Chapter 8
“Developing your own signature notation will take a lot of practice. But in the end, your effort will be worth it.”
Professor Robards roamed the lecture hall as he spoke, slowly making his way up the tiered seating and down each row, glancing in turn at each student’s slate as they painstakingly formed the same symbols over and over again using lengths of chalk carefully sharpened into points.
“It is important for an alchemist who plans to make a career of research to develop their own signature notation so that their discoveries—”
And their failures, I added silently, from my little desk at the front of the lecture hall.
“—can be accurately attributed to them when they’re studied by future generations of students and scholars.”
I tried to picture myself, two years younger, sitting on a bench halfway up the span of risers, laboring over my entry and exit strokes. Struggling to even out my interlinear spaces. Debating the balance between my ascending and descending flourishes.
Along with all of that, I would have glanced left, right, and over the shoulder of the student in front of me, desperate for some assurance that my emerging style looked sufficiently different from theirs. That my work would stand out.
I couldn’t remember doing any of that, yet I must have spent hours—weeks—during my Fundamentals year developing and practicing my own style on a slate, to keep from wasting ink and parchment as I developed the flare and grace of every stroke.
As I’d tailored the curves, slashes, crosses, and vertical and horizontal lines.
I’d drawn the shapes over and over. I’d written and erased, and written again, until my hand formed the symbols spontaneously as soon as I’d thought them.
And though I could remember none of that process, its result remained.
Lead, I thought as I stared down at the parchment on my desktop.
My right hand drew a tall, narrow cross with a hook shaped like a lowercase letter h extending from the bottom half.
And though that felt complete, my quill kept moving, extending the curve below the end of the cross and curving it under, then back up and out, to form a distinctive curlicue.
I drew the symbol for copper—a simple stick figure, with only a round head and arms, though my quill added flourishes on the ends of the horizontal cross line.
And salt, a perfect circle with a horizontal line through it, only my quill thickened the sides of the circle and the ends of the horizontal line, so that the symbol looked thinner on the top and bottom than on the sides.
So many alchemy symbols came to my mind without effort. My hands drew them in my own signature style without hesitation. And yet…
My focus strayed to the leather-bound journal open on my lap, hidden from view.
I knew, from some instinctive corner of my absent memory, that I’d written them. But I could not read a word of my own writing.
Movement from the risers caught my eye, and I glanced up to see that a student in the third row had raised her hand. Professor Robards was across the room, advising a boy in the first row.
The student met my gaze, and my pulse spiked. I couldn’t ignore her now that she knew she’d been seen.
Varrah. I remembered her because I’d read her name aloud from the roll book, three class periods in a row. And because while her right eye was deep brown, her left was a pale green.
Heterochromia. My brain supplied the term as I slid my journal back into my satchel and rose from my seat. I climbed the first two risers to stop in the aisle beside Varrah’s table, where she sat alone, though most students sat in pairs.
“Hello.” I sank onto the bench next to her. “How can I help?”
She hesitated, blinking at me for one oddly weighty moment.
“I don’t think I’m doing this right,” she finally said, and the distinctive sound of her voice—the way it seemed to echo in two slightly different pitches—triggered my sudden understanding.
When I called the roll, Varrah always raised her hand rather than answering aloud. I’d assumed she was just shy, but that clearly wasn’t the whole story.
“Oh!” I gave her a friendly smile. “You’re from Eria? The unified provinces?”
She nodded warily, and I realized why she was sitting alone. “And they’re all being absolute cods about it?” I said with a subtle glance around the room.
“It’s okay. I’m accustomed to it,” she whispered, and her voice seemed to tickle my eardrums. The feeling wasn’t unpleasant, but it was strange.
I tried not to stare at the thin vertical scar directly over the center of her throat. It was faint enough to be undetectable from more than a couple of feet away, but now that I’d noticed it, my gaze felt drawn to it.
“Well, give them a chance,” I whispered. “Sometimes it takes people a while to get used to things they’re unfamiliar with. I’m not saying it should. I’m just saying…don’t count them all out yet. It’s still the first week.”
“Were you lonely, in the beginning?” Varrah asked, and an ache blossomed deep in my chest.
I could not remember my first weeks at the Alchemary, but with two of my childhood friends also attending, I likely had not been lonely.
“My mother was,” I confided in a soft voice.
“She was the only member of her cohort from the kingdom of Lysea, and she told me that she felt very out of place at first. But she came to love her time at the Alchemary. And to make many good friends.” Though my father liked to ignore the truth of that in order to dwell on her departure.
“May I be so fortunate,” Varrah said. Then she gestured to her slate. “I’m picturing a vertical symmetry between the symbols for tin and lead.”
Listening to her took a lot of concentration. Not because I couldn’t understand her, but because there was a very real risk of getting caught up in—trapped by—the ethereal quality of her voice itself. It was eerie and hypnotic.
“But…is this too thick, for the scythe?”
“Scythe?” I studied her slate. “That’s actually supposed to be reminiscent of a crescent moon,” I said.
“As in the symbol for silver. It’s built into the symbols for quicksilver, tin, and lead.
” Reading through the most basic of my own notes had been sufficient for me to relearn the alchemical table and the origin of the symbols.
“But yes.” I tilted my head, squinting at her writing.
“It does look rather like a scythe. And I think your instinct with the style is strong. This would be much more distinctive if you could master a truly thin ‘blade.’ Especially as you move toward the points on each end. Let it get a little thicker in the center, maybe? To give the symbol some weight? That will require a bit more pressure in the middle of the stroke, and a slant of your wrist at the start and finish.”
Her eyes lit up, and she swiped a cloth over her slate, then bent over it again with her chalk, which had been carefully sharpened to an effective, slanted point. “Like this?”
“Yes!” I smiled at her. “I think that’s the beginning of a beautiful signature tin symbol! Now you just have to draw it about five thousand more times, until your hand forms the movement all on its own, quickly and smoothly. Without any pause for thought.”
She considered that for a second, and I could see how intimidating the idea must have been. But then she hunched over her slate again and got to work.
“Do you mind if I ask what province you’re from?” I said, watching as she painstakingly drew a long row of nearly identical tin symbols.
“I’m from Reachan,” she said. “The southernmost province of Unified Eria.”
“I know it!” I couldn’t resist another smile. “I mean, I’ve never been there.” That I could recall. “But when I was a kid, my father did some work on the Sakros of Echoes. He consulted on the design of the Sakros of Whispers as well, in Parlaan. He’s a stonemason.”
Varrah’s eyes widened. “What a strange, strange association gifted to us from the cosmic chaos! It’s entirely possible that I met your father on the street when I was a child!”
“You might have!” I agreed. “He loved Reachan. He came home raving about this little fried donut he used to buy from street vendors. It was evidently tossed in fine-ground sugar seasoned with a local spice, a bit like anise. My stepfather has been trying to replicate that morsel, based on nothing but my father’s aging recollection of it, for the better part of a decade. ”
At least, he had been, last I could remember.
Varrah’s gaze went distant. Nostalgic. “Kokos,” she whispered, the two tones of her voice diverging distinctly on the long O sounds. “I love them filled with pear jam, right out of the fryer.”
“My father insists they’re delicious. He loved everything about your land.”
He’d carried on about the architecture of Unified Eria, where all of the public buildings were designed to amplify or obscure a specific tone or to maximize a specific facet of auditory perception.
And in addition to the food, he’d been fascinated by an inherited tendency of the local population to be born with some form of heterochromia. About half of the populace, he’d said.
Varrah’s voice, though. That wasn’t inherited.
“Do they practice much alchemy in Reachan? Or in any of the provinces?”
She made an eerily multitonal amused sound, deep in her throat, then suddenly looked embarrassed by the impulse.
She shook her head. “The only arcane study permitted in most of the Unified Eria is auriculia. We call it the Craft.” She frowned, considering.
“That’s the only really unifying cultural aspect of the provinces. ”
My father had said something similar—that their Craft was the only thing truly bonding the Eria provinces, despite the conflict between provincial dynasts.
And that Craft didn’t solely involve their altered voices. The ears were modified, too, though there was no visible scarring for that procedure.
I knew better than to ask Varrah about her voice. About what the procedure had done to—or for?—her ears. Natives of the unified provinces were not permitted to divulge such information to outsiders. And even if she were allowed to speak of it, asking would be rude.
“So, how did you wind up at the Alchemary?” I asked instead.
“My cousin married a vintner from Aethermere,” she said as she turned back to her scythes.
“I spent my eighteenth year with her, to learn winemaking in the local tradition, and when the Alchemary recruiter came to town, testing alchemical potential, I…took the assessment.” She glanced up from her slate.
“I suppose I scored well, because he recorded my information and said that if I were interested, I could pursue an education at one of the greatest schools in all the world.” Her gaze intensified.
“Even in Unified Eria, we know of this place.”
Our academy had long ago attained global renown, but according to my father, in many places, that fame was more of an infamy. Including in the unified provinces.
“And your parents allowed you to attend?”
“No.” Varrah looked up at me, her gaze…haunted. “They forbade it, and when I enrolled without their blessing…I was disowned. I am no longer permitted within the borders of Reachan.”
“Oh, Varrah,” I whispered, fighting to breathe past a sudden sharp ache in my chest. “I’m so very sorry!”
She only shrugged. “My cousin and her husband have agreed to take me in during the winter break. She will try to broker a reconciliation with my mother, who might then work slowly on my father.”
I found myself at an utter loss for words.
“Very well. That’s enough practice for today,” Professor Robards said, and I looked up to find him standing behind his podium.
“Your signature notation essays are due on Monday, and if you find extra time over the weekend, aim for five hundred repetitions per day, per symbol, on your slates. Signature notation does not develop without extensive practice!”
The class groaned, and I stood back as they gathered their things and tromped down the risers, headed for the door.
“She seems to have taken to you,” Professor Robards said, glancing at Varrah’s empty seat once the classroom had emptied. “Well done.”
I held my tongue for a moment while I gathered my things, then I faced him as I settled the strap of my satchel over my shoulder. “If I may ask…why do you sound surprised by that?”
“I mean no offense,” he assured me. “It’s only that I requested you as my teaching assistant because I knew you would be the most careful and accurate grader out of your cohort. I’m pleasantly surprised to see that you’re good with the students as well.”
He was giving me a compliment, and I would not be so rude as to question it. And yet…pleasantly surprised was still surprised.