Tareas

CHAPTER FIVE

The Eolian

THE DAYS TRUDGED PAST. I worked in the Fishery until my fingers were numb, then read in the Archives until my eyes were blurry.

On the fifth day of admissions I finally finished my deck lamps and took them to Stocks, hoping they sold quickly. I considered starting another pair, but I knew I wouldn’t have time to finish them before tuition was due.

So I setabout making money in other ways. I played an extra night at Anker’s, earning free drinks and a handful of small change from appreciative audience members. I did some piecework in the Fishery, making simple, useful items like brass gears and panes of twice-tough glass. Such things could be sold back to the workshop immediately for a tiny profit.

Then, since tiny profits weren’t going to be enough,I made two batches of yellow emitters. When used to make a sympathy lamp, their light was a pleasant yellow very close to sunlight. They were worth quite a bit of money because doping them required dangerous materials.

Heavy metals and vaporous acids were the least of them. The bizarre alchemical compounds were the truly frightening things. There were transporting agents that would movethrough your skin without a leaving a mark, then quietly eat the calcium out of your bones. Others would simply lurk in your body, doing nothing for months until you started to bleed from your gums and lose your hair. The things they produced in Alchemy Complex made arsenic look like sugar in your tea.

I was painstakingly careful, but while working on the second batch of emitters my ten glass crackedand tiny drops of transporting agent spattered the glass of the fume hood where I was working. None of it actually touched my skin, but a single drop landed on my shirt, high above the long cuffs of the leather gloves I was wearing.

Moving slowly, I used a nearby caliper to pinch the fabric of my shirt and pull it away from my body. Then, moving awkwardly, I cut the piece of fabric away so ithad no chance at all of touching my skin. The incident left me shaken and sweating, and I decided there were better ways to earn money.

I covered a fellow student’s observation shift in the Medical in exchange for a jot and helped a merchant unload three wagonloads of lime for halfpenny each. Then, later that night, I found a handful of cutthroat gamblers willing to let me sit in on their gameof breath. Over the course of two hours I managed to lose eighteen pennies and some loose iron. Though it galled me, I forced myself to walk away from the table before things got any worse.

At the end of all my scrambling, I had less in my purse than when I had begun.

Luckily, I had one last trick up my sleeve.

I stretched my legs on the wide stone road, heading to Imre.

Accompanyingme were Simmon and Wilem.Wil had ended up selling his late slot to a desperate scriv for a tidy profit, so both of them were finished with admissions and carefree as kittens. Wil’s tuition was set at six talents and eight, while Sim was still gloating over his impressively low five talents and two.

My purse held one talent and three. An inauspicious number.

Completing our quartet was Manet.His wild grey hair and habitually rumpled clothes made him look vaguely bewildered, as if he’d just woken up and couldn’t quite remember where he was. We had brought him along partly because we needed a fourth for corners, but also because we felt it was our duty to get the poor fellow out of the University every once in a while.

The four of us made our way over the high arch of Stonebridge,across the Omethi River, and into Imre. Autumn was in its last gasp, and I wore my cloak against the chance of a chill. My lute was slung comfortably across my back.

At the heart of Imre we crossed a great cobblestone courtyard and walked past the central fountain filled with statues of satyrs chasing nymphs. Water splashed and fanned in the breeze as we joined the line leading to the Eolian....