Her eyes lit up as she recalled something, and she fished eight silver coins out of her pockets. Staring down with some reluctance, she thrust four of the coins into his hands. “We each get four silver half-lucets per month. That’s worth about twelve copper lucets, and a copper lucet is…seven small coppers? So we get, um, around a hundred small coppers?”

“Eighty-four small coppers, then.” Out of habit, he rested a hand where his crystal had sat for nearly three years. “How much does the average meal cost at one of the stalls?”

Anice blushed.

“Oh, of course,” he nodded. “You’ve never paid before, have you?”

“I’ve paid!”

“Okay, then how about this? As punishment for sneaking into my room and stealing my clothes, go to that stall over there”—he pointed to a stall selling chunks of meat pierced with sharp needles of wood—“and buy us each one of those. Then meet me back here and tell me how much it cost.”

“But we just ate.”

“I saw you vomit up your breakfast when you collapsed. Even though you tried to hide it, admit it, Anne!”

“Stupid Alie!” She turned and ran for the meat stall.

With his cousin preoccupied, Alistar wormed his way through clusters of jostling people and followed his memory to the stall he had in mind.

“Mrs. Stall Owner!” he called to the elderly woman, who was slumped over on a stool behind a spread of sugar sticks.

“Ah, that friend of Miss Silverkin’s,” she smiled. She struggled to her feet, her breathing discomforted. “What can I do for you?”

Alistar pointed to the big bowl of sugar sticks. “How much for one of those?”

“One small copper gets you two,” she answered.

“I’ll have two, then.”

She shuffled around for a moment and produced two lengthy sticks, the thickest ones in today’s batch. When she held out her hand, he reached over and dropped one of his coins into her palm. She pursed her lips as she accepted the coin, glancing into her change box with displeasure. “Please excuse my cousin,” he said earnestly. “She’s not as selfish as you might think.”

The woman looked up uneasily. “I don’t recall saying—”

“Treat me again, Mrs. Stall Owner.”

Alistar ran off before she could complete her sentence. He found Anice waiting for him in front of the stall, wearing an impatient stare. She’d already finished her food, along with two of the four chunks of meat on his skewer.

“So, how much was it?”

She breathed in sharply.

“You forgot to pay, didn’t you?”

After returning to the vendor and forcing Anice to pay the man three small coppers for each stick of meat, they spent the next few hours wandering around town. First, they visited the guilds on East Street, a series of sturdy constructs made purely of solid stone. This area stood out from the others in the city, with huge banners draped along the front walls of almost every building. These tapestries denoted the identities of the guilds, with a barrel for the Brewers’ Guild, a forge for the metalsmiths, a drop of ink for the dyers, a potted plant for the Gardeners' Guild, a book for the Scholars’ Guild, a flame for the Magus Guild, and so on. Anice explained as much as she could as they ventured around, surprising Alistar with how much she knew. Of course, he would have to fact check with Caedmon once he returned home, but the moments were magical nonetheless.

Soon the street widened significantly, opening up to a modest plaza with a rounded water fountain at its centre. The most prominent building on all of East Street took up an entire side of the square, standing three stories tall and draped magnificently in flowing banners that depicted the four arrows of direction, as was usually seen on a map. A compass rose was the mark of the Frontiersmen Guild. Alistar wasn’t quite sure what a frontiersman did, but he knew it had something to do with exploration.

After touring most of East Street, the two of them backtracked and cut over to North Street, stopping several times so that Alistar could marvel at different sections of the barracks, a great building with high arching windows. Each of the main roads widened and allowed for a large square to mark the approximate halfway point of the street. Though the square on North Street was lined by only two buildings, they each took up an entire block of space.

At one end sat the collegia, a large complex of many buildings, all made of the same whitewashed stone. An arched entranceway led into a bustling courtyard that branched off to each facility, with many lawns and gardens connected by compact, cobblestone walkways. Alistar caught glimpses of beds of lilies and white hyacinth, along with many elder oaks.

“You want to go inside, don’t you?”

“We’re allowed?”

“The collegia’s open to the public.”

Moss-ridden bird fountains, long benches of strong wood, and the occasional sundial frequented the pathways in every direction. Alistar knew that if he left to investigate the library, then there was a good chance Anice would abandon him, so he resolved to return another day. Another area that caught his eye was the training hall and its training grounds. One of the larger sections of the collegia, the two-storey building covered a great span of the overall property. White pillars held up an overhang that lined the perimeter of the structure, which supported a series of walkways on the floors above. Behind the building, whose many rooms were teeming with pupils both determined and lazy, lay a crowded training ground. A huge area was filled with wooden posts where straw dummies stood for the young knights, squires, and novice frontiersmen who had gathered to practice their sword swings. At the opposite end of the yard, instructors educated blocks of sweating pupils on form and technique.

“Can anyone train here?” he asked his cousin.

“How should I know?”

I’ll have to ask Uncle when we get back.

Upon leaving the collegia, Alistar stared at the resplendent cathedral on the opposite end of the square, a grand building that towered above everything in sight. The tall set of doors seemed to have been made for giants, sitting atop a high flight of marble steps. Small platforms on either side of the stairway supported masterful sculptures that were shaped into ethereal angels, frightening beasts, and holy men. High above sat a fantastic length of huge, colourful windows, with rounded archways that boasted intersecting patterns of matte black metal. Though he wasn’t much for religion, Alistar had to admit that the architecture was beautiful, the building imposing to the point of stealing away his breath.

They didn’t linger in the area, and instead made their way back to the market square. While they walked, Alistar let out a wistful sigh and gazed up at the lazy clouds that shadowed the day.

“Why are you sighing?”

He glanced over his shoulder at the distant collegia, barely visible from so far down the street. “It’s nothing.”

“You just want to go to the library.”

He shrugged. “I like learning new things.”

“All you do is read,” she mumbled.

“That’s because I wouldn’t learn as much if I didn’t.”

She frowned and then stopped in her tracks, thoughtful. “What if you could learn without having to read?”

He paused, turning. “You mean take lessons? Uncle Caedmon said that you need to be registered in the classes in order to attend.” The concept of schooling had seemed very inviting when Caedmon had explained it to him. Under a professional educator, people were separated by age and knowledge into differing groups, within which they would undergo group lessons each day, and be subject to various tests and reviews. There was an annual fee, and his uncle had explained with pride that, so long as one could afford it, the lessons were open to anybody. This set Distan aside from most territories, where schooling was limited to the nobility.

“That’s just at the collegia,” she sniggered.

“Oh, so that’s where the lessons take place? Maybe I can train there if I pay some sort of fee…”

“Listen to me.” She took up a boastful stance. “I’m talking about something else. Old Man Herst gives free lessons at the Hanging Hill on the east side of town. Papa pays him to teach any of the kids that show up, so that anyone can learn if they want to.”

“Are teachers like that uncommon?”

She nodded. “I’ve been to Valay, in the duchy of Vern. Most of their schools only let the high born attend, and poor people there can't receive lessons. That’s our uncle’s territory, by the way.”

He knew that she was right, as he’d learned this from The Regions of Mais and Its Noble Inhabitants.

“That hardly seems fair.”

“Papa says the same thing, which is why he pays Old Man Herst.” She grabbed one of his sleeves and tugged him along, roughly, and without grace. “Let’s hurry. We don’t wanna get there in the middle of a lesson.”