page4 (1/2)

They gave hi rooave hi he’d alotten he didn’t have: a discipline

Every ician had a natural predisposition to a certain specific kind of enuinely useful, but everyone had one: it was a kind of sorcerous fingerprint But they’d never been able to find Quentin’s As part of his induction into the Brakebills faculty Quentin was required to state his discipline, at which point it occurred to him that he still didn’t knohat it was

Just as they had a dozen years ago they sent him to Professor Sunderland, a woly, volcanically infatuated when he was an undergraduate Shesunlit lab she’d worked in back then; it eird to think that she’d been here this whole ti disastrously around the multiverse, and that they were now, for most practical purposes, peers

If anything she was even more beautiful than she had been at twenty-five Her face had ripened and softened She looked ht of at the time as her serene, otherworldly quality now felt a bit ht lack of affect—he hadn’t noticed hoithdrawn and shut-down she was

He’d felt so far below her then, he wasn’t sure she’d even remember him But she did

“Of course I do You weren’t quite as invisible as you thought you were”

Had he thought that? Probably he had

“Does that ht it was?”

She smiled, but not unkindly

“The concealment of crushes probably isn’t your discipline,” she said “Roll up your sleeves, above your elbows Let me see the backs of your hands”

He showed her She gave theular pattern of tiny cold sparks appeared on his skin, like a sparsely populated countryside seen froht he felt a web of icy prickles too, though that could have been his iination

“Mmmmm”

She chewed her lip, studying hi a ga there that interested Professor Sunderland Or Pearl—now that they were colleagues he should get in the habit of calling her by her first name

She snipped a lock of his hair and burned it in a brazier It s hair She scrutinized the smoke

“Nope”

Now that the pleasantries were out of the way she was all business He could have been a tricky flower arrangeh a graduated series of smoked lenses while he walked backward around the room

“Why do you think this is so difficult?” Quentin asked, trying not to run into anything

“Mm? Don’t look over your shoulder”

“My discipline? Why do you think it’s so hard to figure out?”

“Could be a few things” She sht blond hair back behind her ears and switched lenses “It could be occluded Some disciplines just by their natures don’t want to be found Some are just really minor, pointless really, and it’s hard to pick theround noise”

“Right Though could it also be”—he stu? That no one’s ever seen before?”

“Sure Why not”

He’d always envied Penny his fancy and apparently unique discipline, which was interdimensional travel But from her tone he suspected she could have listed a few reasons why not

“Remember when I made those sparks, that one time?”

“I remember Aha I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before Stand still”

He stopped, and Pearl rued ruler nize

“Close your eyes”

He did, and immediately an electric bar of pain flashed across the back of his right hand He clamped it between his knees; it was ten seconds before he even recovered enough to say ow When he opened his eyes he half expected to see his fingers sheared right off at the second knuckle

They were still there, though they were turning red She’d whacked thee of the ruler

“Sorry,” she said “The pain response is often very revealing”

“Listen, if that doesn’t do it I think I’”

“No, that did it You’re very sensitive, I must say”

Quentin didn’t think that not wanting to get smacked across the knuckles with a ruler , and Pearl was already paging through a huge old reference book printed all in jewel type Quentin had a sudden crazy urge to stop her He’d been living with this for so long, it was part of who he was—he was the Man Without a Discipline Was he ready to give that up? If she told him he’d be like everybody else