Vivian

Of all the delights of a new world, and for a mind like Vivian Ninetales' there were many, the scent of new inks was perhaps the most alluring.

Past the great gates of the Maesters' domain, flanked by statues with a curious mix of human and animal parts for a land lacking in fiends, she found herself in a great plaza, thick with stalls and pleasantly crowded by their customers. She saw scribes and booksellers, mapmakers and ink-mixers. Paper and parchment were both for sale, at a pleasing ratio and price, and the flavours of it all filled the air with the promise of knowledge.

"My lady?" Reminded the boy at her side, skin a bare shade darker than her own and hair as black and curled as hers was straight and white.

Her guide was a pleasant young man named Alleras, and where he had earned some favour by not gawping at her as most men did, he had her approval outright for his willingness to linger in the Scribe's Hearth -as he had introduced it- rather than proceed immediately with his assigned task.

All scholars needed a dash of rebellion in their blood.

Still, she had a task to attend to. "Punctuality is the mark of an educated mind." Vivian lied. "Lead the way."

The young man offered a polite nod and set off, trailed by Vivian, as she was by her escort of Cursebreakers and the Hightower men-at-arms who followed after them.

She had been left in Oldtown with a score of their freshly knighted Cursebreakers under command of Sir Cole, and a promise that if her stolas-borne reports were to stop, then an angry Dominant would be on their way in short order.

Practically speaking that Dominant would serve only to ensure they were buried with appropriate honours. Yet the promise, made just publicly enough to function as a threat, did the real work of protecting them. Or so said the theory of it all.

Vivian preferred not to test her theories with lives, least of all her own, but while a scholar had that luxury, a strategist rarely had any choice. Since she had come to serve both roles on behalf of Cid's Outlaws, Vivian had learned to accept the risks.

Thankfully, risks sometimes came with wonders. And for all the trouble that she had had gaining entry to it, she had to admit that the Citadel was a wonder.

The complex was easily the match of any Valisthean institution of academia that she had found cause to visit. Though she could not help comparing as Alleras led the party down an ornamented path, she found as many positives comparisons as negatives, even when she held it against the University of Kanver itself.

They came to a great door and exchanged her young guide for a portly fellow with less disciplined eyes and the full chain of office that marked a scholar of these lands. Around the neck would not have been her choice of where to wear it, but it had links enough not to be constricting and once he remembered himself the man moved freely. He withdrew a key from his robes and unlocked the door, only for the state of the hinges to force him to put his shoulder to it and heave at the heavy slab of wood.

Vivian was idly concluding that it must be a rarity for this particular entrance to be used. Then, through the widening gap, she saw her latest home.

Pushing her way past before the door could open any further, Vivian greeted the library with the smile of a woman finding an old friend. Though she doubted she would be allowed free roam of it, and her study of the written word had found that their mystically imbued knowledge of this land's languages extended only to the common tongues of either continent, Vivian was not discouraged.

Learning for learning's sake was not the heart of her mission, but it was the beating heart of Vivian Ninetales herself. She hardly expected anyone to complain if she brought back treasures unlooked for and she was sure that such treasures awaited her.

Though she had remained safely in Mid's cabin when the Enterprise made its visit to King's Landing, Vivian had still been struck by the stench of that city. Fortunately, Oldtown had been better designed, or perhaps upgraded, but her examinations of the sewers had left her sure that plumbing was an art still in its infancy in these lands. However, when she went in search of the craft that would be needed to advance that art, her examinations of the city's forges had left her giddy with how this world surpassed their understanding of mundane fire.

Who could say what other wonders the cavernous halls of the Citadel might hold?

Sir Nazaire's steady presence at her back reminded her of herself, and there was a brief awkwardness as the various warriors flooding in behind her kept the scholar from getting inside.

When he did squeeze his bulk through the crowd of Hightower men, it was only to come to a halt against the greater solidity of her fellow Outlaws. Though the poor fellow's expression was tremulous enough that she took pity on him and explained their obvious displeasure.

"Have no fear…?"

"Eddard, my lady."

"Eddard. My companions are merely dissatisfied with the prospect of protecting me in such narrow and dimly lit confines. I'm afraid few of them have my familiarity with libraries such as this one." Then she turned to her escort. "Sirs, I am certain of your abilities, for I know what you have overcome. Though I must insist that if you should have cause to cut us a path from this place, you will not use fire or thunder to do so." With her attention back on Maester Eddard, she assured him, "We would never wish to harm such a collection as this."

Of course, Sir Alarra could cast Flare if she absolutely had to, but if they truly had cause to exit by way of a wall then Vivian doubted she would regret the loophole.

Not that she had seen a single warrior of these lands who seemed fit to last the night in Valisthea's wilds. Let alone the mad trials that the Cursebreakers insisted on putting their initiates through. However she had seen the looks some of the Hightower men-at-arms had been giving the women among her escort, and she preferred to nip that sort of thing in the bud.

Perhaps it was time to spread the knowledge of what some of those trials entailed. To her understanding, a Tot Aevis was much akin to what they knew locally as dragons, if only the smaller specimens of such.

"My lady, the Conclave awaits."

"Of course." She returned her focus to the matter at hand. "Lead the way."

The path they took was unusually wide and well lit for a path through such a library. Though it was the statues that capped each shelf they passed that truly made it clear. They walked a path seldom used and with all the signs of being freshly cleaned in effort to disguise that. Likely the Conclave did not often see visitors in attendance.

Though the final set of doors they came to showed no signs of the prior oversight. Gleaming with polish and intricately carved, they opened at the slightest touch of her guide and without sound.

The chamber revealed was not the most impressive she had witnessed personally, and therefore a long way from the most impressive she had had described to her…but Vivian still had to stifle her reaction to it.

Age and dignity all but poured off the walls. Light came mainly from a skylight above, though the sconces were all lit and well tended. Thus illuminated was a round chamber set with four and twenty shallow alcoves, each cupping a chair that could have served as a petty kingdom's throne. Three chairs were empty, but the rest held robed men wearing masks of near as many different metals, with rods of the same resting or held beside each of them. All of them with their mask-shaded eyes fixed on her and their mouths set in stern lines.

It was a half-hearted attempt at intimidation, if it was such at all, and Vivian paid it no mind. The chamber floor was mostly empty, better to reveal the mosaic of tiles laid upon it, but Vivian fixed her attention on the seven sectioned table that encircled the room. It had been carved so as to give each man a place at six of its lengths while the seventh faced the door. Symbolism of some kind, she was sure.

Just as she was sure of her actions in ignoring the chairs set for visitors to their gathering, setting a hand far forward on the table, and vaulting it in a single hop.

Vivian was left sitting on the inside edge of the table, and idly discovered that it was carved with a relief. She had ended up with her hand gripping a finely crafted breast, and took a moment to pay her respects to the carpenter. The woman -goddess, perhaps- seemed almost ready to dance out of the wood.

The men that filled the room certainly didn't approve, but then, she had always had more than just a dash in her own veins.

Their eyes darted between her and the Cursebreakers filing into the room behind her while the Hightowers' men dared not venture inside. So Vivian craned her neck to address her escort.

"You may wait outside."

Sir Nazaire immediately stepped forward, "Cole's orders were to stay at your side."

"That I might be protected, and I am grateful for that protection. However there is no need for us to act like brutes. Sir Cole will understand you remaining at the door." Seeing him waver, Vivian promised in an airy voice, "I assure you, should any threat to my person manifest, I will shout and you may burst in to dispatch it."

With a final frown, one that promised she would be having an intensely tedious conversation with Cole that evening, her escort left her alone in the room full of masked men with rods to hand.

"Shall we get started then?"

Though she had taken them off their balance, Vivian was under no illusions that she had the upper hand. Nor did she doubt the opinions most, or all, of the men in the room had of her.

To gain entry to the Conclave at all, she had had to trade much of the secrets of the Eikons that she had been given leave to spread. Their nature and number, their names and inheritance, even the most simple aspects of their use, though in truth even the Outlaws' Dominants could not say for sure how their rarified craft would be changed by a world where the doom of Lithification held no sway.

She supposed the value of her information had been much reduced by her demands that it be spread to all, and insistence on seeing that done personally. Yet even so, it was intensely valuable.

But, while she had been freely hosted by the Hightowers, the Citadel had granted her entry only with extreme reluctance.

It was not a matter of contempt for a foreigner, or looking down on her station. The Hightowers were a powerful family and they had leapt at every chance to host her and Sir Cole for meals, had freely offered a fine manse and servants to tend it, had allowed her entry to their rookery that she might be assured her words were being spread freely, and had even been happy to pressure the Citadel on her behalf.

Though they had not left another giant pillar to declare themselves, Clive and Jill had still made quite a show in the waters of Oldtown. The iceberg Shiva had left fixed to the coast just outside the city's walls was still mostly there a moon's turn later, despite the industry of those who had promptly set about making use of such an abundance of ice in a warm region.

Yet despite the Hightowers' pressure and the clear evidence of her backing, the Citadel had resisted as much as they could.

So she was not surprised by what she could see in the eyes of the men before her. Nor by the way one of them, his mask bronze and well-burnished, stood up and said with clear contempt, "To think, Good Queen Alysanne would have had us admit students such as this."

Vivian cocked a brow and leant forward. "Are there students in these lands that do not frustrate their teachers? I'm not sure I could believe such a thing to exist."

Whatever response he of the bronze mask and acid tongue had expected, it was not that. He sat back down.

"You are a teacher, Lady Ninetales?" Said an elderly mask of silver. He seemed to be one of three, though the other two might have been silver alloys and they gave clear deference to the speaker.

"As I understand your titles, our equivalent to Archmaester would be Professor. Which is my own title. If we are to speak formally then I would greatly prefer that appellation. Though Vivian will do for the name."

There came a pause, before a man masked in copper with a tremulous voice, asked, "What links do you bear?"

Another, pewter, was quick to clarify, "Archmaester Gallard is asking what fields you claim expertise in."

"I am able to teach with confidence in the fields of astronomy, strategy, politics, anatomy, navigation, architecture, musical theory, accountancy, physicking, rhetoric, philosophy-"

She was interrupted by a rising tide of hostile murmurs. A strident voice won out over the others, and the bronze masked man declared, "You cannot expect us to believe you familiar with all those fields."

Vivian folded one leg over the other, and looked him dead in the eye. "I said I was able to teach in those fields, and others besides. If you would accept mere familiarity then I can think of little and less that I cannot claim it of." Then she reflected on her words, and pride drove her to admit, "That last is a lie as I think of it. I don't know a thing about midwifery."

Her announcement stunned them into a silence that nearly hummed with tension. Until one, pewter masked, leapt to his feet and pointed at her with a shout of, "What is the strongest form in architecture?!"

"A triangle."

The rest of them had followed him to their feet before she finished answering.

"What is the shape of the world?!"

"In simple terms, a sphere."

"What occurs when light passes through a prism?!"

"It splits by colour, akin to a rainbow."

The next question came from the silver mask, and was noticeably calmer, "What is the path of blood through the body of a man?"

"Unless our peoples are more different than we seem, blood flows from the lungs toward the left side of the lungs, which has strength enough to pump it to every extremity, from which it flows back to the right, and is pumped to the lungs."

"Where does the path begin?"

She scoffed at the attempted trick, replied "Where does any circle begin?", and caught a brief smile before the next man barked his question.

"How many men are needed to assault a fortress garrisoned with a hundred men?"

"History would suggest three times their number at a minimum, though any number of tactics may be employed by either side to alter that ratio." Vivian was not crass enough to mention the obvious addendum regarding Dominants that would figure in any Valisthean discussion of military logistics.

The questions continued as fast as she could answer them, with a different -if sometimes subtly so- field from each man who spoke.

Every question she answered correctly resulted in a harder question following with greater fervour until, somewhere between her mental computation of a financial problem and her conversion of a fallacy into the Valisthean equivalent, the Archmaesters began to sit down. Their questions slowed, and calmed, and finally they stopped even attempting to speak over one another and began to ask her questions each in turn. Though one of them stayed silent, masked in a metal she did not recognise and with a scornful twist to his mouth.

The steadier pace of questions did finally began to find some areas she could not answer to either their satisfaction or her own -especially in those subjects she believed Valisthea comparatively primitive in- but even there she saw, and took, the opportunity to answer not as a humbled student but a fellow scholar admitting their lack without shame or hesitation.

Refreshments had been called for amidst the second hour, with boards placed down to protect the table, and provide a steadier surface, one of the Archmaesters had japed.

When she found she could not answer a question concerning a fruit that she was sure did not exist on Valisthea, Vivian admitted her lack of knowledge and asked after a number of plants she had not seen in their markets in the same breath. Then she raised her goblet as an example of the common end all farmers tried to find for their wares, and stirred a wave of laughter before an Archmaester took up the subject with a tale of their past teacher's attempts to make wine from turnips.

Only when the questions finally slowed to a stop, after what she was sure had been most of the day, did Vivian allow herself to think that she might be able to gain the advantage.

Yet she continued to bide her time.

Archmaester Ebrose, whose silver mask declared him expert in a general knowledge of healing, spoke first in the silence after their questions. The man declared, with a respect she had not heard in his kindly voice at the start, "Acolytes have earned their first link from me with lesser proofs of their knowledge. Their second and third, even."

"Not so for mine. Perhaps I am not so readily impressed." Said Archmaester Willifer, whose brass mask she had gathered spoke to expertise in the field of weather and climate.

Before his words could start an argument, Vivian spoke up, "That does not surprise me Archmaester. I fear our world allowed a reliance on magic to stifle our interest in your subject. It is one of a number for which we should benefit from your superior advancement."

"Then you continue to insist that it is another world you come from? Not merely a distant-" A snort interrupted the speaker. Vivian had not caught the name of the Archmaester who had led the three across the room who held to scepticism of that truth, but Vinegar Vaellyn had gone so far as to briefly remove his bronze mask earlier -such was his laughter at one of her comments about students- and was rapidly growing on her now that his acid tongue was directed away from her. Perhaps for how it reminded her of her own.

Vaellyn levelled a withering gaze at the Archmaester he had interrupted, "I'm aware you pay little mind to things outside your own field Ocley, so I will inform you that the existence of other planets has been known since before the Conquest."

"Tha-that-"

Vaellyn interrupted again. "Professor Vivian. How many planets do you know to sustain life?"

She reflected on what she had so far gotten of her interrogations of Clive and Joshua regarding their encounters with Ultima, "Historically. At least three. Though one of those is dead."

"Yours?"

"No. Valisthea endures."

"Valisthea, is that the name given to your planet?" Asked the bronze masked man, curiosity shining in his eyes.

"No, that term refers only to the twin continents of-"

"Archmaesters! Are we truly entertaining such foolishness and superstition?"

It was a mask of iron from which the voice boomed. Harodon, Archmaester of strategy and logistics, and one of the few whose eyes still held only contempt when Vivian met them. A man she had no interest in trying to convince of anything, but before she could attempt to redirect an even louder voice made itself heard.

"Observe! Men who close their eyes and declare themselves blind!" The shouts came from the man who had stayed silent until that moment. The man whose mask Vivian did not recognise. "I am Archmaester Marwyn." He declared. "If these sheep cannot admit the truth, then allow me to-"

"To mumble and murmur and say nothing of actual worth?" Vaellyn sneered. "I once named you Mage, Marwyn, but you're hardly that. Naught but an Archmaester whose knowledge of his links is so meagre as to be useless. Small wonder you had no questions for the Professor."

Having swelled with rage at the interruption, Vivian marked the way Marwyn deflated as Vaellyn's vitriol continued. Though he quickly rallied and said, "So eager to dismiss and denigrate what you cannot comprehend. Or do you deny that I have set the glass candles aflame each time I have attempted it."

His words drew a decidedly sharper response from Ebrose than Vivian had heard from the Archmaester of healing before then. "You certainly succeeded in nearly blinding Lord Leyton, and a dozen acolytes not long after him."

Indeed, more than a few Archmaesters were sending sour looks towards Marwyn, but he did not falter.

"My work with Lord Hightower proved the negative effects of the God-Touched on attempts to communicate via the glass candles, as well as the consequences of trying to spy upon them." Then he said, more to Vivian than his fellow Archmaesters, "My acolytes dared to look upon the Phoenix despite my warnings. It was their fortune that the younger Lord Rosfield felt merciful."

"I would not care to test his mercy for repeated offences." Vivian said, hiding her delight. She would have at least one new treasure to provide in her next report.

"Of course." Marwyn nearly simpered, despite how little such tones fit his appearance or voice.

Vaellyn was not done with his mockery. "Is that the limit of an Archmaester's knowledge then? Some tricks that a band of acolytes can nearly match?"

"Pretty words and clever phrases. Do you have anything more than that Vaellyn? Any grasp of the deeper mysteries at all? Or will you continue to deny the mysteries when they lay outside our very walls. No, outside the door to this chamber itself!"

"I do not deny magic, nor its return to the world. Both are plainly apparent. I deny your having any useful knowledge of it."

"Grey woollen fool I name you Vaellyn! What man can claim knowledge of magic?! It is not your grey and dull things of rock and glass and ink! It is fire and thunder and storm! It is beyond knowing! Beyond understanding!"

Marwyn's roars sent the other men in the room swaying back away from him, as though he was the storm himself, battering away at their castles of reason and knowledge. Even Vaellyn was struck dumb by the force of his words. Vivian however…

"What are you talking about?" she drawled.

There was something like betrayal in Marwyn's eyes when he turned away from the other Archmaesters to look at her, but she paid it no mind at all.

"Seldom have I heard such absolute nonsense. Magical theory is no more or less than those fields of study that entail Aether in some form. Magic itself being the practical application of that theory, there is as much unknowable to us in magic as there is in architecture."

Betrayal was becoming something more like despair, but Vivian had not the slightest intention of easing her assault on such a disgraceful defence of ignorance in a supposed scholar. She turned to a man masked in black iron -a master of messenger ravens- whose questions had made it clear that his mind was failing him outside of his subject, but who had been trying to reach beyond it and ask about stolas when another man interrupted to calm his agitation.

Beneath her gaze Archmaester Walgrave quailed, but Vivian pressed on. "You started to ask about our use of stolas to send messages? I wager you wished to ask how they vanish?"

"Y-yes, yes! That was it. My helper, he claimed the birds disappeared when he tried to follow their flight. Was, is, is it concealment of some, uh, sort?"

Instead of answering directly, Vivian rose to her feet and took a moment to bounce on them until the feeling came back to her legs. Then she turned and spoke loudly enough to be heard through the door without alarming anyone. "Sir Alarra. A demonstration requires you."

Of course it was Nazaire who carefully opened the door to look inside, revealing the Cursebreakers in the same positions that they had held hours earlier, and the Hightower men-at-arms in decidedly more weary stances. There was impatience in his eyes, despite his apparent discipline, and she had to ask twice more before he sent in the Cursebreaker that she required.

"Come over here, to me Alarra." Vivian said as she paced to the most central section of the table and waved for the Archmaesters to crowd around it. Then she shifted the refreshments around until she had cleared a space and placed a goblet at either end of it. "Now, tell me, what is the shortest distance between these two points?"

As expected, the Archmaesters looked at her with collective feelings much like she had held towards their earliest questions. However Vivian lifted her hands in a gesture of surrender and assured them, "This is not a trick question Archmaesters. Truly, what is the shortest distance."

They gave a general murmur, some more stridantly than others, to the effect that it was obviously a straight line between the two goblets.

"It certainly does seem so." Was Vivian's response. Then she told Alarra, who had found her way to a position at Vivian's shoulder, "Darkness aether please, between those two goblets."

Having seen the Cursebreaker practicing, Vivian knew she could provide, and sure enough she was able to generate a dense cloud of aether that obscured the goblets in shifting swirling currents so dark they seemed almost to glow with a red light.

A few of the Archmaesters looked like they might faint, but every man amongst them leant forward and a few called for servants to bring more light.

Once they had observed for a short while, and Vivian had seen what she was looking for, she began her lecture.

"Dark-aspected aether has a number of consistent properties in a pure form such as this. You see the patterns in each eddy within the cloud? It is said that they are all unique, but of course to prove this is an impossibility." They were calming from their initial reaction to the magic and a few even nodded at her words, following her reasoning. "However, that aside, those patterns allow us to see another property without any further aid."

Then, Vivian pointed to two spots she had found within the cloud and waited for each Archmaester in turn to look upon them, and exclaim.

"They're appearing."

"Like passing through a door."

"Is it-?"

"Yes, definitely the same."

"You can tell by the curls within it. It is the same eddy exactly."

Vivian smiled, "So you see, the shortest distance is not a straight line. Stolas, with their vastly foreshortened flights to any destination, are further proof of what we see here by way of this aether. Though space seems to us to be a simple construction of straight lines in three planes, the truth is far more complex. There are folds and wrinkles within it, which allow for far shorter distances to connect two points. Magic reveals this truth to us, just as our eyes reveal the colours of light that passes through a prism."

Her point made, Vivian turned to Marwyn, who had not spoken a word as she lectured, and said, "There is no great unknowable mystery. Only truths yet to be uncovered."

"Then you can explain how these folds you speak of form? You can step through one of them now, before our eyes?" Despite the bitter words, he sounded more defeated than defiant.

"Can I? No, just as I could not explain the methods to predict wind and rain that Archmaester Willifer spoke of. However the Fallen, a civilization that existed long before ours, were able to make use of it extensively."

In fact Cidolfus Telamon's discovery of the secrets of their long disused network of teleporters had been key to the Outlaws' ability to evade pursuit, ignore borders, and generally accomplish anything close to the feats that they had. Even if Vivian privately suspected that it had also been a major impedance to their efforts by way of allowing Clive to spend so much time hopping back and forth to the Hideaway on various errands.

Marwyn did not respond further.

Finally, as the Archmaesters looked upon her with something close to revelation in their eyes, Vivian found herself with the upper hand.

And ready to make good use of it.

"Now, if my capacity as a scholar has been demonstrated to your satisfaction, might we discuss business?" Vivian asked, shooing Alarra back towards the door at the same time.

Already clustered together for her demonstration, the Archmaesters quickly conferred amongst themselves and Vaellyn announced on their behalf, "We will of course allow you entry to the Citadel with an appropriate escort. We would welcome an exchange of knowledge with House Rosfield and the Hidden Isle. If you would accept some number of our own in turn."

She had to take a moment to prepare herself after that offer. The thought of spending endless hours in the library she had seen just a small portion of, it tempted Vivian gravely. Yet she knew her duty.

"To my everlasting regret, such an exchange will not be possible. We do not have the numbers to support such efforts. I especially must return in due course and take up my post as advisor." Rather than offence, her words stirred a general understanding. She supposed they were used to the demands of scholars serving such a role.

"Are you alone among your people Professor Vivian?"

"No, thankfully not. Though I would rank only two of my fellow scholars equal to your number, we have some dozens that could be considered Maesters by your ways."

"These two…Professors, might we have their names?"

"Of course. As you would name them they are: Harpocrates, second of his name, of House Hyperboreos, who was Grand Maester to the Imperial family of Sanbreque and now serves as our Loresman, which is to say one who tends a library; And Midadol of House Telamon, my student in times past, and the creator of the ship which brought me to this city. Unfortunately Harpocrates is past the years when he could easily endure the rigours of travel, and Midadol is unable to be spared."

Seeing the regret in their eyes, or most of their eyes at least, Vivian reached into her pouch and grasped her final, most precious weapon. Then she prepared to use it. "However, while an exchange of scholars is not possible at this time, that does not mean all paths for exchange are closed to us. Please observe these pages closely, and tell me of your conclusions."

The pages Vivian pulled from her pouch used paper from Valisthea, but only for the lack of time to make alterations for the sizes common locally.

She handed them out and watched. First came curiosity. Then the crinkled brows of theory. Then comparison between pages, closer and closer as excitement built. There were words whispered that she did not know at all, and two that she did. "Yi Ti." Though in truth Vivian had no idea why they were discussing the far off place.

Finally, they looked to her, pages in hand, and asked, "Would you ask us to send you books, that you might copy them?"

There was a worry to the words, which she well understood.

"I would not imperil a library so. It is needless anyway." She shrugged, pretending a casualness she did not feel. "Those pages were printed in our manse here in Oldtown."

By the greed that filled the eyes of the men before her, Vivian was certain that only the threat of fire and ice would ensure the manse was not assaulted that very night.

Given how eager she had been to loot the surviving printing presses from the ruins of Kanver, Vivian could not claim to be any different. If she had only known what her colleagues were working on, she thought she might not have walked the path that brought her to the Outlaws at all.

"Of those we have from Valisthea," meaning three, as the rest of the precious prototypes had been annihilated as Jill and Barnabas turned what remained of Kanver into kindling and gravel, "one was brought to Oldtown alongside us."

Though he had been chosen as the voice of the Conclave, Vaellyn could not find words for long moments. Finally he said, "Would you give us leave to make use of it?"

Vivian smiled. "I have permission to sell it to you."

"Name your price!" blurted out the Archmaester of finance, only to step back into the group a moment later, shamefaced at his lapse.

Vaellyn spoke more formally, but with the same intent. "What sum would you have of us?"

"It is not money I ask for." Vivian said, "An exchange is what we discussed, and that is what I seek. An exchange to be agreed between the Citadel of Oldtown, and the University of Elaria. Such that, for every book you print or copy, you provide us three copies."

They consulted in whispers for bare moments. "Agreed."

"I would also ask that you accept copies of our own works in turn."

That clearly confused them, but Vivian expected them to understand soon, once Eikons truly began to do battle across the continent. They were just as quick to have Vaellyn say, "Agreed."

"Last of all, I would ask if you have any experts on the current state of Essos. Most especially those cities that practice slavery?"

At the nods of multiple Archmaesters she gave her own and said, "Teach me everything. And our deal will be struck."

Vaellyn didn't even need to consult his fellows.

"Agreed."

Of course that wasn't the end of it, much to the regret of those still waiting to escort her back, Vivian was sure.

She insisted, with agreement from most of the Conclave, on drafting up the initial contract right away.

Paper, ink, and quills were sent for. Then sealing wax and ribbons and all the other necessities of even a very provisional contract, but in the end it was done.

Only then did Vaellyn, with the relaxed smile of a man who has just been handed a fortune he did not expect in the slightest, admit to her, "I had thought you might demand that we open our doors to women as part of the exchange."

She saw fear and dismay cross several faces, knew that some of them feared Vaellyn had put the idea in her head by saying so, and bent double with the force of her laughter.

When she finally had enough control to speak, Vivian leant her weight on the table and addressed every man in the room.

"Esteemed Archmaesters, I assure you of this. If you wish to leave half your harvest in your fields; I will gladly take custody of it in your place."