I grinned. “Deal. I bet he makes his hacks walk to meet him and doesn’t bother coming here.”
We were all dressed in our uniforms. The coat over our long-sleeved blouses and thick skirts was uncomfortably hot, dredging every drop of sweat from my skin. Madeline had buttoned her blouse and coat to her chin, a much more feminine fashion statement, and I had rolled up my sleeves like Rainier and most of the others. I pulled at my collar. Rainier leaned back to say something.
The door to the lecture hall slammed open. Laurence du Montimer, scarlet coat neatly buttoned from throat to knee over his white shirt and black hose and his hair plaited back so that only a few stray curls framed his face, swept into the room. Every part of him was put together, despite the early hour. He held up his right hand and pointed to the back of the room. Two gold rings with opal slivers glittered on his fingers.
“Rainier, Emilie,” he said, turning to leave. “You’re mine.”
Arrhythmia.
Madeline grabbed my arm.
I stood and Rainier did the same, staring at me. “Good luck. You owe me some silver.”
Madeline looked at me, eyes slightly too wide, lips slightly too tense, and Rainier and I walked after Laurence. I marched after him—my strides too wide to be polite and my arms crossed against my chest; an inappropriate lady of Demeine—and licked my lips, the sting of sulfur and seared skin thick in the air around him. He led us out of the building and to an area far on the other side of university. We stopped before a thick wooden door carved with the creation of the universe. Laurence laid his hand against the dual sun and moon etching.
“You’ve met my second apprentice, Charles, I believe.” Laurence pushed open the door and beckoned for us to enter. “He’s opted not to have a hack, but Emilie, you will, when needed, assist him with non-ethereal and surgical medical work. Rainier, you will be working with my first apprentice, Sébastien. I typically do not permit the use of hacks for my apprentices, but I let them decide this year.”
Wait—was I not going to be working as a hack? Did he think I couldn’t work with the noonday arts? That I shouldn’t?
Laurence ushered us inside. A prickling of gooseflesh spread over my arms, sweat chilling on my skin. The familiar thrum of the noonday arts around me pounded in my head, powerful and demanding, hungry to be used, and I breathed it in, let it steep into me until Laurence spoke again.
“This is the laboratory,” Laurence said, sweeping one reedy arm out to gesture at different tables. No wonder his hands were so worn down. He must channel so much for this amount to have lingered here. If this was what he hadn’t used yet, I could only imagine what he had. “My research is mostly in long-term ethereal solutions to physical problems, adjusting body alchemistry and healing the small veins we haven’t quite mastered closing with surgery yet.”
A glass tablet no bigger than my thumb rested on a table nearby, and a red drop was crushed between two planes. I peeked at it, fingers on the table edge. Charles darted in front of me.
“Don’t touch things.” He said it softly, so Laurence wouldn’t hear, and tapped the pair of thick, protective spectacles atop his head. They had left little crescent moon indents on each side of his nose. “He has a whole list of rules I’ll give you two later. He always forgets.”
“Sorry.” I shrugged. “I’m very curious.”
“Yes,” Charles said. “That is the word we have used to describe you.”
Behind me, Rainier snorted.
“Familiarize yourselves with this layout,” Laurence said quickly. “In the event of an emergency, which does happen on occasion, you might need to traverse it without sight or sound.”
It was a large, high-ceilinged room with windows of curved glass for privacy. Vents spotted the ceiling, to redirect bad air and fumes, and if I were to divide the room in even quadrants, I was sure the four tables of the room would fall in the exact center of each quadrant. Small lamps—flameless, alchemical things of glass and magic that cast an odd, yellow light across the room—hung from the ceiling, sparking in the various glass jars, vials, and distillation setups on the tables. At the back of the room sat Sébastien practicing stitchery on a pig flank. The table to the right of the door,