Let's begin. The start of Chapter One.

"You there!" the master called, though entirely without words. "Boy!" he called. He was brusque, because that was his nature.

Only one of the young men lifted his head to match his teacher’s stare.

"Yes, you!" he scolded Rian. "Who else can hear me this way?"

Rian smiled. The master realized anew that the boy was always smiling. And fidgeting. When it came time for even simple spells, the boy's gestures would wreck havoc.

"There are other boys present with some hearing, hlaford," Rian told him, sending his thoughts to the old man in the same wordless fashion. It was a talent that came easily to him. The masters all called it the Giefu, the Gift. It’s sometimes a curse, the boy thought, keeping this opinion to himself, though perhaps this master--for mathematics, a subject the boy liked... Perhaps this master could hear him even when he shielded his thoughts.

But the master had no sense of the boy’s doubts. In fact, the boy was a mystery to him. To most of the other masters, too. When Rian closed his mind to them, there was no reading him. Only the one hlaford who knew the boy’s real nature and who just last year gave him his true name could see and hear through the silence and clouds.

"May I help you, hlaford?" Rian asked, even while he entertained the other students.

The boy was a perfect mimic and just now he was imitating the way in which Doren’s tongue hung out whenever the nurse was called. He could imitate her, too, holding his cupped hands out away from his chest as though he were as well-formed as she. In Doren’s voice he told the boys, "God was generous with Nurse, friends. And she is generous with me!" At least that was Doren’s claim. No one believed him, of course; Nurse was after Brother Cobbler. Wasn’t that well known?

All the boys who gathered ‘round Rian laughed.

The master told him, "Bring them to their studies now, Rian. Fat load of good it will do. Shiftless beggers. We’ve calculus to do and too little daylight."

"Too few days in the month, hlaford, isn’t that right?"

"You’ve read my mind."

And, of course, he had.