Chapter 45 – The Project

The Tower of Healing was one of the oldest buildings on the university campus, older even than the Great Library and almost as old as the Burning Tower itself. People had been healing here before they had been teaching here, and Valentina could tell just by looking at the building. The walls were made of dark, roughly hewn sandstone that must have once been red but had taken on a dark patina over the centuries, and the narrow windows sat so deep within the walls that the light streaming in had to literally fight its way through the thickness of the masonry.

Professor Whitehall’s study was on the second floor, behind a low oak door.

Valentina knocked.

“Come in!”

Whitehall’s room was quite chaotic. Anatomical drawings hung on the walls, marked with handwritten notes in tiny but legible script. Dried herb samples lay on the desk next to notes and a half-open book on Leb resonance patterns served as a paperweight for a stack of student papers. On the windowsill stood three large clay pots of mint that looked as though they desperately needed water.

“Ah, Valentina.” Professor Whitehall set her writing tools aside and gestured kindly toward the chair across from him. “Have a seat.”

Valentina sat down, placed her folder with the prepared notes on the table in front of her, and carefully pushed aside a herb sample that was in the way.

“Well,” said Whitehall, folding her hands on the table. “The preliminary meeting is the first step toward formal approval of the project by the faculty, as you know and I’m quite looking forward to yours, to be quite honest.”

Valentina took a deep breath. She had practiced the presentation. Twice out loud to herself with Vyxara’s comments and once in front of Innogen, who had also asked some helpful questions. But she was still a little nervous.

“I’d like to optimize the geometric patterns of the Greystone Cascade,” she began. “More specifically, the patterns of the Collection and Concentration tiers.”

Whitehall raised her eyebrows so high they almost disappeared into her hairline, but said nothing.

Valentina opened her folder and spread out the first page of sketches. “The Cascade works by channeling surrounding Leb Essence through four architectural rings. Each stage is based on Leb-resonant patterns that directly follow the building’s architecture. These patterns were designed over a hundred years ago, based on the best geometric understanding available at the time.”

“And they still work perfectly today,” Whitehall said calmly.

“They certainly do, but they are exclusively Leb-resonant, which means they carry the entire set of Leb-specific geometric restrictions. Professor Von Agrippin’s work suggests that these restrictions represent a narrowing from a more fundamental symmetry and that each individual restriction, in principle, actually wastes a significant amount of Essence. These losses accumulate throughout the entire system, from the outermost to the innermost ring.”

Whitehall leaned forward and studied the sketches. Valentina watched as her eyes followed the lines, attentively and quickly.

“So you’re proposing,” Whitehall said slowly, “to redesign the Collection patterns at a more fundamental geometric level. Closer to this so called Grundgestalt of Von Agrippin.”

“Yes, of course, not even remotely close to the Grundgestalt itself in absolute terms, that would be…” Valentina searched for the right word.

“Megalomaniacal?”

“I meant to say ‘impractical.'”

A brief smile flitted across Whitehall’s face. “What practical result do you think that would have?”

“I see two concrete possibilities.” Valentina turned to her second page. “First, it would be a much denser Leb Essence that reaches the inner treatment rooms while maintaining the same architectural layout, and second, and this is the real point for me…”

She paused, both for dramatic effect and because this part was truly close to her heart and she wanted to choose her words carefully.

“If the geometric requirements of the Cascade could be reduced, that would mean the monumental architectural requirements could also be reduced. Then it would be possible to build smaller and simpler versions in places that don’t have the resources of Duskenshire.”

She looked directly at Whitehall. “My home village, for example, has never even seen a healer with Distilled Essence, and even in wealthier places where there are healers who heal with Essence Weaving, they can’t do things that are possible at Greystone Hospital. I personally saved the life of a pregnant woman in labor there who would certainly have bled to death anywhere else in the realm… and every day, dozens of women like her die throughout Sommerland. If the Cascade could be simplified, it would save countless lives.”

“Excellent,” remarked Vyxara.

Whitehall was silent for a moment, nodded, and then leaned back and crossed her arms.

“Have you discussed this with Von Agrippin?”

“Not formally yet. But his lectures provided the theoretical foundation, and I plan to seek his advice as soon as the faculty approves the project.”

“Hmm.” Whitehall nodded thoughtfully. “And how far along are you with the mathematical framework for redesigning the geometry? Admiring Von Agrippin’s transformation rules theoretically in a lecture is one thing, but applying them to a complicated structure like the Greystone Cascade is something entirely different.”

“I have a preliminary calculation showing that the restriction reduction in the outer collection patterns could theoretically achieve an efficiency gain of about fifteen to twenty percent. But the formal derivation isn’t complete yet, especially regarding stability, and of course I want the patterns to work in the long run as well.”

“And that,” said Whitehall, her voice taking on a sharper edge, “brings us to a very important point. The Cascade isn’t an experiment you can simply dismantle if something goes wrong. If an optimized pattern proves unstable over months or years, creeping, perhaps so slowly that no one notices until it’s too late, then human lives are at stake.”

She looked at Valentina seriously. “So how do you model the long-term stability of a pattern that operates on a more fundamental geometric level than the tried-and-true Leb-resonant configurations?”

Valentina opened her mouth and closed it again.

Behind Whitehall’s question lay a perfectly legitimate technical challenge to which she actually had a well-prepared answer, but in the split second before the words came, an image intruded her mind. An image of patients, children perhaps, who had been harmed during difficult surgeries because her geometric model had proven unstable at the crucial moment.

“The… the stability…,” she began, realizing she’d lost her train of thought. She reached for her notes, found the right page, and corrected herself. “My approach would be to analyze the disturbances on a smaller scale first. I could start by optimizing the pattern as only a slight deviation from the known stable Leb pattern and then see whether small disturbances are dampened or amplified over time. If the tendency is for the disturbances to be dampened over time rather than building up, then I would consider it stable. As soon as I see that the disturbances tend to accumulate, rather than subside, I know that the method has reached its limit and I need to take a step back.”

Whitehall looked at her with her warm hazel eyes, and Valentina had the uncomfortable feeling that the professor had noticed very clearly that Valentina’s thoughts had been elsewhere for a moment. But she said nothing about it, instead nodding slowly.

“Good. I think that’s the right approach.” She tapped her finger on Valentina’s notes. “Valentina, I’m approving your project for now. It’s ambitious, and if you’re right, it could be very significant. But I expect a detailed mathematical framework within six weeks that proves the optimized geometry remains stable over long periods of time. No half-measures, please. That’s the part where you need to be most thorough.”

“Understood.”

“Elegant ideas without clean work in the formal design,” said Whitehall, a gentle smile softening the severity of her words, “are just daydreams. And you’re far too talented for daydreaming.”

Valentina stood up, gathered her notes, and thanked her sincerely. Whitehall waved her off and wished her a nice day.

On her way down the well-worn steps of the tower, Valentina passed a student who was leaning against the stairwell wall and looked pale. A first-year student who had apparently just finished his first practical anatomy class.

“Sit down and drink some water,” she said as she passed by. “That’ll help.”

The student nodded gratefully, and Valentina went outside into the courtyard.

The project had been provisionally approved with conditions, and it was exciting, really exciting, in a way that had nothing to do with Vyxara or the Eye or Violet Delights. This was the work she had come to university for. To make the world a better place and save places like Palewood, where children died of fever because the nearest healer was three days’ journey away and no one could afford the treatment anyway.

But the weight of her approaching graduation was slowly but surely settling on her shoulders, more and more, like snow piling up on a roof. She had six weeks to complete the stability proof. Veilford’s demands in Advanced Planar Geometry were becoming increasingly brutal. She had to read, read, read, and on top of that, the sessions with the Eye, the evenings at Violet Delights, the threat from the hooded figure, and someone violently searching for the Eye. And she also wanted to spend time with Innogen and-

“You’re looking at the whole thing too piecemeal,” said Vyxara as Valentina walked along Mill Gate Road. “The project and our other work aren’t separate burdens, but two sides of the same coin.”

“What do you mean?”

“What you’re trying to optimize in the Cascade is restriction reduction in Leb-resonant patterns, and the Eye operates on the same fundamental geometric level where restrictions arise in the first place. What you learn about the deeper structure of the Essences while working with the Eye will sharpen your theoretical understanding for the Cascade optimization, and conversely, the rigorous mathematical work Whitehall demands of you will deepen your understanding of how the Eye operates at this level.”

Valentina thought about it. Vyxara wasn’t wrong. The analysis she needed for the stability proof required an understanding of how patterns behaved when pushed closer to the Grundgestalt, and that was exactly what she had observed while studying the Eye. Patterns operating on a deeper level, beyond conventional symmetry breaking.

“It’s killing two birds with one stone.”

“That’s a nice thought,” she said quietly. “But I still feel like I’m juggling too many knives at once.”

“Luckily, you’ve gotten pretty good at it by now.”

~

In the days following the attack on Madame Dolorosa, Valentina thoroughly changed her routine and tried to be as unpredictable as possible wherever she could do so without drawing attention.

She no longer took Mill Gate Road to the university, but instead took the detour through the riverport, past the cloth merchants and a small chapel by the river, whose Ember swept the steps every morning at this time and nodded to her kindly, somewhat offsetting the dockworkers who shamelessly whistled after her and occasionally shouted obscenities.

The next day she took an even longer detour via Bread Gate Road, and the day after that through the tanneries, putting up with the stench because the narrow alleys there made it difficult for someone to follow her. She varied her times, going sometimes earlier, sometimes later, and made sure never to take the same route twice in a row.

She also changed her shifts at Violet Delights. Instead of her regular Thursday evenings, she now came irregularly, sometimes on Wednesdays, sometimes on Fridays. Madame Dolorosa, who had recovered surprisingly quickly and was already welcoming the clients herself again in the second week after the attack, albeit with her left arm still in a sling, accepted the change without question.

“We can afford to be a little flexible, Lily,” was all she said when Valentina suggested the new schedule. “And besides, it keeps the customers on their toes when they never know exactly when you’ll be there. As we all know, desire thrives best in uncertainty.”

She began using Essence Listening whenever she could do so discreetly. In the university courtyard, when she sat on one of the stone benches between lectures and pretended to read her notes, in the library and at the marketplace, where she eavesdropped on the conversations of vendors and customers at the stalls.

Most of what she heard was terribly banal. Two second-year students were whispering about how Ignacio Flintside had supposedly impregnated the pharmacist’s daughter and whether it was true. It probably wasn’t, but that didn’t stop them from immediately passing the story on, to anyone who would listen. An older scholar and Essence Weaver from the city was complaining to a colleague that Von Agrippin’s theory of transformation was vastly overrated, that the man himself was a charlatan, and that he would say so publicly at the next opportunity, whereupon his colleague advised him to refrain from doing so.

At the market, the talk was of the price of wool, which had risen enormously since the summer, and two textile merchants who made their living from river trade were bitterly discussing the new taxes that Parliament had approved. “A tithe on every shipment that passes through the port of Vandercourt,” said one, a stocky man with an impressive double chin. “A tithe! I might as well sink my ships and raise some sheep instead.”

“Breeding sheep costs taxes too,” the other replied dryly.

She heard nothing about the attack on Madame Dolorosa at Violet Delights, nor any murmurs about artifacts, let alone the Eye of Deceit.

A few times she caught snippets of conversation about herself, but it was nothing to worry about. Two second-year students she didn’t know were chatting on their way to lunch about how pretty Valentina of Palewood was, whereupon one explained to the other that he shouldn’t get his hopes up, because according to rumors, she was the Duke of Duskenshire’s mistress and thus about as far out of his reach as the moon. The other sighed dramatically and said that the moon was, after all, still worth admiring from afar, and then they both laughed, and Valentina had to pull herself together to keep from laughing too.

“At least you have admirers,” Vyxara commented.

“They’re of little use to me, though.”

“You never know.”