I’d likely felt the same way, two years before. But today, I felt…unqualified. How was I supposed to assist a professor with a class I couldn’t remember taking?
“You’ll be great,” Wilder whispered as a girl in a black cloak brushed past us and through the open doorway.
“How do you know?”
He grinned down at me. “You’re always great. It’s rather annoying, actually.”
I laughed.
“And anyway, the bar’s not high,” he added. “When we took Intro, our TA pretty much just graded papers.”
“Ms. Fallbrook!”
I spun, startled, to find a middle-aged man heading down the hallway toward us from the western staircase, his long black cape billowing behind him. The professor—what else could he be?—had brown skin, prominent freckles, and tight, dark curls, shot through with streaks of gray.
“Professor Robards,” I said, taking a chance when he stopped beside me, in the threshold of the classroom. “How nice to see you.”
He gave me a pleasant wink. “Professors have no control over which teaching assistants are assigned to them, you know. But I made a point of mentioning your name every time I had occasion to speak to the Bluehelm’s assistant.”
“How very kind of you,” I murmured.
His focus shifted to Wilder, and he stood a bit straighter. “Mr. Gregory. I hope you are well.Andthat you’re not intending to follow Ms. Fallbrook into my class.”
“Indeed, I am not.” Wilder grimaced. “Once was plenty for me.”
“I assure you the feeling is quite mutual,” Professor Robards grumbled.
I stifled a smile, and Wilder bumped me with his arm.
The professor pulled his overstuffed satchel higher on his shoulder and gestured for me to precede him into the classroom. “After you, then?”
With one last glance at Wilder, who waggled his eyebrows encouragingly at me, I stepped into a large, bright lecture hall dominated by tall, narrow windows and dark, heavy wooden furnishings.
Silence descended, and three dozen wide-eyed faces stared down at me from several rows of tiered bench seating.
“That one’s yours,” Professor Robards whispered, gesturing at a small wooden desk to one side of the room, angled to face both the students and the substantial podium at the center of the front portion of the classroom. The front of the podium was carved with the Alchemary creed—Mind, Matter, Spirit—in the familiar triangle shape. Behind the podium, a long framed slate board was mounted on the wall, dusty from recently erased chalk markings.
I sat at the small desk and opened my satchel to retrieve a notebook and a quill, while he took up his position behind the podium.
“Good afternoon!” Professor Robards began, and his voice, with its deep timbre and cadence of gravitas, felt instantly, comfortingly familiar, even if I could not actually remember having heard it. “My name is Lionel Robards, and this semester I will be teaching you Introductory Theories of Alchemy in a class called ‘Intro’ by most of my students. To my left—your right—you will find our class teaching assistant, Amber Fallbrook, who is currently the top-ranked member of the Mastery-year cohort.”
Top…?
My face warmed. I’d been told I wasatop student, but no one had actually mentioned my ranking.
“—should feel honored to have been admitted into the Alchemary,” Professor Robards continued, and I realized I’d missed part of what he was saying. “But at the same time, you should feel the weight of expectation. Of responsibility.
“There are thirty-six of you now, at the beginning of your Fundamentals year. I want you to look around at these faces, because at the start of your Proficiency year, there will be only twenty-four. And at the beginning of your Mastery year? You.” He pointed to a boy in the second row, who wore a rust-colored scarf beneath his cloak.
“Twelve, Professor Robards.”
The professor nodded. “That is correct. One-third of the faces you see in this room will make it to year three. And only a handful of those will pass the trials and be invited to join the Alchemary.” He glanced around the room. “Only the most gifted and hardworking among you will become my colleagues.”
Benches groaned as students shifted in their seats.
I shared their discomfort.
“So! Let’s begin with the basics. With the most important question: What is alchemy? Other than the most powerful and difficult to learn of the arcane studies?” Professor Robards stepped out from behind the podium, his eyes alight with passion for the topic. “There is a force in the universe that propels it toward change. Constant, unceasing change, of every sort, and in every direction. We do not know what that force is. Though we can see it at work—though we can collect and analyze data based on what we observe—we do not understand that force itself. Part of what the Alchemary seeks to do is gain that understanding. What we know so far is that nature’s tendency in the face of change is towardentropy. Toward chaos and destruction.”
