Sam just nodded. Anyone with a stack of books could be an alchemist. That was Sam in a nutshell. But he would also have some Academy background. He might not have any ability with the Arcane Arts, but no one would have to know that, would they? Sam thought that he could convince others that he had the necessary background, perhaps the necessary abilities, and use that as he tried to keep his way in the city.
They had gone several streets over from the Academy when Sam saw his first alchemy shop. Both he and James slowed before it. The building was enormous. It took up the entirety of a single block. As Sam paused, looking in the windows, he saw impressive works of metal, items that he suspected were made out of cloth, and even strange plants that were growing.
“Look at this place,” James said, his voice a low whisper filled with awe. “You ever see anything quite like that before?”
Sam shook his head. It was nothing like Arne’s basic shop.
“There aren’t many alchemists that could do some of those things,” James went on. “What’s the plant? That’s just filled with Arcane Arts.”
A plant?
But then, Sam had been studying botany, so why wouldn’t that benefit somebody who could use the Arcane Arts and could turn it into something of power?
The idea that it could do that was almost overwhelming to him.
“It’s not at all like the alchemy we have out in Erstan,” Sam whispered.
“Minor alchemy,” James said. When Sam looked at him, James shrugged. “That’s what they call it, anyway. Minor alchemists. Those who don’t have any access to the Arcane Arts. They aren’t valuable around here. You can probably find some minor alchemists on the fringes of the city, where people can’t afford much, but in a city like Tavran, a minor alchemist isn’t going to fetch much.”
Sam should have expected that.
“Come on,” James said. “The shop isn’t even open. Though I would be curious to see what it’s like when it is. Whoever runs a place like this obviously has some talent.”
He nodded. More than just some talent, Sam suspected. Whoever ran a place like that had to have considerable talent.
He followed James along the street, and they got closer to the sound of music.
James glanced over. “I’ve heard that some students go into the city to go dancing. I’m not much of a dancer myself, but I wouldn’t mind having a partner.”
“I’m sure that you could find a partner,” Sam teased.
“Not with some of the people that we have in our tower. They’re either completely disinterested in us or aren’t even in the right tower. It might be easier if we were in one of the other towers. More of a selection, you know.”
Sam snorted. “I didn’t realize you were concerned about the selection that you had available to you within the tower.”
“Well, Lacey is nice enough and all…”
Sam arched a brow and looked over to his friend. “Lacey?”
“I shouldn’t have said anything,” James said, cheeks flaming.
“No,” Sam said, elbowing James. “You aren’t wrong. Lacey is nice.”
“I only have one class with her, and she doesn’t really talk to me there, or at meals, or anytime really in the tower, but I’ve caught her in the hall.”
“And?”
“And what?” James asked, shifting his feet. “I’m not good at talking to girls. They’re generally looking for something more than me.”
Sam clapped him on the shoulder. “You do realize that they probably feel the same way about themselves? We’re all in the tolath tower, so we all have the same issues.”
“I suppose,” he said, drifting slightly forward and closer to the music. “We don’t even know who’s going to stick around, anyway. Most people in our tower have some potential. You probably have the quickest mind of anybody in our class, and Alexa has some of the most potent Arcane Arts, and I like to think that I’m not too shabby.” He chuckled and waved for Sam to move forward.
He was drawn by the sound of the music. There was a vibrancy to it and an energy. He saw a ring of students around the small square, many of them dancing, others holding drinks and laughing, and others standing off to the side, just watching like Sam and James now were. There were a few people from the city easily identifiable by their lack of robes, though, for the most part, it was almost as if the minstrels strumming their guitars knew that the Academy would be out here.
Which they probably did. Carts lined the square, selling food and drink and various different crafts.
“Are you hungry?”
Sam shook his head. He had money. Having been at the Academy for the better part of a month had earned him his single silver, and though he hadn’t had the opportunity to meet with Mia to try to get hers to save them both, having a single silver was far more than he could ever have imagined having before. It was a dragon’s hoard. It was also money he had to save.
“There’s plenty of food back at the Academy.”
“But not like this,” James said. “Wait here. I’ll bring it back.”
Sam waited in place, watching the dancing.
Somebody bumped into him, and he turned only to see the dark-haired tolath hall monitor that he had been trying to find.
“Watch where you’re… Oh. Sorry about that,” she said to him.
“What’s your name?” Sam asked. He stammered a little bit, feeling stupid. She was incredibly lovely, with full lips, dark eyes, and there was just something about her…
“Why?”
“We’re in the same tower,” Sam said hurriedly. “I just thought that I should know your name.”
She frowned at him. “Tara. Tara Stone.”
Sam stuck his hand out, and she took it but looked down at him for a moment. “Sam Bilson. I’m a first-year student, and I—”
“I know you are,” she said. When Sam frowned at her, she shrugged. “We don’t have many students in tolath.”
“Oh, right.”
He glanced over to the sound of the music and knew that he was going to have to take a chance here. He needed to get to know Tara, if only so that he could learn some secret of what was happening in the alchemy section. Or what had happened.
“Say, Tara, would you want to dance?”
She looked at him for a long moment, and Sam half expected her to tell him, no, but she finally shrugged. “Why not.”
Sam glanced over to where James had disappeared. Hopefully, his friend wouldn’t mind him sneaking off and dancing.
If he did… Well, that didn’t really matter.
He had a chance to try to find information from Tara.
As he pulled her into the square, closer to the minstrels, he tried to tell himself that was the only reason that he wanted to do that, and not because she was incredibly lovely. This was all to help his sister. That was it.
Chapter Sixteen
“I can’t believe that you went off with Tara Stone,” James whispered as they made their way to class the following morning.
Sam was tired. He hadn’t gotten nearly as much sleep as he had wanted, and he rubbed the fatigue from his eyes. Everything was quiet all around them, and though they hurried through the otherwise silent hall, Sam still tried to keep his voice quiet.
“Why shouldn’t I have gone off with her?”
It seemed to him that James was upset that he had danced with Tara the night before. Not only had she been lovely, but she had a quick mind that matched her feet.
“You were taking too long getting food,” Sam added.
James looked as if he wanted to argue with him, opening his mouth briefly before clamping it back shut again. “Too long? I couldn’t have been gone longer than five minutes. Maybe ten. Okay. It might’ve been twenty minutes. They had a baker there, and he was making these fruit-filled pastries that looked delectable.”
“So you stayed there to watch him?”
James shrugged. “I figured you wouldn’t mind. Well, that was before I knew you had gone off with Tara Sto
ne.”
Sam chuckled as they made their way up the stairs and toward his class on angulation. He wasn’t in much of a mood to sit through the class, though that was mostly due to his fatigue. Someone hurrying up the steps past them, jostling past him and James, and James let out a sharp cry of protestation.
When the figures slowed and finally turned, Sam’s stomach sunk.
“Barlands boy. And who is this? Someone who has taken you under his wing?”
“Go on, Gresham,” Sam said. “You wouldn’t want to be late to class.”
“Oh, I don’t need to get to class. Besides, I already know that I won’t have any trouble passing my exams.” He took a step toward Sam, and even though he was probably the same age, there was a crackling of energy that seemed to emanate from Gresham.
Gresham sneered at him. “You know, it might’ve been better had we sent troops out to the Barlands to just push all of your kind back into the foothills. It would’ve been better for the rest of us.”
“Is that right?” Sam asked, and he took a step toward him. He needed to control the frustration building within him. It wouldn’t serve him any purpose.
Gresham glowered at him. “That is, unless…”
He trailed off as someone came up the steps alongside them.
With a flush, Sam realized that it was Tara. She looked at him, then to Gresham.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, though she directed the question to Gresham.
“Stone. Don’t you have some project that you’re working on?”
“And don’t you have some young girl you’re trying to convince to let you take advantage of?”
He shifted the direction of his sneer over to Tara. Sam immediately liked her more.
“Maybe you should spend a little more time in the library. It would be nice to have someone challenging me for my position within the Academy, but seeing as how that won’t be you…” Tara glanced up to the two others standing behind Gresham. Sam hadn’t paid much mind to them. They were different young men than the ones that had been with him in the Academy library when Sam had first encountered him. “Or either of you, I guess it doesn’t really matter that much.”
Gresham took a step toward her, and the pale white within him began to build, forming a crisscrossing band of power.
Sam recognized the way he was drawing the power, at least in the way that he created the angulation. Having studied at it as often as he did, he felt as if he could practically recreate some of these patterns on his own, even though he had no ability.
“Don’t push me, Stone. Otherwise, you might find that you have a harder time finding employment once you finish here. What is it that you want so much? Oh, that’s right. To serve on the council. Well, I doubt they will welcome someone quite like you.”
She glowered at him and then lowered her head and stormed up the stairs.
Gresham glanced behind him to watch her go.
“And you, Barlands boy. I don’t have to worry about you. You’ll probably end up as nothing more than a janitor. Maybe even worse? A chambermaid. Scrubbing pots. Or better yet, maybe you want to return to the Barlands where you can end up in the mines.”
Sam clenched his jaw to resist the urge to say something more.
James tapped on him and leaned close. “We need to get to class,” he whispered.
Sam took a deep breath, letting it out slowly as he ignored Gresham.
The bell started tolling. Now they were going to be late for class. Gresham glowered at Sam for another moment before turning and heading up the stairs.
“Great,” James muttered. “I have enough issues with Professor Clarice already.”
“She won’t mind,” Sam said. “Besides, we have been so focused on the earliest tenets of angulation that it’s not that complicated.”
James glanced over to him. “Maybe not for you, but for the rest of us, it is a little harder. Not everybody has such an easy time at understanding angulation.”
“I’m sure you will do well on your exams.”
“I’m not so worried about the early ones. It’s more about the later exams. I’m not exactly sure what it’s going to take for me to pass. My parents talk about what they went through when they studied at the Academy, but…” He shook his head. “I suppose it doesn’t matter too much.”
“See? There you go. You’re already starting to have a better attitude about it.”
They hurried up the stairs and reached the hall with the angulation classroom. Several statues along the hall had distinct carvings on them that made Sam think that they were manifestations of alchemy, though he hadn’t had the opportunity to fully test it. He was curious as to why they would be stationed all throughout the hall here and curious as to whether or not there might be something here that he could learn from them.
James motioned for him to hurry along, and Sam realized that he’d been staring at the sculptures. They hurried to the angulation classroom, where Sam froze in the doorway.
It wasn’t Professor Clarice at all.
Havash.
He turned, looking over to them. “I don’t tolerate tardiness in my classes.”
“I’m sorry, Professor Havash,” James said, hurrying to one of the back tables. The room was large, not tiered the way that the alchemy classroom was, and situated with space around each table so that there was plenty of room, which Sam assumed was so the practical application of angulation could later be attempted.
“Yes, well, seeing as how even your instructor isn’t able to be here, perhaps you shall have a pass.” He leveled his heavy gaze on Sam for a long moment and then tore it away, almost shooing Sam back to his seat.
He hurried through the room, taking a seat near the back, sitting alongside James.
James leaned close. “Where do you think Professor Clarice is?”
“I don’t know,” Sam said. She had always been present for angulation, but then she had been one of the professors who had gone down to the alchemy section. At least when there had been the rumbling that he had heard. Had something happened to her?
She had been decent to him, so Sam selfishly didn’t want anything to happen to Professor Clarice, if only because he wanted to continue to learn about angulation, at least theoretically.
“Why don’t you tell me what you have been working on so that we can discuss the appropriate level of conversation today?” Havash drawled. He grabbed his long beard in one hand, squeezing it together while sweeping his gaze around at each person in the room.
This was a different side of Havash than Sam had seen before. In the alchemy classroom, as it was primarily theoretical, there wasn’t anything. They had never really seen Havash teaching, at least nothing of any real significance. Though Sam knew him as a master of the Arcane Arts and, having traveled to the city with him, knew that he was skilled in it, he had never seen it demonstrated first hand.
A hand went up near the front of the classroom. A blonde-haired woman in a red striped robe that he didn’t know that well. Havash frowned. “Yes?”
“Well, we have been talking about the various aspects of the first tenet of angulation and the implications of—”
“The first tenet?” Havash asked.
The girl flushed slightly, and she straightened in her chair. “That is what we have started with,” she said. “We have—”
“Have you begun a practical demonstration of it?”
“Why… Um… No?”
Havash snorted, and he turned to the chalkboard behind him. His gaze lingered on it for a moment, but then he turned back to them. “All of you will be having your first tests to determine your competence moving forward. This does not determine whether you stay within the Academy, but it is a measuring stick. Do poorly, and you will find that your place within the Academy is not nearly as secure as it was when you were first granted admission. Do well, and the Academy will reward you.”
Sam couldn’t help but feel as though Havash were looking right at him.
; But why?
Havash would have to know that Sam had no real chance of actually succeeding. He wasn’t going to be able to prove himself. It was more about having the ability to demonstrate knowledge, and in that, Sam thought that he would do well.
“Today, we will discuss the practical approach to angulation that will be expected of you during your first testing,” Havash said. He nodded to one of the other front-row students. “You. What is your name?”
It was one of the olwand students.
He had chocolate-colored hair, a slight build, and frowned for a moment before getting to his feet. “I am Goran Jok, professor.”
“Fine. Fine. Come on up here.” Goran made his way toward the front of the class, and he faced Havash. Havash stood with his hands clasped before him. Sam noticed a faint tracing of pale white light around him. It was nothing more than that. “Now. When you have spoken about the first tenet of angulation, what have you discussed when it comes to the use of it?”
“That the Arcane Arts must be acted upon. Otherwise, the angulation will go on indefinitely.”
Havash huffed, and there was a hint of irritation that flashed in his eyes, which left Sam wondering if Havash didn’t necessarily agree with that. Professor Clarice had wanted them to understand all the details of angulate in order for them to be able to perform it adequately. From Sam’s reading, he felt as if that was an accurate representation, though.
Havash waved his hand. “Why don’t you show me something basic? I would like to see you create a parallel line of power.”
Goran licked his lips. His eyes narrowed, and he shifted his feet, clasping his hands together.
Sam immediately knew that he couldn’t do it.
“That’s not basic,” James said.
“Careful,” Sam whispered.
He didn’t need Havash to look back and try to draw their attention.
“But it’s not basic,” James countered. “Parallel lines involve drawing upon two aspects, and…”
He trailed off as Havash hurried through the classroom toward him.
Alchemist Apprentice (The Alchemist Book 1) Page 14