Chapter 23 #2
I took Martyn to see my bedchamber, my classrooms, Desmond’s lab, and the Refectory.
I showed him my favorite bench by the Dormitory’s courtyard fountain and my preferred table in the southwest corner of the student library, all while we ate rabbit roasted on skewers and dried fruit sold in wax paper packets.
Finally, as the sun began to set over the ocean, behind the towering roof of the Conservatory, Martyn and the Gregorys said good night to me and to Desmond, whom we’d found in the quadrangle, then headed past the guards, through the gate, and over the bridge into Saltstrand, where they’d secured accommodations for the next two nights despite the crowd that had descended upon the small town.
“Have you any idea where my brother’s gone?” Desmond whispered as we waved to them from the Seminary’s rear lawn.
“He isn’t exactly feeling forthcoming with me right now, but I could guess.”
Wilder had likely snuck off to conduct his business as soon as Desmond had shown up to distract their parents.
“And that one?” Martyn leaned against the back of the bench and nodded subtly toward a student meandering through the quadrangle with an older couple who were clearly his parents.
“He’s an underclassman. Fundamentals year. I only know him because he’s in Professor Robards’s Intro class.”
“Where you’re a teaching assistant?” he said, and when I nodded, he went on. “I see. What about that girl? She seems to have quite a bit of attention on campus.”
I stifled a groan. “That’s Keryth Malcom. She does not care for me.”
He gave me a quiet smile. “Meaning that you are competition for her?”
“We are all competition for one another.” But surely that didn’t mean we couldn’t be friends.
“And those two?”
I followed his gaze. “Petyr Lorena and Adria…something or other. They’re in my cohort. They don’t seem to care much for me either.”
Martyn and I had broken our fast together on a bench in the Dormitory courtyard, looking out over the quadrangle, and afterward he’d seemed content to sit and ask about my classmates rather than drag me through the festival, as the Gregorys were currently engaged with both of their reluctant sons.
Annora was particularly enamored of the booth where people could fire arrows at a volunteer from the research staff, who stood against a wooden backdrop in only his trousers, his skin shining thickly with an embrocation that temporarily rendered his flesh impermeable to the projectiles.
She’d paid for four rounds so far and seemed to thrill at aiming directly at the poor man’s bare chest. He maintained a good- natured smile, his arms propped on his narrow hips, and indulged her recreational bloodlust. As well as her repeated insistence that her son Desmond had helped develop the miracle elixir that made it possible.
She was not wrong.
Wilder would clearly rather have been drawn and quartered than hear the story again.
“And the azure-toned young man over there?” Martyn glanced pointedly at Pryce Wishart. “Is that something to do with the festival? Is there a booth for tinting skin?”
“In fact, there is.” And that was likely what Pryce had told the elegant but dour-looking man and woman who were accompanying him across the quadrangle with their noses in the air. “But that boy’s blue cast has nothing to do with the festival and everything to do with Wilder Gregory.”
“Oh?” Martyn turned to me, brows raised. “Do tell.”
“The story doesn’t bear repeating,” I insisted, well aware that if my father thought I was in any specific danger, especially from an influential family, he would redouble his efforts to bring me home. “Except to say that Wilder is the last student on campus with whom one ought to—”
“Interfere?” Martyn suggested, saving me the utterance of a particular profanity.
“Precisely.”
“So, which of these students are your friends, Amber dear?” Martyn slid his arm around mine and squeezed. “With whom do you share your secrets?”
“Well…” There’s never any good way to tell a parent you have no real friends. “With Wilder, I guess.”
“So that’s unchanged, since you were children?”
“I suppose.”
“And yet yesterday it certainly looked…changed.” His grip tightened on my arm, and I turned to see him eyeing me with one brow raised. “Would you say that your relationship has…matured?”
“Would you say you’re gathering intelligence for my father?”
Martyn laughed and let go of my arm so he could retrieve the teacup sitting on the bench to his left. “At this moment? I am simply asking, as an interested parental figure.”
“My relationship with Wilder certainly has changed. But at the moment, it is both difficult for me to understand and difficult for me to define.”
“Because of your memory loss?”
“In part, at least. We have clearly bonded physically. But I can’t remember that happening. And that has left me confused and unsure how I should feel.”
“Regardless of how you should feel, how do you feel? Do you care for him?”
“Of course. I always have.”
Martyn’s brows rose. “Are you attracted to him?”
I shrugged, but the gesture was far more overblown than I’d intended. “Look at him!” I whispered, unable to resist a gesture in Wilder’s direction. “Of course I am attracted. Who wouldn’t be?”
Martyn chuckled. “You were possessive of both of the Gregory brothers, when you were younger. You considered them both yours—”
My face flamed like a bonfire. “I did not!”
“—and you would pout like a toddler if either of them so much as glanced at another girl.”
“I do not recall the pouting,” I mumbled. “But I do remember frequent roving glances.” And more-than-glances. “That bit has not changed. Wilder is ravenous for attention, and it is becoming clear that mine may not be enough for him.”
For a moment, Martyn sipped his tea in silence. My father was always quick to jump in with an opinion, which was no doubt where I’d inherited the trait. But my stepfather had a particular way of letting me stew in the echo of my own words. It was vexingly effective.
“Is that an objective assessment?” he finally asked. “Or might it be driven by overwrought sentiment?”
“You’re asking if I could be overreacting?”
He smiled. “I would not quarrel with that phrasing.”
“—cannot fathom what could have led to her acceptance.”
The whisper floated to us on an ocean-scented westbound breeze, and I stiffened on the bench, loathe to turn and see who was speaking from the courtyard behind us for fear of silencing the speaker.
Martyn also went still and silent.
“No one trusts her,” the voice continued. “Her voice is virtually painful to experience, and there’s no telling what she can hear that we cannot, if her ears were altered as well.”
Whoever it was, he was talking about Varrah.
A brief flash of relief washed over me when I realized I wasn’t the target of such distrust and suspicion, but I felt immediately guilty for that.
“You think she’s a spy?” another voice whispered.
“Or a scout?” There was a pause. “I can’t imagine why else a citizen of the unified provinces would come to the Alchemary, when they don’t acknowledge alchemy as a valid study. Perhaps she is an asset of the Crown. Their Crown.”
“Unified Eria doesn’t have a crown,” the second voice said, and from my left, Martyn chuckled again softly.
“It’s comprised of half a dozen independent city states, each ruled by a figure of a different title.
Some positions are elected, others are inherited.
So even if she’s an agent, it wouldn’t be for all of Eria. ”
“I think you comprehend my point,” the first voice grumbled. “It’s difficult to trust someone who can hear things we don’t intend to be heard, and who could be saying things we can’t hear.”
Finally, my patience wore thin, and I turned to find that the original speaker was a young man from Varrah’s cohort. He was speaking to a woman a few years older who resembled him closely enough that she had to be a sister or a cousin.
He noticed me looking and tugged his relative off toward the festival.
“They’re talking about a classmate from the provinces?” Martyn asked.
“A Fundamentals student. She’s very sweet and shy. She shows a lot of promise, but most of her family disowned her for enrolling at the Alchemary, and her cohort hasn’t been very…welcoming.”
“How awful.”
“Yes. That’s her.” I nodded at Varrah and Erikka, who sat on a blanket on the edge of quadrangle, watching the festival but largely removed from it.
“The woman with her is her cousin, the only family member she still has contact with. They’re from Reachan.
She mentioned to me that she loves those little fried dough balls my father came home raving about when I was a child. Do you remember?”
“Do I remember?” He huffed. “I tried to replicate them for—” Martyn suddenly stood. “I have an idea. Would you mind distracting your friend, while I borrow her cousin?”
I arched both brows at him. “I hate to take her away from her family.”
“It will be worth the sacrifice of a couple of hours. You have my word.”
“And how is it made? This crunchy syrup?” Varrah bit into another celestial grape, smiling as she chewed. “It sticks to my teeth, and it’s quite sweet, yet…I can’t cease eating it!”
“It’s novelty alchemy,” I said, plucking one of the glittering orbs from her wax paper packet as we strolled slowly through the festival. “Like that.”
I pointed to the booth where a female staff member from the Panacea division was applying a thin, clear serum to a young girl’s arms and face. As we watched, her skin began to bloom a beautiful pale shade of green everywhere the serum had been applied.
“And like that,” I added, nodding at a broad enclosure that had been built near the front of the Refectory. Within it, several small, wheelless carriages hovered several inches in the air.
“How does that work?” Varrah asked. “The hovering carts?”