“That Amber didn’t have to struggle with anything, so she didn’t have much sympathy for those who did.”
“I was cruel?” My heart ached at the thought, and yet some angry impulse made me want to debate the premise.
Which was exactly his point.
“Not intentionally,” Desmond said. “You were…driven. You saw everything in binary terms. Right and wrong. Efficient and inefficient. Worthy or unworthy.”
“Worthy of what?”
“Of thought. Of your time. It made you an exceptional alchemist. The ideal, in many ways. And yet this Amber seems to embody an element the previous version was missing.”
“Compassion?”
He nodded. “Or consideration, at least.”
“I admit, I don’t like the thought that I was cruel. Or even inconsiderate.” Though my interactions with several of my classmates so far seemed to confirm Desmond’s claim. “But compassion isn’t helping me recover my skill. Or my memory.”
He studied me, leaning with one hip against an empty workstation, his arms crossed over the front of his thick, stained safety apron. “Which is it you want? Your skill or your memory?”
“Am I limited to one?”
“I’ve never known you to be limited by anything.” His focus narrowed intensely on me, and his gaze suddenly felt bottomless.
I sucked in a breath, shocked by the abrupt sensation of a plunge, as if the very floor had disappeared from beneath my feet.
“But even if you aren’t able to recover your memory,” he continued, “there’s no real loss in being forced to relearn alchemy from the beginning.”
Cold fear crawled up my spine. “Of course there is! There’s lost time and lost skill! Both of which could lead to the loss of my life when the Black Trial comes. But you aren’t thinking of that, are you? Because you don’t think I should do it.”
He blinked at me, calmly enough to be vastly irritating. “Iamthinking of that, because I know youwilldo it. My point is that it is highly unlikely, statistically speaking, for you to learn alchemy the same way twice, and in relearning, you will gain techniques and aptitudes you missed or dismissed the first time around. Given your new understanding of the concepts of struggle and disadvantage, it’s entirely likely that this time you won’t undervalue the slower, less direct route to a solution, by which avenue you might discover entirely new ideas and options.”
“You’re saying I should let myselfmeander, in alchemy? That I shouldget lostin scientific theory?”
Or perhaps in life? That was a romantic notion, but…
“I’m saying that maybe this time you won’t dismiss that idea entirely.”
I nodded slowly. “That seems like a valuable lesson to learn, in certain circumstances. When one has time to meander. When one’s life is not on the line.” I lifted an accusatory brow at him. “Say, if one were a staff researcher with stable employment, a huge private lab, and bright career prospects.”
Desmond somehow managed to scowl even as one corner of his mouth turned up.
“The most efficient route inmycircumstance, however, seems to be to recover my memory, because with it would come all of my skill.” I crossed both arms over my chest before adding, “Wilder agrees.”
He scowled. “A bit of an irony, considering that his skill can mostly be attributed to instinct given free rein. Pure aptitude, both untempered and undisciplined.”
“And yet he has already contributed quite a bit to the field of Panacea, whether or not the Alchemary recognizes his work.”
“Indeed,” Desmond said, and I could not contain my surprise. “And with that statement, you’ve made my point. While you wait for your memory to come back—or while you work actively toward that goal—would your time not also be well spent relearning alchemy with an eye toward paths and possibilities you likely did not take the first time?”
“That does make a certain sense,” I finally admitted. “Learning alchemy via new pathways. And yet I am at a loss for how to begin.”
“Well, if you will allow me to help you…?”
“Yes. Please.” I wanted to regain my former skill level and standing—to survive the trials—more than I wanted to be able to say I’d done it all on my own.
Though that was still true. Ihaddone it on my own, before I’d been robbed of that knowledge.
“I understand that you’ve been quite literally burning the midnight oil in your studies. That you’ve largely caught up on vocabulary and concepts. On at least Fundamentals-year theory.”
