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scribes, serving the most important people in the kingdom.
    After a year of very hard study, Scribe Halimas entered our history class one afternoon as usual. Instead of offering a topic to research and discuss, he said, “At the midday meal today, you were joined by a journey herald who insisted that Adamas Dei left Sartor for the west in 3391 when he discovered that he would not inherit the throne.”
    He paused long enough for us to comprehend that what we thought was a conversation-turned-debate had actually been a test.
    “It’s the same question we discussed in class the night before. During our discussion, you all employed admirable skills in politely confining yourselves to facts, without attempting influence, according to the First and Second Rules. But today, one of you used elementary diplomacy techniques to persuade: apparent agreement, then question, or apparent agreement then correction.”
    Birdy flushed to his ears.
    “Two of you did stay with the facts, but in attempting to avoid any imputation of influence, got bound up in a tangle of justifications andqualifiers until no one could make sense of your point. It seems, including you.”
    It was my turn to look down at my pen case, and I heard Nashande shuffling his feet.
    “One of you escalated in emphatic statements, rude in tone, and finally in word. Yet in class, these statements, when repeated, were couched in language that can only be termed an attempt at flattery. As if a buttery tone and a smile excuses emphatic repetition.”
    Shadow-kissing, in other words. Sheris looked away—and Tiflis looked startled, then uneasy. Faura just looked lost.
    “And one of you thought it best to parrot the flatterer.”
    Tiflis blushed.
    Over the past year, Tiflis had responded to my attempts to get back to our old rhythms by being friendly in public, but any time I tried to talk to her alone I was cut short by the ever watchful Sheris. That had hurt so much I’d tried to bury myself in work, studying even during recreational times—especially when they all turned sixteen and went off to the pleasure house, where I couldn’t go yet, unless I stayed in the children’s rooms downstairs. So I didn’t go at all.
    Now Senior Scribe Halimas surprised us further by saying, “You also did not know that this past ten days were your year tests. We have saved you a week’s effort in trying to gain knowledge that you should have spent the year accruing, and we have also saved ourselves a week of listening to what you think we want to hear.”
    The others’ shock, commensurate with my own, revealed itself in tiny shiftings, the sighs of indignation.
    The corners of the senior scribe’s mouth curled. “I am going to dismiss you to your Interviews, and thence to your new studies. Tiflis, you will attend me. Sheris, you will wait outside the door. When they are done, I will send someone to fetch the rest of you.”
    Tiflis cast a triumphant smile at the rest of us, though her shoulders were stiff. I suspected she wasn’t quite certain she was being singled out first for a good reason.
    The Interviews did not take long. Birdy and I were last.
    He had been kindly, if distant, this past year. I fancied that he looked down on me from his great height, from the vast worldly knowledge of a sixteen year old who regularly went off to the pleasure house, while babyish me stayed alone at our dorms and studied.
    Birdy addressed me abruptly. “My sister told me if you get called out first, it’s because you’re being sent from the royal scribe pool.” He’dtransgressed unspoken etiquette by referring to family, but it was acceptable if the family member in question was employed at the palace—a fellow scribe. Everyone knew that one of his twin sisters, who were older even than my brother Olnar, was a royal scribe, employed by no less than the queen. “I think Sheris is being sent away.”
    “Sheris?” I repeated. I was used to thinking of her at the top, because she acted