Chapter 3 #2
Where the Dormitory was dramatic, warm, and almost oppressive with its dark stone, windowless corridors, and soaring towers, the Conservatory was cold and clinical: a study of polished planes, right angles, and sharp corners.
The only curve in the building that I could see was the spiral staircase rising from the grand, three-story atrium, and even that felt nothing like the tower staircases in the Dormitory.
These steps were wide and bright, each tread precisely level and even, unlike the stone treads of the tower staircases.
Even the torches mounted on the Conservatory walls burned with a clean, crisp white light that felt almost cold, despite the heat and illumination they gave off, and could not have been produced without a lab-created fuel and treated wicks.
But the marble…
How, exactly, did I know the marble slabs were hand-polished to their extraordinarily reflective finish? I couldn’t remember learning that, or ever having toured the Conservatory, which meant I’d probably heard about the construction of this building from my father, when I was a child.
He and my mother had shared disparate opinions about the Alchemary. Her memories of the campus were nostalgic, until the bittersweet ending of her Mastery year.
My father disapproved of alchemy entirely, but he never tired of discussing the master craftsmanship that had gone into the construction of the most prominent university in the kingdom of Aethermere—one of the most famous campuses in the world.
He wasn’t just a stonemason. He was the stonemason—head of the mason’s guild and a high-ranking member of the Toolkeepers.
As a teenager, I’d worried that my familial affiliation—the Toolkeepers’ disdain for alchemy in general and the Alchemary specifically—would keep me from being admitted. Or that he would forbid me from attending if I did get in.
And yet here I was, a star student, known to the Bluehelm by name.
Anxiety crawled along my spine as I stared at the interior of a building I found both inspiring and intimidating.
The conditions the Bluehelm had set, though they were everything I’d wanted five minutes before, suddenly felt cruel and impossible.
She was to receive reports every fortnight from each of my professors on my progress, to make sure my scores didn’t drop below the sixty percent mark.
If they did, I would not be allowed to undertake the first trial.
The Black Trial.
“Why do you look so glum?” Wilder threw his arm around my shoulders and squeezed, half guiding me past tall pillars and benches built into the wall of the atrium.
Past tile-lined recesses in the walls and rectangular leaded glass windows that allowed daylight to paint the white floor with warmer streaks of color.
Something pointed pressed against my hip from beneath his cloak.
“You got exactly what you wanted!” he declared as we stepped over the Alchemary creed—Mind, Matter, Spirit—carved in the shape of a triangle in the center of the floor.
Yes, I had, and that didn’t feel like a novel state of affairs for me. Yet I was no longer certain I could actually capitalize on the opportunity I’d demanded.
“What is poking at me?” I asked, seizing his cloak to pull it back.
Wilder’s brows rose, and before he could voice the ribald jest clearly burning the end of his tongue, I thumped the dark green leather sheath hanging at his hip.
“Since when do you carry a blade?”
“Since I’ve developed need of one,” he said. At my questioning look, he sighed. “Brigands sometimes lurk in shadows, across the bridge. You should not go into Saltstrand alone.”
“Duly noted.”
“We should celebrate,” Wilder declared as he shoved open the heavy mahogany double doors in the center of the front wall of the atrium.
“A drink. You probably don’t even remember where to find one around here, so it’ll be your first time.
Again.” His eyes sparkled as he grinned down at me, holding the left-hand door open.
“Everyone should be lucky enough to have their first time twice!”
The innuendo sent a private little thrill to glow with promising warmth in my belly. Fresh questions bloomed like roses on the branching stems of my amnesia, and more than one of those questions felt like it was rooted squarely in the sapphire depths of his gaze.
“Or—and I know this is going to sound absurd,” I warned, “we could go to class.”
He laughed, despite my willingness to stomp all over his bacchanalian plans, and as he backed down the front steps ahead of me, he was at eye level with me for a moment.
“Our next class doesn’t start until after lunch, and our first class”—he pivoted to peer at the clock tower at the center of a building to the north— “is about to end.”
“Oh.” I followed his gaze to the clock face. I’d officially missed a class I couldn’t even name. As had Wilder, on my behalf.
“If you really can’t remember this place—”
“I cannot.”
“—then why don’t I give you a tour?”
I smiled with a glance around the quadrangle, my gaze skimming the central fountain, several elaborately carved statues, and a handful of tall shrubs trimmed into the shapes of various animals.
“I suspect I can see most of it from this very spot. That’s the Dormitory.
” I pointed directly across the length of the quadrangle to the dark stone building on the eastern cliff.
“And given that that”—I spun to look up at the white marble building we’d just emerged from—“is the Conservatory, then that must be the Seminary,” I said with a glance at the building forming the northern side of the quadrangle on our left, which boasted the clock tower. “Where our classes are.”
“Good guess,” he allowed with a pout.
“Deductive reasoning,” I corrected. “It’s too big to be the Refectory, which means we must take our meals over there.” I shifted my gaze to the building forming the right side of the quadrangle, to the south. It was a single story, easily the smallest and most humble of the main buildings.
“Yes, but what about—”
“The bridge? I can see it from here.” From where we stood, the bridge connecting Alchemary Island to the mainland north of us was, in fact, easily visible, though it would have been blocked by the Seminary from nearly any other angle.
The bridge was a massive, graceful stretch of gray stone, supported by pillars built into the edge of both land masses.
It spanned the strait with a single large arch that allowed boats to pass beneath.
It would have been a landmark all on its own, were it not overshadowed by the various striking buildings of the Alchemary.
The famous Alchemary gate stood at the end of the bridge, defining the campus’s northern border in a functionally artistic display of cast-iron bars, leaves, vines, and flowers.
The bridge was also the only way onto the island, short of taking a boat all the way around the coast to the dock on the southwest side, where uncultivated woodland gradually sloped toward a rocky shoreline.
I couldn’t remember ever seeing that shore, but I’d certainly heard about it as a child.
“The woods, then,” Wilder said, following my gaze to the land that stretched behind both the Refectory and the Conservatory. “Or the menagerie.”
“Soon,” I assured him. “But for now, I have to start…studying. I suppose.”
“Studying what? We missed class.”
“Studying my life. I don’t know what research I was working on or how I’d planned to prepare for the trials. I don’t even know who I was as a person yesterday. But there’s likely evidence of all of that in my room.”
“You’re overlooking one other very valuable source of that information. And I happen to know that he is very generous.” Wilder threw his arms out, as if he were inviting me for an embrace, and the impulse to accept it was surprisingly strong.
I couldn’t remember the nature of our relationship, but I felt very alone in my current reality, standing outside of my own memory and experience. And he seemed willing to step into that distressingly foggy place with me. Or, more accurately, to help me clear the fog.
After all, what were the chances that the man who’d woken up in my bed knew nothing useful about my life?
“You’re offering to fill me in on what I’ve forgotten?”
“I’m offering to do anything you need.”
I blinked up at him, choosing to ignore the subtext. “That’s very kind of you,” I said as a familiar feeling crawled up my back and across my shoulders. A feeling that we were no longer alone.
Just as that sensation settled in, sinking through flesh and blood into my very bones, vague movements on the edge of my vision solidified into black-cloaked human forms.
Students. Classmates. The first class of the day was over, and I could feel heads turning our way.
I aimed an acknowledging glance at several unfamiliar faces, but I found my focus straying back to Wilder. To what suddenly felt like safe territory, despite the fact that I had no more memory of him over the past two years than I had of any of these other students.
They all seemed to recognize me, but there were no friendly looks or cordial nods. No one was smiling.
The front door of the Seminary suddenly flew open, and several more students emerged, their dark cloaks flaring back in the cool autumn breeze.
A young man with brown skin and a young woman with long, voluminous blond hair bounced down the front steps onto a stone pathway that meandered fancifully around the lawn with no clear aim, only to wind up beneath my very feet.
They looked up, deep in conversation, and words seemed to trail away from the girl as she tossed a thick, loose braid over one shoulder and her eyes found me.
She elbowed the young man and nodded in my direction. Her sudden broad smile had the affectation of a stage masque as she marched toward Wilder and me, eschewing the circuitous path, determination practically thundering from her steps.
My veins sparked with a sharp dread I could not contextualize.
She and I were not friends. Though my memory had hidden the details, my body’s reaction to her was quite clear.
“Yes.” The word flew from my mouth as I grabbed Wilder’s arm, to his obvious surprise. “Yes, please, come help me.”
I shot the blond girl and her male friend a smile—despite my panic, I didn’t want to appear rude—then I spun on my heel and half dragged Wilder across the lawn, past a couple dozen nearly identically dressed students toward the Dormitory perched on the edge of a cliff, at the other end of the quadrangle.