Back up the steps they went, pausing just long enough at the first floor for Teren to open the door and Skif to look through it. “This is where the classrooms are,” Teren told him, and he took a quick glance down the long hall lined with doors. “We’re on Midsummer holiday right now, so all but two of the Trainees are gone on visits home. It’s just as well; with this heat, no one would be able to study.”

“Do what they’s does in th’ City,” Skif advised, voice muffled behind the pile of clothing. “They ain’t gettin’ no holidays. Work from dawn till it gets too hot, then go back to’t when it’s cooled off a bit.”

“We’re ahead of you there,” Teren told him. “It’s already arranged. Follow me up to the second floor.”

Teren went on ahead, and Skif found him holding open the door on the next landing. He stepped into another corridor, this one lined with still more doors. But it ended in a wall, and seemed less than half the length of the one on the first floor. It was a bit difficult to tell, because the light here was very dim. There were openings above each door that presumably let the light from the room beyond pass through, and that was it for illumination.

“You won’t be living on this side of the common room,” Teren told him. “This is the girls’ side. The common room where you take all meals is between the boys’ and girls’ side. Come along, and you’ll see.”

He led the way down the corridor, opened a door, and Skif preceded him into the common room. There were windows and fireplaces on both sides, and the place was full of long tables and benches, rather like an inn. Skif made a quick reckoning, and guessed it could hold seventy-five people at a time—a hundred, if they squeezed in together. “How many of them Trainees you got?” he asked, as Teren held the door in the opposite wall open for him.

“Forty-one. Twenty-six boys, fifteen girls.” Teren turned to catch his grimace. “That does make for some stiff competition among the ladies—or are you not interested in girls yet?”

“Never thought ’bout it,” he said truthfully. “Where I come from—”

Where I come from, you don’ get no girl ‘less you pays for ’er, an’ I got better things t’spend m’ glim on, he thought. But no point in shocking this man. He’d probably go white at the thought.

“And this is your room,” Teren said, interrupting his thoughts, opening one of the doors. Eager now to put down his burdens, Skif hurried through the door.