Alchemist Assault (The Alchemist Book 2) Read online

  Gresham looked at him with an incredulous glare. “The Nighlan?” He raised his voice, looking around the room as if searching for his audience. “Now the Barlands boy thinks that the Nighlan have attacked the Academy.” He started laughing, and there came a hint of nervous laughter from elsewhere. “Typical of a Barlands boy.”

  “Just stop, Gresham,” Tara snapped.

  Sam looked over to her. He didn’t need her to stand up for him. “What do you think happened?”

  “I know what happened. I heard it from my father, who knows exactly what took place. The Secundum wanted revenge for what happened to his brother. It’s nothing more than that.”

  Sam shifted in his seat, getting a brief glimpse of others around him, and he realized that must’ve been the story that had gone around. None in the Academy, the Grandam, Havash, or any of the instructors, would want the students to know the truth. It was too dangerous.

  Gresham leaned close, lowering his voice. “And I know that Stone and the Secundum had been working together. What do you think is going to happen to you? What prospects will you have now?”

  Tara glowered at him but stayed silent.

  Gresham straightened, laughing. “The Nighlan. Can you believe that?”

  He sauntered away, the laughter following him.

  Sam looked across the table. He could see the worry and terror’s eyes.

  What would happen to her?

  He hadn’t given it much thought, and it wasn’t fair, but she was nearing graduation from the Academy. She didn’t deserve to get caught up in rumors that caused her to lose her prospects.

  They ate in silence, and before Sam even finished half his tray, Tara got to her feet. “I’m leaving.”

  Sam hurriedly finished and then stood. “I’m coming with you.”

  She looked as if she wanted to argue with him but finally shrugged and headed toward the door. She dropped off her tray, disappearing.

  As Sam followed, he heard mutters of Barlands boy followed by laughter and mentions of the Nighlan.

  Knowing the truth didn’t help him fit in one bit.

  He glanced back, looking toward his sister, and found her keeping her gaze focused on her tray.

  All of this was for Mia.

  He was willing to endure for her.

  He just wished it wouldn’t have to be so difficult.

  Chapter Two

  The library looked nothing like it once had.

  As Sam stood inside, he could almost imagine the way that it had appeared before the attack. Rows of shelves were supposed to be neatly arranged, worked around the curved walls, leading to the Annex near the back. Pale green alchemy lanterns glowed with a soft light, the only thing that remained intact. That, and a hint of the musty odor of books. Even that, though, had changed. There was still the musty odor, but now there was a hint of something more. The stench of char, along with the memory of the violence that had struck here.

  Tara tapped on his arm. “You don’t have to stand there,” she said.

  It was early in the day, the only time that students were permitted in the library. They were cordoned off, given only a small section to access compared to what it had been like before when they had been given free rein over the entirety of the library. Now he had a small section near the front of the library, where desks had been situated far too close together, and there were three librarians stationed at desks behind that created a barricade preventing students from getting too deep into the library. To obtain any books now, Sam had to go through one of the librarians rather than simply wandering the shelves and finding what he wanted. How was he supposed to know what he wanted? He scarcely knew anything within the Academy.

  “It still feels wrong,” he said, keeping his voice low. After all, it was still the library, and now it was even busier than it had been before. Not because there were students interested in studying. Far from it. The occupied tables were filled mostly with students who wanted to gawk at the attack, driven more by morbid than intellectual curiosity.

  He didn’t even have an easy place for him to sit. That bothered him almost as much as anything else. Tara took his hand, guiding him inside.

  “We can just come back later,” he whispered.

  One of the students sitting at the table nearest them from the sharan tower looked over. The striped robes they wore were slightly too small, suggesting they had gotten them when they had first arrived and had a significant growth spurt. He glowered at Sam and Tara, along with their green striped robes.

  “Keep it down,” Tara mouthed.

  They could come back later, which was not the point. More than almost anyone else, the two of them had the ability to return to the library after hours. These days, after hours was a very different time than it had been when Sam had first been coming to the library. Now it involved coming any time after the dinner bell.

  It had changed Sam’s entire schedule. And not for the better.

  He was accustomed to coming to the library after eating, spending hours poring through books, taking advantage of the one part of his time in the Academy that felt like he had earned head.

  He couldn’t use the arcane arts, and he knew that his time in the Academy was short-lived, so he still wanted to take advantage of every opportunity that he had, which involves spending time in the library.

  They found one end of a table near the outskirts of the sectioned-off student area and took a seat across from each other. Tara leaned close, resting her elbows on the table. Her dark hair hung down into her face, and her brown eyes seemed to swallow him for a moment. “What do you want to read about today?”

  What do I want?

  For a while, he had poured through all of the books on alchemy, learning as much as he could, but now he had a different way of reaching alchemy. His hand instinctively went to the key curled up in the center of his palm. It was an alchemy device that had bonded to him, and as far as he knew, until somebody with enough knowledge of alchemy arrived, it would stay that way. He didn’t mind, though. The key permitted him certain things he didn’t have otherwise. Not just access to power, though that was part of it, it also helped him use the almanac, an ancient book of alchemy that was unlike anything that he had ever read within the library.

  “I don’t know that it even matters,” he said. “Maybe something on advanced angulation?”

  For Sam to pass his next exams, he was going to need to prove himself. Seeing as he didn’t have the same potential as most other students, the only way that Sam thought that he might be able to prove himself worthy would be by wowing his instructors with his knowledge. It had worked so far. He knew there would come a time when it wouldn’t, though, and at that point, he would find that his luck failed him, but for now, he would stick to what had helped him succeed.

  “I think you’ve read through most of them.”

  “I have not. There are still nearly a dozen books that were once over there,” he pointed, motioning toward a section of stacks that had toppled over. There were towers of books resting near the fallen stacks, and it served as a reminder of the attack that had taken place within the library. “If you go there, third from the bottom of the first stack, and then another three in the middle, and then—”

  Tara waved her hand. “I can’t tell the librarians that you know exactly where in the stacks the books you want are. That’s going to raise the wrong kind of questions,” she said, smiling slightly. “Besides, we only have about an hour here.”

  Only an hour.

  It seemed like a long time, or it would have once, but Sam knew better than that now. Now it wasn’t a long time at all. An hour was only long enough for him to get through the majority of one book. That was it.

  “Get whatever you can,” he said.

  “I might see if they want our help,” she said, looking over to one of the librarians. This was Rory, an older man with a lean face and pale skin, who looked as if he hadn’t seen the sun in months. “They know that we have been spending quite a b
it of time here. And they could use as much help as possible.”

  “You know what happened when I tried,” Sam said.

  She looked over to him, and a smile split her face. “But that was you. You are just a first-year student, after all. And I am one of the most revered fourth-year students.”

  “Now, who’s getting full of themselves?”

  “I figured it was my turn. Too often, you go running around with that big head of yours.”

  She hurried off before she gave him a chance to say anything in response.

  Sam used that time to sweep his gaze around the inside of the library. The stacks were damaged, but it didn’t look like the librarians had progressed much in restoring it. He wondered why that was. Maybe they were using this time as a chance to reorganize the library, or maybe they simply didn’t have the numbers to improve the organization and get the library back up and running the way that it needed to be. Students still needed to study, so they had to balance as much access to the library as possible and had defaulted to keeping it to a minimum.

  As Sam turned in place, he caught sight of the door leading back to the restricted section. He knew how to open it, but it had been sealed off from him ever since he had. He hadn’t figured out the key to unsealing it. Before, it had been a matter of using the alchemy symbols that he had already studied and mastered to figure out what he needed to trigger it to open. Now he wasn’t quite as certain.

  He stared at it until Tara returned.

  “You have to stop looking at that,” she said. “Especially that way.”

  Sam turned back to her. “And what way is that?”

  “As if you intend to try to tear it open yourself.”

  “There’s more inside of that,” he said. “I know there is. And it’s not just alchemy.”

  “It may not be,” she said. “It is the restricted section, so it’s probably got books on advanced angulation, possibly high-level mathematical concepts, maybe even chemistry in botany and—”

  Sam raised his hand, waving it for a moment. “You made your point.”

  “I wasn’t trying to,” she said, shrugging. “Just that you are probably right that there is something in there; it’s just that we are going to be able to get in there to see it.”

  “Not like that,” Sam said. “But there might be a way for us to get in there.”

  “You do realize that if we get caught in there, it’s only going to become increasingly difficult for both of us.”

  Sam turned back to her, and he smiled. “I didn’t realize that you were worried about that.”

  She flicked her gaze over to the section of the library where the door to the Study Hall, a hidden door that would lead into always had only a few of them knew to find. “If we do it the right way, then it’s not so much of a problem,” she said.

  The right way. Both of them knew that the right way still posed its own challenges. They might be able to access the Study Hall, but the library itself was occupied at all hours of the day these days. It made sneaking through incredibly difficult, and it certainly made trying to test the door, searching for any way to get into the restricted section, much more difficult.

  By the time the librarian, an older man named Gildan, had brought the books that they’d requested over, they had been sitting in the library for the better part of half an hour.

  Sam couldn’t even suppress his irritation.

  “We barely have any time to read,” he muttered.

  “It’s temporary,” Tara said.

  “It doesn’t feel temporary,” he said. “It looks like they have no intention of opening things back up again.”

  “You know how long it would take to reorganize all of this. Wait. You don’t know how long it would take. That’s just the problem. Neither of us does. So we can’t get upset that the librarians are taking a diligent approach to it.”

  “I can be upset by that,” he said. “Maybe I shouldn’t be.”

  He turned his attention back to the book, and they read until the bell rang. The students were shooed away from the library, and Sam reluctantly went, wishing that he could take one of the books with him, though he didn’t really need to.

  Tara pulled on his arm. “We have plenty to read,” she said.

  “I haven’t read these books,” he said.

  “See? At least I found something new for you.”

  He snorted, and they stepped out of the library into the main part of the Academy.

  It was still early. Painfully early.

  It made the time in the Academy far more challenging for him.

  Tara looked over. She shared his feeling.

  “We can either go to the great hall, or we can go out to the courtyard,” she said. “Only a few more days until we can get out into the city.”

  “Great,” Sam said.

  “They will secure it soon enough,” she said.

  She was far more optimistic about the council and their ability to secure the city safely against the Nighlan than Sam was. He didn’t know if there would be any way for them to fully prevent the Nighlan from heading back into the city. They had come once, and they both knew there were still reasons for them to return.

  “We could go to the courtyard,” Sam said.

  They made their way out of the Academy and into the empty courtyard. At least empty in this part of it. It was still early, though, and in time, both knew that students would come to fill it.

  “Think of this as another way of studying,” Tara said.

  “And how would this be another way of studying?”

  “The garden,” she said, spreading her hands. “This is all part of botany.” She smiled at him. “At least, that’s what I’m telling myself. I focused more on the books on botany that I have, thinking that maybe I can learn something useful. And if I can, then maybe I can convince myself that botany can actually be useful.”

  She started to smile, and Sam chuckled. “I can’t imagine botany being useful.”

  “That’s because you think of it in terms of alchemy.” She shook her head and paused at a flower with deep purple leaves. “I’m sure there are ways of using botany in the arcane arts, but everything they teach is really not all that effective.” She looked over to him. “Though from the lessons I remember from alchemy, botany did have its uses.”

  “Mostly in traditional alchemy,” he said. “The kind where there is healing, and mixing of—”

  Tara shook her head, taking his hand. “You don’t have to tell me,” she said. “I know.”

  He followed her through the garden, and they paused at different flowers, each taking turns to identify them. They wandered until the garden filled with other students. Tara frowned. “I should probably go back. I have an advanced angulation seminar.”

  “Can I observe it?”

  She frowned for a moment. “I don’t think it is connected to the Study Hall. Probably intentionally,” she said. “As far as I can tell, it’s not connected to much of anything.”

  “Who’s teaching it now?”

  Sam had known that Tara would go off for some of her advanced seminars. He wanted to observe them. Nothing more than that. He knew that he wasn’t going to be able to learn any other than the fundamentals and the theoretical approach, but that still intrigued him.

  “The Grandam has taken over for the Secundum.”

  “I imagine they’re going to have to replace him.”

  “Oh, I’m sure they will. He has an important role within the Academy, more so even than the Grandam. But, I think, for now, she’s taken on most of his responsibilities.”

  They reached the door leading back into the Academy, and Tara offered him a rueful smile. “How about I find you later? We can go back to the library. You can have as much time as you want there.”

  “I doubt it’ll be as much as I want,” he said.

  “Maybe not as much as you want, but we can take some time. How about that?”

  Sam snorted, and she skipped away from him.
/>   As he looked around the entrance to the Academy, he debated what he would do. He could go up to the great hall where students of his level would be playing games, cards or dice or dominoes, or he could stay in the courtyard where other students were gathering, but he had another idea. It had been a while since he had been to the kitchen and visited Okun. The cook—or alchemist, as Sam now knew him to be hidden as—had always been friendly to him. Sam hadn’t taken the time to ask him more about his role within the Academy since the attack.

  He started toward the kitchen when the door to the alchemy tower opened.

  Sam instinctively tensed.

  And then he realized who it was.

  Havash.

  He was tall and had a thick beard, and his deep gray instructor robes swirled around him, giving him something of an ominous air. He swept along the hall until he caught sight of Sam, and then he slowed, tipping his head to him.

  “Mr. Bilson. Perhaps it’s for that I came across you. I was thinking about you.”

  Sam resisted the temptation to look around him. He didn’t need others to know that Havash had been looking for him. He already had enough issues of people talking about him and his strange connections to things within the Academy.

  But then, that might be better than some of the other reasons they talk about him.

  “Why?”

  “I understand you have been searching for information on a specific book?”

  Sam smiled inwardly. It was Havash’s way of asking him about the almanac. Sam had been trying to continue to read it, though he hadn’t thought that Havash would care. On the contrary, he suspected that Havash wanted Sam to keep working on that book, trying to answer the secrets found within the almanac.

  “Was I not to?”

  “No need,” Havash waved his hand, and he glanced toward the door leading out of the Academy. He glowed softly, the hint of his connection to the arcane arts obvious to Sam.