Chapter 7: A Promise
Roy rolled onto his stomach, groaning as he buried his face in his pillow. Tempted though he was to stay in bed, he knew he had to eat something before he faced Master Hawkeye. Slowly, he lifted his head and opened one eye to look at the three copper figures between the stacks of books and papers on the desk. There's no way they're good enough. It should have been easy with only one element to manipulate, but, like with drawing, it would take more practice to get the shapes right. It was a shame the master wanted something more complex than geometrical shapes: his first attempt at a pyramid had been nearly perfect. The animals, however, left a lot to be desired.
In the end, it was the smell of breakfast that forced him to get up. Riza had stopped coming for him now that he was used to early mornings and her cooking was so good that he always managed to get to the kitchen while it was still hot. After dressing quickly, he picked up the figures and made his way downstairs. Riza was already at the table when he entered the kitchen and she smiled at him as he sat across from her. Placing the copper animals beside his plate, he gave her a quick smile in return and began spreading butter on his pancakes. "How's your ankle?"
"Much better, thanks," she said, sliding the syrup toward him. "What are those?"
"My homework." He passed the first figure to Riza. "I already showed you this one. It's a cow."
"I thought it was a horse."
"Shut up," he said, scowling as he reached for the next figure. Taking a sip of tea, he set the small animal beside her plate. "A dog."
She picked it up and examined it as she chewed. "It's a good dog."
"It was supposed to be a pig," he admitted, staring at his plate. He took a large bite and hoped that Hawkeye would agree with his daughter.
"And what's the last one?" she asked as he looked up again.
"I want you to guess."
Riza reached across the table and lifted the copper figure carefully. After several minutes of inspection, she set it down beside the others. "I was going to say it was a tree at first," she said, cutting another slice of pancake. "But now I'm fairly certain it's a giraffe."
Pleased, Roy nodded. "Very good," he said. After a few moments, he scratched his head. "Wait—you thought it was a tree?"
"The legs are really close together," she explained as she returned the copper animals. "You've only been here a month; you should be proud."
"Yeah, I know. It's just…" He had to tell her, had to make her understand his dreams, but the words refused to come.
"Just what?" she asked, scraping leftover syrup from her plate onto her fork.
"I only have a year. That's how long he said it would take to master the basics if I studied hard." He buried his face in his hands. "But I have to do better than that if I hope to learn his secret research too."
"Why? Can't you stay longer?" She sounded sad, as though she wanted nothing more than for him to remain in this house until he had learned everything there was to know of alchemy. Of course she does, he realized. She doesn't want to say good bye any more than I do.
He shook his head. "I have to go at the end of next summer." With all his heart, he hoped she wouldn't ask why. When she didn't, he continued, "And I would have been fine with that. I could have left and continued with my own research in Central, but I heard that he was working on something special. Something no other alchemist had dared to research."
Shifting in her chair, Riza reached for her tea. She sipped it slowly as Roy watched her.
"You know what it is, don't you?"
"I do," she said, without meeting his eyes.
"Will you tell me if the rumors are true? Has he really discovered a form of alchemy based on combustion? He hinted at it in his letter, but I need to be certain."
To avoid answering, she set her mug on her plate and carried the dishes to the sink. Roy carried his own over and began washing them while Riza watched, holding a towel. She dried his plate and set it aside. "What's wrong?" he asked.
"He offered you the chance to stay longer and you turned him down." She leaned her elbows on the counter and stared out the window. "I was hoping you'd want to stay. If you continued studying under him, you'd have an excuse to stay here with me." She turned and took a clean mug from him. "But I shouldn't be so selfish. You have no reason to stay here beyond what you had originally planned."
Her words stung, and he knew he had to force himself to tell her the truth. He couldn't possibly hurt her more than he already had. "I have two very good reasons to stay here and the best is right here." He put a hand on her shoulder. "But I made a promise."
She looked up at him in surprise. "To whom?"
"To myself." He set aside the fork he was washing and scratched his neck. "I'm only seventeen, so when I finished school, I decided to study alchemy and I found someone who claimed he could teach me in a year. That's one part of why I chose your father," he explained. Her eyes narrowed, as though she suspected where he was headed, but she said nothing. "And so," Roy continued, "next fall, when the military academy accepts new students, I have to be in Central." This time, she didn't react at all, and the longer he waited for a response, the more he felt he had to explain himself. "I want to keep soldiers from hurting civilians. I also want to be able to make a decent living but I couldn't really think of another career I wanted to pursue. I shouldn't have kept this from you but I didn't want to hurt you."
"Well," she said slowly, "I'm glad you told me now instead of when you left. And I won't mention it to Father—that's your place, not mine."
"Is that all? If you hate me, you can say it." He scrubbed the fork rather more aggressively than he meant to before slamming it onto the counter in front of her.
"I could never hate you, Roy." She set the towel aside and touched his elbow hesitantly, his fingers barely brushing his skin.
The simple gesture was enough to make him shiver, even though the room was still warm from the stove. He didn't want to think about that, though. Whatever his feelings for Riza might be, he refused to examine them beyond the friendship and trust they shared so openly. "I'm glad." He wiped his hands on the discarded towel then pulled her into an embrace, which she returned enthusiastically.
"You should go," she said softly, pulling her arms away. "Father's expecting you."
"Right." Reluctantly, he released her and went to the table to collect the figures he had transmuted. In the doorway, he looked at her over his shoulder. She was smiling again.
"Good luck."
"Thanks." He dashed up both sets of stairs and opened the door to the attic, where he found Hawkeye in his usual place on the far side of the table, twiddling his thumbs impatiently. Roy approached slowly and set the completed transmutations on the table for appraisal. Sitting in his usual chair, he kept his eyes firmly on the floor.
For several minutes, the only sounds came from a sparrow outside the window and from Hawkeye lifting and examining each piece in turn. "I've seen worse," he said at last, causing Roy to look up. "But I expected better of you."
"Not to make excuses, sir, but it's like the circles. I couldn't draw anything when I got here, and now I have to do it three-dimensionally. I can learn how to manipulate an element easily. I'm just not good at forming them into intricate shapes yet."
"So I have gathered. It will take practice, like the circles did and you clearly have not practiced enough."
"Yes, Master." He sat quietly while Hawkeye drew a transmutation circle and returned each animal to its original form: a small, solid cube of copper.
"I suppose you should begin working with simple alloys," he said, and Roy looked up in astonishment. "I don't doubt your abilities, Mustang. I just think you're too easily distracted." He stood and carried the copper to a chest beside one of the bookcases.
"What do you mean?" Roy asked, puzzled.
"I mean," said Hawkeye, "that while you're doing my daughter a world of good, she seems to have the opposite effect on your studies." He removed three different blocks from the chest before closing it.
Roy clenched his fists under the table, but he tried to keep his tone polite. "Are you saying I can't spend time with her?"
"All I'm saying is that you need to learn to control your thoughts." Hawkeye sighed as he returned to his chair. "She knows when you need to take a break from studying and when you need to concentrate. You should learn that too."
"I already have, sir. I can decipher the journals easily enough. I just need more practice shaping objects."
Hawkeye looked amused for a moment before his face returned to its usual impassive expression. "And that is where you need to learn to concentrate. If you can control your thoughts, your transmutations will look the way you want them to. You have no hope of mastering more complex transmutations if you lack the discipline to properly shape single-element blocks."
Embarrassed, Roy looked down. It was true that he let his mind wander when he was supposed to be studying. It was difficult to picture animals he had only seen in books or in fields when the train had brought him here and he often found himself wondering what adventure he and Riza would have next. "I'm sorry, Master. You're right and I'll do better next time."
"Good." He handed the cubes to Roy. "You'll find everything you need in the red poetry book I gave you last week. I expect significant improvements by next Sunday. You may go."
"Yes, Master." Roy lowered his gaze and pocketed the pieces of metal as he stood. "Thank you."
Hawkeye said nothing, only waved dismissively toward the door as Roy left. As he reached the bottom of the stairs, he wondered whether or not Hawkeye approved of his relationship with Riza. She was obviously much happier than she had been before but he wouldn't blame the man for worrying. If he had a teenage daughter, he would never let a strange boy stay in the house. Still, he was almost as grateful for Hawkeye's leniency as he was for Riza's friendship. He left the cubes in his room and decided that he didn't feel much like studying at the moment. Instead, he headed downstairs in search of his friend.
He found her in the dining room, washing the window. "How was it?" she asked when she heard him enter the room.
"He said I needed to concentrate."
"Well, he does have a point," she said. "If you don't learn that by the time he teaches you what he's been researching, you could get yourself killed."
"Are you going to tell me after all?" he asked, cocking his head slightly.
"You look like a puppy," she said, chuckling.
"And you look like someone trying to avoid questions," he replied irritably. "How would you even know what it is anyway? You said you would never touch anything to do with alchemy."
She tensed; her neck stiffened and he could almost see muscles knotting in her upper back and he was about to voice his concern when she turned, dropping her cleaning rag in the bucket on the windowsill. "Fire," she whispered, shoving her hands into the pockets of her apron. "After Mother's funeral, he became obsessed with it. He would stare at the flames for hours, scribbling notes on scraps of paper and then staring at the words before tossing them on the coals. He never seemed satisfied."
"Until now?"
"Until now," Riza agreed. "If he's offering to teach it to you, he must close at the very least."
Roy pulled a chair out and sat. "Do you think he'd still be willing to teach me if I came back during my time at the academy? If I had a long enough time on leave, that is. Or maybe I could come back after."
"Even if he refuses, I'll plead your case," she pledged.
"Why would you do that if I'm going to become a soldier?"
"Because you're a good person." She hesitated and then sat in the chair beside his. "And because I don't want to see all those years of work go to waste."
"I'm sure he'll see to that himself," said Roy.
"He would carry it to the grave if he didn't think anyone was worthy of it," she said, tapping her chin thoughtfully. "If we can convince him that you are, then it would at least be put to good use."
Roy looked at her curiously. "And how are we going to go about that?"
"Well, for one thing," she said, getting to her feet, "you need learn how to make your transmutations look better."
"I had a feeling you were going to tell me to get off my ass and go study," he said sheepishly.
"You can do that later. I was actually going to tell you to get off your ass and come to the market with me." Grabbing his hands, she pulled him to his feet. "I have to go back to school soon and I want to spend as much time with you as I can before then."
"At least we'll be able to study together," he said as he followed her into the hall.
"I'd like that." She stepped into her shoes and tucked her coin purse into a pocket. "Ready?"
"I forgot something upstairs. One minute." He ran to his room and removed two thousand cenz from the nightstand's drawer. When he returned, he handed the money to Riza.
"I can't accept this," she said, holding it out to him. "You're paying room and board for the month, and when I asked Father, he told me that includes groceries."
"Please keep it." He closed her hand around the coins. "I want to help."
She sighed and put the money in her purse. "It's awfully hard to say no when you look at me like that."
"If that's the case, I'll give you more," he said, turning toward the stairs.
"Please don't. This is more than enough for now." With a faint smile spreading across her face, she opened the door. "Thank you."
"You're welcome." He followed her out and they walked side by side down the dusty road to the village. He hadn't been there since the day he arrived, and even then he hadn't seen much of the town beyond the station and the main road. As the buildings came into view, he noticed changes in Riza's posture: she held her head higher and thrust her chin out. Her steps were stiff and even and her face was expressionless. "Are you okay?"
She nodded curtly and he moved closer to her, wonder how she would react if he held her hand. If their positions were reversed, he would probably have asked her to hold his, but she didn't seem to want protection. She had walked alone for so long that, while she always seemed grateful for his help, she still seemed somewhat uncomfortable with it. She's a lot stronger than I'll ever be. And he admired her all the more because of it. Tiny though she was, he had no doubt that she would have been just as capable of carrying him home from the woods if he had broken his ankle. After dragging deer across that ramshackle old bridge, he assumed a scrawny boy would be easy to manage.
Cramming his hands in his pockets, he looked around curiously, hoping to get some insight into Riza's life as they approached the town nestled among green hills. The buildings were smaller than the ones in Central, but they seemed imposing in their own way, perhaps because of the way Riza had spoken of their inhabitants. He noticed the church she had spoken of, alone on a small hill, not far from the road they were on. It looked almost as abandoned and rundown as the Hawkeye home. Between the church and the village was a cemetery and he wondered if Riza's mother was buried there.
The market was on the outskirts of town: a collection of stalls set up in a grassy field. They went from stall to stall as Riza made note of the different prices for fresh fruits and vegetables. After they had visited each stand, she made her purchases and they wandered back toward the exit. Before they could reach it, Riza stopped and Roy turned to see what had caught her eye. He glanced at the prices beside each piece of jewelry on display and his heart sank. Even the lowest were beyond what he could afford.
"My mother had something like this," she said, pointing at a pearl necklace. "She let me wear it sometimes, and when she got sick, she said I could have it, but Father insisted on burying her in it."
Roy stared at the price tag: two million cenz. It would take ages to save up that kind of money, unless…If I were to try for qualification as a State Alchemist, I could afford it in a heartbeat. But would she accept that kind of gift? She had been reluctant to accept even a tenth of a percent of what the necklace cost, and something like this could be seen in a more romantic than he intended. "I'm sorry," he said.
"It's fine. I had just wondered how much it would cost to buy something like it. So I could have a piece of her." She walked away sadly and Roy followed her, putting his arm around her shoulders.
"I wish I could do something to help," he said.
"You could help me cook lunch," she said, shifting the sack of groceries to one arm so she could put an arm around Roy as well. "Hey, Roy, do you have anything from your parents?"
He shook his head. "Just pictures. I was so young when they died that I don't really remember them, but I wish I had some way of knowing them. Sometimes my aunt told me stories about growing up with my father, but she didn't know my mother very well." He looked up toward the distant mountains, far beyond the Hawkeye residence.
Riza leaned her head on his shoulder. "I'm sorry," she said softly, her words almost lost in the summer breeze. "I think that would be worse. As hard as it was to lose my mother, I'm glad I got to know her."
"I'm glad you did too." He pulled her closer as they walked up the road toward her house, wondering if any villagers were watching them and hoping that no one was. The last thing Riza needed before the new school year started was a flood of rumors about a new boyfriend.
