All the Unaffiliated students were supposed to wear uniforms in a blue that was about two shades lighter than Guard blue and tailored to match the Trainee uniforms. That was something more often seen in the breech than the observance with the highborns or moneyed. Yes, their expensive outfits were blue . . . and they might on occasion be in the correct shade. But mostly, they weren’t, and they definitely did not match the simple tunics and trews of the three sets of Trainees. And there were always a few who wore whatever they wanted to.

That accounted for a small number of the so-called “Blues.”

But the Unaffiliated students were much more than a place to put an academically inclined younger son because you didn’t want him to sit idle and get into mischief. Almost all of the girls, and a great many of the boys, were not from highborn or moneyed families at all. They were here on their own merit, and since most of them couldn’t afford uniforms, the appropriate uniforms in the right color were supplied to them by the Crown.

They came from all over the Kingdom and had generally been sponsored by some temple or other in their home towns and villages, since most formal schooling was supplied by temples large and small. And the majority of the boys were in the Artificers—the students who would, at the conclusion of their studies, go out and do things with their knowledge. Build. Invent. Improve. Granted, you didn’t have to graduate from the Artificers to learn how to do the same things—there were apprenticeships available in all the Trades that did that sort of work, such as the Building Trades. But apprenticeships were expensive, and even when the student’s parents could afford such a thing, apprenticeships were limited by the scope and interest of the master and did not encourage innovation. Everyone knew that if you were going to go out and do new things, you had to come to the Collegia to learn the tools to let you do that.

There were more Unaffiliated students with interests outside the Artificers and the highborn, who were also in the blue uniforms and also sponsored here by various temples. But they were fewer than the Artificers, and were pure scholars, studying history, literature, the arts. It wasn’t likely that Abi would ever run into any of them.