Herald Trainees wore gray. Healer Trainees wore a light green. Bardic Trainees wore a sort of dark reddish orange. But there were people who attended classes here at the three Collegia who weren’t Trainees at all. And this particular classroom was full of them, so there wasn’t a trace of any of those colors to be seen here. Abi had taken a desk at the back of the room, the only place that was open, and what she saw was a lot of blue-clad backs that matched her own brand new blue tunic and trews.

Abi was used to the Collegia classrooms; they all looked pretty much alike, whether they were in the Heralds’, Healers’ or Bardic Collegium buildings. Each room held about twenty bench seats and simple slanted wooden desks for the students, a larger desk and actual chair for the instructor, with a slateboard at the front of the room, another at the back, and one on the side facing the wall. The remaining side was all windows. There was a door at the front of the room with a transom over it, so on hot days there was a breeze coming through the open windows and the transoms. The floor was polished wood, the ceiling whitewashed plaster. The room smelled of wood polish, chalk dust, and ink. Abi had been taking lessons in rooms like these since she’d been about six, just like her older and younger brothers and Kat and her siblings.

Most of the young people taking classes here who weren’t Trainees were the offspring of those highborn or wealthy families that didn’t want to bother with personal tutors for them. That was a smaller number than people might think, as Abi well knew. If you were highborn, and especially if you were wealthy, you didn’t want people to think you couldn’t afford private tutors for your sons. So generally the only highborn or wealthy boys taking classes at the Collegium were those whose abilities had outstripped most tutors . . . or, of course, whose parents actually couldn’t afford private tutors. There were very few girls among the highborn coterie of the Unaffiliated students; the vast majority of highborn girls were here at their parents’ manors or living at the Palace itself solely for the Serious Business of getting husbands, and they were expected to invest all of their time in activities that would bring them to the attention of eligible males or the mothers of eligible males. Taking academic classes was not on the approved list of such activities, unless it was dancing lessons, or etiquette, or a little rudimentary lute or harp playing.

Abi had heard that there were a couple of highborn girls studying seriously here, but she hadn’t met them yet. She might never, if they weren’t associated with the classes that the Artificers took.