In fact, Abi was pretty sure that of all of the students at the Collegia, she was the only one who knew the truth about the tale, since her father and mother had been neck-deep in it.

Unfortunately, some people didn’t learn the most important lesson, Abi reflected, as she came back down the stairs, now laden only with her history book and a small rug to sit on. Women and girls are not the property of men and boys, to do with as they please. Dudley’s behavior was evidence of that much.

She’d taken to reading the history lesson aloud at Brice’s request. He was not a good reader and labored through words she leaped over, and now she understood why his copy of the set of notes the friends had given her was smaller than the other two. He’d worked twice as hard to achieve half as much. He understood words when spoken; he just had trouble reading and writing them.

Well, the Artificers weren’t here to learn how to read, she reasoned. So she had volunteered. History was the only nonmath class her group was required to take this quarter anyway. It wasn’t as if she was doing all their work for them.

Rudi and Brice had also brought small rugs. Emmit, however, turned up a few moments after the rest laden down with so many cushions it was a wonder he didn’t lose any.

“What did I say about lounging?” Abi demanded, eyeing the pile.

“I knew you were going to say that!” Emmit protested. “I just brought cushions for all of us, because I knew you were going to say that!” He dropped his pile and tossed pillows to Brice, Rudi and Abi, who caught them. “Look, we’re none of us going to be Heralds. We’re none of us going to have to get used to roughing it, because all of us are going to be working in nice, civilized places where it’s not hard to find a pillow for your bum. And besides, the last time I gave in to your ridiculous demand that we martyr ourselves by sitting on the hard ground, I got ants.”

“Your pockets were full of cake crumbs,” Abi pointed out. “You want ants? That’s how you get ants.”

“You ate the cake too!” he protested, but he turned out his pockets and shook them vigorously before he sat down, using two cushions, one to sit on, and one leaned up against the tree trunk as a backrest. “When I produce my Master Work and I’m a full Artificer, I am never going to sit on the ground again. I’m going to have a servant just to carry around a folding chair for me.”