“Yes, but so far, that isn’t unlocking an understanding of higher-level concepts.”
“That’s because you lack practical application. Which is where the lab comes in. And with any luck, your learning curve in here will be as steep as it has been with your textbooks. To that end…” He turned and marched quickly into his office, leaving me unsure whether or not I should follow.
Before I could decide, he was back with a stack of parchment, which he set on the nearest work surface. “These are my notes from my own Fundamentals year. I went through them and pulled out all of the lab experiments. They’re all for basic, grade-one elixirs. You might notice that they’re organized by date, which should help you start with the simplest. You might further notice that they get easier to understand midway through the year, when I started Bollinger’s Records and Note-Taking practicum—or whatever it was called—and learned how to take proper notes.”
I lifted the first sheet, and my eyes widened. Despite his claim, even from the beginning, he’d been a concise and thorough note taker.
“I’ve read through all the records from my own Fundamentals year, and they are nowhere near this thorough,” I mumbled, still scanning the text. Noting, as I flipped through the sheets, when his alchemical notation began to develop its own signature style. “I must be missing some pages.”
“I highly doubt that. You were quite an organized student, and I’ve never known you to misplace a thing. You simply didn’t take copious notes in the early classes because you had no need to. Youdidtake notes in the lab—last year, at least—but those are likely too advanced for you to understand.”
“Quite so,” I whispered, still turning over pages. “How many of these did I do each week, as a Fundamentals-year student?”
“Two, on average. They take between one and three hours each, so if you—”
“And how many could I reasonably run at a time, here in the lab?”
“Simultaneously?” Desmond blinked at me. For a moment, he looked surprised. Then a smile tugged at his lips, one brow arching high. “It would not be responsible of me to encourage—”
“How many?”I snapped.
His smile widened. He extended one arm to indicate my section of the lab—one-third of the total space. “One per work surface, I would surmise.”
There were four tables in my section of the lab.
Numbers began to scroll through my mind. Tables. Parchment pages. Days. Nights. Weeks until the Black Trial.
There was plenty of equipment. There were plenty of supplies.
“I suspect that will be more than sufficient,” I said. “I’ll run the four simplest experiments tonight, and I’ll set up for four more before I leave, to save time tomorrow.”
I took the top four sheets of parchment and set one on the front right corner of each of my allotted tables, then I turned toward the supply closet, so focused on the list of equipment running through my head that I nearly missed Desmond’s satisfied—almost greedy—smile.
Nearly.
It was after ten that night by the time I finished cleaning up and taking notes. Two of the four experiments had taken a little more than three hours, because my time was divided between them and because I was not able to apply lessons learned in the first two, since they were being conducted simultaneously.
Still, my learning curve was indeed steep. Desmond’s lab was laid outperfectlylogically. Every single piece of equipment and ingredient was exactly where I would have expected to find it, which cut down on what could otherwise have been a frustrating and slow search for supplies, even after the tour he’d given me.
And he was right. Concepts I’d relearned in theory become solidified in my understanding with the experience of their practical application.
Even better, I found myself anticipating the results, though I had no memory of having run the experiments before.
By the time I had reset my tables and equipment for the next day’s work, I felt nearly intoxicated on both accomplishment—rudimentary though it was—and possibility. On comprehension and aptitude.
And my stomach had begun to growl.
A light still burned in Desmond’s office. I moved quietly to avoid disturbing his work, but also because I had an inexplicable but undeniable desire to watch him when he didn’t know he was being observed. To…understand him.
From a purely scientific perspective, of course.
I leaned around the doorway, expecting to find him huddled over a book or scratching out notes on parchment by lamplight. Instead, he was perched on his desk facing away from me. As I watched, he lifted something and tilted his head back, then heaved a full-body shudder, giving me a glimpse of a familiar vial as he lowered it, empty, from his lips.
I backed silently away from the door, the image burned into my eyelids as they fell closed.
That was one of Wilder’s vials. I recognized the label he used for all of his illicit elixirs as well as the handwriting on it, which was entirely devoid of any signature notation. The symbols were all straight lines, benign curves, and right angles—as generic as possible, so that if the vial were discovered, its maker could not be easily identified.
Desmond had criticized Wilder for making those elixirs. He had warned me away from them, even though he did not deny his brother’s skill and contribution to the field. Yet he was secretly taking one himself.
