lessons, you'll be assigned chores here in the Collegium. All three Collegia do this with their Trainees. The only thing that the Trainees don't do for themselves is the actual cooking and building repair work.”
Skif made a face, but then something occurred to him. “Highborn, too?” he asked.
“Highborn, too,” Teren confirmed. “It makes everyone equal — and we never want a Herald in the field to be anything other than self-sufficient. That means knowing how to clean and mend and cook, if need be. That way you don't owe anyone anything — because we don't want you to have anything going on that might be an outside influence on your judgment.”
“Huh.” By now, they had reached the lowest landing and the half cellar — which wasn't really a cellar as Skif would have recognized one, since it wasn't at all damp, and just a little cooler than the staircase. Teren went straight through the door at the bottom of the staircase, and Skif followed.
They entered a narrow, whitewashed room containing only a desk and a middle-aged woman who didn't look much different from any ordinary craftsman's wife that Skif had ever seen. She had pale-brown hair neatly braided and wrapped around her head, and wore a sober, dark-blue gown with a spotless white apron. “New one, Gaytha,” said Teren, as she looked up.
She gave him a different sort of penetrating look than Alberich had; this one looked at everything on the surface, and nothing underneath. “You'll be a ten, I think,” she said, and stood up, pushing away from her desk. Exiting through a side doorway, she returned a moment later with a pile of neatly folded clothing, all in a silver-gray color, and a lumpy bag. “Here's your uniforms — now let me see your shoes.”
When Skif didn't move, she gestured impatiently. “Go ahead, put your foot on the edge of the desk, there's a lad,” she said. With a shrug, Skif did as he was told, and she tsked at his shoes.
“Well, those won't do. Teren, measure him for boots, there's a dear, while I get some temporaries.” She whisked back out again while Teren had Skif pull off his shoes, made tracings of his feet, then measured each leg at ankle, calf and knee, noting the measurements in the middle of the tracing of left or right. By the time he was finished, the Housekeeper was back with a pair of boots and a pair of soft shoes. Both had laces and straps to turn an approximate fit into a slightly better one,
“These will do until I get boots made that are fitted to you,” she said briskly. “Now, my lad, I want you to know that there are very strict rules about washing around here.” This time the look she gave him was the daggerlike glare of a woman who has seen too many pairs of “washed hands and arms” that were dirty down to the wristbone. “A full bath every night, and a thorough washup before meals — or before you help with the meal, if you're a server or a Cook's helper. If you don't measure up, it's back to the bathing room until you do, even if all that's left to eat when you're done is dry crusts and water. Do you understand?”
“Yes'm,” Skif replied. He wasn't going to point out to this woman that a dirty thief is very soon a thief in the gaol. That was just something she didn't need to know.
“Good.” She took him at his word — for now. He had no doubt he'd be inspected at every meal until they figured out he knew what “clean” meant. “Now, I don't suppose you have any experience at household chores — ”
“Laundry an' mendin' is what I'd druther do; dishes, floor washin', an' scrubbin' is what I can do, but druther have laundry an' mendin',” he said immediately. “Can boil an egg, an' cut bread'n'butter, but nought else worth eatin'.”
“Laundry and mending?” The Housekeeper's eyebrows rose. “Well, if that's what you're good at — we have more boys here than girls, so we tend not to have as many hands as I'd like that are actually good at those chores.”
Her expression said quite clearly that she would very much like to know how it was that he was apt at those tasks. But she didn't ask, and Skif was hardly likely to tell her.
“This boy is Skif, Chosen by Cymry,” Teren said, as Gaytha got out a big piece of paper divided up into large squares, each square with several names in it.
“I've got you down for laundry and mending for the next five days,” Gaytha said. “Teren will schedule that around your classes and meals. We'll see how you do.”
“Off we go, then.” Teren said, and loaded Skif's arms with his new possessions.
Back up the steps they went, pausing just long enough at the first floor for Teren to open the door and Skif to look through it. “This is where the classrooms are,” Teren told him, and he took a quick glance down the long hall lined with doors. “We're on Midsummer holiday right now, so all but two of the Trainees are gone on visits home. It's just as well; with this heat, no one would be able to study.”
“Do what they's does in th' City,” Skif advised, voice muffled behind the pile of clothing. “They ain't gettin' no holidays. Work from dawn till it gets too hot, then go back to't when it's cooled off a bit.”
“We're ahead of you there,” Teren told him. “It's already arranged. Follow me up to the second floor.”
Teren went on ahead, and Skif found him holding open the door on the next landing. He stepped into another corridor, this one lined with still more doors. But it ended in a wall, and seemed less than half the length of the one on the first floor. It was a bit difficult to tell, because the light here was very dim. There were openings above each
