You didn't spend as long as Gabe had knocking around the Mediterranean, not to mention learning alchemancy in Old Andalusia, without picking up at least a smattering of Arabic. Gabe could haggle for fruit and insult a camel-merchant and talk basic potions in rooms filled with hookah smoke, but only fragments of William's earnest imprecations were making sense. He picked out magic, and the traditional acolyte's greeting to a Sufi (every time Gabe had asked, he'd had a different translation, but they all evened out to instruct me). He didn't know if the rest was beyond him or in no language he actually knew. (How many did William know? And did it matter to the potion?)
He wondered how long it had been, but didn't even bother looking up; Gabe didn't keep a clock in his workshop. Potions worked to their own time. Instead, he shifted his grip on William's hand to be more certain. William's palm was damp with sweat, and Gabe wasn't intending to let go until this was over.
Tilted over William, he found himself wondering what the mystics he'd studied with in the Levant, the old hermits he'd tracked down in the desert, the well-robed poets in their cool gardens, what they'd all make of William. And he found himself grinning.