THE NEXT MORNING I splashed some water on my face and trudged downstairs. The taproom of Anker's was just starting to fill with people looking for an early lunch, and a few particularly disconsolate students were getting an early start on the day's drinking.

Still bleary from lack of sleep, I settled into my usual corner table and began to fret about my upcoming interview.

Kilvin and Elxa Dal didn't worry me. I was ready for their questions. The same was largely true of Arwyl. But the other masters were all varying degrees of mystery to me.

Every term each master put a selection of books on display in Tomes, the reading room in the Archives. There were basic texts for the low-ranking E'lir to study from, with progressively more advanced works for Re'lar and El'the. Those books revealed what the masters considered valuable knowledge. Those were the books a clever student studied before admissions.

But I couldn't wander into Tomes like everyone else. I was the only student who had been banned from the Archives in a dozen years, and everyone knew about it. Tomes was the only well-lit room in the whole building, and during admissions there were always people there, reading.

So I was forced to find copies of the masters' texts buried in the Stacks. You'd be amazed how many versions of the same book there can be. If I was lucky, the volume I found was identical to the one the master had set aside in Tomes. More often, the versions I found were outdated, expurgated, or badly translated.

I'd done as much reading as possible over the last few nights, but hunting down the books took precious time, and I was still woefully underprepared.

I was lost in these anxious thoughts when Anker's voice caught my attention. "Actually, that's Kvothe right over there," he said.

I looked up to see a woman sitting at the bar. She wasn't dressed like a student. She wore an elaborate burgundy dress with long skirts, a tight waist, and matching burgundy gloves that rose all the way to her elbows.

Moving deliberately, she managed to get down off the stool without tangling her feet and made her way over to stand next to my table. Her blond hair was artfully curled, and her lips were a deeply painted red. I couldn't help wondering what she was doing in a place like Anker's.