He gave me another humble shrug. “We begged some space and supplies of the Refectory staff and promised to share the recipe. A very pleasant woman in a brown apron was willing to oblige, since we promised to clean up after ourselves.” He smiled. “She got the first taste.”
The provincial donuts were a hit, and I was thrilled to see no fewer than three of Varrah’s classmates gathered around her, asking for details on variations.
Martyn and I retreated to watch Varrah and Erikka enjoying their moment. “You’re a very sweet old man,” I said as I wound my arm through his.
“I amtwo years youngerthan your father, I’ll remind you,” he said with a laugh.
“A fact you never allow him to—”
A cry from the crowd spun me around, cutting me off in mid-sentence, but it wasn’t coming from the kokos booth.
“Something’s wrong with her!” an unfamiliar voice shouted, and I followed the sound to see a student I recognized from the Proficiency cohort trembling in a near panic next to a woman who could only be his mother. She stood, eerily still on one of the winding cobblestone pathways, staring into the distance as if she couldn’t see her son, though his face hovered mere inches from hers. “She won’t move! She will not speak!”
And as the setting sun shone on the poor woman’s face— literally as I watched—her skin began to sparkle with an odd metallic tint. Not gold or copper, but…
I pressed my way through the crowd until I could almost see her clearly, just as two soldiers posted at the Alchemary arrived and blocked my view. Just as the Bluehelm, and Desmond, and a couple of his researcher colleagues—including the woman with the severe blond bun—appeared at the front of the crowd and began to whisper frantically to one another. Cressa stood at the Bluehelm’s elbow, scribbling furiously on her wax tablet. When some movement parted the crowd, I could see the woman again.…
Bronze. That was the hue of the poor woman’s flesh. Not the naturally occurring bronze that some skin has, but a true bronze. A metallic tone.
I could not hear what the researchers were saying, but one word buzzed up from the crowd at large, as the soldiers lifted the woman bodily and carried her toward the infirmary.
Aurum.
My Dearest Amber,
I lack adequate words to express my disappointment at being unable to see you this weekend, and I can only hope that Martyn’s attendance in my place is a comfort. I suspect, given your fondness for each other, that you might even find his company preferable to mine. I hope with this correspondence to convey all of the heartfelt platitudes I am not there to deliver in person. And in that endeavor…
I keep thinking about how lovely your hair looked in plaits when I visited, not only for its beauty but also because I’m certain your mother would be delighted by your traditional Lysëan braids. I imagine your bedchamber is neatly kept, to your credit, and I hope that you remember to eat at least twice a day. I trust that you’re enjoying the company of your friends, unless they are foolish enough to decline, in which case the loss is entirely theirs, and I trust that they will eventually come to that conclusion on their own.
The other day, as I was leaving work for the evening, a crowd had gathered on the edge of the construction site to admire our work. There was among their number a small child sitting in the dirt, drawing with his finger in the sand, and I was reminded of the child you were many years ago. You spent one spring dedicated to tracing various shapes in the dirt of your mother’s garden, quite heedless, on occasion, of seeds she’d sown. I remember thinking, as I watched you, that several of your forms resembled notation you’d seen in my masonry sketches. I had hoped, for a while, that you might follow in my footsteps. But I will admit to a different kind of nostalgic pleasure in knowing that a bit of your mother lives on in you instead. She would be just as proud of you as I am.
Love always,
Your father, Cornelius Fallbrook
Alchemary Island was quiet in the absence of visitors. The quadrangle felt virtually barren, without all the booths and stalls. Without the vendors and alchemy-themed diversions.
It had taken two days to clean up from the festival, but Mastery students had been exempt from the effort; we were expected to turn our attention to the Black Trial, now that it loomed just days away. The tension—the fear—was palpable.
Martyn hadn’t said a word about it before he’d left, but he had squeezed my hands, then my shoulders, and he’d whispered into my ear a plea to make wise choices. Not to put myself into unnecessary danger.
But danger, I was coming to understand, was usually necessary.
The incident at the festival hadn’t helped. The woman who’d become an aurum was being well cared for in the infirmary, in isolation, according to reports from Alchemary administration. But the fact that someone had come down with the mysterious malady onourcampus, during the family festival, less than a week from the first trial…
The research staff in particular seemed bowed beneath the expectation. The pressure from the public—from the Crown—to identify the illness and develop a cure was intense. And since no one on our campus had any real faith in the Alkahest Institute—our rival alchemy academy—that duty seemed to rest primarily on the Alchemary’s collective shoulders.
For my Mastery cohort, the appearance of an aurum on campus drove home the importance of the career we’d chosen, as well as the slim chances any one of us had of being selected to practice alchemy at the highest level.
The Black Trial represented the first step in winnowing down our cohort, and we each had a different way of dealing with that pressure.
Yoslyn Savva had taken to burning astringent-smelling incense in her room. Clouds of it occasionally wafted up the stairs to my landing, and oddly, I found that if I stepped out and inhaled them…I often felt better, at least for a bit.
Keryth and Lennox practically moved into the student lab, working through most of the night, much to Wilder’s irritation, and even taking naps on the floor, bundled in blankets brought from their rooms.
Petyr, Adria, and Gavin studied in the student library, their heads ducked low over books of various poisons and remedies. Pryce and Cressa ignored everyone and everything, including the general sense of tension, as far as I could tell. And Wilder…
I caught him looking at me several times during class, and twice his arm appeared to intentionally brush mine at our shared table. But he seemed loathe to break my concentration by addressing our interpersonal concerns, so close to the first trial.
