1 The Outstretched Shadow.3 by 1 The Outstretched Shadow.3

irritation, "but you clearly are not prepared to pay attention—and I am not prepared to waste my valuable time on a pupil who doesn't wish to learn."
     Oh, grand. Father is certainly going to hear about this, Kellen thought with a sinking feeling. And what could he say? That he didn't like the way the City was run? But he had liked it, mostly, up until now.
     He guessed…
     Anigrel made a shooing motion with his hands, frowning exasperatedly. "Get out of here, boy. Go play, since that is obviously the only thing you're fit for today. I shall attempt to salvage something out of this morning while you idle your way about the City, child that you are. Be grateful I don't call for a nurse to take you to your room to play with toys."
     Release, but with a sting in it.
     Kellen picked up his notes and strode out of the room before Anigrel changed his mind.
     Release—but at the cost of being treated like a child, like an infant, at being insulted and abused by a fatuous prig who thought he was owed everything he got!
     Kellen set his chin stubbornly and left the workroom.
     He stopped on the way out of the College and deposited his books in his locker, hoping he wouldn't run into any of his year-mates at the Mage College who would wonder why he wasn't still at his morning's lessons with his tutor—or worse, that he wouldn't run into his father, who sometimes visited the College between Council sessions to check up on some of the more promising senior pupils.
     He thought of going home, but the thought of going back to Tavadon House, to the chilly corridors and grudging servants, nearly made him ill. He had to get out, somewhere far from here, from there, from Mages and magick. He needed free air and—if there was such a thing in this City— free talk.
     There was only one place to go for both of those things.
     Kellen opened his locker again and pulled off his robe, wadding it up and stuffing it in atop his books and tools. Where he was going, it would be a disadvantage to be recognized as a Student-Apprentice of the Mage College of Armethalieh.
     A definite disadvantage.
     WHEN the foreign ships from the Out Islands and the lands beyond the bounds of those claimed by the City were in, there was one place in Armethalieh where there was little or no chance that anyone would recognize him for who and what he was. The docks were the one place where Mages didn't go if they could help it.
     Sailors distrusted them, captains did not like having to depend on the magicks that they bought at such high prices from them—the Talismans that brought fair following winds, the Amulets that directed storms to move out of the path of a ship, the Runestones that dispelled fog, the Wands that warned the man at the tiller of shoals and dangerous rocks. Yet those who failed to purchase such aids often came to grief—far oftener, said the whispers, than mere bad luck could account for…
     And as for the merchants, well—it was the Mages who dictated what could and could not be sold. It was hardly to be expected that they would welcome the sight of those who restricted their ability to profit.
     Foreign sailors were confined to the area of the docks; only the merchant-captain of a ship—or better still, his City-born representative— was allowed into the City proper to present samples of the cargo for inspection or deliver promised goods. The dock even had its own market, plenty of taverns and inns, and in any case the sailors were kept busy enough even in port that they didn't have much time to spend wandering the streets of Armethalieh.
     The citizens were not encouraged to wander the docks, either, and generally everyone had heard tales of drunken sailors quarreling with peaceful citizens, starting fights, and generally behaving in an uncivilized manner. That was enough to keep most folk away. But Kellen had learned—by going there himself—that very few of those stories were true, and of the rest, well, people got drunk