The Lady Alchemist Page 3

The Court Alchemist’s eyes widened. His face paled.

  But the Magistrate’s lips curled into a catlike grin. “You can … make … anything. From anything.”

  Sepha opened her mouth and closed it again.

  Stupid! hissed the snide voice.

  “So, you can make a starling from sunlight, can you?” the Magistrate asked. Her eyes were bright with malice. “You can make a phoenix from fire? Or perhaps you can make truth from a lie.”

  All of the blood drained from Sepha’s head and went straight to her gut. Her limbs lit up with adrenaline, leaving her trembly and stupid.

  “Well,” Sepha said, “I—”

  “I’ll go easy on you,” the Magistrate interrupted. She tipped her head to one side and sucked on her teeth, considering Sepha. She could well imagine how she looked, how filthy and stupid, and she held still. The Magistrate craned her neck, another catlike arch, and looked around the mill-yard.

  Her gaze fell upon a line of wagons that were empty but for the straw that had padded their erstwhile freight.

  “I should very much like to see you transmute straw,” the Magistrate said, tasting her words and seeming to find them sweet, “into gold. And if you say you can’t,” she added, before Sepha could respond, “then I shall know you weren’t entirely truthful with me, shan’t I?”

  The world shrank, reduced to rain and rotted rooftops and stupidity and slips of the tongue.

  The Magistrate nodded to herself and said, her voice a gravelly purr, “You will come with me.” She glanced at someone behind Sepha. “Both of you.”

  Sepha stood with the Magistrate on a small wooden platform in front of Three Mills’ courthouse. Three Mills’ mayor, a round and largely irrelevant man, hovered behind the Magistrate, his face glistening from rainwater or sweat. Father and the Magistrate’s Court Alchemist were there, too, as well as the Magistrate’s soaking wet homunculus.

  The entire town was gathered in the square, eager to see the Magistrate herself, to hear what she might have to say about Three Mills and the proposed contract. Sepha tried not to look directly at any of the curious faces before her. She had to concentrate, anyway, on not being sick.

  This is all your fault, said the snide voice. It was right.

  “Good people of Three Mills,” the Magistrate called into the microphone. Her voice sounded tinny and high-pitched through the sound amplifiers, which stood on either side of the small stage. “I have completed my circuit of your little, ah, hamlet, and am deeply impressed. I am proud that our country can boast of such fine citizens!”

  There was a smattering of applause.

  “However,” the Magistrate said, and her metallic voice clanged as it echoed around the square, “two of your number have made a claim that I can hardly believe while attempting to gain a new contract with our fine army. As they were unable to verify this claim, I was forced to create a test for this child here.”

  The crowd fell silent. Their faces, opal and amber and umber and ebony, oriented themselves toward Sepha as if she were a magnet, and they so many pieces of iron filings. It occurred to Sepha that Ruhen might be in the crowd, and she wanted, more than ever, to dissolve into nothing.

  “Since I am a trusting woman and would love to see the wondrous things this child can do,” the Magistrate went on, “I have requested something magnificent. Just for today, just for her, I will lift the ban on alchemical production of pure gold. Sepha, if she can, shall transmute straw—normal, everyday straw—into gold!”

  No one cheered. This was a mill town, a town supported by amateur alchemists. Everyone knew this was an impossible task, even for Sepha. Straw and gold were too dissimilar for such a transmutation to work, and gold was famously tricky to produce in the first place. The rain had stopped as suddenly as it had started, and the sodden welcome banners wept rainwater onto the crowd below.

  “If the child can do it, I shall name her my Lady Alchemist, and she shall have equal rank and privilege to my own Court Alchemists.”

  Despite her fear, Sepha’s heartbeat quickened.

  “But if she fails,” the Magistrate continued, “well, I will have no choice but to sentence the child and her father to death and discontinue the army’s business with the mill. This may seem harsh,” she said loudly, over gasps of shock and the loud cries of You wouldn’t!, “but it is necessary! We cannot allow our society to become one in which businessmen lie to government officials with impunity in order to gain access to your hard-earned money! False claims of this nature are a crime against every tax-paying citizen of Tirenia. As such, this sort of malicious fraud is the highest crime of all and is to be punished without mercy.

  “Let us hope, therefore,” concluded Madame Magistrate, “that the child is as good as her word. She claimed, after all, that she can make anything from anything. If she has not completed her task by noon tomorrow, well, then we shall know the truth.”

  Sepha stood very still. The Magistrate’s words draped over her, heavy and hard. She couldn’t understand, could not comprehend what was happening.

  Someone took her by the elbow and led her inside the courthouse. Dimly, she sensed there was some sort of uproar behind her. She could hear Father shouting.

  Sentenced to death …

  Transmute straw to gold …

  With a feeling like a sudden wind, Sepha came back to herself.

  She was inside a large holding cell, enclosed by metal bars on three sides and a brick wall on the fourth. There were people outside the cell, lots of them, and they were all looking at her without appearing to look at her. Frequent furtive glances and fingernails chewed soggy.

  Sepha recognized faces she’d passed on the street, but she didn’t know any of them. These were government people, not mill people. She wouldn’t find any help here.

  Someone Sepha couldn’t see shouted, “They’ve found some straw! They’re putting it in Cell Two-Seven.”

  A woman and man glanced at each other in surprise. “Cell Two-Seven? Is that right?” called the man.

  “That’s what they said,” came the answer.

  “What …” Sepha started, but her mouth was cottony, and no sound came out. She tried again. “What’s Cell Two-Seven?”

  The woman regarded Sepha sadly for a moment, and then said, “It’s our biggest cell. In the Level Two basement. It’s the only cell we’ve got that can hold an alchemist in. Something about the construction.”

  As if she feared she’d said too much, the woman ducked her head and walked away.

  Well.

  They’d found the straw, and a place to put it. And a place to put her. A place for her to wait out the long hours until noon tomorrow. And then—

  Sepha gripped the metal bars of her holding cell, wishing for all the world that she was a real, true alchemist. She’d draw an alchem right here and now. It would be so easy to escape from this cell. But she was stupid, so stupid, because even after using those alchems every day for five years, she couldn’t draw a single one of them. She’d tried a million times, but they invariably turned out wrong: more swirled and continuous than the sharp geometrical symmetry of a good, proper alchem. Unusable.

  Sepha pressed her head against the bars, angling her face toward the tiled floor so no one could see the hot, furious tears spilling out of her eyes. A drop of blood splashed onto the floor. Godsdamnit! She’d ripped through the fresh scab on her forehead, pressing against the bars like that, and now she was bleeding again.

  Another drop. Another, and another. The drops coalesced into a large, semicircular blob.

  Like half an alchem.

  A transformation alchem flashed in Sepha’s mind. Her eyes flicked furtively upward. No one was looking at her. If she was going to try to escape, now was the time; and blood, after all, was as good as ink. She could get rid of the bars and make a run for it, if everyone was distracted enough. If not, the bars could form a good weapon …

  Three more drops. Now there was enough t
o complete a simple alchem, if she could manage to draw one.

  Sepha casually dropped one hand to the floor and wetted a finger in her own blood. Stroke by stroke, she spread it into a full circle. She’d never managed to draw an alchem before. But this time, she would, because she had to.

  She focused on her memory of the transformation alchem, but it began to waver.

  Stroke, stroke, stroke.

  The more desperately she focused, the less she could remember. Panic began to rise.

  Strokestrokestroke.

  It was the same every time. She’d start off all right, but then—

  Sepha stared down at her alchem.

  Botched. Botched to oblivion.

  Useless!

  Biting down a scream of frustration, Sepha wiped her finger across her bleeding forehead. She’d try again. She’d try and try, until—

  Boots appeared on the other side of the bars.

  Sepha hastily wiped away the botched alchem. But it was too late.

  “That wouldn’t’ve gone very well,” a man said. “Come with me.”

  The man ushered Sepha down a bright corridor, then down some stairs that seemed to last forever.

  Sepha walked through the doorway at the end of the stairs, knowing without asking that it was the door to Cell Two-Seven, the only cell that could keep an alchemist in.

  Sepha stood just inside the threshold as the heavy metal door swung shut. Once she heard the click that meant she was trapped for good, she allowed herself to look up and around.

  And around.

  The cell was less like a cell than an underground warehouse. Every surface of the room, glowing faintly orange from the light of the bulbs that hung from the ceiling high above, was etched with long curves and scrollwork. The etchings weren’t alchems, at least none that she could recognize. But if they weren’t alchems, what were they?

  Sepha stopped wondering about the etchings when, with a cascading sense of panic, she took in the mountain of straw that covered most of the floor and reached nearly to the ceiling.

  The straw she was expected to transmute into gold.

  Sepha’s legs, still wobbly from the Wicking Willow, buckled, and she crumpled to the floor. She sat, legs splayed, hands in her lap, and stared dumbly at the straw. Until this moment, she hadn’t quite believed it. She had to transmute straw to gold. This straw. And if she didn’t—

  The door opened. Footsteps. Then a voice, flat and female. “Madame Magistrate told me you don’t know how to draw the transmutation alchem.”

  “Mm?” Sepha grunted, turning her head to see who was speaking.

  It was a young woman, tall and pale, with blue eyes and a slightly beaky nose. Her chin-length hair was almost white. She wore a golden ring and a deeply black, silver-buttoned jacket. Around her waist, crisscrossing into an X, were two leather holsters stocked with ammunition, ingots, and rolled-up pieces of paper.

  She was a member of the Court Alchemists’ Guild and a Military Alchemist, to boot.

  Sepha had never met a Military Alchemist before and had never wanted to. They had a reputation for being brutish and violent, and were even more dangerous than the weapons Sepha made at the mill. Military Alchemists were the monsters mothers used to get their children to listen. They were warnings whispered in the dark. They were the surest enforcers of peace in Tirenia, because they were the alternative.

  The woman surveyed Sepha and continued, an inscrutable expression on her face, “Madame wanted me to draw the transmutation alchem for you. But you’re sitting in the only free space, so you need to move.”

  Sepha was too numb to ask questions, but just there enough to feel bemused and bristling. With an almighty effort, she clambered to her feet and stalked to the wall. The young woman produced a thick stick of chalk from one of her holsters and began to draw a giant transmutation alchem on the floor. The woman worked calmly, efficiently, as if she did this every day.

  Maybe she did.

  Sepha scowled.

  Before long, the woman was done. She inspected her completed work, gave a satisfied nod, and then strode toward Sepha. “I have to search you,” she said.

  “Why?” Sepha asked. There was a serrated edge to her voice—an unwise aggression—but she didn’t care.

  The young woman seemed unperturbed. “You’re an alchemist. You probably have metal on you. And since the wager is for you to turn the straw into gold …”

  “You think I’d try to get away with turning my stock into gold instead,” Sepha finished for her, shaking her head. The idea hadn’t even occurred to her. She would’ve done it in a heartbeat, if it had. “I don’t have any on me.” She thought ruefully of the axe Ruhen had lost in the woods. Wouldn’t have done her any good, anyway.

  “An alchemist without any metal,” the young woman said, arching her eyebrow. “This is a strange day.”

  She eyed Sepha’s thick sweater and frowned. Sepha barely had time to note the woman’s fingerless gloves—the stained leather must protect her palms from calluses and freshly spilled blood alike—before she took Sepha’s arm and shoved her loose sleeve all the way up. Sepha winced as her rising sleeve revealed faded bruises shaped like fingertips. The woman blinked and narrowed her eyes, but she didn’t say anything. Sepha didn’t, either.

  After she’d checked Sepha’s other sleeve with similar results, the woman flicked her eyes up to meet Sepha’s and said, “Lift your sweater, please.”

  Sepha pursed her lips, lifted her sweater to her ribs, and pretended that the woman was not staring at the yellow-green remains from a week ago, when she hadn’t managed to dodge Father’s thrown fist. The woman’s frown deepened into a scowl. Her eyes met Sepha’s again in a silent, searching glance. In a carefully flat voice, she said, “That’s quite a lot of bruises.”

  Sepha yanked her sweater back down. Her cheeks went crimson, but she lifted her chin and said, “But no metal.”

  “No,” the woman said. “No metal.” She patted her hands down Sepha’s legs, feeling for telltale lumps, and then she straightened and repeated, “No metal.” She looked at Sepha said, “Madame Magistrate wanted me to tell you she expects you to transmute all of the straw into gold. Good luck.”

  As the woman turned, a spike of panic ran through Sepha. This was her last chance. This woman was the last person she would see before—

  “This isn’t right!” Sepha cried. The woman turned back. “If you kill me and my father, the whole town will suffer.”

  The woman tipped her chin toward the straw. “Then get to work.”

  Then the woman was gone, and Sepha was alone with the mountain of straw.

  Time passed, or maybe it didn’t. It was impossible to tell in this huge, windowless room whether it was even day or night. Sepha was exhausted, but maybe that was to be expected. She’d almost died that morning but hadn’t. She would die tomorrow instead.

  But would she really?

  Even in this vast underground cell, Sepha could hardly believe what was happening. That her life could end in less than twenty-four hours.

  She imagined the scene: the gallows, maybe, or a firing squad. A blindfold. Blank moments spent breathless, waiting. And then pain, and then nothing, and then the After.

  Would she really allow herself to die?

  Sepha was on her feet before she even bothered to answer the question. The very first thing to do was to find out if these walls really were alchemy-proof. She strode to the nearest swirled etching on the wall—it was as unfamiliar as ever—and placed her fingers along the rim. She closed her eyes and pretended, hard, that the etching was an alchem.

  It was silent. It was dark.

  She thought of the material inside the wall behind the etching. She imagined it becoming dense, denser, until it took up only a few inches, leaving behind an enormous hole through which she could escape.

  And made the exchange, trading the material she had for the material she needed.

 
There was a halfway feeling, a sense of almost, and it was as if the etching gathered itself up and shoved her. Sepha’s eyes popped open as she stumbled backward, fingers tingling.

  There was no hole. She hadn’t made the exchange.

  She shook her hands and tried again, this time imagining the materials in the wall bending and warping, shifting aside to leave an opening large enough for her to squeeze through. And made the exchange.

  And again, it didn’t work.

  Sepha tried until her hands were numb, but it was no use. She didn’t know what those etchings were, but they sure as After weren’t alchems.

  If she wanted to survive, there was only one thing to do.

  Sepha approached the Military Alchemist’s transmutation alchem.

  It was different from the one she’d traced at the mill. That transmutation alchem was meant to turn raw steel into tirenium. This one, she guessed, was the standard alchem for transmuting lead into gold. Only instead of lead, she had straw.

  Ludicrous.

  Alchemy operated on the simple principle of exchange. To start, Sepha would put a material inside her alchem and place her hands just so on the alchem’s rim. Then, with the proper amount of focus, the alchem would become a portal through which Sepha could access dozens of pocket realities, each of which contained a different version of the material she’d placed inside the alchem. To perform the alchemical exchange, Sepha would select the version she desired and swap it with the original material. The portal would close, the pocket realities would vanish, and the original material would cease to exist, replaced with the version she’d selected.

  But for the alchemical exchange to work properly, the starting material and the ending material had to be closely related. Straw and gold were not closely related.

  But. Maybe there was some copper in the straw, leached up from the heavy mountain soil. Copper and gold were close enough for a proper exchange.

  Sepha grabbed an armful of the dry, crackly straw and stacked it in the center of the alchem.

  She walked back to the alchem’s outermost ring and knelt beside it.