“I say they are,” retorted Elymas. “Your deceit has disgraced every apprentice standing here.”

            It was a battle he was destined to lose. With a snarl, Elymas flung the dice at his feet.

His pouch lay empty on the table before him.

            Jessum stood for inderminate minutes, staring at the ground. When he looked up, everyone was gone.

            He hadn’t been able to stop his tears. He was wiping the last away with his sleeve when he sensed a movement to his right. A short, barefoot man in a dirty, patched tunic that hung past his knees stood behind a wheelbarrow, staring. Jessum recognized him as a “Wabber” at once.

            The man gave Jessum a sympathetic look which he found infuriating. “I don’t need sympathy from the likes of you,” he’d shouted. “Get back to work!”

            Then, in the same manner as Elymas, he’d turned on his heel. He’d been ashamed of that encounter ever since. 

            He spent the rest of the day and the night as well in the stable, hunger forcing him to face down the other in the dining hall the next day at noon. No one had acknowledged him that day or since, but he’d found sharp knives, rocks and once a snake in his bed. He learned not to walk beneath the galleries lest he be sprayed with piss.

            What caused him to stay?

            Pride. Also, a stubbornness rooted in the knowledge that he’d been wronged. Also, he desired to shield his father not from knowing not that he’d failed, but that he’d failed so soon.