Chapter 16 - Technically Theft

Wherein Rose puts her own education first and follows her heart.

The end of the semester was fast approaching. Rose was finally getting the hang of what teachers wanted from her, and learning how to give the required answers. As a result, her grades were going up. Still she only ranked as ‘skilled’ in the practical courses, but she no longer minded that.

Brittany’s gang got under her skin every day. Animal sounds followed her everywhere she went at Bardic College. It wasn’t even just Brittany’s gang anymore, either. Random people would grunt, moo, and cluck at her. Someone threw dirt at her as she rushed off campus grounds to catch the tube. The laughter as she brushed the wet clumps of soil from her braid haunted her.

She didn’t know what she had done to deserve the treatment she got. She didn’t want to talk to her friends about it, didn’t want to hear from them that she was making a big deal out of nothing. People jeered at Bosra sometimes on the tube, or in the busier streets, but it never seemed to worry the woman.

Instead of focussing on the negative, Rose hunted for more positive moments. In doing so, she had gotten together with the other skilled musicians of her class a few times, had lunch with them, studied with them, and listened to their complaints about college. It had fermented the suspicion that Bardic College wasn't about training up actual bards. If it ever had been, then it certainly wasn’t anymore. 

She had pre-magic classes the past six weeks, and those had actually been interesting. Perhaps simply because she had not studied the topic before. At least not in its arcane form. 

During the course, given by a real wizard from the University of Unseen Arts, she learned that there was magic in many simple tasks. That the rituals performed with certain happenstances were part of that small magic infusing all life. 

The wizard had little patience for after-hours talk. Where other teachers were all about informal contact with students – or crudely put: letting the students suck up for better grades –  at the end of his two-hour lecture he simply gathered his papers, put them into a small suitcase, picked up the suitcase and left the building. 

This last lesson, he had given them a reading list of publicly available books that should be sported in the Bardic College library. There was a note on the bottom of the paper that read: If not at Bardic, visit U of UA library; free admission.

Choosing to be late for dinner, Rose went to browse the stacks at the Bardic library – the ones she was free to roam, anyway. It was a depressing place to be. It smelled of mould, of dirt, and, in places, urine. Odours that shouldn’t be associated with a library. The lighting was bad, the roof too low. Everything, including the shelves, was a variation of grey. The books all had dark grey sleeves with yellow lettering, supposedly to make the title more clearly legible.

She found only one of the books on the list. It was as thick as her fist and felt heavier than it looked. Flipping to the title page, she saw the beautiful illustration of arcane symbols was marred with a glued-on, stamped square of card stock. ‘Do not check out.’

Stumped, Rose looked down at the sticker. Frustration bubbled in her chest. It made her want to scream.

She didn’t. Instead, she did something she had never, ever thought she would do in her life. She purloined an item.

It was sacrilege. The reality of it slashed through the bubbling in her chest and made her jittery.

Checking the aisle both left and right, Rose knelt down and opened the case that held the extension of herself. Book and violin would never fit inside together. Bags bigger than a reticule had to be left in the designated racks upon entry. Apparently book smuggling was a known issue.

After a deep breath to still herself, Rose lifted out her heirloom violin and put the book where the body had been. She closed the case, stood up – case in one hand, violin in the other – and made a beeline for the check-out desk.

It was blessedly busy in the library, the noise of a hundred voices plausibly drowning out detailed conversation at the check-out counter. Rose ignored the questions from the desk clerk.

"I’m sorry," she gestured to her ear. "My violin! It needs a less moist atmosphere. The dampness is terrible for the strings!" She blurted out the first thing that came to mind, not caring if it was true or not. Her second sin this day.

She grabbed her bookbag from its receptacle and hurried out the doors, being mindful not to smash her instrument between the swinging doors.

The further she got from the campus library, the easier it was to keep going. She stopped at the tables outside one of the dorms, on her way to the tube, to put her violin back into its proper case and the book into her bag. It weighed the bag down like a millstone would a criminal sentenced to drowning.

All the way home, she carried this burden. Usually she would chat to people on the tubes in an attempt to brighten their day, as well as her own. That connection to the people, the real people, people that worked, shopped, had worries and loved ones, helped her centre herself after a day of mind-numbing idiocy. Not today, though. Today, it felt like everyone could see the crime she had committed written on her forehead.

This is what she should be mocked and targeted for, not for her humble upbringing, or her lack of money.

Halfway through her journey, as she switched tubes, she swore she heard someone moo at her. The culprit should be happy she didn’t recognise him, or she would’ve punched him in the face, adding violence to her list of sins for that day.

She justified the act of stealing to herself by swearing to Sunfather that she would return it after she read it.

The book turned out to be a very dry treatise, yet she struggled through it. Even if she didn’t understand half of it, she made notes and copied diagrams. After a week of devoting more hours than she had to spend to it, she was happy she wasn’t going to be a wizard. She didn’t think she could do this day after day after day.

And so, the promise of free admission to the library at the University of Unseen Arts drifted to the bottom of her priority list.

Besides, with the end of the semester also came the winter holidays: the Winter Wake, the Midwinter Feast, and the Birth of Light. The prospect of the celebrations that went with those days made Rose fiercely miss her family back home.

She debated visiting. While helping Valentina cook on several successive nights, she discussed the possibility with her friends. She would have two weeks off from school, but it would take four to five days to get there and again as many to get back. She would miss the true holy days during the travel time, and have only four days left to spend at leisure with the people she loved most in the world.

In the end, she decided against it. Instead, she wrote a packet of letters, one for each member of her family. 

~

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