There were five rows of keys behind the assignment clerk. She took mine from a box on the floor.
It had a wooden tag, worn smooth at the edges. She laid it beside my arrival card and began writing the room number before I had agreed to anything.
"Is that in the Silver residences?"
Her pen stopped.
"No. Have you been assessed?"
"Not yet."
"Then this is the room I can give you."
A student at the next desk was being told where to leave a trunk. His two attendants listened while he examined a second key, smaller than the first. He asked whether it opened the practice room from the corridor as well as from his quarters. I had been about to ask for one of those.
The clerk followed my glance.
"Returning student," she said.
I looked down at my single key.
All afternoon I had been using a room large enough to receive visitors in. There had been a Valdrake crest above the door and no bed behind the adjoining one. The man at the reception counter had seemed surprised when I asked. He directed me here before his own desk closed.
"It's a single room?"
"Yes. The washroom is along the passage. Water is brought to the room at the ordinary hours." She turned the card toward me. "Read this part before you sign."
The permissions were on the back. General classes, the public reading room, the foundation courts during open practice and a basic meal allocation. Most of the lower half was empty.
"A private training room?"
"Requires an assessment or a separately approved booking."
"My name—"
I stopped. She waited without supplying the rest for me.
At the Great Hall I had been seated where my name belonged. I was tired enough to want it to get me something more useful here.
"Would an assessment change the room as well?"
"It may. Bring the key back when the permanent allocation is posted. This card ends then."
I ran my thumb along its blank lower half. Iron, Silver, whatever I managed to leave the examination with: that would decide what happened afterward. For tonight I needed somewhere I could take the glove off and stop answering questions.
The student beside me lifted his two keys. One of his attendants took the trunk while the other collected the papers he had left behind. They went out together, leaving a strip of clean floor where the luggage had stood.
"Is there anything nearer the foundation courts?" I asked.
The clerk pulled the key back and checked another page. This took long enough that I began to regret asking. At the other end of the counter, a porter was lifting the last of several cases onto a trolley.
"One room on the ground passage," she said. "Overlooks the delivery way. You'll hear the carts in the morning."
"How many stairs?"
"Two at the entrance."
"I'll take it."
She crossed out the first number. This key came from the same box, but the tag had a crack in one corner. I put it where my left hand could reach it.
The clerk set out a notice for the foundation group: the court at six the next morning, then an introductory history session later that morning. I asked her to show me the court on the little plan beneath the notice. She drew her finger along the covered way, around the washhouse and across a short yard.
I repeated the route. She corrected the turn at the washhouse.
"Take the passage before the steps. You don't need to climb them."
I had spent a month discovering how much there was to know about getting from one room to another.
"And meals?"
"Show the card. Extras are marked at the counter. They're separate from the basic allocation." She checked that I had taken the notice. "Accounts is still open, if you have a house allowance to collect."
I hadn't settled the road money. The purse was still in my coat, on the opposite side from the wallet, where it had been for the journey.
At the small accounts window I gave the clerk the allowance receipt, the posting-house bill and the coins that remained. He counted them into a shallow tray, checked the subtraction and marked the road advance settled. The used receipt came back to me. The coins did not.
The Valdrake account had an ordinary living allowance available. He named the period it covered and put the schedule beside my arrival card. I read it, then counted the smaller payment he passed through the window. It went into the same purse, with a fresh receipt to show where it had come from.
"If I need more before then?"
"You submit a request." He pushed the schedule toward me. "Before you spend it."
I put that paper behind the receipt. Ren's agreed pay would go through the separate service account. I checked that with the clerk because I didn't want to discover, after buying supper, that I had spent somebody's wages.
He showed me where service charges were entered. I signed for my own money and left the rest of the account alone.
---
By the time I returned to the assignment desk, the porter had brought his trolley around.
My case was still at the day-reception store. Ren had gone to make his remittance, and I had told him to go. For a moment I considered asking the counter to find him, simply because he was the only person here whose name I knew well enough to call.
The porter held out his hand for the claim stub.
"The reception store?"
I gave it to him. He checked the mark against the trolley's collection sheet, and I took my satchel from the floor.
"Can I come with you?"
"If you want. It's on the way."
We went back through the covered passage. The reception rooms were emptying. Someone had put a chair across the entrance to the one I had used that afternoon; the crest was still above it, as unhelpful now as it had been when I looked for a bed.
At the staffed store the porter handed over the stub. My case came out with the same straps and the gate tag still fastened beneath the handle. I checked them while the two men compared their entries. Then it was on the trolley and moving toward the residences.
The porter took the slope. I followed on the side away from the wheels, carrying the satchel on my left shoulder. The narrow strip of linen under my right glove had worked loose. I left it alone until we stopped.
He set the case inside the room, waited while I counted one case and one satchel, then marked the delivery finished. I thanked him. He had already turned the trolley to keep it from blocking the passage.
The room was smaller than the reception room's entrance alcove.
There was a bed, a table and a chair that fitted beneath it only if it was turned sideways. The window looked onto the delivery way. A cart stood beneath it with an empty basket overturned on top. I could see why no one had hurried to take the room.
I shut the door. It stayed shut.
For a while I stood holding the key, listening. Footsteps passed outside, a voice asked for a room farther down, and neither stopped at mine.
I put the satchel on the table and opened the case. The shirts were creased where the spare formal gloves had pressed into them. I hung one over the back of the chair and laid the gloves beside it, then took off the soft pair I was wearing. The linen followed more easily than I expected. The old line on my finger still pulled when I bent it.
The water flask had enough left for a drink. I used my left hand, sitting on the edge of the bed. The mattress gave at the middle and made me shift toward the wall.
Tomorrow's notice went beside the arrival card. Six at the court. I would need to leave before the morning service block had finished; Ren could bring the tea at its beginning. The thought of explaining that made me close my eyes.
I wasn't going to summon him tonight to arrange tomorrow.
I put the notice where I would see it on waking, slid the notebook and the protected citation into the table drawer, and checked that nothing caught when I closed it. There was no lock. I moved them back into the satchel and fastened it instead.
The bedcover smelled faintly of soap. I took off my boots, loosened the collar and lay down without deciding where the rest of my things should go.
Outside, someone began dragging the basket off the cart.
I heard the first scrape. I didn't hear where they put it.