“Abysmally dull,” she said. “There’s nothing to do in my hometown, and my family is entirely unimpressed that I’ve made it to the Mastery year. My mother is making me pretend I’m apprenticing with a cousin in the country, learning to compound aromatics.” She rolled those green eyes. “You’re all so lucky.” Her gaze flickered toward me again, then back to Wilder. “I don’t suppose you have anything I could drop into their tea, do you? Something to make them more accepting of alchemy as my chosen path? At least while I’m stuck there with them?”
Wilder gave her a sympathetic smile. “That seems a bit extreme, but if you still feel that way going into the winter holiday, come see me.” He paused with a glance my way. “If it makes you feel any better, not everyone in Aethermere approves of Alchemy either.”
She turned to me, puzzled. “Wasn’t your mother an alchemist?”
“Amber’s mom was a third-year washout,” a new voice said, and as my temper bloomed hot behind my sternum, I looked past Wilder to see a familiar girl settling into a chair across the aisle, a shiny green ribbon braided through her blond hair. She was the classmate who’d called out to me that morning from across the quadrangle. The one I’d fled, on instinct, though I couldn’t even recall her name. “But her father,” the girl continued, “is a Toolkeeper.”
“Keryth,” Wilder said with a scowl. “May I remind you thatyou’reresponsible for what spews from the geyser on the front of your face? Make better choices.”
She waved off his rebuke as her gaze slid to me, her smile just a tad too wide. “Amber knows I mean no harm.Mostof us are going to wash out this year.”
Yoslyn squirmed in her seat, and Wilder looked distinctly uncomfortable, but Keryth was right. According to my mother, no more than three students from one cohort had ever been invited to join the Alchemary as staff members or instructors, and some years, none were invited at all. Because some years, no one passed all four trials.
Those who washed out in the third year could take the Alchemary’s accreditation exam and practice off-campus, under the Alchemary seal, as my mother had. But clearly, none of my classmates wanted to truly contemplate failing one of the trials. Or being passed over by the institute that had trained us.
Being relegated to the second tier of alchemy: provincial practice.
“My point,” Keryth continued, “is that Yoslyn’s parents might disapprove of alchemy specifically, given her native land’s affinity for aromatics.” An incense-based rival art of alchemy. “But Toolkeepers rejectallof the arcane studies.” She turned to Yoslyn. “So if anyone understands how it feels for your family to utterly reject your life choices, it’s Amber Fallbrook.”
“And before the midterm exam, I expect you to have memorized all of the advanced formulas and to have come up with—and had officially approved!—a Mastery-year field of study in general as well as a specific project thesis. This can be an improvement upon an existing theory, an attempt to disprove an existing theory, or you may—the more ambitious of you—come up with an entirely new premise. Any questions?”
Half of the class scribbled anxiously on loose sheets of parchment; the sound of quills scratching felt both familiar and soothing. As did the knowledge that while they were all taking notes about how tobegintheir independent research projects, I’d been working on mine for at least a year.
As it turned out, the copious notes on my independent study werenotstandard among our cohort. I truly had been an extraordinary student, it seemed.
That knowledge would have brought me more comfort if I could remember any of the work I’d done. Any of the progress I’d made. If I could make even the slightest sense out of my own notes.
While she waited for replies, Professor Edmiston slid one hand into her tangle of dense silver curls and fluffed them at the root, a gesture that seemed more habitual than truly functional.
Her hair didnotlack volume.
I stared at the sheets of parchment on the table in front of me. I’d taken extensive notes for two straight hours, covering a shameful amount of expensive parchment and draining half of the inkwell set into the front edge of the table, equidistant from my side of the shared surface and Wilder’s.
I glanced at his notes and was unsurprised to see that he’d barely covered the front side of one sheet. But his work was not a proper bar against which to measure my own. As a child, he’d done the bare minimum expected of him in nearly every endeavor. He’d been forgiven for shoddily performed chores because of his charming smile, and he was generally gifted enough, academically, to perform at an average level with no effort whatsoever. A prospect that used to infuriate me on two levels.
First was the fact that since he never really studied, he had far more leisure time than I, and far more than was good for him, truth be told. And second, I found it scandalous how accomplished he could have been at just about anything, if he were to ever actually put forth a respectable effort.
I found it equally scandalous how little he cared about that.
Wilder had glided through life as an ardent underachiever, and I couldn’t imagine that had changed in the past two years. Though he’d clearly performed well enough to stay at the Alchemary.
While Professor Edmiston answered questions and restated the hours when she would be available to students in her office, I glanced at the table to my left, where Keryth sat with that same young man from the quadrangle. The one with light brown skin and dark, slicked-back hair. I hadn’t caught his name during class, and I couldn’t see his work from where I sat. But Keryth had taken thorough notes, and the volume of her writing—though it was not as great as mine—set me at ease a bit, as it cast my own work as not entirely unreasonable.
As, perhaps, reasonable for a star student who had not lost her memory.
Ididknow the name of the quiet young woman seated in front of me and next to Yoslyn. Cressa, the Bluehelm’s student aide, still wore the blue frock and rust-colored belt I’d noticed when she’d stepped into Dr. Winhoof’s office that morning. She’d hardly glanced at me before taking her seat at the beginning of class, but Wilder had whispered to me that her surname was Baxter, and that she and I were acquaintances at best.
The impression I’d gotten, more from his tone than his words, was that neither she nor I was exactly considered sociable.
Cressa Baxter had taken consistent but sparse notes, and she clearly had no trouble keeping up with Professor Edmiston’s lecture.
I, on the other hand…
I sighed softly as I stared at my parchment again. I’d scribbled madly, writing down nearly everything the instructor had said so I could study it later. So I could compare it to the notes on my desk and hopefully decode the advanced concepts, based on the more basic ones I’d taken notes on two years before.
Or maybe I could talk Wilder into explaining some of it to me.
I’d understood generally what Professor Edmiston was talking about. I knew all of the words, and I knew how to spell them. But my rudimentary understanding was insufficient to allow me comprehension of advanced-level theories.
