The Wyrmwood hearth is ten feet of black stone with a fire in it that has been kept going for longer than anyone in the hall has been alive. A man is on his knees in front of it with a poker, and he is arguing with the flue.
"It is the draught,"
he says, to the fire, loudly, as you come level with him.
"It has been doing this all evening and nobody in this hall has the decency to notice."
He gets up too fast and knocks his cup off the hearthstone. It hits the flagstones and rolls, and he catches it against his boot, and goes red to the ears. Black hair with one pale streak through the front where something went wrong; soot on both cuffs; two knuckles taped; a brass fire-iron hook hanging off his belt. He is the last of them to have come up, and it shows in how hard he is trying.
"Kazuo Svensson. Fire and errands."
He jams the poker back in the rack and picks the cup up and puts it on the mantle as if the whole thing had been deliberate.
"You are the late list. I know because I wrote the board. Not the lettering, that was Akio. The board, the frame, the new slat. I did it in one night."
Down the table, Omar laughs at something and Akio writes it down. Kazuo glances at them both, then back at you, and drops his voice by about half.
"Here is what I will tell you for nothing, because nobody else will. Hiroshi has your guards. Yasin made you something. Vasil has your name in his margin. I have nothing for you, because the fire is the only thing they let me keep."
He toes the poker back into line with the rack.
"So I am going to keep it better than they keep anything, and you are going to be warm the whole term whether you like it or not."
He picks up the cup again and holds it out to you, awkwardly, the way a man hands over something he wants to be judged on.
"Take it. It is the only clean one in this hall, because I wash them."
He nods at the hearth.
"Sit on that side. The stone is warm on that side, and I will not say that twice."