Arbiter's Word (Alchemist's Fire Book 1)

by Ogden Fairfax

  I kept my expression as still and neutral as I could, but Peters' behavior was getting on my Azoth-shielded nerves.

  “Melancholy, you know it's not fair when you snatch newcomers into your court without givng us a fair shake.” pouted Ruby as she pulled out a chair and took a seat. “Especially with the Phlegmatic Court all up in arms and fighting over the power vacuum Blake left behind.”

  “Oh but that's where you're wrong, Ruby dear, Chance here is courtless. Further, in the interest of fairness, I'm willing to sell the exclusivity contract with either one of you for the right price. You'll have to make me quite the offer, though. He's very...gifted.” she said, emphasizing her last word with more lurid implications. So that was her game, I thought. I'm not a new toy, I'm livestock to be traded, a stud up for sale.

  “Please stop talking about me like I'm a commodity. You hurt my girlfriend and I'm only staying so you'll leave us alone.” I said, sitting down and forcing her to let go of my arm. I was quickly nearing the end of my ability to keep the anger at Peters over essentially trying to kill my friend and then using her to blackmail me. I agreed to stay until two in the afternoon but I didn't say I had to play along with her anymore.

  Peters mercifully took her seat at the head of the table like before, and Tiva sat a few seats away from Ruby.

  “Is that why you're so unhappy to be here?” Ruby said, conjuring a glass of wine out of thin air and taking a sip.

  “Melancholy sent a golem to kill my friend.” I said, not caring that I had juste reveal I knew it was her behind the attack. Peters didn't flinch or let her smile falter in the slightest. “Then she only promised to heal her if I brought her an obscene amount of gold.”

  “That is correct.” Peters said, and I felt a tingle run down my spine as said it. I wondered if that was the clause in our agreement about information being lifted from my agreement to sell her gold. “Chance is very young, and still attached to the mortal fetters of his mundane life.” she said, as if explaining that I was dropped as a baby. “I had hoped to convince him that his efforts were best used elsewhere.” She concluded.

  “Wow, Peters. That's messed up.” Tiva said.

  “Indeed, bravo.” said Ruby, sarcastically giving the blonde woman a solf golf clap.

  “It isn't like you haven't gained anything out of this, Mr. Clarke.” Peters said back in a tone that felt more like she felt this was witty banter than me accusing her of attempted murder. “You've gained knowledge of my alchemical recipes, including access to the elixir of life.”

  “Only the recipes you thought I should have, probably.” I said. Her eyebrows went up at that. I guessed she was surprised that I'd put that together myself. “With everything you've done to try to keep me on a leash, I honestly don't think you'd have ever really given me knowledge that could put me anywhere near your level.”

  “You gave a courtless Phlegmatic access to high alchemy?” Ruby said in disbelief. “I know he's cute, but he's not that cute.”

  “What aren't you telling us?” Tiva asked.

  I sighed, knowing that this was probably where the conversation had been headed when Peters had wanted me to stay. I resisted the urge to conjure my own beverage, since I didn't want Peters or the other queens to know I could do anything without my tablet yet.

  “Well, darling, would you like to tell them or should I?” Peters said, leaning forward to put her elbow on the table and her chin to the palm of her hand.

  “Shit.” I said, suddenly realizing that even with my Azoth-cooled mind, I had still gotten myself maneuvered into deeper water.

  “What? What's the dramatic secret?” Ruby said, unimpressed with the drama unfolding before her.

  “I guess Peters didn't introduce me properly.” I said. “Hi, my name is Chance. I'm an Arbiter.”

  33

  “Bullshit.” Tiva said, dismissing my claim by folding her arms over her chest and giving me a skeptical raise of her dark eyebrow. Ruby, however, suddenly looked far more interested in my presence at the table. She sat up a little straighter, smiled a bit brighter, and I think she was even trying to pose herself in a way that showed off the curves of her attractive, young body.

  “I assure you, he's telling the truth.” Peters said, confirming my statement. Tiva only looked unconvinced for a few seconds more before her own face grew a bit more pale as she realized whatever gravity of the situation I didn't feel at the moment. Peters suddenly let out a long and haughty laugh. “I can't believe you thought I'd just bring some simple upstart with a bit of potential. I know I've been flirting with the man, but I'm not some smitten schoolgirl.” She said.

  “Oh please,” Ruby said, rolling her eyes at Peters so hard her head tilted back. before turning back to me. “Let me guess, she's been trying to get into your pants since she found out.” Ruby leaned forward, a hand to the side of her mouth and speaking in a stage whisper.

  “From what I know, that's about right.” I said.

  “I can't say I blame her,” Tiva said.

  “Not you too!” Ruby said with a mock gasp followed by a girlish giggle.

  “We haven't found an Arbiter in more than a thousand years. If you're going to sit there and pretend you don't want at least some of that power for yourself, you're an even bigger liar than I am.” Peters said.

  “Of course I'm tempted,” Ruby said. “but I prefer a bit more romance than the web of lies and secrets you've got him tangled in, mother.” All at once, I felt my surprise at finding out Ruby was Peters' daughter tempered by the understanding she was using that fact to sway my interest in her direction. It wasn't working. Then I was surprised to find Tiva had walked over to swing a leg over my lap so she could straddle me and look me in the eyes as she spoke. As intimidating as her no-nonsense attitude had been a moment ago, there was an animal hunger in her gaze that I found to be genuinely enticing.

  “Father my babies.” She said, straight to the point. “I'll give you whatever you want if you give me a child.”

  I knew she was telling the truth, it was plain as day. The earnest desire in her voice was matched by the longing sensation of her hands on my shoulders as she did her best to show off her admittedly impressive figure. But I also knew it wasn't me she was attracted to. It was my power. Nothing else mattered to her, or to the others. When her hand began to reach toward my zipper, I knew I had to speak.

  “Tiva, please,”

  “Yes?” she said. I grabbed her hand to stop her from making any more progress. My touch caused her heavy breath in my ear to catch.

  “Please get off of me.” I said. Disappointed that her brute-force attraction hadn't worked, she dismounted, and I had to take my hand from my pocket to secure my half-open zipper. I looked at the clock on the opposite wall. It was just barely one o'clock. I had to survive another hour in this shark tank, and I knew they all smelled blood. At least Tavi had gotten close enough for me to see she actually did have a gun in her shoulder holster. I tried not to dwell on how dangerous it was to turn down such an enthusiastic offer from a woman with a pistol.

  “It was worth a shot,” Tiva shrugged before sitting back down.

  “How awkward would that have been if he'd agreed?” Ruby said to Tiva, sipping from her wine glass again. “Would you have done it right here in front of us?”

  “Probably.” Tiva shrugged one more time as she took her jacket off, letting it drape over the back of her chair.

  “Moving on,” I said, attempting to speak firmly enough to take command of the conversation,

  “Ruby, are you going to try something or can I get a word in, here?”

  “In front of my mom? Ew. No.” She said. I knew that she was commenting more on the context of when I could expect her advances rather than denying she'd attempt them at all. Peters stifled a laugh.

  “So then let me guess, you'd approach me later and offer me whatever you thought would work to convince me to join you?” Ruby responded with a conceding nod.

  “In that case, I'd like to
say something.” I said.

  “We're all ears, dear boy.” Peters said, “Out with it.” She emphasized that last bit with another letcherous glance at my hands, which were still protectively holding my zipper against any other assaults. I let go, clearing my throat and ignoring the embarrassment I knew I would have felt more keenly if I had spent any energy over the evening. I took a moment to look each woman in the eye before I spoke.

  “I am not interested in joining any of your courts.” I said. “While not all of you have openly deceived me, none of you have gone out of your way to earn and maintain my trust. I've been at this for less than a week and you're all pushing me to make life-long decision that I barely understand.” I looked at Peters, leveling a cold gaze at her. “You made me promise to sell gold to you and only you, but now that Grace is set to be cured, I have no incentive to make gold for you ever again. If I need money, I'll make silver, or platinum, or some other dense metal and sell it to one of these two.” I said, hooking a thumb at the midpoint between Ruby and Tiva. “If you wanted me under your control, you made the wrong play. I'm willing to sit and play “tea party” until I'm allowed to leave, but don't think for a second that I have any reason to join your court.” Then I turned to Ruby.

  “No offense, but you're pretty much disqualified for being related to her.” I said.

  “None taken.” Ruby said, holding up both hands in surrender.

  “And Tiva, I'm flattered at your advances, but Peters was telling the truth earlier. I have mortal attachments I'm not willing to let go of.”

  “I see.” Tiva said, her mouth in a stern expression.

  “Anything else you wanted to get off your chest?” Peters said. “Or are you done having your temper-tantrum?”

  “Actually, yes.” I said, “I want to be clear that I know what I'm saying doesn't matter to any of you. But I've already promised Grace that I would never seek to halt my aging or extend my life through alchemy. I still feel guilty for how the rest of the night went. But if there's one last thing I owe you, Peters, it's gratitude for the lesson you've taught me since..”

  “What lesson is that?” she said, humoring me.

  “When I first met you, do you remember what I said?”

  “I'm sure you'll remind me.”

  “I said that if you intended to hurt Grace, you might as well have put me down right there.”

  “Ah, yes, you were quite dramatic then as well.” Peters tone was condescending and dismissive.

  “I was absolutely serious. So I have just one last thing to say” I said as I stood and raised my hand. In a flash of light, a thick titanium clipboard appeared in my hand. Attached was a note I'd scrawled when Amber and I had been preparing in the precious time we'd had before I'd come here.

  The room seemed to spring into motion around me, and I heard at least a dozen guns clear holsters and saw even Tiva was pointing hers in my direction.

  “I decree that I will finish my next declaration inumpeded.” I said quickly. I felt a powerful tug against my Azoth, It was like crashing into a hangover in an instant, and I felt like I was going to vomit as pain flooded my skull.

  “Kill him!” Peters commanded, and I heard a staccato rattle of every gun jamming at once. So far, so good. I took another breath to speak.

  “I hereby decree that henceforth, a new law shall bind all alchemists, that all will be born mortal, live mortal lives, and die mortal deaths.”

  Tiva's gun went off, and I felt an intense impact hit my chest followed by incredible pain. I stifled the scream that tried to claw its way from the throat and continued me speech.

  “And I thereby find that the gift of agelessness be considered a breach of the old laws.” I shouted above the chaos of the room before my right arm seemed to explode with pain. I watched as my hand, still grasping the clipboard, fell away from my wrist, severed by a broad knife held by Gustav, who loomed over me. In a fluid motion, he grabbed me by the neck, in a sensation that felt immediately familiar. As his grasp squeezed around my neck and cut off my air and circulation, my vision began to swim, but not before I saw Gustav's face warp into the mask of the golem who had attacked a week before. The one who had nearly killed me and had helped Peters try to take Grace away from me.

  I felt like my body was being electrified all over, the same sensation I Imagined that Grace had felt when I had promised never to become immortal. Azoth was being ripped from my body and thrown into the clipboard on the floor as my power made my command into law. Vaguely, I could hear screaming, but the increase of Gustav's grip on my neck was far more distracting.

  My right hand was gone, but my left was still free. Although all of us were being rapidly depleted of Azoth, I used some of my power to conjure a weapon to my left hand. It was the gun that Amber had made me memorize the schematic for just a few days ago. I was no marksman, in fact I'd never fired anything other than a BB gun in my life. But I had learned enough from the schematic that I could disengage the safety and aim it at Gustav's head.

  Unlike a normal gun, mine wasn't made to use gunpowder to throw lead. It was powered by a small charge of a powerful plastic explosive meant to launch a solid gold hollow-point projectile with all the force of a roll of quarters moving at twice the speed of sound. The recoil was enough to snap my wrist, but the bullet did the trick. Gustav's head split open like someone had put a stick of dynamite into an industrial-sized container of cream-cheese. Blood, bone, and brainmatter sprayed in all directions as the bullet punched through a skylight and kept going to who knows where. I dropped to the floor, expecting to have to further destroy my remaining hand by shooting at the other guards in Peters' employ, but the room had gone silent.

  I collapsed into my chair, surprised it was still there after Gustav's charge. Absently, I grabbed the tablecloth and tried to slow the bleeding from the stump of my right wrist as my migrane gave way to shock and the light-headedness of blood loss. I looked around the room, seeing that each one of Peters' goons lay in limp heaps of bloody gray clay with white bone sticking out in several places. Each of the three queens was gone, small piles of dust and their clothes and what they had on them were all that remained. I hadn't seen whether they'd burst into flames or melted away 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' style. I didn't care. It was over, and although I knew I was letting Grace down, at least I didn't become what we both feared.

  34

  I expected to die in that pizza parlor. I was relatively certain that the Flux void I'd created from my command would have killed me, but I guessed that between the queens and whatever was animating their golem security, it was barely enough. A horrified thought struck me, that maybe the flux void Amber had said was the result of my Arbiter ability was still pulling in Azoth from every livin thing in an ever-increasing radius. But then I saw a woman walk through the arched brick doorway into the dining room.

  She was positively angelic, striding across the floor toward me, dressed in a suit of plate armor that gleamed from a source of light I couldn't find in the room. Then I realized the souce of light was the pair of wings that stretched out behind her. They appeared to be made of light, bright and piercing like when I glimpsed my Azoth when I conjured or transmuted matter. No, they didn't look like Azoth, they were Azoth. She had dark auburn hair that fell in waves down to her shoulders, framing her pretty face in an expression of pride.

  She walked through the table, passing through it at the waist like a ghost. She knelt down next to me and looked at the bloody stump of my wrist. She grabbed it, and though I'd watched her pass through the table a second ago, her touch was as solid and real as the bloody fabric in my mangled hand.

  There was a burst of light that felt like it seared my eyeballs, and the pain from my right arm ebbed like a tide relenting to the cyclical dance of the moon's embrace. I could feel my hand was there again, as if I had just put on a glove made of my own flesh and bone. Then she reached over and did the same for my left hand, and I heard the bones painlessly move into place like grinding stones ben
eath my skin.

  I listened for sirens in the distance as the angel women put her arm under my shoulder and helped me to my feet. As my eyes recovered from the flash of light she'd used to heal me, I could see that the room no longer looked like the horror show it had a moment ago. The bodies, the ash, the clay, the blood, and even the gun I'd used to end Gustav were all gone. The tables were back to their original arrangement, as if employees had moved them apart to ready for tomorrow. I strained my ears, but no sirens were on the way. I frowned.

  “Can I ask a question?” I said, looking at the woman as she helped me remain steady as the led me toward the door. She paused, quirking an eyebrow and giving me a quizical look. “Are you a bailiff knight?” The woman paused for a moment before nodding, a serene smile on her face. “Did I fuck up?” I asked. The angel shrugged noncommittally as she resumed leading me to the door. Unsatisfied, I stood my ground and spoke again.

  “No, seriously, all week, it seems like every thing I've done has only made things worse. And then you come along and erase everything like it never happened. I'm really out of power, here, so I need to get a few answers. I'm going going to stand for this cryptic deux-ex machina stuff.”

  The angel frowned and tapped her wrist. I sighed and promised to make it quick.

  “Did all that just happen?” I asked. She nodded. “Am I going to be in trouble for doing what I did?” I asked. She shook her head in the negative. “Is Grace safe?” I asked. The woman made a face that looked like she wanted to say something like 'oh you poor, silly thing, that's the least of your worries now,' and touched my cheek. It felt warm, and I felt my level of Azoth climb until I was maybe a third of the way full and able to feel normal.

  “Do you know what's going to happen to me?” I asked. The woman shook her head.

  “Am I going to see you again?” I asked. She shrugged, uncertain.