Chapter Twenty-Nine
Normally, acute arsenic poisoning would take several days to become fatal, but this was the Black Trial. Whatever the administering team of professors had done to the toxin had clearly accelerated its impact, for the purposes of the event.
I’d swallowed not just arsenic, but alchemically compounded arsenic.
Shit.
Hands shaking, I swept my notes on toxins and poisons off the edge of the workstation and into my open satchel, distantly noting my official observer as he scribbled in his journal from his stool at the end of the table.
Then I flipped the page on metal toxicity over, hoping against hope that Past Amber had taken notes on a remedy.
And she—I—had. Copious, prolific notes, full of concepts that strained the level of knowledge I’d managed to reacquire and exceeded my post-amnesia experience entirely.
It would take me hours just to read through all of it and determine which parts were relevant to this specific scenario, much less identify the formula for an antidote, and…
Wait. The alchemical symbol for arsenic was underlined, in that same bold style as the second line beneath the title of this section of notes, trailing downward on the left end of the stroke. As if the writer had started on the right and moved her quill to the left.
As if she—no, he—were left-handed.
Desmond.
He’d been in the lab that morning, making a remedy for potential conception, for me. While he was there, he’d gathered my notes into my satchel and brought it to me. Had he also done this? Underlined the relevant bits of Past Amber’s research on metal toxicity?
Why? He’d said he had no idea what the poison would be.
A cough billowed up from my chest and exploded from my throat, spraying pink-tinged droplets all over the notes, and distantly, I heard another murmur from the crowd.
Panicked, I swiped the sleeve of my robe across the page, leaving pink smears across the ink. Smudging the print.
There was no time to wonder how or why Desmond had decided to help me, or to feel like I was getting an unfair advantage. Yes, I wanted to survive on my own merits. But more than that, I wanted to survive.
I scanned the text, homing in on each underlined word and phrase, reading just enough of the surrounding bits to understand the context. Then I raced back to the supply cupboard, grabbed what I needed, and got to work.
Keryth was blinking blearily at a vial as she carefully swirled it, watching the contents separate, then recombine. Vomit had dried on her shoes and the front of her robe.
Lennox’s light brown cheeks had been overtaken by a swollen red rash. The fingers of his left hand were spasming, and he was compulsively clearing his throat.
Cressa looked fairly composed, though she coughed into the billowing material of her cloak as she worked, heating a bright pink substance to a slow boil over a low flame while she crushed something else to powder in a stone mortar.
Wilder looked triumphant, if nauseated, as he held a vial up to the white-flamed lantern suspended above his workstation. A second vial—its contents a vibrant moss green—hung in a stand at the end of his table.
At least half of the class had finished a first attempt at an antidote, and they likely would not get time for a second. Which meant I was running behind.
I measured, ground, and diluted as carefully as I could, given the tremor in my fingers.
Clenching my jaw until it ached fiercely, in order to avoid contaminating my workstation with vomit.
When my elixir was finally bubbling softly, I took a moment to lean against my work surface, pretending to double-check my notes while I caught my breath.
While I surreptitiously spied on my classmates.
Lennox had just swallowed his antidote, and Keryth was eyeing her own somewhat skeptically. Lennox’s observer stood in front of him, journal open, quill poised in one hand, and pulled down his student’s lower eyelids to peer at the whites of his eyes.
Finally, the observer nodded, made one final note, and gestured to the attendant to let him out.
Keryth watched him go, panic firing behind her eyes. Tensing the line of her spine.
She threw her antidote back, wincing as she swallowed, and I realized she had not let it fully cool.
Wilder tapped his workstation, drawing my attention.
I turned, and he raised his vial in my direction, as if he were proposing a toast with a glass of wine.
He looked utterly confident, highly nauseated, and terribly worried.
That last sentiment was likely on my behalf, as his gaze shifted to the elixir I’d just begun to heat.
He swallowed his bright pink antidote, then turned to his observer, who paused in her scribbling to assess the antidote’s effects.
The other vial still rested in its stand, but at some point he had corked and labeled it, though I could not read the print from my own workstation.
Minutes later, Wilder’s observer nodded and released him from the arena.
As I watched him leave, jealousy sliced me with all the pain and drama of a knife right to the heart, despite my relief for him and my pride on his behalf.
And to my amusement, as he passed the dignitaries seated on the front row, he paused to not-so-subtly pass the corked vial of moss-green fluid to one of the men to the left of the aisle staircase.
I laughed, though it earned me several strange looks from my competitors.
But I couldn’t help it. Wilder had struggled so little with the trial that he’d had time to concoct one of his unsanctioned elixirs while he made his antidote.
Right there in full view of our professors, the staff researchers, honored alumni, and the Bluehelm herself.
My kingdom for an ounce of his confidence. And just a dollop of his skill.
Or, preferably, the return of my own skill.
Two more students cured themselves and were allowed to leave while I waited for my antidote to bubble to the right consistency, and a third left while I waited for the elixir to cool.
While I coughed, spraying my entire workstation with blood-tinged spittle, and prayed that none had fallen into the open vial.
Or, if some had, that the elixir was still hot enough to boil off any impurities.
Cressa glanced back at me as she left the arena, just in time to see that last scientific transgression, and she gave me a sympathetic smile.
No matter. The technique didn’t have to be perfect, as long as the result was functional.
There were three of us left by the time my elixir had cooled enough for me to pour it into a preheated vial without cracking it. Three still by the time that vial was cool enough to touch without an iron vial clamp.
Yoslyn stood hunched over her workstation, her forehead pressed to her folded arms. The flame was too low beneath her beaker. The liquid inside had yet to start bubbling, and I worried she would not have time to finish her antidote before the poison had progressed beyond repair.
Heartache gripped my chest like a set of overheated beaker tongs.
Squeezing. Burning. She was not going to make it, and there was nothing I could do about that.
I wasn’t sure I would make it out alive myself, even with Past Amber’s notes and Desmond’s surreptitious underlining.
I could not worry about a classmate. Especially considering that we were not allowed to help each other.
The third remaining student was Petyr Lorena, at the front right table.
His face was bright red, and as I watched, he shoved his spectacles back up the sweaty slope of his nose.
I could feel all of the eyes trained on us from the spectators beyond the honeycomb of glass panels.
Some looked concerned, others coldly clinical in their silent assessment.
Fighting a crippling wave of nausea and a vicious tremor in my left hand, I gingerly touched my cooling vial.
The fluid inside was still hot, but not scalding.
So I snatched it from the stand, holding it as firmly as I dared, given that my hand could spasm at any moment.
Then I took a sip. When the hot liquid did not burn my tongue, I tilted the vial back again.
I’d swallowed half of the elixir when Yoslyn collapsed to the floor in front of my workstation, startling my observer so badly that he nearly dropped his quill.
The vial Yoslyn had been holding had shattered, and even from where I stood, I could see that the spilled liquid had scalded two of her fingers and her thumb.
She lay on the ground, unmoving except for the twitch of her right arm.
I rushed around my workstation, still holding my own vial.
“Ms. Fallbrook!” my official observer snapped, his stool squealing behind me as he stood. “You are not allowed to intervene with another student.”
I knelt next to Yoslyn and used the edge of my cape to wipe scalding elixir from her hand. Blood lined her lips, and as I tried to lift her head, she coughed, spraying a foamy, pink-tinged spittle all over us both.
Vaguely, I was aware that several members of our audience had stood from their seats in order to see us over Yoslyn’s workstation.
They whispered fiercely to one another, but no one tried to stop me when I brushed hair back from her forehead.
Or when I pulled her chin down and poured the last half of my elixir into her mouth.
I had no idea whether or not I’d made the right cure. Or whether half of a properly brewed antidote would be enough to save either of us. All I knew was that I wasn’t dead yet, and that I could not step out of the arena and let her die, if there was any chance I could help her.
Yoslyn’s observer, a woman with hair as dark as her eyes, contrasting harshly with very pale skin, pulled me up by one arm. My own observer scribbled furiously in his journal. Then he turned to me, while Yoslyn’s observer knelt to examine her, journal and quill at the ready.
“It’ll take a few minutes,” I said to the balding man as he pulled my chin down to peer into my mouth. And yet…I’d stopped coughing.
He pulled my lower eyelids down, one at a time, then looked into my ears and peered intently at my face. He turned me around, and I felt something hard and round pressed against my back.
“Breathe,” he ordered softly.
I inhaled, then let the breath out. Had the rest of the cohort been examined this thoroughly?
“Cough,” he ordered, so I forced a cough.
Nothing came up from my throat. I tasted no blood.
The hard circle left my back, and when I heard the scratch of quill on parchment, I turned to find him writing in his journal once again.
But when I tried to read the words, he retreated to his stool.
A moment later, he set his quill on my workstation, stood, and gave a nod to the Bluehelm through the glass panels.
Then he gestured at the attendant to open the door for me.
“Wait,” I said as the attendant waved me forward. “What about Yoslyn?”
“She is none of your concern,” her observer insisted.
Yoslyn was sitting up. She coughed softly, but I saw no blood. Her eyes looked clear, and though she had not yet stood, she looked steadier by the moment.
With an exhalation that emptied my lungs, I crossed the arena, avoiding both shattered glass and a sour puddle of vomit, and stepped through the open glass doorway.
Many members of the audience were still standing.
Some stared at Yoslyn. Others stared at me.
But the only look I returned as I climbed the steps, following a path already trodden by nine of my classmates, was Desmond’s—not of relief, but of pure and utter pride.