Clariel: The Lost Abhorsen (The Abhorsen Trilogy Book 4) by Garth Nix

capital to establish such a business,” said Ader. “It would be slow to start, particularly at your age, but it is not an impossible notion. If you can talk your parents into supplying say . . . at least fifty bezants a year, for your first five years, I would adjudge it an achievable ambition.”
    “Really?” asked Clariel. “I thought you would . . .”
    Her voice trailed off. She did not want to say that she thought that the Academy was the kind of place that would make its pupils only want one kind of life.
    “You thought that we limit the choices of our students?” asked Ader. “We do not, but it is a sad fact that the great majority limit themselves. You might find it best to keep your ambition secret, Lady Clariel. Many here would consider it too small, a thing to be made fun of. However, all I am concerned with is that we equip you both for the possibility of other futures, and for the one you yourself envisage.”
    She lifted the lid of her writing desk and removed a piece of thick paper, which had a list of twelve things printed in a large legible type in bright blue ink down the middle, leaving a very generous margin to the top, bottom, and either side. Closing the desk again, she put the paper down, carefully inked a quill, and drew two nearly perfect lines through two of the items on the list. Then she renumbered the list from one to ten with large numerals in the margin, not in the order they were originally written.
    “This is our standard curriculum for those young people who will be venturing into their own business or enterprise,” said Ader. “I think two subjects would be superfluous in your case. You will attend the other ten lessons, starting with number eight, as that is about to begin, and work your way through each day, attending lesson nine on Belday, ten when we resume next week on Bethday, and so forth, to be repeated as you go on. Each room in the Academy has a name, you will find the location of each lesson in this list, and the name of each instructor. Your immediate class is in the Three Window Room—take the southwest stair there down two floors, walk twenty paces along the hallway, and the door will be on your left, with a nameplate. After your lesson today, I suggest you to walk around and learn the names and locations of all the rooms; there are only nineteen.”
    Clariel took the paper, running her eyes quickly down the list of lessons. The two that had been crossed out were “Keeping a Count of Monies, the Twice-Written Method” and “The Calculation of Cost of Making Stuff and the Setting of Prices Thereof,” both familiar to her from her work with her father. The remaining ten were:
     
    On the Writing of Letters, Reports, Epistles, Writs, Bills, and Such
    The Proper Obtainment, Direction, and Discontinuance or Severance of Servants, Apprentices, and Partners-in-Business
    Music and Dancing, Courtly and Otherwise
    The Role of Each Person in Households, Great to Small
    The High, Middle, and Low Guilds and Great Companies of Belisaere
    The Direction of Feasts, Celebrations, Festivals, and Fairs
    Geographical Understanding and the Flow of Trade
    The Serving of Tea
    Matters of Law, Royal, City, and Guild
    The Exercise of the Body, Martial and Merely Aesthetic
     
    “The Serving of Tea?” asked Clariel. She knew what tea was, a new herbal drink that had been introduced to the Kingdom from somewhere far off five or six years before, though she had never drunk it herself. There was even a teahouse in Estwael that had been open a year with little sign of it becoming a permanent fixture. “How can that be helpful to anyone?”
    “Go and find out,” said Mistress Ader. “I shall see you again in due course, to discuss your progress. You may go.”
    Clariel hesitated, then bowed and turned around, heading for the southwest staircase. She had just taken her first step down when Ader called after her.
    “Lady Clariel. One more thing.”
    Clariel looked back from the top of