Luminous

55 - The Lost Treatise

"Your only daughter tinkering in a room full of explosives. I wouldn't have my son within a feather's flight of my lab, you know." He said. Sameri sighed heavily.

"Best let them play under your watch lest they sneak behind your back." He gestured at Arinel, returning to business,

"I'm glad you brought your apprentice. Dineira's studying Greeneye anatomy. Lady Jaise summoned me last night, said you have a student who might be interested. I take it this is the one?"

Riddell whipped around to Arinel, mouth ajar, then quickly gathered himself.

"Ah, how generous of your Lady! What say you, Haselle?" He smiled at Arinel, who realized she couldn't possibly do anything but smile and bow in these circumstances.

Meya was a dear friend. Arinel would do whatever it took to further her cause, but it was impossible to focus on dragons when a friend of the mother she barely knew was standing not a stone's throw away. But how would she bring up Mother with Dineira as the nonexistent Haselle? 

"Very well, then. I shall be discussing the drought with old Diamat. Dineira, if you don't mind, would you show my bumbling apprentice and Sir Bayne around your lab?" Riddell turned to Dineira.

"Not at all, Master Riddell! A pleasure." 

The two senior alchemists departed with smiles, chatting animatedly all the way. Dineira craned her neck and stared after them. She waited until her father and Riddell had disappeared into the former's lab, then rounded on Arinel,

"So, you know the secret about Greeneyes, too?" She wrung Arinel's hands in excitement. Arinel wasn't sure if she had nodded, or her head had simply bobbed to the force of Dineira's fleshy hands. Dineira bustled off on the lush grass, Arinel and Jerald not two steps behind,

"I've been dying to talk to anyone at all about my experiments. But the Lady made me swear never to tell a soul. Not even my parents! Can you imagine? Yes, I understand the danger to Greeneyes, but my father's an alchemist, too—"

Dineira prattled on without the merest pause for breath or thought, even as she approached the padlocked door of her lab, shutting the floodgates only to fish the key out of her pocket. Unlike Muldor's disused lab, this lock turned smoothly, and the door fell back without protest.

"Here we are. My humble lab."

Dineira ushered Arinel and Jerald inside. Arinel glanced around, conjuring memories of the few labs she'd seen before. Dineira's lab had the appearance of belonging to a fledgling alchemist. Compared to Muldor and Riddell's labs, the apparatuses were less varied and rudimentary, the shelves less populated with bottles bearing eye-catching labels signaling danger.

Dineira was also much more haphazard. Piles of papers weighed down by bottles or salt-crusted beakers teetered over the edge of chairs. On her worktable, books closed and open gathered in a pell-mell hill, peppered with soot, dust motes and pie crumbs. Broken quills and ink spatters littered the tabletop around the centerpiece distilling set. Her writing desk was adorned in similar fashion.

Dineira bustled about freeing up chairs.

"Sorry for the mess. My father's always chiding me about my lack of organization." She relocated the papers to the table, holding up a firm hand when Jerald made to lend aid, "We don't welcome guests that often. Wish my father hadn't sprung this on me right on the spot, so I'd have time to tidy up."

With one hand and a clatter, she set a freed chair before Jerald. As he drew it back for Arinel, Jerald turned to Dineira with a small smile.

"You haven't changed, Dineira." Dineira jumped as if startled by a scuttling cockcroach, scattering papers, "It's been seventeen years. Do you remember me?"