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as if she were at the top. The rest of us had accepted her at her own valuation.
    “Did you notice her nails?” Birdy asked.
    “No.”
    I looked back in memory, and yes, Sheris’s hands were always hidden, except when we wrote, and then everyone’s attention was on work. “She bites them?” I asked.
    Birdy tossed one of his sandbags in answer. “Wager she gets sent to Archive. Not for herald training—she could never decide what is worthy of keeping—but as a scribe.”
    “She’d be perfect there.” Neat, orderly details, ranks and rows of indexed books and scrolls. Facts. “Perfect.”
    But it was no place for Tif. She’d hate that. Facts had always been her weakness. Her interest was in people.
    We were called soon after, to discover that we were joining the very small pool of royal scribes in training. As I made my way to Housekeeping to order my new plain bleached-white linen robe of the journey-scribe, I began to suspect that the Interviews had been nothing more than a compassionate gesture keeping us out of the way so that those not chosen for royal scribe training could gather their belongings and go.
    Sheris went to Archive, which meant she lived across the courtyard from us, and Faura to the public scribes. Her new dorm was on the other side of the palace, overlooking the city.
    Tiflis was sent to prentice with one of the most prominent book dealers in the city, which meant she had to leave the palace altogether. I hid in the stairwell, ready to pop out to hug her, to commiserate, to say anything, if she even glanced toward me as she trundled her trunk along.
    But she marched down to the canal, face red, mouth angry, without a look my way. Once again I crept to my room and wept, in spite of my promotion. When I got up, I resolved to bury feelings altogether. I was going to be the best royal scribe ever, even if I was the youngest in training.

     
    Here is another of those coincidences that shape us, though we have no idea at the time.
    Among our many new duties was the beginning of our training in sitting still for long periods. Scribes were expected to remain in the background, observing, ready at an instant to serve but otherwise separate from events.
    Because of those long periods of sitting, the senior scribes now required us to choose a method of exercise. I loved dancing, but that class was already full. So I scurried to the class meeting down by the canal to learn graceful boating. When I recognized the back of Sheris’s head among those waiting to join the class, I backed away in haste, to discover Birdy waiting for me.
    “Come do fan form,” he urged.
    “What is that?”
    “You will see.”
    Since I had to choose something, I went along with him.
    We were required to move slowly, in exactly prescribed patterns, back and forth across the floor, a fan in each hand, our steps in time to softly played music.
    Afterward, Birdy left with me, already juggling. “Like it?”
    “Boring. So slow!” I hopped out of the way when Birdy dropped one of his bags and dove down stork-like to retrieve it. I was startled to discover how long his arms were—how tall he’d grown. “I can’t believe that the fan form was truly for training warriors. Not that I know anything about war. But one would think that by the time you finished that first sweep, wouldn’t the warriors on horseback have trampled you and gone on to another city?”
    Birdy shot a bag into the air and nodded assent. “You didn’t hear her say that they used speed for attack?”
    “Even so. Whether fast or slow, waving a fan in a circle does not seem martial.”
    Birdy grinned. “I know. Well, it’s to strengthen our wrists and hands, and to keep them supple—that I learned when I talked to the instructor yesterday. I can use that. Since I won’t be going to any wars, I don’t care if waving a fan is lethal or not.” He let the bags plop to the marble floor and clapped his hands in The Peace. “Shall you say it, or shall I?