Chapter 5: Tuition Admissions

THE MORNING OF admissions I counted my money.

This is something the wealthy never do. They know what they have like they know their own name. For those of us who have known true poverty, counting money is a ritual as familiar as prayer and twice as desperate.

I sat on the edge of my narrow bed in the dormitory and spread the contents of my purse across the wool blanket with the care of a surgeon laying out instruments. Four silver talents. Eleven jots. Eight drabs and a ha’penny bent nearly in half. Two terms ago, I’d have laughed at any number they set. Alveron’s letter of credit covered any amount, and Riem and I split the profit on everything over ten talents. But the Maer’s two-line letter had revoked everything, and the journey back from Vintas had eaten through what remained — slowly, then all at once.

Four talents, eleven and change. I’d survived on less. But there is a particular cruelty in having just enough money to understand exactly how much you don’t have.

The queue for admissions stretched from the Questioning Hall doors, down the corridor, around the corner, and halfway to the Mews. I took my place at the end behind a girl with ink-stained fingers who was muttering alchemical formulas under her breath and a broad-shouldered boy who smelled of the Fishery and stood with his arms crossed, bracing.

This was the ritual. Every term, the same. The Masters sat their high table, and one by one each student walked that long aisle to stand before them and be weighed — not for knowledge or aptitude, but for what you could afford to pay. Tuition was set individually, a system that was either brilliantly equitable or cruelly arbitrary depending on which end of the purse you stood at.

The theory was simple. The Masters assessed your competence and set your rate accordingly — the better you performed, the lower your tuition. On paper, a magnificent system.

In practice, it meant that every term I walked into that hall knowing that the difference between eating and starving would be decided by nine people who had never missed a meal in their lives.

The queue moved slowly. Students emerged from the Questioning Hall — some relieved, some dismayed, some blank-faced and still calculating. One girl emerged weeping silently, walking fast, and no one met her eyes. You didn’t watch the ones who came out broken. You looked at your shoes, because next time it might be you.

I’d been her. My first term, I’d walked out of that hall and sat against the cold stone behind the Mains and done the math on my fingers, adding and re-adding because the numbers couldn’t be right, until I accepted that they were and the world became a narrower place.

“Thirty,” someone ahead of me whispered. I caught it in the general murmur. “Basil got thirty.”

“Thirty’s not bad.”

“Thirty’s not bad if your father owns a mill. Basil’s father is a tanner.”

Numbers rippled through the queue. Everyone was converting their particular talent and their particular poverty into the private equation that would determine whether they stayed or left. A Vintish noble’s son, four places ahead, had the loose-shouldered ease of someone who would pay whatever was asked and have money left over for wine. The alchemist girl behind me had bitten her thumbnail raw.

The broad-shouldered boy ahead of me shifted his weight. His jaw was tight.

“First time?” I asked.

He glanced back. “Third term. You?”

“I’ve lost count.”

Something in my tone made him look at me properly. Recognition flickered. “You’re Kvothe.”

“Depending on who’s asking.”

“They say you burned a Master’s robes.”

“Only slightly. And only once.”

He laughed, short and startled, and some of the tension left his shoulders. “They say that’s why Hemme sets tuition like a man trying to murder someone with arithmetic.”

“That,” I said, “is almost certainly true.”

An older student passed us going the other direction — Manet, his grey hair wild, his expression carrying the serene indifference of a man who has survived so many admissions that the process has become as mundane as breakfast. He caught my eye, gave me a nod that managed to convey both sympathy and amusement, and kept walking. Manet had been at the University longer than some of the buildings. I envied him that perspective.

Simmon found me forty minutes into the wait, slightly out of breath.

“I came to wish you luck,” he said. “Also to bring you this.” He handed me an apple. It was bruised on one side and perfect on the other.

“You ran across campus to bring me an apple?”

“I walked briskly. There’s a difference.” He leaned against the corridor wall, trying and failing to look casual. “How are you feeling?”

“Like a man about to have his purse examined by people who set his robes on fire.”

“You set his robes on fire. That’s the whole point.”

“Yes, but Hemme has the memory of a grudge-bearing elephant and the temperament of a stepped-on cat.” I took a bite of the apple. It was mealy and wonderful. “And he’s sitting Chancellor pro tem, which means he sets the tone.”

Sim’s brow furrowed, his mouth tightened, and his eyes went soft and bright, as though he were personally offended by the existence of unfairness.

“What if—” He hesitated.

“What?”

“What if I lent you something? Just in case? Fela and I have been putting aside—”

“No.”

“You don’t even know how much.”

“No, Sim.”

“It’s not charity. It’s a loan. A very reasonable loan at extremely favorable—”

“Simmon.” I said it gently. “No.”

He opened his mouth, closed it, and exhaled through his nose. “You are the most stubborn person I have ever met. And I once watched a mule refuse to cross a bridge for six hours.”

“Did the mule eventually cross?”

“It did not. It sat down and they had to build the bridge around it.” He paused. “I’m not sure what my point was.”

“That I’m worse than a mule.”

“That you’re exactly like a mule, and I mean that with tremendous affection.”

Wilem arrived a few minutes later. He didn’t offer luck or fruit. He appeared at my other side, leaned against the wall, and said nothing.

After a long silence, he said: “How much do you have?”

I told him.

He nodded once, his expression unchanging. Then: “How much can you make in the Fishery this term?”

“Depends on commissions. Six, maybe eight talents if Kilvin has work.”

“And the arrowcatch royalties?”

“A talent and a half last term. Maybe two this term, if the orders keep up.” I shrugged. “The University takes its cut. Kilvin takes his for materials and workshop time. By the time the profit reaches me, it’s a trickle.”

“Better than nothing.”

“Better than nothing,” I agreed.

“And the Eolian?”

“Another two, if the crowds are good.”

“And Devi?”

I looked at him. He looked back, utterly without judgment. That was Wil. He laid options on the table like coins and let you count them yourself.

“Devi is a last resort,” I said.

“Last resorts are still resorts.” He crossed his arms. “What’s your number?”

“My number?”

“The number where you walk away. Where you say it’s too high and leave the University.” His dark eyes held mine. “Everyone has a number. What’s yours?”

I thought about it. Really thought.

“I don’t have one,” I said.

Wilem’s eyebrows rose a fraction. For him, this was the equivalent of gasping in shock. “Everyone has a number.”

“Not me. I’ll beg, borrow, steal, play music on street corners, sell my blood to the Medica, and eat nothing but bread crusts for three months if I have to. I’m not leaving.”

He studied me. Then the corner of his mouth twitched.

“Then I suppose you’d better go in there and be brilliant.”

I have already told you what happened inside. The walk. The questions. Hemme’s smile from the Chancellor’s chair. Kilvin’s blunt defense. Lorren’s quiet maneuvering. There is no need to walk those thirty-two steps twice.

Thirty-six talents. Due in full before the end of the first span.

The doors closed behind me. My face was stone. My hands were steady. Inside, the numbers were already running — thirty-six minus four and change left a gap of nearly thirty-two talents.

“Well?” Sim asked.

“Thirty-six.”

“Thirty—” He stopped. Swallowed. “That’s…”

“I know what it is, Sim.”

Wilem straightened from the wall. “How much do you have?”

“We covered this.”

“We covered it before we had the number. Now we have the number.” He held up a hand, counting off fingers. “Four and change in hand. Six to eight from the Fishery. Two from the arrowcatch. Two from the Eolian. That’s fourteen to sixteen, generous.” He folded his arms. “You need twenty more.”

“I’ll figure it out.”

“Will you.”

“I always do.”

“You always have,” he corrected. “Past performance does not guarantee future outcomes. My father says this about every investment that eventually ruins a family.”

Simmon made a strangled sound. “Wil, that’s not helpful.”

“It was meant to be accurate.” His dark eyes found mine. “Devi.”

“I said last resort.”

“And I said last resorts are still resorts. I also notice you didn’t say no.”

The three of us stood in the corridor while other students filed past toward their own reckonings. Everyone had their own numbers to carry.

“I’ll go to the Fishery,” I said. “Kilvin mentioned he had commissions. And there’s the Eolian.”

“And the rest?”

I thought of Devi’s door. The way she smiled when she knew she had you.

“I’ll think of something.”

Sim put his hand on my shoulder. “You know the offer stands.”

“I know.” I covered his hand with mine, briefly. “But this is my weight to carry.”

Wilem made a sound that might have been disagreement, but he didn’t argue. The Cealdish understand that some men would rather starve than owe their friends.

I walked out into the courtyard. The sun was high, the air warm with the first suggestion of real spring. Somewhere a bell rang — second bell — and its sound carried across the cobblestones, clean and indifferent to whatever private catastrophe you might be navigating.

Thirty-six talents. Due in full before the end of the first span.

I’d been poor before. Tarbean poor, the kind where hunger stops being a sensation and becomes a state of being. This wasn’t that. This was the University’s particular breed of poverty — you had everything you needed except the one thing that let you keep it. And the cruelty was that it left you just comfortable enough to feel the loss when it was taken away.

I still had the bent ha’penny in my pocket. I took it out, turned it between my fingers, felt the place where the metal had been stressed past its limit and refused to return to its original shape. Damaged, but still currency.

I put it back in my pocket and went to find Kilvin.