Page 32 of A Tower of Half-Truths

Twenty

“Please tell me you did something other than study that spell tome all night.”

“That depends. Does eating count?”

“That depends. Was it something other than tea and bread?”

Alain hesitated. “I think this is a conversation best cut short.”

Shaking her head, Mavery crossed the threshold and dropped her pack in its usual spot by the desk.

Gods help her, she would find some way to force this man to take a night off.

There was still an abundance of alchemical supplies in the next room, including dried nightshade hanging from one of the rafters.

A single petal, ground into powder and mixed into his tea, would put him to sleep for a few hours…

No, she wasn’t yet that desperate.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “I failed to take my own advice and get some rest. But you won’t believe the progress I’ve made!”

His notes blanketed the tea table. To her, they were gibberish. One page was completely covered in inkblots; either Alain had spilled an entire well upon it, or his pen had ruptured under the strain of his frenzied writing.

He paced around the tea table as he explained what had kept him up all night. Mavery nodded as she tried to follow along.

“…And so, Enodus’s incantation will reveal the auras of warding magic, but only in the color of the Ether, which is not actually a color, as the Ether is an interaction of wavelengths and energy. That would be akin to saying light itself is a color, when it’s really a spectrum of—”

“Alain, focus!”

“Right.” He cleared his throat. “First, we will need to complete Enodus’s spell, which will serve as the primary incantation. Then…”

From his mouth flowed a deluge of names and theorems. Each was more obscure than the last, but he rattled them off as easily as recalling his own name. When he finally paused to take a breath, Mavery seized the opportunity and placed a hand on his shoulder.

“You lost me about halfway through all that, but I gather you have a plan for finishing the spell.”

“In essence, yes. But first things first: are you ready for an Etherean lesson?”

“Do you need to ask?” Remembering the decorum Nezima had demanded yesterday in the lecture hall, she threw Alain a smirk. “Though I hope you’re not expecting me to address you as ‘sir’ the entire time.”

He returned her smile. “Only if you want me to address you as ‘Ms. Culwich’…or, is it ‘Mrs. Culwich’?”

She raised her eyebrows. “You think I look like the marrying type? I should be flattered.”

He laughed, and it was then Mavery realized she was still grasping his shoulder. Though he made no mention of it, she snatched her hand back anyway. Her heart thrummed annoyingly against her ribcage as she took a seat on the sofa. Meanwhile, Alain retrieved something from his desk.

He seemed in much better spirits today. Since parting ways yesterday, she’d replayed their exchange by the fountain countless times.

She’d been so thrilled by the idea of Etherean lessons, she’d impulsively thrown her arms around him.

And he, just as impulsively, had pushed her away and collapsed against the fountain.

She’d worried about him flinging into the water the remains of his breakfast, if not himself.

Before regaining his senses, he’d muttered something she’d had to lean in closely to discern.

Not here…not here…not here…

Last night, she’d read The Covenants of Wizarding Decorum from cover to cover. While she’d found nothing that forbade a simple embrace between colleagues, she’d come across a covenant that was along those same lines:

Faculty holding the title of Professor are prohibited from engaging in romantic relationships—including, but not limited to, courtships and marriage—with any Wizard’s Assistant.

Had he feared that the handful of students and professors on the quad would mistake them for something beyond colleagues, beyond even friends?

Either way, she wasn’t stung by his rejection; it was clear he hadn’t been himself in that moment.

And it was clear that whatever had forced that sudden change ran more deeply than he was willing to admit.

He turned away from his desk, and nothing in his expression indicated that he was also thinking of yesterday afternoon. He had a battered notebook tucked under his arm, and he placed an equally worn book on the tea table. Upon reading its title, Mavery’s worries vanished—along with her enthusiasm.

“The Etherean Alphabet Primer.” She frowned. “I thought you were going to teach me something.”

“I am. This is how I begin every first-year Etherean course.”

“By practicing letters?”

“Runes.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Do you use that tone with all your students?”

“What tone?”

“The same one you used when we first met, when you corrected my pronunciation, dismissed all of my credentials—well, all except for my being a Senser.”

He stared at her blankly, mouth agape, as if he couldn’t find the words. Then, a flush of scarlet crept up his neck.

“Oh, that,” he said, gazing downward. “I wasn’t thinking at the time. Well, I was thinking, but about the reaction you would receive from one of my colleagues, should I have passed you along to, gods forbid, someone like Nezima.”

Mavery replied with a slight nod. She could only imagine how Nezima would react to a prospective assistant showing up without so much as a transcript.

“At least, that’s the way I saw it,” Alain continued. “But as for just now, I honestly hadn’t a clue. And if that’s how I came across to my students, well…” For a moment, he trailed off with that blank look on his face again. “Well, that explains quite a lot.”

Mavery sighed. “Look, if there’s one thing I remember from my studies, it’s practicing these runes for hours on end, until my hand turned numb and I was bored senseless.”

“I understand it’s tedious, but memorizing the alphabet is the first step toward learning Etherean. That’s been the pedagogical standard for decades.”

“But, despite all that writing and memorizing, I can’t remember a single rune. Isn’t that proof that the ‘standard’ is, if not useless, then at least flawed?”

His eyes widened, and he placed his hand to his chest as though she’d just stabbed him in the heart.

“What if you started by teaching me a very basic incantation?” she asked.

“But even the ‘basics’ can be dangerous without sufficient training.”

“Then why not place some wards? I saw Nezima’s assistants do that before her class yesterday.”

He flinched, nearly dropping his notebook. “You…you attended one of her classes? Er, what did you think?”

“It all went over my head—but don’t change the subject.

” She wagged a finger at him. “What I’m suggesting is, maybe if your students saw a little success with Etherean early on, that would keep them motivated through the more tedious lessons.

” She glanced at the primer. “At the very least, it might help those lessons stick.”

Alain looked at the notebook he was holding. For a long moment, he didn’t say anything. He broke the silence with a deep sigh.

“Though I hesitate to abandon my tried-and-true lesson plans,” he said, “I suppose it’s worth a shot.”

He placed his notebook on the tea table, then walked to the closest corner of the room and recited an incantation.

Mavery shivered as the nearby walls glowed with the violet aura of a soundproofing ward.

She’d expected a protective ward, but she supposed this spell was designed to keep the Ether itself from listening in, so to speak.

Alain moved to the opposite side of the room and repeated the incantation.

This time, the chill of Ether was weaker than before.

As he continued his preparations, Mavery examined his notebook. The spine was cracked, the pages’ outer edges were curled and yellowed, some of the writing was smeared with tea stains. The oldest entries were from the Autumn 1033 term—almost eight years ago.

“These are your lecture notes?” she asked, though she had no doubt the handwriting—and the tea stains—were his.

“Yes, I’ve used that same notebook since my first year of teaching.”

“As an assistant?”

“No, as a professor.”

She furrowed her brow as she mentally rechecked her math. After he placed the final ward, he stood in front of her and held out his hand. She passed back the lecture notes.

“Then you became a professor at—”

“Twenty-six.” He averted his eyes as he paged through the book. “Technically speaking, I was only appointed at twenty-six. I began teaching on my twenty-seventh birthday.”

“But to become a professor, you have to be a wizard first.”

He closed the book with a sigh. “Yes, I earned my rank a few months prior to my appointment.”

She gawked at him. She’d known he was young for a wizard, but she never would have guessed that he’d held his rank for eight years.

As if he’d read her mind, he threw her an exasperated look. “Let’s just say I was assistant to a wizard with impossibly high expectations and little tolerance for failure, which gave me ample motivation to extricate myself from that relationship.

“I graduated from the University at twenty-three, worked under Seringoth for two and a half years, earned my rank at twenty-six, and—thanks to an auspiciously timed opening at the University of Leyport—became a professor that same year.” He raised his hands with an air of finality. “There, that ought to cover it.”

“You were Archmage Seringoth’s assistant?”

He winced. “Er, yes, though he was only an Elder Wizard at the time.”

“ ‘Only an Elder Wizard,’ he says.” Mavery scoffed, shaking her head. “If you worked for the most famous wizard on Perrun, how had I never heard of you?”

“Nothing kills a young wizard’s notoriety faster than a quiet life in academia.” He shrugged. “Now, if I’m not mistaken, Etherean is the subject of today’s lesson. Shall we begin?”