Nerd In the North, Arc 6 - Interlude 1

Mending would set the dish right, no?

The thought came to him as he stared at the candle crooked in it, the wax at risk of running past the lip and onto the table. Before the hour was out, no doubt.

Sam had already resolved twice to move it and had yet to move it even once.

Mending would not set the candle right, though. Because the candle is not broken, merely leaning. Leaning was not the same as broken, a distinction that cost him most of a morning a sennight past.

A distinction he had made sure to note down, of course

He did so for near everything now.

His hand rose, quill gripped tight. Ink first. Nib tested against the corner of the scrap, Samwell bent over the scroll and stared down at proper vellum as he began to write his new understandings. Duration of effect lasts a quarter-hour by the water-clock, thought the water-clock in the workroom runs slow b-

“You are muttering, Sam.”

“I…” The young black brother blinked, shoulders coming up around his ears before he turned his head to the only other person in the room. “Apologies, Maester. I did not mean to disturb you wi-”

“I made no such claims, Sam.” Maester Aemon didn’t bother turning his own neck from where he sat. “I merely meant to tell you what you were doing.”

“...ah.”

“And to ask a question, of course.”

“A…” Sam wet his lips. “A question, Maester?”

“Yes.” The old man nodded slowly. “What of the workroom?”

“The clock. In your workroom. I’ve been reckoning my durations against it and I’m sure the cold has had some effect on it…” Sam frowned, something else coming to mind. “And I’m sure every figure I’ve set down for the passing month is at least a bit off. I… I should have thought of that at the start.”

Truly, he should have, but the joy of magic at his hands was a thrilling one.

Even as the other black brothers found new reason to keep their distance, Sam could not find it in him to care not a whit.

“Wrong in which direction, Sam?”

“Long, I’d say.” The young man of the Night’s Watch stared at the eldest, doing his best to keep his voice as strong as the aging maester’s seemed to be with every passing day. “Effects will have run shorter than I’ve written, not longer. Better that way, if it must be at all. A cautious figure is always one to trust and— sorry, you did not ask that.”

"True enough.” The maester pulled in a breath longer than the last, dry and shaky enough for Sam to recognize it as a laugh. “But it is very much what I meant.” Maester Aemon leaned forward slightly, chai already close to the heat of the brazier. “Now take your time and speak your mind, young Sam."

Sam nodded, the motion slowing to nothing as he remembered he shared the room with a blind man. Fool… “The fourth one… m-my spells, if you will.”

“I will.”

A laugh escaped the Tarly despite himself, but he shouldered on still. “I’ve yet to come up with a proper name. Maester’s Eye seems a good one. It… It doesn’t do anything, not like the others at least. No light to it, nothing a man would notice across a yard. I merely look at a book or a scroll and it… it opens to me.”

“And what does that mean? What is it that opens?”

“Everything, Maester Aemon.” Sam shook his head, a half-smile on his face. “I… that is… I’m sorry, not everything, the three scrolls of Valyrian make in the second chest, those Maester Harmune catalogued as mere religious texts. They are not so, not simply so at least. A list, is what it is. An inventory of properties and a hand in the margin that isn’t the scribe’s.”

Sam’s quill stopped, ink already long-dry as he set it down properly across the rest to avoid a stain. He breathed out slow. “I’ve gone on.”

“You have.”

“I’m sorry, I only—”

“Do not be sorry, Sam.” The old man sighed slow. “I have known one and a hundred years and always seek to know more. These conversations are a pleasure.”

The wind found the shutter, pushing at it in the low way that threatened at a rattle but never quite found its way there. Under it, far down in the yard, somebody was calling for a match in the training yard.
Thoughts of training brought up faint memories of a year past, a pale-skinned boy with a direwolf the size of a destrier. Sam knew not where Jon Snow was, past rumors that the other boy had gone north. There was no way to reckon it; a year had come and gone and Sam had stopped asking Lord Commander Stark after the man had simply said ‘when I know, you’ll know, lad’.

Sam took another breath as he remembered the kindness. Four months…

Four months of friendship seemed a small thing to still be carrying about, but it held a weight that Sam simply couldn’t let go of.

He'd been a boy of six with a sword in his hand, his father standing above him in the yard at Horn Hill. A boy of ten opposite him held a padded stick and Sam had only lasted five heartbeats before his face found the dirt.

He failed to let that go either.

“Sam.”

“Yes, yes, Maester…” His fingers found the quill again. “There’s a few more that I have noted down over the past months.”

“Go ahead, my boy.”