The Lady Alchemist

by Samantha Vitale

  Sepha gave him a brief smile and waved. It was all she could manage. There was an unaccountably powerful feeling somewhere around her heart, and it momentarily drowned out everything else. A feeling of relief, almost, although why she should feel relieved, she couldn’t guess.

  “Hello again,” she said when he reached them, feeling grateful that this time, at least, she looked presentable. The cut on her temple was all but healed, and she wore her new dark, fitted jacket to shield against the nip in the air. She’d even cleaned most of the mud off her boots in preparation for the journey.

  Ruhen smiled with one side of his mouth and said, “Good morning.” He looked almost nervous, but Sepha dismissed the thought. Why should he be nervous?

  Destry eyed Ruhen before looking at Sepha in a silent question.

  “This is Ruhen Salmarre,” Sepha said. “He’s, um, I met him the other day. There was a Wicking Willow,” she finished lamely.

  Destry’s eyes widened. She gave Ruhen an appraising look. “A Wicking Willow? And you both survived? Well, that’s something!” She paused. “Wait—Salmarre? The Salmarre who aced the Institute’s entrance exam?”

  Sepha gaped at Ruhen. She knew someone from town had passed the entrance exam—everyone at the mill had been buzzing about it—but no one knew who it was. And now to find out it had been Ruhen—

  Ruhen was unable to suppress his wide grin. “The very same. And you are?”

  “Destry Beronsic,” she said, thrusting her hand out. They shook, a quick up-down-release, and Destry said, “Impressive scores. How long have you been studying?”

  “A while.”

  “I didn’t know you were an alchemist!” Sepha said belatedly, and it came out sounding like an accusation.

  Ruhen’s smile went sly as he shrugged with one shoulder. “You never asked.”

  Sepha clicked her tongue and rolled her eyes, and he laughed.

  “Are you traveling to the Institute too, then?” Destry asked.

  “I am.” Ruhen’s eyes flicked from Destry to Sepha, and he said, “Can I travel with you, since we’re all going to the same place?”

  Sepha went crimson as Destry said, “I don’t see why not.”

  The other two paused, waiting for a response from Sepha, so she coughed and said, “Oh! Yes, of course! It’ll be fun!”

  You sound so stupid, remarked the snide voice.

  Ruhen smiled. “Thanks.” His smile faded and he said, with a look in his eyes that Sepha was probably just imagining, “I’m glad you made it out all right. From the whole—” he gestured toward the town square “—the straw. Transmuting it.”

  Sepha’s face went hot. So Ruhen had been in the crowd! Thoroughly disconcerted but pretending not to be, she said the first thing that came to mind. “Well, I didn’t have anyone lined up to save me at the very last second, so I had to solve the problem myself.”

  Mock sternness replaced the other look in Ruhen’s eyes, and he said, “Well, I would’ve saved you again if it came to that, but I have to tell you I’d’ve done it very grudgingly.”

  “Oh, so you saved me from the Wicking Willow, did you?” Sepha asked, squinting up at Ruhen. “Because I seem to recall more of a teamwork situation.”

  Ruhen faked a confused grimace. “If you say so.”

  Their eyes met, and Sepha couldn’t fight the smile that crept across her face. Ruhen smiled too, and she noticed that he not only had crinkles beside his eyes when he smiled, but deep creases in his cheeks, too.

  And she was staring again. She blinked and looked away, casting about for some sort of distraction, something that would keep her from being such a damn idiot, and failed.

  Luckily, Destry came to her rescue. With the barest sideways look at Sepha, Destry said, “Where did you study alchemy, Ruhen?”

  “I taught myself, mostly,” Ruhen said, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I’ve made friends with all the right librarians.”

  “You even taught yourself practical alchemy—not just theoretical?” Sepha asked, surprised. Even she had needed extensive teaching, at the beginning. She’d never have learned on her own.

  “Even practical,” Ruhen said. He grimaced. “Took me a long time.” Before Sepha could think of anything to say in response, he said, “Oh! Before I forget.” He reached into his knapsack and pulled out the axe Sepha had made at the Wicking Willow. “I, um. Found this.”

  He found the axe! Not only that, but he brought it with him! But why? So he could return it if he ever saw her again? But then that would mean he’d wanted to see her again, or had at least thought about the possibility of seeing her again, which meant that—

  Don’t be stupid! snapped the snide voice. Just take the axe.

  Trying to hide her blush, Sepha took the axe from Ruhen’s outstretched hand, and inadvertently brushed her fingers against his. Her eyes flicked up, and her gaze collided with Ruhen’s.

  That uncomfortable, sticky silence welled up between them.

  “And there’s the train, thank all the good in the After,” Destry said as the train, a monster with shining gray sides, rumbled up to the station. It slowed to a stop, releasing jets of steam into the misty air.

  For a few minutes, there was the organized chaos of passengers jockeying for the best seats. Sepha, the first of her little clan to board, led the others to the back of the car. Sepha, Destry, and Ruhen claimed seats facing each other, but the homunculus stood in the aisle, blocking the other passengers and generally causing a ruckus, until Sepha told him to sit beside Ruhen.

  At last, everyone was settled, and the train eased out of the station. The engine sped down the mountainside and into the rolling foothills, curling around rocky outcrops and crossing bridges whose supports were lost in misty depths far below.

  The door at the far end of the car slid open and shut. “Tickets!” cried a bored-sounding voice. “Get your tickets out.”

  Destry produced two tickets from her jacket pocket, and Ruhen pulled one out of his knapsack. The ticket master, a plump man with narrow eyes and a mouth that seemed too big for his face, stamped their tickets one by one. He was about to move on when his eyes fell on the homunculus, who was swaying with the motion of the car.

  “That can’t be in here,” the man said with a cruel glint in his small eyes. “It belongs in the baggage car.”

  Sepha glared at him. “But he isn’t baggage.”

  “It’s taking up a seat,” said the man. “If it’s not baggage and it’s taking up a seat, then it needs a ticket.”

  He gave her a smug smile, as if he’d just won a debate. No one in their right mind would buy a ticket for a homunculus.

  Sepha studied her homunculus, whose mouth was still obediently frozen in a placating smile. He wasn’t a person, not quite, but did that make him an object, deserving of the same treatment as a trunk or a knapsack? The homunculus blinked and used the toe of his shoe to scratch an itch on the back of his leg.

  Baggage didn’t blink, or itch, or scratch.

  And she would not be the type of person who treated a being under her protection as something lesser. Something worthless.

  “I’ll take one more ticket to the Institute, then,” Sepha said, lifting her chin.

  The ticket master snorted. “Suit yourself. Six livres.”

  Sepha handed him six gold pieces—a shocking amount of money—and he moved on to the next car, shaking his head.

  Destry studied Sepha with an expression somewhere between pity and respect. “That was a kind gesture,” she said, “but it was misplaced. Homunculi are alive, but they don’t feel gratitude or loneliness or anger. He would’ve been fine in the baggage car.”

  “It wouldn’t’ve felt right,” Sepha said. This homunculus was her responsibility now, and it was up to her to decide how to treat him. He wasn’t baggage. And that was that.

  Sometime in the afternoon, as the engine pulled them steadily across a flat stretch of grassland, it began to rain
. Huge drops splattered against the windows, leaving diagonal tracks as the wind blew them across the glass. The train tracks traced a long, gradual curve, and Sepha could see the engine far ahead as it tugged them across the plains.

  Sepha gazed out over the tall, sepia grass as it undulated beneath the force of the storm. It was almost like being at sea, she thought, although she had never been there. She glanced at Ruhen, as she’d covertly been doing all day, mostly to see if he was glancing at her.

  She’d caught him once.

  Right now, he was looking out the window; but, no, he actually wasn’t. He was looking at the window, studying it as if someone had written him a message on it. Sepha stared at the window, too, watching the raindrops move across it. It was mesmerizing in a way, but not nearly as interesting as the wind on the grass.

  The wind that was suddenly parting the grass in a straight line, shooting like a bullet toward the front of the train.

  Sepha’s eyes followed the strange line to a pulsing ball of light that hovered near the tracks ahead of the engine. The light intensified.

  Then it burst.

  White lightning, jagged and silent, erupted from an epicenter only seconds ahead of the train’s engine. Horrified, Sepha shifted her gaze to meet Ruhen’s. Comprehension sparked in his dark eyes. Destry sucked in a deep breath.

  Time slowed.

  “Brace yourselves!” Destry screamed, and the other passengers twisted around to see her, shouting confused questions over each other’s heads. Ruhen half-rose from his seat, and people were standing and diving, clutching at whatever they thought would save them.

  In all the chaos, Sepha’s eyes were drawn to her homunculus’s stillness.

  Her homunculus, who’d be thrown a mile if the train skipped the tracks.

  At the same moment that the engine bucked into the air, Sepha launched herself toward the little man and scooped him into her arms. He was heavier than she’d expected, and she teetered forward.

  There was a horrible series of metallic squeals as the aftershock of the crash reached the cars ahead. Then it reached theirs.

  The car leapt impossibly high off the tracks, throwing Sepha off her feet. For an infinite fraction of a second, Sepha was falling, homunculus and all. Then a tirenium-strong arm snatched her out of the air.

  Time sped up again.

  The car rocketed off the tracks and into the tall grass. The passengers who hadn’t listened to Destry were tossed this way and that through an avalanche of falling luggage as the car bounded across the plain. The rest of the train’s cars careened off the tracks behind them, and they were all in danger of being crushed to death at any moment.

  But Ruhen’s arm was around her waist, and he was holding her tight against the wall of his chest. Lithe and fluid, he absorbed the shocks of the car’s leaping and lurching, and Sepha clutched at him with her free arm.

  At last, the train, slowed by the wet grass, slid to a stop. Their car tipped ominously to one side, but then, with an odd motion, clunked back down onto its wheels. A thank-After-we’re-alive moment passed. From far away, Sepha heard Destry asking the car at large if everyone was all right.

  Sepha slumped against Ruhen and felt the tension in his body dissolve as he leaned his head forward and loosed his breath in a huff. He smelled like autumn wind wrapped in another strange, wild smell she didn’t recognize.

  With a deep breath, Sepha set herself onto her own two feet and eased away from Ruhen. One more deep breath, and she looked up and saw his worried frown.

  “Thanks,” she said. Her voice came out as a whisper, hardly louder than her own wildly beating heart.

  Then a voice, not the snide one but one that was entirely unfamiliar, said, Him!

  Warmth flooded Sepha to the bones and filled her with something so right that everything in her fought against it.

  Him! the voice said again, and Sepha’s left palm tingled electric, as if an invisible finger were tracing circles onto it. She clenched her hand into a fist, digging her fingernails into her skin.

  Her contract, that smooth, hard thing beside her heart, began to thrum, as if pleased.

  As if it had figured out where Sepha’s baby was to come from.

  Sepha shook her head, blinking rapidly. Not him! Not anyone, but especially not him!

  Ruhen scanned her from head to toe and seemed to deflate. Unclenching his fist from the luggage rack, he eased the homunculus from beneath Sepha’s arm. He set the little man down in his chair and, to Sepha’s surprise, slid his hand down her arm until it circled her wrist.

  Her contract thrummed with approval.

  “Are you hurt?” His voice sounded hoarse.

  Sepha shook her head and focused on a point somewhere over Ruhen’s shoulder. The other passengers were shifting and groaning, hauling themselves to their feet and searching for their luggage.

  “You?” she asked, flicking her eyes to his and away again.

  He shook his head, rubbing his mouth with his free hand. “That’s three, you know.”

  Sepha swallowed. “Three what?”

  “Three times you could’ve died in the past three days.” He attempted a smile, but it faded.

  Their eyes met, his dark with worry or something else. But her contract was still thrumming and someone had attacked their godsdamned train—

  “Did you see what happened?” Ruhen asked at the same time that Sepha said, “I should go help Destry.”

  “I’ll come too,” he said quickly.

  “No!” Sepha almost shrieked. “No, just—just stay and watch my homunculus, if you don’t mind.”

  And she patted his shoulder like an idiot, then looked around for Destry, who was suddenly nowhere to be found.

  Suspecting that Destry would be in the middle of things, Sepha clambered off the train and into the forceful wind. The damp air smelled of ozone and crushed grass. It cleared the cobwebs from her head and stilled her contract, and she quickly spotted a group of people huddled near the engine. Sure enough, there was Destry’s white-blond hair, bright against the storm’s darkness.

  Aided by the wind at her back, Sepha approached the huddle. A short woman dressed in the characteristic Tirenian blue of a train engineer jumped down from the engine, looking sick. “The driver’s dead,” she shouted, holding her hat onto her head. “Derailment at full speed like that, I couldn’t hope otherwise, but … he’s dead.”

  Destry leapt up into the engine to see for herself and momentarily reappeared, her face tight. “A quick death, at least,” was all she said.

  One man dead, and maybe more. Sepha felt much too old and simultaneously not nearly old enough to deal with this. She wondered what had gone through the man’s mind in the last few seconds of his life, when he saw the strange light erupt over the tracks.

  With dawning comprehension, Sepha ran back past the zig-zagging line of cars toward the tracks. Then she saw it: an enormous crater where the tracks had been. On either side were knotted metal ribbons, sticking up in the air like a dead spider’s legs.

  No natural explosion could’ve done this. This was magic, and it didn’t take a magician to realize it.

  Sepha’s right hand began to ache with a bone-deep pain that sent her mind racing back to Cell Two-Seven. To the searing heat of the undead magician taking her hand between his.

  Something like the echo of a whisper drew Sepha’s eyes to the swaying grass on the opposite side of the tracks. Standing barely higher than the grass was the undead magician himself. He was leering at Destry with manic eyes, baring every single tooth.

  A familiar windmilling, howling panic took over, freezing Sepha in place. What did he want—and why was he here?

  Then the magician opened his mouth, and Sepha realized what was about to happen.

  “Look out!” Sepha screamed as a burst of red light like an electric fire arced toward the incapacitated engine and the huddled men and women.

  There was a faint pulse, a
nd a tall metal tree erupted from the crowd, forming a protective wall of branches between them and the electric fire.

  The fire tore through the air. It snapped and sparked against the metal branches, scorching the grass at the base of the tree and making Destry’s hair stand on end, but the defense was effective. The magician’s attack hadn’t harmed anyone.

  The heavy rain, which had decreased to an annoying, sharp mist, suddenly returned in full force. The group of people scattered, leaving Destry crouching alone behind her tree.

  Destry pulled two alchems from her holster and placed them on the ground. She reached for her holster again, this time producing two large ingots, and pressed them onto the waiting alchems.

  As quickly as she’d moved, Destry was too slow.

  The magician’s second attack came just as Destry placed a hand on each alchem. With a garbled shout, he conjured a new fire. This one was blue and bestial, shaped like an enormous crow with wickedly sharp talons. It shot deadly quick toward Destry, and Sepha knew that Destry was going to die.

  But then there was a loud, electric splash. The magician’s attack spiraled into the sky and dissipated. Through the water that ran down her forehead and into her eyes, Sepha could hardly make out what was happening. It had seemed, just for a moment, that the rain had formed a wall of its own, one that the fire had been unable to penetrate. As if the rain itself was protecting Destry from the attack.

  The rain, or a second magician, joining the fight for reasons of their own.

  Sepha looked wildly around, but only saw Destry and the huddled mass of passengers near the back of the train. Maybe the other magician was hiding in the grass too—

  So easily distracted, are you? whispered the snide voice, and Sepha snapped her gaze back toward Destry.

  With a double pulse, Destry stood and assembled what looked like a small cannon. She’d used two alchems at the same time!

  Sprinting away from her tree’s protection, Destry produced a large bullet from her holster. She loaded it into the barrel and hoisted the cannon onto her shoulder. She yanked on the pull and was nearly thrown backward as the round exploded from the cannon. There was a magnificent explosion across the tracks, but Destry had overshot the homunculus.