“And if you do? Do you intend to share with me what you learn?”
Sam hesitated a moment before nodding. Bastan deserved that, even if there was nothing he could do. “Marin had a role in it.”
His gaze narrowed, and the darkness in his eyes deepened. Bastan could be a hard man, and age had made him even harder. Sam had only known him for eight years—that she could remember—and she never wanted to be on the receiving end of one of his stares.
“How certain are you that Marin had a role?”
“Quite.”
“And you? I know that she used you for some task.”
“She tried to use me, but…” Sam didn’t know how much of Marin’s plan had been intentional, and how much had been accidental. She suspected that Marin intended the wasting illness from the Book of Maladies to be targeted toward the princess, but had Marin known that it would backfire on her and she would end up the recipient as well?
Bastan let out a long sigh. “What is it that you need?”
“Why do I have to need anything?”
He chuckled, clasping his hands together as he leaned forward on his desk. “You’ve been gone for a while. The fact that you returned tells me that you need something and that you think I’m the one who can help get it for you. What can I get for you that you can’t obtain in the palace?”
He knew that she’d been in the palace. Sam doubted that was simply a guess. He was too well connected for something like that.
“Memories.”
He frowned. “Memories?”
“I… I have discovered that my memories of the time when we first met are hazy.”
“I never took you for the type to reminisce. You were always practical. It’s a trait that I have always appreciated about you, Samara.”
She shook her head. “This isn’t to reminisce. I need to understand what happened to me.”
“In saying that, I must assume that something happened at that time that you don’t fully recall. Is it something that I need to worry about?”
“Why would you worry?”
“I’ve seen these augmentations that you can do, Samara. I don’t intend to be on the receiving end of one of them.”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t have anything to do with the augmentations. No,” she corrected herself, shaking her head, “that’s not quite right. It doesn’t have to do with any of my augmentations.”
“You don’t intend to attack me for some perceived slight that occurred nearly a decade ago?”
“Bastan, you don’t understand. My memories of you are… fond if nothing else. You took me in when you didn’t have to. You gave Tray and me a place to stay. Who else would have done that?”
“Only because I saw that you had potential. I have an eye for things like that.” He shrugged. “I wish I could say it was more altruistic than that, but I saw your raw talent and knew you had potential that could benefit me, and I intended to use it.”
Sam laughed. “You can try to convince me that you had no other motive, but I’ve been around you long enough—and gotten to know you well enough—to be certain that you didn’t have to help me nearly as much as you did. You paid more fairly than you pay most, and you never became overly angry when I didn’t do the tasks quite as you instructed.”
Bastan looked down at his hand. “You never were a great listener. Always too stubborn. Too much like me in that, I suspect.”
“What was it like when Tray and I first came to you?” she asked Bastan.
“Like? You were small, even smaller than you are now. You were hungry and dirty, and I suspected you’d been on the streets for a while.”
Sam didn’t have a memory of that. “Why did you take us in rather than sending us off to one of the orphanages?”
Bastan shrugged. “I don’t know. Pity?”
“I thought you said it was for cheap labor.”
“There is some of that. You can do things when you’re small that some of my other employees can’t accomplish. People don’t look sideways at a child, not like they do at a man creeping toward them. When you showed early success, I kept giving you more assignments.” He spread his hands apart. “What can I say? I have an eye for talent.”
“I’m having a hard time remembering much about that time,” Sam said.
Bastan considered her a moment, his brow furrowing as he did, then he leaned back and shrugged his shoulders. “You had been through a lot. You had lost your mother. Your brother was young, though never quite as helpless as you wanted to believe him to be.”
“I’ve never wanted Trayson to be helpless,” she said.
“No? I think you enjoyed the fact that he needed you.”
“I only wanted to ensure that Tray had everything he needed. I didn’t want him to end up…” Sam closed her eyes, catching herself before saying too much.
“You never wanted him to be too indebted to me? Is that what you didn’t want to say?”
“Yes. You have a reputation, one that’s well-earned, and because of it, you create challenges for me. It was bad enough that Tray spent so much time with Marin, I didn’t want to have him owe you as well. I didn’t know what you would ask of him.”
Bastan waved his hand dismissively. “Your brother was never in any danger from me. Once I saw how Marin latched on to him, it wasn’t worth it to me to risk angering her. She has something of a temper.”
Sam swallowed. What would’ve happened had Bastan attempted to make a play for Tray? How would Marin have reacted to that?
“Have you heard anything about her recently?”
“Only that she has not been seen. I think you know more about where she is than anyone else.”
“I haven’t seen her. I’ve been trying to learn…”
She had to be careful. She trusted Bastan to an extent but allowing him to learn what she was doing, what she knew, placed her and others in danger. He had his own agenda, one that wasn’t always the same as Sam’s.
“You’ve been trying to learn about this paper?” Bastan grinned. “You don’t have to conceal that from me. I’ve seen enough from you, and about you, to know that you learning how to use that paper is valuable.”
“That’s just the problem. I don’t want you thinking it’s valuable.”
Bastan shrugged. “That’s how I operate. You’ve known that from the moment you set foot in my tavern. I haven’t concealed that from you at all. You provide value, or you don’t. When you don’t, then you no longer have a place here.”
“By ‘you,’ do you mean me? Do I still provide value? If not, do I no longer have a place here?”
Bastan smiled. “Samara, you will always have a place with me.”
“That’s not the same.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Does that mean that I’ll always be valuable to you?”
Bastan smiled and held her gaze, saying nothing.
Sam sighed. She didn’t know what she expected from Bastan but figured she had managed to get about as much as she would.
“Thank you.”
She stood, and Bastan arched a brow at her in question. “For what?”
“For taking me in. I don’t know that I’ve ever properly thanked you. So, thank you.”
She headed to the door, and Bastan cleared his throat. “Samara, don’t be a stranger.”
“Don’t worry. I plan on surprising you as often as possible.”
“You know I always enjoy your visits.”
Sam laughed as she pushed the door open and stepped back into the tavern.
4
Study Partners
The inside of the university had a dark feel to it today. Alec had grown comfortable here in the months that he had studied within these walls. It was a different sort of comfort from what he’d had when training—and studying—with his father. With his father, there had been a practical application that required he study the effects of medicines that Alec chose. He was given freedom to practice as he saw fit. That gave him confidence in wha
t worked and what didn’t, confidence that few other students in the university shared.
Within the university, the method of learning was quite different. He attended lectures, and rarely was allowed to go and observe the direct care of people coming to the university for healing. Alec thought that a shame, and thought that were he and the others who studied with him granted that opportunity, they would learn much more.
Anxiety bubbled in his stomach. He tried to ignore it, but it gnawed at him. It had been there for days, likely because he had not seen Sam in days. He often felt stretched when he didn’t see her, a strange sensation that ate at his stomach, leaving him with a mild agitation.
Without her, he didn’t dare attempt augmentations, even those he might try out on himself. She would know. That was something he hadn’t realized before. He knew she had an awareness of it when he used her blood, but he’d not realized the augmentations caused weakness in her as well as him.
Tapping on his shoulder drew him out of his reverie, and Alec turned to see Beckah standing in the hall behind him. She clasped her hands behind her back and looked up at him, her curious eyes constantly seeming to study him, trying to figure him out. He was a puzzle to her, not the least because he was not highborn, as so many who came to the university were.
“Why are you just standing here?” Beckah asked.
“I’m not just standing here,” Alec said. “I’m contemplating.”
A hint of a smile played across her lips. “Why are you contemplating here in the hallway?”
Alec suppressed a laugh. Beckah had a way about her that amused him. She had a sharp tongue, but rarely did she direct it at him. Most of the time, she directed it at others within the university, masters who taught them, each getting targeted by the sharpness of her barbs.
“I’m thinking through the last lecture,” Alec said. That wasn’t entirely true, but a part of his mind was thinking through that.
She snorted. “You know that you’re the only one who spends time after the lecture trying to understand what you were just taught.”
“I doubt I’m the only one.”
“You’re the only one who questions what we’ve been taught. I think it amused many of the masters at first.”
At first. That, like so much else, had slowly faded. The masters that had once been intrigued by the way his father had taught him had increasingly become frustrated when he challenged their assertions. Often times, their book-learning was quite different from his experience. There were many times when things they had studied in their books didn’t work when they tried them on living people.
“I don’t mean to be disrespectful—”
“It just happens?”
Alec shook his head. It probably shouldn’t just happen. He probably should be more respectful and should try harder to not put off the masters. He needed them if he intended to stay in the university to study.
“Did you come here just to give me a hard time?”
“Not at all. I wanted to see if you had any interest in studying this afternoon.”
Studying with Beckah would be helpful. She had a knack for finding things within the library, and often, there were topics that he wanted to research but didn’t always have the right way of looking at them. That was when Beckah was useful.
“I’d love to, but—”
“But you’re going to see your friend again, aren’t you?”
Alec hadn’t been able to explain Sam to the others in the university. All he could say was that she was his friend. How could he describe that he was her Scribe and that together, they had magical abilities? None in the city—other than the few Kavers he’d met—believed in magic. Especially in the university, they felt that everything had an answer, if only one studied hard enough.
“I’ll have you know that I haven’t seen my friend in several days.”
“Most of us gave up those we care about to come to the university.”
“I don’t think the university wants anyone to give up the people they’re close to.”
“The masters want our attention. They want our focus. We can’t do that when we’re distracted by things in our past lives.”
Alec considered telling her how hard he thought that was, but she wasn’t the only student within the university to feel that way. He knew that most had abandoned their former lives and considered their appointment to the university an honor.
Then there were others who didn’t view it in quite the same way. They treated the university as a steppingstone, one that would give them greater political leverage in the future. Many of the city’s leaders came from the university, and some of the least connected highborns attended the university simply to gain greater connectivity throughout the city.
“I’m sorry that I can’t shut her out the same way others have shut out those they care about,” Alec said. The brief flash of hurt that crossed Beckah’s face had him shaking his head. “I’m sorry, Beckah. That’s not what I intended.”
“What did you intend? You know there are others who feel that you’re too conceited?”
“Conceited?”
“You’re aloof. You don’t let anyone get close, and that strikes some as either arrogant or—”
Alec shook his head, trying to cut her off. “It’s not arrogance. I don’t feel like I fit in here the same as others. I’m not highborn.”
“Highborn isn’t the only requirement to be a part of the university,” Beckah said. “And you’ve shown probably too often that you’re certainly smart enough to be here.” She cocked her head to the side and studied him a moment, the same playful smile on her face that he’d seen before. “Let me give you some advice. It would help everyone if you got to know people here. It would help if you were willing to be seen and weren’t so standoffish.”
Alec looked back at her and knew that she was only trying to be helpful, but it still hurt to hear. He wasn’t trying to be aloof, but he didn’t feel that he shared many commonalities with the highborn students at the university. In his mind, he was giving them the space they wanted, space that they probably preferred he maintain. Except Beckah was telling him that by giving them that space he made it worse.
“Thank you,” he said.
Beckah scrunched her nose and frowned. “Thank you? That’s all you’re going to say?”
“I will see if I can do a better job of connecting,” Alec said. There were a few of the other students he thought he could reach, but there were others who he would be unlikely to connect with. Some actually believed that he had no right to be at the university, in spite of the fact that he thought he’d proven himself.
“There you go again.”
“What did I do this time?”
“Nothing other than Alec being Alec. You probably meant that to be sincere, but it comes off as sarcastic.”
“I think with you, everything comes off as sarcastic,” he told Beckah.
She smiled, taking that as a compliment that he had not intended it to be.
“If you don’t want to study with me today, how about tomorrow?” Beckah asked.
Alec nodded. “Tomorrow would be better. I promise I will meet you tomorrow morning.”
“Morning? You’re going to make me get up to study with you during a free morning?”
“Isn’t that what you—”
“I’m teasing you, Alec. You’re going to have to get over yourself.”
He could only nod in response. He wasn’t really sure what she meant, but maybe he did need to get over himself. But he hadn’t been spending much time with Sam. He’d been here. Studying. But could he have both? He enjoyed their time together and enjoyed attempting various augmentations. But in the end, if he had to choose…
He felt pulled between two different responsibilities. On one hand, he was expected to study and master the healing arts with the university instructors, and on the other hand, he was drawn to work with Sam, and felt the need—and desire—to serve as her Scribe.
“Tomorrow,”
she said. “I’ll be there bright and early.”
“I can’t promise the same.”
Beckah studied him, almost as if she couldn’t decide whether he was joking with her or not. Finally, she barked out a quick laugh. “See? That’s better. You don’t have to be quite so stiff.” She laughed to herself, and then turned, disappearing down the hall, leaving Alec staring after her, uncertain what more to say.
5
A Library Session
Alec managed to beat Beckah to the library. His night had not gone as hoped. The attempt to reach Sam had failed. She had even given him access to her at the palace, but crossing the bridges leading to the section of the city where the palace was had been difficult. The guards had refused him, turning him away as soon as he had appeared, telling him that no crossings were allowed. Even with his papers, he wasn’t granted access to Sam.
Instead, he had spent the night reading through his notes that he’d made during the week. He kept a neat journal, recording what the masters taught in class, and comparing it to what he could find in the library. Most of the time, they were similar, though occasionally, he had discovered discrepancies. When he found them, he wondered which to believe. The masters were not infallible.
Then again, the texts within the library weren’t always completely accurate either. Alec had found references in the library that he knew to be inaccurate. Likely it was not intentional, but it made him question what he was taught. The masters based their talks and topics on information they had a particular understanding of, but there were things that even the masters had missed.
The library was empty. It was early in the morning, and most of the other students remained asleep after a long night spent in the taverns blowing off steam from the week. Even the librarian was absent, having shown his face when Alec first appeared, but then disappearing back into the stacks of books.
Alec leaned on his elbows as he stared at a page in one of the books he’d pulled out, reading about conditions of the heart. There were various treatments, many of which were consistent with what his father had taught him—and which Alec had seen firsthand to be effective—but some were odd. Alec didn’t know what to make of the recommendation to give dorsalberry to women who were suffering from loss. The book made it seem as if that was a condition of the heart.
Poisoned: The Book of Maladies Page 3