Students.
What a fool.
She tried not to yawn in his face, but it was difficult. Jib had more sense in his big toe than this puffed-up popinjay had in his entire body. And of all the things to be over-proud of-this endless debate over frothy nothings, like the question of what a 'soul' truly consisted of, made her weary to the bone. If they would spend half the time on questions of a practical nature instead of this chop-logic drivel, the world would be better run. Finally he came to the point: the name of the book.
'By whom?' she asked, finally getting a word in. Of all of the Scholars, the Philosophers were by far and away the windiest.
'Athold Derelas,' he replied, loftily, as if he expected that she had never heard of the great man.
'Ah, you're in luck,' she replied immediately. 'We have two copies. Does your master prefer the annotated version by Wasserman, or the simple translation by Bartol?'
He gaped at her. She stifled a giggle. In truth, she wouldn't have known the books were there if she hadn't replaced a volume of history by Lyam Derfan to its place beside them the day before. It was bad enough that she'd known of the book; but she'd offered two choices, and he didn't know how to react. He'd loftily assumed, no doubt, that she was the next thing to illiterate, and she'd just confounded him.
He'd have been less startled to hear a pig sing, or an ape recite poetry.
She decided to rub the humiliation in. 'If your master is doing a monograph covering Derelas' work as a whole, he would probably want the annotated version,' she continued blithely, 'but if all he wants is Derelas' comments on specific subjects, he'd be better off with the Bartol translation.'
Now the young man had to refer to the slip of paper in his hand. He looked from it, to her, and back again, and couldn't seem to come to a decision. His face took on a pinched look of miserable confusion.
'Perhaps he'd better have both,' she suggested. 'No knowledge is ever wasted, after all. The Wasserman is rare; he may find enough of interest in it for an entirely new monograph.'
The Student brightened up considerably. 'Yes, of course,' he said happily, and Rune had no doubt that he would parrot her words back to his Scholar as if they were his own, and suggesting that the shop-girl hadn't known what a rarity the Wasserman was, so that he'd gotten the book at a bargain price.
Before he could change his mind-it was his master's money he was spending, after all, and not his own-she rolled the floor-to-ceiling ladder over to the 'D' section, and scampered up it. The Student virtuously averted his eyes, blushing, lest he have an inadvertent glimpse of feminine flesh. As if there was anything to be seen under her double skirts, double leggings, and boots.
Besides being the most long-winded, Philosophers were also the most prudish of the Scholars-at least the ones that Rune had met. She much preferred the company of the Natural Scientists and the Mathematicians. The former were full of the wonders of the world, and eager to share the strange stories of birds and beasts; the latter tended to make up for the times when they lost themselves in the dry world of numbers with a vengeance. And both welcomed women into their ranks far oftener than the Philosophers.
Doubtless because women are too sensible to be distracted for long by maunderings about airy nothings.
She came down with both books clutched in her hand, eluding his grasp for them so easily he might not even have been standing there, and took them behind the counter. There she consulted the book where Tonno noted the prices of everything in the shop, by category. It was a little tedious, for things were listed in the order he had acquired them, and not in the alphabetical order in which they were ranked on the shelves. But finally she had the prices of both of them, and looked up, reaching beneath the counter for a piece of rough paper to wrap them in.
'The Wasserman, as I said, is rare,' she said, deftly making a package and tying it with a bit of string. 'Master Tonno has it listed at forty silver pieces.'
His mouth gaped, and he was about to utter a gasp of outrage. She continued before he had a chance. 'The other is more common as I said; it is only twenty. Now, as it is Master Tonno's policy to offer a discount to steady clients like your Scholar, I believe I can let you have both for fifty.' She batted her eyelashes ingenuously at him. 'After all, Master Tonno does trust me in all things, and it isn't often we have a fine young man like you in the shop.'
The appeal to his vanity killed whatever protest he had been about to make. His mouth snapped shut, and he counted out the silver quickly, before she could change her mind. He knew very well-although he did not know that she knew-his Scholar was anything but a steady customer; he bought perhaps a book or two in a year. What he did not know-and since he was not a regular customer, neither would his Scholar-was that she had inflated the listed prices of both books by ten silver pieces each. She had heard other Scholars speaking when she had tended the shop before, chuckling over Tonno's prices. She heard a lot of things Tonno didn't. The Scholars tended to ignore her as insignificant.
So whenever she had sold a book lately, she had inflated the price. Scholars would never argue with her, assuming no woman would be so audacious as to cheat a Scholar; their Students never argued with her because she bullied and flattered them the same way she had treated this boy, and with the same effect. And when she added the nonsense about a 'discount,' they generally kept their mouths shut.
She handed him the parcel, and he hurried out into the cold. She dropped the taxes and tithes into the appropriate boxes, and pocketed the rest to take back to Tonno. Merchants with shops never went to a Church stall the way buskers and peddlers did; they kept separate tax and tithe boxes which were locked with keys only the Church Collectors had. The Collectors would come around once a week with a city constable to take what had accumulated in the boxes, noting the amounts in their books. Rune actually liked the Collector who serviced Tonno's shop; she hadn't expected to, but the first day he had appeared when she was on duty he had charmed her completely. Brother Bryan was a thin, energetic man with a marvelously dry sense of humor, and was, so far as she could tell, absolutely honest. Tonno seemed convinced of his honesty as well, and greeted him as a friend. And whenever she was here and Tonno was ill, he would make a point of coming to the back of the shop to see how the old man was faring, pass the time of day with him, and see if he could find some way to entertain Tonno a little before he continued on his rounds of the other shops.
She dipped a quill in a bit of ink and ran a delicate line through the titles of the two books to indicate they had been sold, and returned to Tonno.
He sat up with interest, and demanded to know what had happened. He shook his head over her duplicity with the spurious 'discount,' but she noted that he did not demand that she refund the extra ten silvers.
'You should update your prices,' she said, scolding a little. 'You haven't changed some of them from the time when your father ran this shop. I know you haven't, because I've seen the prices still in his handwriting.'
He sighed. 'But people come here for bargains, Rune,' he replied plaintively. 'Even when father had the shop, this district was changing over from shops to residences. Now-it's so out of the way that no one would ever come here at all if they didn't know they'd get a bargain.'
'You can make them think you've given them a bargain and still not cheat yourself,' she said, taking the empty bowl from the floor beside his bed and swishing it in the painfully cold wash-water until it was clean.
'I hope you put what was due in the tax box, and not what was in the book,' he said suddenly.
She grimaced, but nodded. 'Of course I did. Although I can't for the life of me see why. That Scholar isn't likely to tell anyone how much he paid, and you need every silver you can get. We may not have another sale for a week or more!' She put the bowl back on the shelf with a thud.
'Because it's our responsibility, Rune,' he replied, patiently, as if she was a child. He said that every time she brought up the subject of taxes, and she was tired to death of hearing it. He never once explained what he meant, and she just couldn't see it. There were too many rich ones she suspected of diddling the tax rolls to get by with paying less than they should.
'Why is it our responsibility?' she asked fiercely. 'And why ours? I don't see anyone else leaping forward to throw money in the tax and tithe boxes! You and Amber keep saying that, and I don't see any reason for it!'
He just looked at her, somberly, until she flushed. He made her feel as if she had said something incredibly irresponsible, and that made no sense. She didn't know why she should feel embarrassed by her outburst, but she did, and that made her angry as well.
'Rune,' he said slowly, as if he had just figured out that she was serious. 'There truly is a reason for it. Now do you really want to hear the reason, or do you want to be like all those empty-headed fools out there who
