Page 87 of A Tower of Half-Truths
He looked at his notebook, then out the window. Thanks to Wren, Mavery had a good idea of what his sabbatical had consisted of. She gently touched his shoulder, and he tore his gaze away from the window. His weak smile did little to ease her concerns.
“Can I ask you something?” she said.
“Of course.”
“When I was rereading the Covenants last night, I noticed that there are many ways you wizards can retain your rank. Teaching is only one of them.”
Alain nodded. “Yes, almost any contribution to scholarship counts. The High Council keeps it open-ended on purpose.”
“Then why did you become a professor?”
“It was the first opportunity presented to me, and I didn’t have much choice in the matter.”
Mavery furrowed her brow. “What makes you say that?”
“Because Seringoth personally recommended me to the High Council. He might have been difficult to work for, to put it lightly, but he argued my case when the rest of the Elder Wizards thought I was too young for the job. I very well couldn’t decline after that.
“Being young and not knowing any better, I thought professors spent most of their time in the classroom. Little did I know there was more to it than that: reading essays, administering exams, managing assistants, writing books, conducting research, crafting spells… Up until my sabbatical, I had little time for anything else—mundane hobbies, least of all.” He gazed at his notebook again with a sigh. “We should start on the potion. At least alchemy is considered a ‘respectable’ hobby.”
He showed her his latest version of the recipe. For a potion with such a profound impact on Mavery’s Senses, it was relatively simple. It required only six ingredients, the most exotic of whichwere the powdered kutauss claws.
The first step was to create a sort of herbal tea to serve as the base. Alain’s recipe required two herbs that even the most novice alchemist would recognize: fallowroot and feygrass. Bundles of them hung from the rafters. Mavery plucked off violet fallowroot petals and sapphire feygrass sprigs, shredded them into smaller pieces, then began to grind them with a mortar and pestle. Meanwhile, Alain set up a fireproofing ward—its aura was soft pink—around the perimeter of the kitchen.
“Let me guess,” she said. “Fallowroot is to treat my headaches, feygrass is to treat my cold chills.”
“Exactly. My first attempts included persilweed, but fallowroot is far more potent.”
Persilweed was, as the name implied, a weed that grew rampant in the wilderness. Though it was most effective when brewed into a tea, chewing a few leaves would treat minor aches in a pinch. In large enough quantities, it was brewed into a contraceptive tea that was as effective as it was bitter. Mavery hadn’t brewed it in over two months; it was difficult to say when she would need it again.
As she perished that thought, she drove the pestle into the bowl of the mortar with more force than was necessary. In what must have been record time, the fallowroot and feygrass became a fine indigo-hued powder. She tipped it into a saucepan, added a measure of water, brought the mixture to a boil, then removed it from the burner to steep.
With that settled, she went to see what Alain was doing on the other side of the kitchen. He was weighing out an ash-like substance on a set of brass scales.
“Powdered kutauss claws,” he said. “We’ll need to heat these with a torch.”
Mavery peered into the container that stored the rest of the claws. It was almost empty.
“What are you going to do when you run out?” she asked. “Are you still avoiding Enid’s shop?”
He stiffened. “I suppose I’ll either need to find an alternative that’s available through more…legitimatechannels, or I’ll need to make an exception. But that’s a bridge to cross at a later date. Restassured, I have enough to last through the spell presentation.”
He swept the powder onto a piece of cloth, then tipped it into a calcinator—a shallow cast-iron bowl whose tall legs allowed for heating either from above with a torch, or from below with a candle. The powdered claws required the former method.
“Ever use one of these?” Alain asked, showing her the torch.
“No,” Mavery said, “but I’ll give it a go.”
The main part of the torch was a brass chamber slightly larger than her fist. Embedded in the metal were gemstones with pink and black stripes. She attempted to feed a bit of her arcana into the chamber, but nothing came out of the torch’s long, thin nozzle.
“Make sure your skin is in direct contact with the rhodonite,” Alain said. “Here, wrap your fingers around it like this.”
He stood behind her with his chest to her back. His hand covered hers, then guided her fingers to the smooth stone. But once her hand was in the proper place, he didn’t pull his own away. Mavery became acutely aware of his breath against her neck, the warmth of his body behind her, the gentle pressure of his fingers slipping into the gaps between her own. Heart racing, she slowly turned her head to the side; with his cheek mere inches away, meeting his eye took no effort at all. His body froze with a sharp inhale, as though he’d suddenly realized what he’d done. They both spoke at once:
“Sorry,” he said. “I, er, think—”
“Maybe you should handle this—”
“—you get the idea.”
