Chapter 4 – Study Session

True to his word, Nicolus was standing under the gatehouse arch, uniform crisp and clean as it always was, his cloak draped over one arm. The rain was still coming down lightly. There was another figure standing by him, cloak still on. For a moment, Mirian froze. She remembered the two strange people she’d seen slinking about the campus and thought, is this another one? But then she realized, that’s Nicolus’s tutor, you dummy.

“Ah, Mirian. Glad you could make it. This is Sire Nurea March, though to frustrate the sense of dignity she tries to maintain, I call her ‘Nur-Nur.’ She’s been my tutor and friend for…?”

“Twenty years,” Nurea said. Which meant she’d apparently started when he was two. The title also meant she was a knight. Long ago, that meant she would bear arms for the Nicolus’s family when called, but now it just meant she had a hereditary estate. It also meant, because of her status, that land was not taxed. That meant their families had been working together for at least a few hundred years.

“Good to meet you, Sire Nurea,” Mirian said, bowing slightly as she shook Nurea’s hand. That was, her parents had taught her, the proper greeting to give a knight.

Nurea smiled slightly at this. She was a tall woman, and beautiful. She stood straight as a soldier. The precision and grace of her movements spoke of someone who still considered etiquette important. She had a commanding presence, and a strong voice. “Good to meet you, too, Mirian.”

As they walked into Bainrose Castle–now a vast library that filled every level of the keep and several basement levels–Mirian said, “I thought the study group might be larger.”
Nicolus laughed, that easy, warm laugh of his. “Hah! That’s the other study group. They’re more… drinking buddies.”

Mirian raised an eyebrow at this. Drinking was not allowed at Torrviol Academy.

“I couldn’t hide it from Nur-Nur here if I tried, so I don’t try. Besides, it serves a useful social function, so as long as I don’t over-do it, she doesn’t even disapprove. Well,” he said, winking, “she still disapproves a little.”

Nurea said nothing to this.

Bainrose’s keep was a massive structure, with large vaulted ceilings on the first level. The second level consisted of elevated walkways that hugged the walls and pillars. Once, archers and magi would have stood there to confront any attackers breaching the keep, but now it was just another place to put shelves.

Towering shelves also stood in rows from one end of the hall to the other. Some days, when Mirian wanted to be alone, she would go to the second story and lean out on the railing, watching as people wandered the long corridors of books, here and there settling down to read. Somewhere beneath the stone floor, hot air from a magical furnace raced beneath, so the place was always warm, even in the winter.

Off the central corridor, there were loads of rooms. Long ago, one of the noble families had lived here, with all their servants and knights, but now the rooms were all re-purposed for study, research, conferences, or events. Thankfully, the Academy had also installed pipes with running water, so now only a single latrine remained in the museum wing, for preservation.

They made their way to one of the study rooms, where several textbooks and notecards were organized in neat piles on one of the tables.

“Thanks again for inviting me,” Mirian said. “Alchemistry is….”

“—hard,” Nicolus finished. “Even Nurea here can’t keep it all straight. That notebook of yours told me you had a good way of keeping it all straight though. And, it did what Professor Viridian keeps telling us to do: build out mental schema and form connections with related material.”

This comment surprised Mirian. She’d always thought of Nicolus as the type who only half-listened in class, who had better things to do than really engage with the material. She got out the notebook.

“Hm,” Sire Nurea said. “This is very good work. She even listened to her instructors about handwriting.”

Nicolus laughed at that. “Ah, but if no one can read my handwriting, my enemies can’t spy on me!”

Sire Nurea, it turned out, had already prepared a hundred notecards with all the various chemicals, magichemicals, precursors, and alchemical devices on them, and their task was to build in all the connections. Mirian’s contribution was to draw nice little pictures on as many of them as she could, as well as remind Nicolus of the various energy equations that he apparently had no head for at all.

“Math,” he bemoaned. “I’d rather speak ancient Lorcadian!”

Then, Nurea had prepared a practice exam for them.

“Where did you get this?” Mirian said, impressed at how much the questions sounded like the stuff Professor Seneca liked to ask.

“Archives. Each professor is required to keep a copy of past exams for families and politicians to review upon request. You have to fill out a form, pay a three silver fee, wait a week, and then they can look at it. Nurea here counts as family, so she can do that. She can’t make copies, but she can memorize the kinds of questions and come up with a reasonable facsimile.”

Then and there, Mirian had a revelation.

“That’s bullshit!” she said. “That just means–”

“That people with more money, time, and connections have an unfair advantage? Yup. Welcome to the way the world works,” Nicolus said.

This also surprised Mirian, who didn’t expect Nicolus to just say it. She’d talked to wealthier students before, and they almost always got mad at the mere implication that they might have any sort of advantage from their wealth. It always grated on Mirian’s nerves. Remembering her manners, though, she said, “Well thank you, then, for inviting me.”

“Yeah,” he said. “No problem.”

They went through the questions, discussing what they thought was the answer, then checking their notes while Nurea supervised.

Nicolus even had dinner scheduled for delivery: Roast duck and a vegetable medley coated in a spiced honey glaze. Mirian, having only had a light lunch and lighter breakfast, was famished, and devoured hers in record time, only slightly embarrassed by her lack of fine dining etiquette. Nicolus munched on his casually, paging through the notecards as he did, staining several with sauce. This horrified both Mirian and Nurea.

After three hours, they were both spent.

“So what brings you to the Academy?” Nicolus asked, while Sire Nurea cleaned up the notecards and sorted the practice exams and documents into her briefcase. The same man that had delivered the food arrived to take all the dishes away.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

“Artifice. It’s the best paying job, and my family needs the money.” After three hours with him, Mirian had decided Nicolus respected honesty.

“It’s changing the world,” he said. “My family didn’t see it until it was too late. By then, others had snapped up the fossilized myrvite deposits and invested in the spellforge factories. Get in with the big families. The Palamas, the Bardas, or any of these new joint-stock companies. It’s where the power is.”

“It’s all a bit beyond me,” she said.