Fio suddenly stood and exited the room, looking grim. Sepha spared half a glance to watch him go without her telling him to. She spared half a thought to wonder why in all After he was able to do it, but then she stopped herself. Fio was not her problem right now. He was not necessarily a problem at all. He was just … a puzzle. For her to solve at a later time.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Sepha said, looking at Destry but meaning it for Ruhen as well.
“Well, you might’ve saved us a lot of trouble if you had,” Destry said. Ruhen stayed silent. “But I understand why you didn’t.”
“How did he find you?” Ruhen asked after a tense moment, letting his hands drop into his lap. “How did he know you needed help?”
“All he said when I asked him was ‘Wicking Willow,’ whatever that means.”
Ruhen made a soft sound of comprehension. Sepha raised her eyebrows, and he said, “I’m only going by what I’ve heard, but they say Wicking Willows show up when a magician has made a sacrifice. Some magicians, the very worst kind, make human sacrifices to ask questions of the dead. He must’ve asked where there was a female alchemist nearby. One who would be desperate.”
Before Sepha could even worry about Ruhen admitting in front of Destry that he’d talked to magicians, Destry said, “That makes sense. I’ve heard that before, too.”
Sepha’s heart thudded and swooped during the long pause that followed.
Destry said slowly, to Ruhen, “But why would he—with her—”
“He can’t’ve known,” Ruhen said, to Sepha’s utter bewilderment. “Otherwise, he’d never—the danger—”
“Yes,” Destry said, frowning so intently at the ceiling that Sepha looked up at it too. “Yes, he must not have known. That could be good.”
There was another long pause. Ruhen and Destry were talking about her, which they were apparently in the habit of doing, and Sepha couldn’t work out what they meant. She opened her mouth to ask, but Destry spoke first. “But how? How did a dead magician’s soul come to be inside that homunculus?”
Sepha blinked. “I—I don’t know. I haven’t had time to find out, what with … everything.”
“That’s the first question we need answered,” Destry said. She tugged on the wrists of her gloves, tucked her short hair behind her ears, crossed and uncrossed her arms. “I have to go figure out what in all After I’m going to do about this. But thank you for telling me, anyway, Sepha. And don’t worry. As far as I’m concerned, the contract is more than enough punishment for lying to Mother. That test was an awful thing for her to do, anyway.” Destry was rambling. Destry never rambled. She fixed Sepha with a fierce look and said, “Next time you get in trouble, tell me immediately. Understood?”
Sepha nodded. “Understood.” She paused. “Should I—they probably need our help outside. I can—”
“No!” Destry snapped. Her voice was sharp. “No, you—you stay here. Don’t go out until the morning. The last thing we—er, you—need is to go out in,” she waved her hand, “all of this. Whatever you do, don’t tell Henric.”
Destry needn’t have said anything. Henric was the last person Sepha would tell. But Sepha nodded anyway and said, “I won’t.”
Then Destry was gone, and Sepha was alone with Ruhen, to whom this news would mean something entirely different from what it meant to Destry. Ruhen, who almost definitely hated her now. After a long, empty moment, she worked up the courage to look at him, and found him staring at her. Not in an angry way, but as if he, like Destry, was piecing scattered bits of information together.
“So, you think the contract is what caused this,” he said at last, gesturing between them.
She nodded.
“Do you think it’s because of the contract that I can’t stop thinking about you?”
Sepha’s heartbeat surged; a second later, so did her contract. “Probably,” she said, and Ruhen’s frown deepened.
“And you think the contract caused any feelings you might have for me,” he said.
This question was harder to answer for about a thousand different reasons. “I don’t think so,” she said, and Ruhen loosed his breath in a shaky huff. “But there’s no way to know for sure.”
Ruhen chewed his lip. Grimaced.
It was coming any second now. The moment when Ruhen would shout at her and storm off. “What?” she prompted, trying to hasten the moment along.
“With this, you’re careful. You’re reckless with everything else, including your own life, but with this, with your own feelings, you’re careful.”
Sepha blinked. “Shouldn’t I be? You know what the contract will make me do! And you know what he plans to do, if he gets a baby from me! Shouldn’t I guard myself against it any way I can, regardless of how I feel?”
Her head ached where she’d banged it against the wall. The library was gone, and people had probably died tonight. She had scrapes up and down her body from falling, and now this. Arguing. With Ruhen. About feelings.
Sepha chewed the inside of her cheeks. Ruhen’s glare faltered, his thunderhead eyes darkening from anger to something else entirely. He looked away again.
“You were going to leave,” he said. “I thought you were just going on a walk, or something. But you were leaving.”
Sepha nodded.
“You didn’t say goodbye.” His voice was hoarse.
“I couldn’t. You would’ve tried to come with me.”
A half-smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Well, you’re right about that.” He scrubbed at his mouth. “I almost didn’t catch you. He kept me away from you until the last second, used you as a distraction so he could escape. I thought you were going to die.”
His voice went gravelly at the end, and Sepha understood. He wasn’t angry. Not really.
“But you did catch me,” she said. “I didn’t die.”
Ruhen started to respond, then stopped. He sighed instead, and said, “Gods, I want to kill him.”
That made Sepha smile. “That’s what I was trying to do tonight.”
Ruhen only sighed again, and Sepha could practically hear him thinking, Reckless.
“That’s the only thing to be done, though,” he said at last. “That’s the only way out.”
“I know,” Sepha said, glad she didn’t have to explain it to Ruhen. The magician had to die.
“I want to help.” Ruhen’s voice was fierce, and he leaned close, resting one hand on her leg and circling her waist with the other. “He’s tricked you and hurt you. What he’s done to us, what he plans to do with—” he faltered and came to a stop. “I want to help.”
Sepha swallowed. Nodded. Touched Ruhen’s arm, briefly. “I’m sorry for all of this,” she said. “I’m sorry for lying so much. I didn’t know, when I made the deal, that this would happen. With you and me. And I’ve been trying so hard to fix it.”
Ruhen looked down. “I know,” he said, and looked at her again. He tucked a strand of her still-wet hair behind her ear and rested his forehead against hers. A thrill went through her, and her contract thrummed, but she didn’t pull away. She didn’t want to.
“Don’t you hate me?” Sepha asked, almost against her will.
There was a short pause, and Sepha was so tightly strung.
“Of course not,” he said at last. “I just wish you’d told me sooner. If I’d known you were indebted to someone so dangerous—I don’t know what I would’ve done.”
“There’s nothing you could’ve done, other than what you did do,” she said. “You helped me.”
Ruhen sighed. He was stroking the curve of her ear almost absentmindedly, his fingertips light against her skin. “I could’ve worried more, at least,” he said, and Sepha let out a weak laugh. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
Sepha rested a hand against his chest. His heartbeat quickened. “I’m fine,” she said, and it was less of a lie than before.
Ruhen traced the curve of her ear one las
t time and pulled away. They both had to wipe their eyes.
Feeling quite as reckless as Ruhen had accused her of being, Sepha whispered, “Will you stay with me tonight?”
It was a risk. But it was a risk she needed to take.
Ruhen nodded.
Sepha’s demons, her contract, the snide voice, and the memory of the undead magician, all thrummed and whispered and cackled.
But the smaller, truer part of her sighed in relief. As if she’d finally gotten something right.
The wind’s cool kiss woke Sepha the next morning. It had gotten warm last night, with the two of them nestled together on Sepha’s narrow bed like a two-piece jigsaw puzzle, so they’d cracked open one of the windows to let in the cold wind and the sound of the sea.
Sepha felt warm and comfortable and—awake. There was a strange, crystalline quality to the light, as if last night’s storm had polished it. Now, it was new and gleaming bright.
Last night’s storm.
The library. The undead magician. Ruhen. Destry. Ruhen!
Sepha rolled over with nearly violent speed and saw Ruhen, a wall of Ruhen. He was already awake.
There was a beat of silence as they stared at each other. Ruhen’s eyes were steely gray in the brightness, his body warm against hers. Nothing had happened last night—nothing beyond sleeping beside each other, that is—but something felt new. Something felt different. Something felt right.
“Morning,” Sepha said, covering her mouth with her hand.
Ruhen smiled a closed-lip smile. “Morning,” he said, hiding his mouth too. “How do you feel?”
He could mean any number of things by that question, so Sepha answered the way she felt like answering. “Awake,” she said, smiling. “And you talk in your sleep.”
She rolled over and sat up, putting her bare feet on the cool floor.
“I do?” Ruhen sounded surprised and not at all pleased. “What did I say?”
“Just nonsense words,” Sepha said, tugging on some socks and shoving her feet into her boots.
Ruhen sat up. “Oh? Well, you are weirdly silent while you sleep, so.”
Still feeling strange and new and somehow more real than before, Sepha took her comb from the top of her dresser. She tugged it through her long, rain-tangled hair, picking out the snarls.
“Sepha.”
Sepha stopped combing. Ruhen, bare-footed and broad-shouldered, was sitting on the edge of her bed. He seemed to take up the whole room. There was a strange and almost fearful determination in his eyes. “There’s something I want to tell you,” he said.
He’s been keeping secrets! barked the snide voice.
Sepha frowned. “What is it?”
Ruhen opened his mouth to respond but stopped when Destry burst into the room.
For a moment, Destry stared at the two of them. Then her mouth quirked into a smirk. “Well! Whatever this is,” she said, waving her hand at them, “needs to wait. Thuban wants you to help clean up out there. I couldn’t dissuade him, and with the state things are in, it might be best to let him have his way today.”
“Oh,” Sepha said. She licked her lips and asked, “What do they know?”
“They know it was the homunculus magician,” Destry said, frowning a little. “There wasn’t a way around that part. But as far as his connection to you goes, they’re in the dark.”
Sepha heaved a relieved sigh. “Thank you.”
Destry shrugged and looked at Ruhen. “You should go help, too. If you don’t mind.”
Ruhen twisted his mouth to the side, but nodded. He looked at Sepha. “Come find me after you’re done,” he said. “Don’t forget.”
Sepha nodded and watched as Ruhen strode shoeless out of the room.
“Well!” Destry said, looking expectantly at Sepha. “What happened?”
“Nothing!” Sepha said, pretending that she wasn’t going crimson, that half of her attention wasn’t on her lengthening tether.
“Doesn’t look like nothing,” Destry said, leaning against the wall.
“We only talked.” She knew it sounded like a lie, but that didn’t make it one.
“Please tell me you didn’t—”
“I’m not stupid, Destry!” Sepha said. “And neither is he.”
“Well, you’d better not be,” Destry said, sighing and looking up at the ceiling. “Twilit After, you’re toeing a dangerous line. You ready to go?”
Sepha grabbed her holsters from her desk and buckled them around her hips. “Ready.”
Frowning a little, Destry said, “I hope so.”
Sepha followed Destry out of the Ten and into a maze of hastily erected pavilions in the courtyard. The air smelled like char. Teams of alchemists were sorting through what few books had been saved from the wreckage. Against the outer wall, white sheets covered four human-sized lumps and several homunculus-sized ones—everyone who hadn’t made it out in time.
Bricks smashed against stone as alchemists heaved rubble out the library’s gaping windows. The air was taut and twanging, as if everyone were connected to everyone else by a bit of string. If Sepha yanked on a single strand, all of the alchemists would come tumbling toward her.
Her own string told her that Ruhen was inside the library’s husk, helping to clear the rubble.
“Start here,” Destry said, pointing at a sad pile of half-burnt books awaiting sorting. “I have to go take care of a few things.”
After a blank moment spent staring at the pile, Sepha knelt and started flipping through the books, trying to decide how burnt was too burnt.
“And there she is,” said a slinking, snide voice. Thuban appeared from beneath a nearby pavilion, twisting his Guild ring around his finger, Henric at his side. The circles beneath Henric’s eyes were darker than ever. “I was wondering when you would decide to pitch in.”
Sepha took a sharp breath. “Do you need something?”
“We need our windows back,” Thuban said, and pointed at an enormous pile of assorted detritus retrieved from the husk of the library. “This is all of the glass we could find. There was no way to separate the glass from the general rubble, so much of what you see might be unusable.” He smirked as he spoke, and added, “But for someone who could transmute straw into gold, this should be quite a simple task. You are, after all, only turning glass and metal into differently shaped glass and metal.”
Thuban thought he was taunting her, thought he was asking for the impossible. He knew, just as everyone here did, that the materials inside that pile of rubbish were too many and varied for any sort of transformation to work properly. A bitter wind tugged at the corner of a half-burnt AUTHORIZED and COMPELLED to EXECUTE poster that was partially buried in the rubble.
Sepha glanced at the library, burned to a crisp and roofless, and suddenly didn’t care that Destry had warned her not to rise to the alchemists’ challenges. She had an actual, real enemy, one whom she very much wanted to execute. She simply did not have the time to waste on such an insignificant man as Thuban.
Ruhen would say this was reckless, and Destry would tell her to ignore Thuban. But Ruhen and Destry weren’t here, and Sepha would finish before either of them noticed what was happening.
“You’re absolutely right. This will be simple,” she said, surprised by how confident her voice sounded. “I’ll need a transformation alchem, please.”
Thuban’s look of surprise was quickly replaced with one of derision. “Still can’t make your own?”
“No,” she said curtly, and turned to Henric. “Would you mind?”
“Not at all,” said Henric, looking altogether too pleased. He started chalking a transformation alchem around the pile of rubble.
Sepha’s palms started to sweat, and her heart pumped quickly—too quickly. “I can do this, I can do this,” she whispered to herself, wiping her hands on the legs of her pants.
Within moments, Henric straightened. “Finished,” he said. His voice boomed thr
oughout the silent courtyard, and Sepha could practically feel the alchemists turn their gazes curiously toward her. “I’d start soon, if I were you. You’re drawing a crowd.”
Sepha’s heart lurched as she looked around. Sure enough, there was a ring of alchemists around the freshly drawn alchem. Henric’s Military Alchemist friends were there, glaring at her as if they somehow knew she was the cause of all of this destruction.
She scowled at them, then looked away.
Ruhen appeared directly across the alchem from Sepha, his eyes wide, and shook his head frantically. Sepha pretended not to notice.
Sepha walked to the edge of the alchem, knelt, and placed her hands just so. She studied the towering pile of glass, metal, and sundries one last time, and closed her eyes.
It was silent. It was dark. That strange sense of newness, of awakeness, stirred; she felt as if anything was possible, if she would only think to do it.
Sepha allowed herself a small smile. Let Thuban choke on this, she thought.
She focused.
She thought of the glass shards and twisted pane dividers and pictured them whole and straight. She pictured the panes installed into their frames, so all that remained was for someone to install the fresh new windows into the husk of the library. The rest of the rubble, she pictured as dust.
Dozens of pocket realities sprang up, all possibility and potential, containing variations of the material inside her alchem.
She selected the variation she needed. And made the exchange.
There was a prolonged pulse that set her bones ringing, and Sepha opened her eyes and smiled. A neat row of new windows had replaced the pile of rubble, just as she’d intended. Any moment now, the ring of alchemists would start clamoring. Impossible! How did you do it? She readied to stand.
The Lady Alchemist Page 17