Arthur woke to the sound of someone very deliberately not being quiet. He sat up in the narrow bed, momentarily uncertain where he was, the ceiling wrong, the light wrong, the whole unfamiliar geometry of the room resolving itself slowly into memory, East Hall, room fourteen, Solmere, and across the room a young woman he had never seen before was crouched over the trunk he'd noticed the evening before, unpacking it with the brisk efficiency of someone entirely unbothered by his presence. She was tall, blonde, dressed already despite the early hour, and there was a smear of something faintly metallic across one knuckle that she hadn't bothered to wipe away.
ART: I think there's been a mistake.
YSE: Was there? I was told room fourteen. Is this not room fourteen?
ART: It's room fourteen. I just thought-
YSE: You thought they'd give you a roommate who matched your general shape and disposition. Understandable assumption. Wrong one.
She straightened, wiping her hands on her trousers, and looked at him properly for the first time, an assessing, unhurried once-over that made Arthur suddenly, acutely aware that he was sitting in bed with his hair doing whatever it did overnight.
YSE: Yseult Marchant.
ART: Arthur Lyerm.
YSE: I know. Everyone knows. You're the one who parried lightning with your bare hand and no ability to speak of. You're rather famous, in certain circles.
ART: I didn't realize the story had traveled this far already.
YSE: Astoria's not a large province, in the ways that matter. Word moves quickly among people who care about that sort of thing. And I care very much about that sort of thing.
She said it plainly, without any apparent embarrassment at the admission, and crossed the room to drop down onto the edge of her own bed, studying him with an expression Arthur couldn't quite categorize, somewhere between scientific curiosity and something else he was less equipped to name.
ART: I didn't realize the dorms weren't-
YSE: Sorted by anything so old-fashioned as gender? They're not. Solmere sorts by academic merit and administrative convenience, and apparently the administration decided the boy who does the impossible and the girl who intends to invent the impossible belonged in the same room. I can't say I disagree with their logic.
ART: You intend to invent the impossible.
YSE: Eventually. Presently I intend to pass Alchemy foundations, which starts in an hour, so you should probably get dressed unless you'd like to attend your first class looking like that.
Arthur looked down at himself, and then back at her, and found her watching him with an expression that had shifted, subtly, into something closer to open amusement.
ART: Looking like what?
YSE: Like someone who just woke up. It's not an insult. I find it rather charming, actually. Most people spend twenty minutes making themselves presentable before they'll let a stranger see them. You simply exist, unbothered, at whatever version of yourself the morning handed you.
ART: I don't know what to say to that.
YSE: You don't have to say anything. I'm simply making an observation. I make a great many observations. You'll get used to it.
She stood, tossing something at him from across the room, a folded shirt that turned out to belong to him, apparently retrieved from where he'd left it draped over the desk chair the night before, and Arthur caught it against his chest with more startlement than the gentle throw warranted.
YSE: Get dressed, Arthur Lyerm. I intend to walk into my first Alchemy lecture beside the most interesting person in this entire academy, and I'd rather you weren't late for it.
ART: Is that what I am? The most interesting person in the academy?
YSE: Currently, yes. Ask me again in a year. I reserve the right to revise my assessment.
She said it with a small, private smile that Arthur found himself entirely unable to interpret, and gathered her own things with the same brisk efficiency she'd unpacked with, and Arthur, dressing hurriedly behind the modest privacy of turning his back, found himself smiling slightly despite his own confusion, the particular disarmed amusement of someone who had just been thoroughly, cheerfully outmaneuvered in a conversation he hadn't realized he was having. The Alchemy lecture hall was larger than any room Arthur had ever stood in, tiered benches curving down toward a raised platform at the front where a woman in dark, practical robes was already arranging a series of small vials and instruments with the particular unhurried precision of someone who had given this exact lecture many times before. Arthur found a seat, Yseult settling in beside him without asking, and looked around at the gathering room, easily thirty or forty students filing in around them, and spotted, three rows down, a familiar dark head of hair holding easy court among a small cluster of others.
Corin Ashby.
He had not spoken to Arthur once since their arrival, had not, as far as Arthur could tell, even fully registered his existence, and Arthur watched him now with the particular detached curiosity of someone assessing a person he suspected he'd need to understand eventually, without yet knowing how.
YSE: That's Corin Ashby. Castelgard nobility. Top of every ranking they've ever published. Don't let him rattle you.
ART: I wasn't planning to.
YSE: Good. Most people do, eventually. He has a gift for it.
Before Arthur could ask what she meant, a boy dropped into the seat on his other side with the particular unhurried confidence of someone entirely comfortable inserting himself into a conversation he hadn't been part of.
BRR: You're the Lyerm one, aren't you. The lightning thing.
ART: Word travels fast.
BRR: Word travels fast everywhere, but especially here, where half the students have nothing better to do than gossip about the other half. Briar Colton. Corvane.
He extended a hand, sun-browned and calloused in a way that suggested real work rather than academy softness, and Arthur shook it, finding something immediately easy about him, the particular unguarded warmth of someone who had never learned, or never bothered to learn, the more careful social calculations Corin seemed to operate by.
BRR: You'll want to watch this one.
He nodded toward Yseult, who was arranging her own materials with the focused attention of someone entirely uninterested in the conversation happening beside her, though Arthur suspected, from the small curve at the corner of her mouth, that she was listening to every word.
YSE: I can hear you, Briar.
BRR: I know. That's rather the point.
On Arthur's other side, a quiet girl with pale, unusual eyes and a faint iridescent sheen along her cheekbones that caught the light strangely had settled into her seat without a word, and Arthur, noticing the particular careful stillness of her posture, the way she seemed to be bracing for something before anyone had said anything at all, offered her a small nod.
ART: Arthur.
MRA: Mira.
She said it quietly, and did not offer anything further, her eyes flicking briefly toward him and away again, and Arthur, recognizing something in that particular careful economy of movement, the specific wariness of someone accustomed to being looked at for reasons that had nothing to do with kindness, did not push for more. The lecture hall's noise settled as the instructor at the front raised a hand.
VNC: Settle, please. I am Instructor Vance, and this is Alchemy Foundations, a course every single one of you will complete before you're permitted to choose a specialization in your third year. I want to begin with a simple truth, one you'll hear repeated across every lecture I give you this term, because it bears repeating until it settles properly into your bones.
She held up one of the small vials from the table before her, its contents shifting faintly with an inner light.
VNC: Your soul ability is what your soul already is. Effortless. Given. Alchemy is not that. Alchemy is the deliberate bending of your own soul essence into a shape it was never meant to hold. It will always cost you more than your natural gift would. It will always produce something rougher than what a soul ability could manage on its own. If you came here expecting an easy second gift, I encourage you to leave this lecture hall immediately and save us both the disappointment.
A ripple of nervous laughter moved through the room, and Instructor Vance did not smile.
VNC: I am not joking. Alchemy is difficult, and costly, and most of you will find your first attempts humbling in ways your soul ability never was. But it is also the one door in this entire academy that opens for absolutely anyone, regardless of what you were or were not born with.
Her eyes moved across the room, briefly, and Arthur had the distinct impression, though he could not have said why, that they had paused on him a fraction longer than they had on anyone else.
VNC: Let's begin.
She launched into the first practical demonstration, a simple bending of essence into a small controlled current of water, hovering it above the vial in a slow, unimpressive coil, and had barely finished explaining the theory behind it when Yseult, beside Arthur, leaned toward him with a running commentary he suspected was not meant for Instructor Vance's ears at all.
YSE: She's underselling it. That's a much finer thread of control than she's letting on. You can see it in the way the water holds its shape without wavering, that's not foundations-level work, that's someone who's spent years refining a much simpler trick until it looks effortless. I'd wager she could do considerably more if she-
VNC: Miss Marchant.
Yseult straightened immediately, the picture of innocent attention, though the effect was somewhat undermined by the fact that half the row had turned to look at her.
YSE: Yes, Instructor?
VNC: Since you clearly have opinions on the fineness of essence control, perhaps you'd like to demonstrate your own.
YSE: I'd be delighted.
VNC: Wonderful.
Instructor Vance's hand moved with a small, precise gesture, and the coiled water she'd been holding above the vial detached itself and crossed the space between the platform and the third row with an unhurried, deliberate arc, and struck Yseult square in the face with the particular soaking, undignified thoroughness of a bucket upended over someone's head. The lecture hall erupted. Yseult sat there for a long moment, dripping, her carefully arranged hair now plastered flat against her skull, water running in a steady stream off the end of her nose, and the silence she maintained in the aftermath was, if anything, more impressive than anything she'd said all morning.
VNC: There. Now you have opinions AND a demonstration to compare them against. I find that's usually the more educational combination.
She returned to her materials without further comment, and the laughter took a long while to fully subside, and Briar, three seats down, was wiping actual tears from his eyes.
BRR: I've been here one day and that's already the best thing I've ever seen.
Yseult wiped water from her face with the back of one hand, entirely unbothered by the general hilarity at her expense, and turned to Arthur with an expression that had lost none of its earlier confidence despite being, at present, thoroughly drenched.
YSE: Well. Now you've seen me at my absolute worst.
ART: I don't think that's your worst.
YSE: No?
ART: I think your worst would involve considerably more talking.
Something flickered across her face, surprise giving way almost immediately to delight, and she laughed, loud and genuine and entirely unselfconscious despite the water still dripping from her chin.
YSE: Arthur Lyerm. Was that a joke?
ART: I'm not sure. Was it funny?
YSE: It was, rather. I didn't expect that from you.
ART: Neither did I.
YSE: Careful. Keep that up and I might have to revise my assessment of you sooner than a year.
She said it with a particular arch note that made the back of Arthur's neck go warm, and he found himself, despite the ridiculousness of the moment, entirely unable to think of a response, and Yseult, apparently satisfied with having thoroughly won whatever exchange had just occurred, turned back toward the front of the room, wringing water from the end of her sleeve with the particular unbothered composure of someone who considered herself, water damage notwithstanding, to have come out of the encounter well ahead.
The rest of the morning passed in the particular blur of a first day anywhere new, names and faces arriving faster than Arthur could properly file them, the lecture giving way to a practical demonstration that left most of the room, Arthur included, producing results considerably less impressive than the instructor's own effortless example.
By the time the bell rang for the midday meal, his head ached with the particular fullness of too much new information arriving too quickly, and he found Elsie waiting near the refectory doors exactly where they'd agreed, her own face carrying a similar expression of overwhelmed satisfaction.
ELS: How was it?
ART: Loud. Confusing. My roommate is Yseult Marchant.
ELS: The girl from the gate line? The clerk mentioned her?
ART: No, that was a different- it doesn't matter. She's brilliant, and strange, and I don't think I understood half of what she said to me this morning.
ELS: Do you like her?
ART: I don't know yet. I think I'm supposed to find out.
Elsie studied him for a moment with an expression he couldn't quite read, something careful behind her usual easy directness, and then it passed, replaced by her familiar grin.
ELS: Well. Tell me everything over lunch. I want to hear about the lightning boy's very confusing first morning in full.
ART: It's not that confusing.
ELS: You just told me you don't understand half of what your roommate said to you. That sounds fairly confusing to me.
She looped her arm through his, the same easy, familiar gesture she'd used a thousand times across a decade of friendship, and pulled him toward the refectory doors, and Arthur, following her in, found himself laughing despite the exhaustion, the particular relief of an old, uncomplicated comfort after a morning full of new and complicated ones.