“I’ll be with you in just one minute!” she said brightly, busily repacking a set of very fine, sharp-looking silver instruments in a velvet carrying case.

“So.” She snapped the case shut and latched it. “Everybody at Brakebills has an aptitude for magic, but there are individual variations—people tend to have an affinity for some specific strain.” She delivered this speech by rote, like a stewardess demonstrating in-flight safety procedures. “It’s a very personal thing. It has to do with where you were born, and where the moon was, and what the weather was like, and what kind of person you are, plus all kinds of technical stuff that’s not worth getting into. There are two hundred or so other factors which Professor March would be happy to list for you. It’s one of his specialties. In fact I think Disciplines are his Discipline.”

“What’s your Discipline?”

“It’s related to metallurgy. Any other personal questions?”

“Yes. Why do we have to go through all this testing? Can’t you just figure my Discipline out from my birthday and all that stuff you just mentioned?”

“You could. In theory. In practice it would just be a pain in the ass.” She smiled and put her blond hair up and secured it with a clip, and a sharp shard of his old yen for her pierced Quentin’s heart. “It’s much easier to go at it inductively, from the outside in, till we get a hit.”

She placed a bronze scarab in each of his hands and asked him to recite the alphabet, first in Greek, then in Hebrew, which he had to be prompted on, while she studied him through what looked like a many-crooked collapsible telescope. He could feel the metal beetles crackling and buzzing with old spells. He had a horrible fear that their little legs would suddenly start wriggling. Occasionally she would stop and have him repeat a letter while she adjusted the instrument by means of protruding screws.

“Mm,” she said. “Uh-huh.”

She produced a tiny bonsai fir tree and made him stare at it from different angles while it ruffled its tiny needles in response to a wind that wasn’t there. Afterward she took the tree aside and conferred with it privately.

“Well, you’re not an herbalist!” she said.

Over the next hour she tested him in two dozen different ways, only a few of which he understood the point of. He ran through basic First Year spells while she watched and measured their effectiveness with a battery of instruments. She had him read an incantation while standing next to a large brass clock with seven hands, one of which circled its face backward and with disconcerting speed. She sighed heavily. Several times she took down sagging, overweight volumes from high shelves and consulted them for long, uncomfortable intervals.

“You’re an interesting case,” she said.

There is really no end to life’s little humiliations, Quentin reflected.

He sorted pearl buttons of various sizes and colors into different piles while she studied his reflection in a silver mirror. She tried to get him to take a nap so she could pry into his dreams, but he couldn’t fall asleep, so she put him under with one sip of a minty, effervescent potion.