I considered showing her my papers and grew irritated with myself for considering it. I leaned against the chalkboard and crossed my arms against my chest. “Do you have a question for me?”

“You’re getting chalk all over your back.” I leapt away from the board like it had electrocuted me. I frowned at her. Her smirk turned highly amused and slightly cruel. “Are you teaching the afternoon session on Lothic, too?”

“Yes.”

“That would be my luck,” she said, and then she sailed out the door without so much as a backward glance. Two hours later, she and I were once again in that same lecture hall. This time, she sat in the very center of the front row. The bravado with which I had taught that session of Athenorkos abandoned me. I stumbled through the class on Lothic. My points were punctuated with shrill giggles. My nerves got the better of me and led to several dropped and shattered pieces of chalk. As the class wore on, her face grew more amused and more disgusted with me. When I dismissed the class, the Qin students glared at me and lined up to sign the roster. She stayed where she was. She leaned on to the arm of the chair and studied me. “Where are you from?”

I pretended not to hear her. It was no use.

“Professor, where are you from?” This time she asked it in Qin. A dozen pairs eyes turned toward me.

“Ardijan,” I said. My voice cracked halfway through.

She laughed—a quick, authoritative ha!—and leaned back in her seat. “I don’t believe you,” she said.

Once again I considered showing her my papers. “I’m not showing you my papers. You’ll have to take my word for it.”

“You’re from the City,” she said. She gestured at me. “Look at you. How did you get this assignment?”

“I’m from Ardijan,” I said again. I left the lecture hall without taking the roster. Her laughter taunted me all the way down the hall. At home, I recounted my failures to Dirva. He told me I was making too much of it, but I wasn’t. When I arrived the next day, a Qin official was lying in wait for me. He led me to the hall, handed me my abandoned roster, and said there had been complaints. Ralah College, he said, is not a place students complain about. My assignment was granted in the graciousness of the Exalted’s example, he said, and it would be a shame for such graciousness to be misplaced, or worse, for it to go unrecognized.