with roughly equal numbers of hairs on his chin and spots on his face. A grown-up was a much more appealing proposition. You can talk to grown-ups, for one thing. Female and a member of the aristocracy weren’t aspects I’d have chosen myself, but I’m not exactly opposed on principle to either. Live and let live, I always say.

I hauled myself to my feet, making a nominal effort to brush bits of hay off my coat. “You just got here,” I said.

“That’s right,” she replied. “My coach got stuck trying to cross the river at Ferabrune. Flooding.”

I nodded. “
Andra moi ennepe
,” I said. “To modulate and reduce a flow of water. Or haven’t you done that yet?”

“Elemental and environmental is next year,” she replied. “I have actually read it up in the book, but I didn’t want to try it before I’d covered it in class, in case it went wrong.”

I couldn’t help grinning. I tried to put out a house fire in my second year, using
proelthe
. Put the fire out, flattened half the street. “Very sensible,” I said. “Come on, we’d better make a move.”

“What exactly is it that we’ll be doing?”

They hadn’t told her. Well, why should they? Nobody ever told me anything when I was a student; expected me to find out for myself, or know by light of nature. Which was entirely appropriate for seventeen-year-olds who, as everybody knows, thrive on humiliation the way roses grow in horseshit. But a grown-up deserves more respect, surely.

How to phrase it, though. “Do you like dogs?”

“Yes.”

“You’re going to have a ball,” I said. “This way.”

Some people are born teachers. I’m not one of them. I get impatient if I have to tell someone something more than once. I tend to forget how many times I had to do various simple procedures before I got the hang of them. When I’m teaching someone and they don’t get it right first time, I assume they’re stupid, or being dense on purpose, or not listening to me, or else for some reason they don’t believe me when I tell them something.

But the Lady Comitissa would have tried the patience of the most skilled and dedicated teacher—like the ones who taught me, for instance. She had the ability, she wasn’t stupid and she wanted to learn, but things just didn’t sink in. She shrugged off new knowledge the way oilskin repels water. I could tell she was no happier about this than I was, and she did her best to keep her temper, remember what we were there for and that we were both on the same side, etcetera. But after the first hour it was obvious to me that she’d been brought up in a world where she was never wrong, simply because of who her father and grandfather had been, and it took her an exceptional amount of effort and application to get past that. The aristocracy are like that. They’re comfortable with the idea that it’s easier and more fitting to change the world rather than change themselves. Of course, that very quality stands them in good stead in our profession; but only once they’ve learned the basics and qualified. Not the most helpful mindset for a trainee. Of course, if she’d been a man, she’d have done all this stuff in her teens, when the mind (even the aristocratic version) is so much more pliable. At her time of life, trying to teach her was like trying to file hardened steel.

And meanwhile, there were dogs. They came along every few minutes, on the ends of ropes, with grim-looking Razoans holding the other end and scowling at me as though it was all my fault. If you think I’m making a fuss about nothing, you try it: a Third room examination of an animal, in Separation, in under three minutes real time, while simultaneously trying to explain what you’re doing to an increasingly short-tempered noblewoman who just can’t seem to get it. Now I look back on it, I reckon it must’ve been one of the best days’ work I’ve ever put in, and all for next to nothing.

Finally, just when I knew I couldn’t take any more, the flow of dogs dried up. We sat there for a while, me just absorbed in the sheer golden joy of having stopped, until the foreman came by and asked us to leave so his men could start clearing up the mess.

Aperesia Apoina has many places where you can buy strong drink. I marched her to the nearest one, ordered a quart jug of whatever was cheapest, and ordered her to shut up, sit still and listen. I think the only reason I’m still alive is that she was too frazzled to argue.

“I don’t see what your problem is,” I said. Whatever-was-cheapest tasted horrible and didn’t do anything to cure my headache, but after a long pull at the stuff I really didn’t care. “All you’ve got to do is cross into the Third room—”

I stopped short. She was looking at me. “I’ve got a confession to make,” she said. “I can’t do rooms.”

It was a bit like walking into a wall you hadn’t noticed was there. “But you’re in second year,” I said. “Surely—”

“I can’t do rooms,” she repeated. “I just can’t. Luckily I’m really good at forms, so my marks sort of balance out. Next year, of course, it’s all bloody rooms, and they’ll realise I can’t do them and throw me out. And that’ll be two years of my life completely wasted.”

Can’t do rooms…Like someone admitting to you that they’ve lived for thirty-odd years and never managed to learn how to breathe. “But they’re easy,” I said. “And if you can do forms—”

She sighed. It came from deep down. “That’s what everybody keeps telling me,” she said. “But—” She shook her head. “It’s all a bit ridiculous, really. When we first did them I didn’t understand, not a word of it, but everybody else did, and I didn’t want to stick my hand up and confess, because I didn’t want to look totally stupid. Doesn’t help that I’m old enough to be my classmates’ mother. Anyway, it snowballed from there. Everything in the course is predicated on understanding the basics, and I didn’t. The longer I left it, the worse it got, till I reached the point where I gave up. Guess I thought I’d be able to get by on my forms work. Stupid.”

I took a while to get a grip. Stunned is putting it mildly. Rooms are
easy
. But then I thought: correction,
I
find rooms easy. She doesn’t. I took a deep breath, and tried to imagine what I’d do in this situation if I was an ordinary decent, compassionate human being.

“It’s like this,” I said. “Imagine the universe is an old, neglected house. The family’s fallen on hard times, so they only use one of the rooms. The rest are all boarded up and dust-sheeted. With me so far?”

She actually smiled. “I’ve got cousins like that.”

“Fine. Imagine your cousins, in their one room. That room is the world that anybody can see: people without the gift, normal people. Now imagine they’ve been living in that one room so long that their kids and grandkids have grown up there, and don’t even realise there are any other rooms. That’s how it is for the untalented.”

She pulled a face. “And me.”

“Not anymore,” I said firmly. “Now, obviously, what you need to get from one room to another is a door. Untalenteds only ever see two doors, birth and death, and generally speaking they have no control over when they encounter them or go through. We’re different. We can
make
doors, any time we choose.”

Little scowl. “Speak for yourself.”

“No, listen,” I said. “It’s so simple. Provided you’ve got the gift, of course, otherwise you can’t do it at all. But you can. If you can do forms—”

“Forms are completely different.”

I let her have a moment before I contradicted her. “My old teacher used to say, forms are just tools we bring back from other rooms. If you can do forms,
trust me
, you can do rooms. Come on,” I added, as she shot me that I-don’t-think-so look. “It’s like swimming. For ages and ages you’re convinced you’ll never be able to, and then suddenly something clicks into place and suddenly you’re doing it. Rooms are like that. You just need to—”

“I can’t swim, either,” she said.

I’m really proud of the way I didn’t hit her at that point. “Fine,” I said. “You can’t swim. But you can do rooms. No, really,” I added, as she opened her mouth. “You can. You’re going to do it right now. Understood?”

The best time for anything, according to my old and much-loved copy of
The Art of War
, is when the enemy is tired. “All right,” she snapped at me. “So, what do I do?”

I gave her a big, warm smile I hadn’t realised I had. “Just look at that wall over there,” I said, “and imagine a door.”

“Yes, but—”

“Try it.”

She decided to humour me, presumably as her best shot at getting me to shut up and leave her alone. She turned her head, held it for a second or so and closed her eyes. And then it happened.

Untalenteds say things like, “I saw him flicker” or “there was a flash of light.” Sometimes they hear noises, or feel a slipstream. Pure imagination. There’s nothing to see, hear or feel because nothing’s happened. Someone who was there a millionth of a second ago is still there. Big deal.

She looked at me. Her eyes were huge. “There was a door,” she said.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Really. It was
there
. You do believe me, don’t you?”

I restrained myself, and just rolled my eyes instead. “So,” I said, “what did you do?”

She frowned. “Well, I suppose I must’ve opened it, but I don’t remember standing up or walking across the room—”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said quickly. “You were by the door. You opened it. Did you go through?”

She nodded. “The door swung open, so I went in.”

“What did you see?”

“It was just—” She looked helpless for a moment. “Well, just a room, really.”

“Hence the name,” I said. “Did you recognise it?”

“No, of course not. It was just—well, a room. Empty. Plain floorboards, no furniture. I don’t remember seeing any windows—”

“You wouldn’t have,” I assured her. “They come later. Advanced level. So, what did you do?”

“I turned round and came back.”

I smiled. I was feeling really rather pleased with myself. “There you are, you see,” I said. “You did it. You can swim.”

“Yes, but how did I—?”

“Don’t ask,” I cut her off. “No, really, don’t ask. Don’t even think about it, not till you’ve got used to it. Just tell yourself, I can do this, because I’ve already done it once. That’s all.”

She grabbed her cup and drank some of the disgusting strong liquor, which she hadn’t touched before. “All right,” she said quietly. “But
what
did I do?”

“You went into the First room,” I said.

“What does that mean?”

Curiously, I didn’t feel quite so tired. “The First room is pretty straightforward,” I said. “We use it for simple things, like moving from place to place instantaneously, disappearing, moving objects. As you saw for yourself, it’s empty, you only find what you’ve brought yourself. It’s worth bothering with because when you’re in the First room, you can open a door back to anywhere you like; where you just came from, or somewhere completely different. So, if I wanted to nip back to the Studium to look something up, I’d just go into the First room, then open a door back into Long Cloister, and I’d be looking straight at the Library gates.”

Her mouth had dropped open. “That’s—”

“A piece of cake,” I said. “In actual fact there’s slightly more to it than that. There are restrictions and limitations, which you’ll need to know eventually. But don’t even think about them now, or you’ll lose confidence. For the time being, just assume you can go anywhere you like. And that’s just the First room,” I couldn’t resist adding. “Really, the First’s only important because it leads to the others.”

Well. I said it because that’s what my teacher said to me, when I was a kid; an unusually talented and promising kid, who had the misfortune to grow up to be me. All my teachers had to do was engage my enthusiasm.

The trouble with me is, when I get interested, I get impatient. “Come on,” I said, “I’ll come with you this time.”

“You want me to go there again?”

“Sure. It won’t hurt, I promise.”

Imagine you were born and brought up on Temple Street, or in a cottage on the slopes of Mons Tonans. To you, it’s familiar, it’s just home, no big deal. To the people who sail across the sea and walk a hundred miles just to see it, it’s the most amazing thing ever. But you never even bother to look. I guess that’s me and the rooms. By the time I was seven years old I’d already made it to the Third room; I used to go exploring, and not tell anybody. And somehow, I always knew exactly what I had to do. I’m prepared to bet that if room time was real time, I’ve spent more of my life in rooms than I have here.

It’s easy to forget that other people aren’t like you.

Before she could start arguing, I opened a door. I left it open behind me. A moment later, she followed me in.

“Is this how it looked the first time?” I asked.

She nodded. “Maybe not quite so filthy,” she said.

I looked down. There was dust on the floor. I tried to remember if that was normal, but I couldn’t. I tend not to look at floors much. “This is how it should look,” I said. “Remember, nothing but what you bring with you.”