The Crystal Variation (61 page)

The tailor sealed the front of the robe. She offered the slippers one at a time, and the scholar slid her slim feet into them.

“Jela! Come here!”

Summoned, he approached until she ordered him to stop and to hand her sash to the tailor. He did this and watched as that worthy wove it around the scholar’s slender waist, carefully tucking up the ends.

Scholar tay’Nordif lowered her arms. The full sleeves fell precisely to her knuckles, the robe broke at the instep of her new, soft slippers. Her golden skin and pale hair somehow took light from the dark color, and seemed to glow.

“Jela! Hand me my knife, hilt first!”

He obeyed, handling the ill-kept blade as if it were no better balanced than a crowbar, and stood dull and stupid while she situated it to her satisfaction. That done, she relieved him of the smart gloves, which she held in her hand as she turned to address the tailor once more. In the absence of further orders, Jela stood where he’d been stopped, the unitard and tabard over his arm.

“I will want more than one robe.”

“Certainly, Scholar. You may order as many as you wish. The cost will be charged against your account.”

“My account, is it?” Scholar tay’Nordif fixed her in a cool green stare. “From whom would I learn the status of my account?”

“From the Bursar, Scholar,” the tailor replied and stepped back, her hands twisting about each other as if they had a life and a purpose of their own.

“Ah. I shall speak with the Bursar, then, before ordering more robes.”

“Very good, Scholar.” She tipped her head, sending a sidewise glance at the garments Jela held.

“If the scholar would be so kind as to direct her servant to place the Wanderer’s costume on the table, here . . .”

Scholar tay’Nordif raised a eyebrow. “Does the Tower purchase my clothing?” she inquired.

The tailor raised her hands, fingers moving in a meaningless ripple.

“It is custom, Scholar. You shed the skin of a Wanderer and are reborn into the plumage of a Seated Scholar . . .”

“I see.” said Scholar tay’Nordif. There was a slight pause before she inclined her head. “Surely, there can be no argument with custom. As the great philosopher bin’Arli tells us,
Custom carries all before it
.”

The tailor blinked, but managed a faint, “Just so, Scholar.”

“Just so,” the scholar repeated. “Jela! Place those pieces of clothing where the tailor directs you.”

Slowly, Jela turned toward the tailor. She bit her lip, and drifted back half-a-dozen steps to put her palm flat on the console table. “Put them here,” she said, voice quavering.

He stomped forward, the tailor flinching with each heavy step, and dropped the clothing on the spot she had indicated, not without a pang. The tabard was of no consequence, being only wandercloth, but the unitard . . . the unitard was light-duty armor. So light-duty that any true soldier would call it none at all, but sufficient to turn the point of a weak knife-stroke—or lessen the power of a serious thrust. He didn’t like the notion of having nothing between Can—Scholar tay’Nordif and a truth-blade but a layer of smart-wove fabric. Impossible to know what the scholar herself thought of it, of course, though he took hope from that pause before she agreed to the ceding of her garments.

“Is there anything else required of me here?” she asked the tailor.

“No, Scholar,” the woman said unsteadily.

“That is well, then. Jela! Follow me.” Scholar tay’Nordif swept off the dias, robes billowing, walking light, but nothing so light nor so free as Pilot Cantra had done. Obeying orders, he followed her, three steps behind, no more, no less, eyes down; giving his ears, his nose, and his peripheral vision as much of a workout as he dared.

“Liad’s sole surviving student,
is it?” The Bursar’s gray eyebrows lifted sardonically, her eyes sharp and blue and giving as ice.

The scholar bowed briskly.

“Maelyn tay’Nordif,” she said in her high, sharp voice. “I am come to inquire into the status of my account.”

The Bursar pursed her lips. “The status of your account? You have no account, Scholar. You are a drain on the resources of this community until such time as your work attracts a patron willing to pay your expenses, or the artificers find that your work has practical application and market it. In the first case, any funds granted by your patron will of course go first against your accrued expenses. In the latter case, you will receive ten percent of any income generated by the sale or lease of the application incorporating your work, which funds will first be placed against your accrued expenses. At the moment . . .” She lifted her wand in one hand and fingered the chords absently.

“Yes,” she said, flicking a casual glance at the screen. “At the moment, your debt to the Tower stands at eighteen qwint.” She smiled. “That sum includes the lease on your quarters and on your office for the remainder of the month; one meal per day for yourself for the remainder of the month; your robe, equipment and storage space; and your share of Tower maintenance.”

Scholar tay’Nordif stood silent, her head tipped to one side, her hands tucked meditatively into the sleeves of her robe.

“Is there any other way in which I may be pleased to serve you, Scholar?” the Bursar inquired, her smile now a full-assault grin.

“I would be grateful,” the scholar said crisply, “if you would be so kind as to instruct me how I might deposit a flan into my account.”

The Bursar’s grin dimmed somewhat. “A flan,” she repeated.

“It happens to be what I have with me at the moment,” Scholar tay’Nordif said. “If it is too small a sum, I will of course be pleased to add another, but in that wise the conclusion of this matter will wait upon the morrow.”

The Bursar cleared her throat. “I am able to accept a flan on account, Scholar. You do realize that your current expenses will be deducted—”

“Immediately,” the scholar interrupted. “Yes, I quite understand that, thank you. Would it be possible for you to tell me if the six qwint remaining will procure a pass-tile?”

“Pass-tiles are six carolis the pair,” the Bursar answered. Jela, standing three steps behind the scholar and one step to her right, thought he heard a bit of irritation there.

“In that wise, I will have two, if you please,” Scholar tay’Nordif said composedly.

The Bursar spun her chair, snatched a green folder from one of the many cubbies behind her and spun back, her arm whipping, the packet spinning flat and potentially deadly toward—

Jela gritted his teeth, locking muscles that wanted to leap, crushing instincts that demanded he take the strike and protect his pilot—

. . . don’t
, he heard the familiar husky voice whisper from memory . . .
don’t for a heartbeat acknowledge that ghost.

Right
, he told himself, for the first time taking comfort from his kobold’s habitual stolid, stupid stance.
She’s not your pilot. Your pilot’s—

He balked at “dead,” no matter that she would have said it herself.

Unchecked, the projectile continued along its path. Far too late, and clumsily, the scholar snatched a warding hand out of her sleeve. The packet bounced off of her wrist, hit the wall high and clattered to the floor.

“Jela!” Scholar tay’Nordif snapped. “Pick that—” she pointed— “up and bring it to me.”

He moved, stumping deliberately over to the fallen packet, aware of the Bursar’s speculative gaze. Bending, he retrieved the folder, then stumped back to place it in his mistress’ outstretched, impatient palm.

“Very good,” she said peremptorily. She slipped the packet into her sash; extended her hand again.

“Jela,” she said clearly, “give me my purse.”

He counted three of his long, at-rest heartbeats, for the speculation in the Bursar’s eyes, then groped in the pockets of his vest, eventually producing a battered corduroy pouch, which he held out uncertainly.

The scholar sighed, snatched it from his fingers, pulled the string and stepped up to the Bursar’s desk.

“One flan, as agreed,” she said. “Is it the custom to give a receipt for funds received?”

The Bursar’s mouth was in a straight line now, facial muscles tight.

“You may access your account at any time from any work terminal linked to Osabei Administration, Scholar.”

“I am grateful,” Scholar tay’Nordif said, bowing just low enough, as Jela read it, to avoid being overtly rude.

The Bursar snorted and spun to face her screen, wand already in hand.

“Good-day, Scholar. May your work be fruitful and all your proofs accurate.”

* * *

THE ID PLATE SHONE
briefly orange beneath Scholar tay’Nordif’s palm, a chime sounded and motes of light danced beneath the door’s dull surface, joining together until they cohered into glowing script:

Maelyn tay’Nordif

The scholar made a satisfied sound—something between a chuckle and a sigh—and lifted her hand away from the reader. Immediately, the door opened, lights coming up in the room beyond.

Where the living quarters were sparse and tidy, the office was cluttered and chaotic. It was, Jela thought fair mindedly, something of an accomplishment to have fit so comprehensive a confusion into so small a space.

Shelves lined three walls, but the scrolls and data-arrays they must once have held were absent, leaving only dust and a scattered handful of unassociated logic tiles.

By contrast, the scarred and chipped ceramic table in the center of the room was over-full with bits of piping, hoses, several canisters marked with the symbol for
poison
, a portable fission chamber, a large wooden box, its lid missing, the interior containing a stained rumple of cloth—and an orange cat, fast asleep.

“Well,” Scholar tay’Nordif said, apparently to herself, “I have worked in less favored places.” With difficulty, she squeezed past the table and bent over the work desk which had been jammed into the farthest and least-lit corner, as if whoever had occupied the office previously had only wished to be rid of it. The real work, it seemed to Jela, had been done at the table, though what—

Light flickered in the dark corner, which was the work screen coming up. The scholar clattered about a bit in the dimness, located the input wand and straightened, fingers sliding up and down the length, weaving chords at a rapid pace. Jela perforce reprised his impersonation of a rock, his eyes on the jumble of junk on the table, trying to make sense of the disparate bits; to imagine what sort of device might have been built from them—

“Jela,” the scholar said in the dreamy, unsnappish way that meant most of her thought processes were engaged with something far more important than him. “Move away from the door.”

As kobold-directions went, it was pretty loose, which might mean she really was thinking about something else. Still, he trusted her to give him some clear signal if he was in her line of fire, so he took his time about moving—slow, stolid and heavy—to his right, which cleared access to the door and also put him in a good place to observe both it and the scholar. For six of his heartbeats, nothing at all happened. The scholar continued to work the wand, her attention fixed on the screen. The cat in the box stretched and sighed without waking.

A CHIME SOUNDED,
followed by a rather breathless, “Grudent tel’Ashon reporting, Scholar tay’Nordif.”

The scholar did not look up from her screen. “Enter,” she said absently, and the door opened to admit a flustered young woman wearing a unitard and a utility belt hung about with tools and tiles, scrolls and ‘scribers—but lacking a truth-blade or any other weapon that Jela could see.

“Scholar tay’Nordif, allow me to say that I am honored—” she began.

The scholar did not so much as glance up from her screen. “Explain,” she interrupted, “the condition in which I find my office.”

Grudent tel’Ashon swallowed. “Yes, Scholar. This office had previously been tenanted by Scholar ser’Dinther, who failed to adequately prove his work—”

“Does this have a bearing on the condition of my office, Grudent?” The scholar interrupted, sharply. She turned from the screen, the wand held quiescent between her palms.

The other bowed, hastily. “Scholar, I merely sought to explain—the apparatus, and the, the—”

“The lack of standard resource works?” Scholar tay’Nordif snapped. “The absence of logic tiles, grids, and storage medium? The fact that the single chair is broken, and this terminal sub-standard?”

Silence.

“I am waiting, Grudent, for an explanation of these lacks and impediments to my work. Am I to understand the deplorable state of this office as a challenge? Perhaps there is another scholar on this hall who believes my work unworthy?” She tipped her head, meditatively. “Perhaps
you
—”

Grudent tel’Ashon raised her hands in what Jela registered as honest horror.

“Scholar, no! Please! There was no intention on my part . . . The grudent staff has been over—That is, I did not expect a new scholar to arrive so quickly, nor that the Second Chair would place you here, when there are other offices which have been . . . Had I known he wanted you near to himself and to the Prime . . .” She stuttered, gasped, and took refuge in a bow so deep she was bent quite in half, a posture she held until Scholar tay’Nordif instructed her, impatiently, to stand up straight.

This, the grudent did, with noticeable trepidation; squared her shoulders, and folded her hands into a tense knot before her belt buckle.

“That is better. I will expect you to comport yourself as befits a scholar during the time you serve as my grudent,” Scholar tay’Nordif said, sharp and no-nonsense. “Scholars do not rely upon excuses, rather they rest squarely on good work and ample proof. Now.” She swept the wand out, indicating the room at large. “I will have this office made seemly. I will have two chairs in addition to my work chair, none of which will be broken. I will have the standard references. I will have both logic and data tiles and several of the larger grids, in addition to the usual kit. I will have
that
—” the wand pointed at the cluttered table— “gone.” She lowered the wand. “Am I clear, Grudent?”