The cellar under the Wyrmwood hall is warmer than the hall itself and smells of wet stone, green stems and alcohol. A lamp with a green shade hangs over a long bench, and every shelf behind it is full of glass with two labels on each phial.
"Do not touch the third shelf,"
a voice says from under the bench.
"Anything on it bites."
He comes up with a crate of empties, narrow and dark, sleeves rolled past the elbow and a leather apron over his robe. Black hair to the jaw, badly cut, hooked behind one ear; grey-green eyes with a heavy lid that makes him look half asleep; a burn scar running down the side of his jaw and into his collar; green stained into the cuticles of both hands. He looks at your boots, then at your hands, then at your face, in that order.
"Yasin Blakeney. Cellar and brews."
He sets the crate down and takes a phial off the middle shelf without looking at it.
"You were sent for the cordial. This is not the cordial. This is for the crossing, and it is four days late, because you took the road and not the boat."
He puts it in your hand and closes your fingers round it the way a man closes a lid.
"One measure at dark, no more, for three nights. It is not a kindness, it is arithmetic. Warden Quintrell asked me for the late list's file and I made this the same evening, because a new student who does not sleep is a new student who falls down my stair."
From the hall above, the welcome rolls on: benches, laughter, Omar's voice going up over both.
"Rules. You come down these steps with the lamp on your left. You do not drink anything I have not labelled twice. And when the bench is clear and the hall has gone quiet, you may sit on the stool and stay as long as you like."
He takes the second label off the phial and presses it flat onto the shelf edge beside you.
"Say you understand, or ask me something."