His room had taken on the air of a place where someone lived, in no small part because of Skif’s little wagers. Mindful of the impression he was hoping to create, he always wagered for something he knew wouldn’t put the person who was betting against him to any hardship. So in many cases, particularly early in the game, that wager had been a cushion against a small silver coin—which, of course, Skif knew he wasn’t going to lose. Skif preferred sitting in his bed to study, unless he actually had to write something out, and any Trainee could make as many cushions for himself as he cared to—fabric and cleaned feathers by the bagful were at his disposal in the sewing room as Skif well knew. Palace and Collegia kitchens went through a lot of fowl, most of which came into the complex still protesting. The Palace seamstresses bespoke the goosedown for featherbeds, the swansdown for trimming, and the tail feathers for hats. Wing feathers went off to the fletchers and to be made into quill pens. That left the body feathers free for the claiming, so there were always bags full of them for anyone who cared to take worn-out clothing and other scrap material to make a patchwork cushion or two.

Skif now had nearly twenty piled up behind him. And for those whose pockets ran to more than the stipend, some of the more top-lofty of the Blues, he’d wagered against such things as a plush coverlet, a map to hang on his wall so that he wouldn’t need to be always running up to the Library, and, oddly enough, books.

The plush coverlet was folded up and waiting for winter to go on his bed, the map made a dark rectangle on one whitewashed wall, and the bookcase—the bookcase was no longer empty.

He’d never disliked reading, but he’d also never had a lot of choice about what he read. It had never occurred to him that there might be other things to read than religious texts and dry histories.

Then he discovered tales. Poetry. Books written to be read for pleasure. It wasn’t the overwhelming addiction for him that it was with some of the Trainees, who would have had their nose in a book every free moment if they could, but for him, reading was as satisfying as a good meal, in his opinion.

And a book made a very, very useful thing to demand on a wager. It made him look a great deal more harmless in the eyes of those highborn Blues.

So now his bookshelves held two kinds of books; his schoolbooks, and the growing collection of books he could open at any time to lose himself in some distant place or time. And the room now had personality that it hadn’t shown before.