Ophelia returned to his stare with equal curiosity. Getting to know him would have been a good strategy with regard to her plans, but she dropped the idea almost as soon as she’d had it. The relentless intensity with which the young man was staring at her wasn’t merely a sign of interest. It was distrust.
“Put away your equipment, leave your samples on the bench, and hand your reports in to me before you go,” instructed Lady Septima at the end of the class. “Sons of Pollux, you are to go to the gymnasium for your sensory training. Godchildren of Helen, you are to return to your ark and to mind what you say. No more rumors for today, understood? Stay with me, Apprentice Eulalia,” she added, holding Ophelia back by the shoulder. “I would like to discuss one or two things with you.”
Once everyone had left her laboratory, Lady Septima closed the door and turned to Ophelia with stonelike rigidity. “Apprentice Eulalia, are you bored among us?”
Ophelia tensed. This woman made her feel uncomfortable. And yet she was very calm, and almost as small as her.
“I don’t understand.”
Lady Septima looked at her. No, look was the wrong verb for such eyes. She dissected her. Penetrating the loose lens of Ophelia’s glasses, she calculated the dilation of her pupils; probed inside her veins; measured her blood-flow rate; delved into the intimate chemistry of her organs; examined, one by one, every molecule of her body.
“You remained idle for the entire duration of my class.”
“Because you asked me to touch nothing.” Ophelia felt sweat soaking her gloves. She had only just noticed, now that they were standing close to one another, the emblem that Lady Septima wore as a clasp on her cape. A sun with the word “LUX” engraved within it.
This woman, on whom Ophelia would depend from now on, was a sentinel of God.
Lady Septima pulled on a glove as golden as her uniform. Delicately, between thumb and index finger, she picked up the minuscule sample that had remained at Ophelia’s place on the bench. Her red eyes examined it in the light.
“Let’s see . . . This metal is composed of more than three-quarters tin, just under a quarter lead, and a tiny part copper,” she murmured. “This alloy was created . . . eh bien . . . three centuries ago, maybe even four. A variant of bronze, but with an entirely distinctive makeup. That is reserved for the manufacture of organ pipes.”
Ophelia felt, much despite herself, a rare admiration. Sons and Daughters of Pollux were known for their highly developed senses, but Lady Septima would have made the best microscope on Anima blanch. So this was what Visionaries were really capable of.
“Why do you think I left this within your reach?” the teacher asked, returning the fragment to its velvet pad
It was a test, Ophelia realized. And she’d failed it.
“You could have tried to impress me, to show me what your reader’s hands are capable of,” Lady Septima persisted, her tone measured. “You did nothing of the sort. Either you lack daring, or you lack curiosity. What, in your opinion, is the foremost quality of a Forerunner?”
Ophelia almost retorted that she didn’t think she lacked either daring or curiosity, in her own way, but refrained at the last second. Become a FORERUNNER in the city’s service! the recruitment poster had proclaimed. It was now that the true test was taking place. “Obedience.”
Lady Septima broke into a fleeting smile of approval. How could a woman with such fire in her eyes send such shivers down one’s spine?
“That, indeed, is the correct answer, but I would like to be sure of its sincerity. Take your place on this,” she requested, pulling a stool in front of the stained-glass window.
As Ophelia was sitting on it, Lady Septima made a sign for her to stop. “Not like that, apprentice. Standing.”
With great stiffness, Ophelia hoisted herself, awkwardly, up on to the stool.
“Perfect,” Lady Septima said, appreciatively. “You will remain like that until you receive permission to leave.”
“And my apprenticeship?”
“During your period of probation, your every day will be broken down into four periods: theory, practical, training, and chores. Theory and practical are done for today. So consider this little exercise as training.”
With these words, Lady Septima pulled the cords of the fans to stop them and closed the door behind her. Ophelia found herself alone among the test tubes and the scales, in the dazzling light of the rose window. Without the fans, the laboratory gradually turned into a furnace. Having already played at being a servant, Ophelia knew it was hard to remain standing still for a lengthy period, but this was the first time she was trying it on a stool: it was impossible for her to stretch her legs, impossible to change position, impossible to shift her body weight more to one side than to the other. All her muscles were straining to maintain her balance, but they were aching due to the night without a mattress and the fall on the stairs. The numbness spread, like slow petrifaction, from her calves up to her hips, from her lower back up to her shoulders. Ophelia focused on the rose window’s colors sliding across the precious wood of the laboratory, as the sun gradually moved in the sky. Sweat was trickling under her trousers and she felt the increasingly urgent need to go to the toilet.
She fell backwards onto the floor. The stool, overcome by the exasperation of her Animism, had suddenly launched into a tap-dancing number.
As Ophelia was searching for the lens from her glasses, which, sneakily, had taken advantage of the situation to escape again, anger exploded inside her. A kid! Even far from home, even after all these years, she was still, and forever, being treated like a kid.
She watched the stool galloping around the laboratory, and suddenly thought back to the periscope in the amphitheater, to the words that it was forbidden to utter, to that collective memory locked away in the Secretarium. It wasn’t she who was the kid. It was the whole of humanity. They were all, absolutely all, kept in a state of infantilism by God and his Guardians.
“I’ve been Berenilde’s valet, Farouk’s plaything, and Baron Melchior’s prey,” she repeated to herself, once she’d halted the stool and got back on to it. “I’m not going to give Lady Septima any excuse to distance me from my objective.”
The sun was fading from the laboratory when the door was at last reopened. Ophelia blinked several times to make the beads of sweat clinging to her eyelashes fall. Elizabeth was standing right in front of her, expressionless behind her constellation of freckles.
“So, your first day? Still determined to remain with us, Apprentice Eulalia?”
“Still.” Ophelia’s voice was croaky due to thirst.
“As the person in charge of the second division of the company of Forerunners, I release you from that stool.”
The phrase was so pompous, Ophelia thought she was making fun of her. So she was astonished when she offered her hand to help her get down, and then gave her a siphon of water, brought specially for her.