The Lady Alchemist

by Samantha Vitale

  Captain Ellsworth swore. Behind Sepha, Ruhen and Henric swore, too.

  Sepha glanced at the table. There was a map lying there, on which Ms. Elos had hastily plotted their new course with a complicated set of angles and calculations. From what the map showed, the ship was headed toward a forest of sea stacks. There was hardly any space between the marks on the map for their ship to pass through.

  “And we can’t change course or access the engines,” Ellsworth muttered.

  “Even if we could,” Ms. Elos said, “with things the way they are, anyone inside the engine room would be cooked alive. It couldn’t be done, regardless.”

  “What are you doing to arm yourselves against the cleptapods?” Destry asked, looking up from the map.

  “We have some armaments,” Ellsworth said, running both hands through his bright red hair. “But this isn’t a military vessel. It’s a rudding cargo boat. Easy prey for those godsdamned demons.”

  Feeling distinctly that she was the only person in the room who didn’t know what they were talking about, Sepha asked, “What’s a cleptapod?”

  Ms. Elos and Captain Ellsworth gaped at her as if she was the stupidest person they’d ever seen. Destry spoke before they could. “Cleptapods are giant octopuses, about the length of this boat. They’re strong enough to break a boat in two, if there are enough of them. They hunt humans specifically, and when they eat people, they use the bones to create armor for themselves.”

  “Damn near impossible to kill and smarter than half the men on this boat,” Captain Ellsworth added. “Thank After they’re so damnably slow above water. It’s the only reason anyone’s ever survived.”

  They all went silent for a moment, digesting this news. Sepha shifted uncomfortably, acutely aware, for the first time, of the framework that held her muscles together and kept her upright.

  After a fidgety moment, Ms. Elos said, “Fixing the rudder would solve our immediate problem. If we can change course, we can deal with the engine later.”

  “But can it be fixed?” asked Ellsworth, his voice a deep rumble.

  “An alchemist could do it,” said Ms. Elos. “Probably.”

  Sepha looked at Destry, her mouth already open with the offer to help, but Destry shook her head fiercely—a silent order not to say a word.

  “Henric will do it,” Destry said. “And afterward, he will stay belowdecks and transform weapons from whatever metal you have available.”

  Henric twisted his lips at her commanding tone but gave a single, tight nod.

  “For my part, I’ll make whatever weapons I can for your crew as well, Captain. When we reach cleptapod territory, I’ll fight with you. If you have any lifeboats, you ought to—”

  “None of the crew will go,” Ms. Elos said. Something like pride gleamed in her midnight eyes as she said, “If the captain stays, we all stay.”

  Destry glanced from Elos to Ellsworth. “All right, then.”

  “How long until we get to cleptapod territory?” Henric asked.

  “Not long, and surely not long enough to waste any more time,” Ms. Elos said and led Henric out of the room. Captain Ellsworth’s gaze snagged on Sepha for half a second, and then he stomped out after his first mate and Henric.

  “Do you have any alchems left, Sepha?” Destry asked. Her voice was businesslike, direct. As if this were only another mission with her Military Alchemists. As if her arm weren’t dangling uselessly at her side.

  “No.”

  Destry slipped a rolled-up alchem from her holster and handed it to Sepha. She winced at the movement, even though she’d used her uninjured arm. “Take this one,” she said. “Don’t freeze. Don’t overthink things. Your body will remember your training.”

  “It’s the magician,” Sepha said. She took the alchem from Destry and stuffed it into her holster. “He’s here. I can feel him.”

  Destry loosed a quick breath and stared up at the ceiling, pulling apart and reassembling her plans. “All right,” she said after a minute. “One magician. I can handle that.”

  “What happened to you?” Sepha asked. “How can you fight with a broken arm?”

  “It’s not broken. I only fell on it wrong,” Destry said, sounding distracted. “The magician doesn’t know you’re an alchemancer, Sepha,” she added abruptly. “Try not to use your magic tonight—unless it’s to kill him, to get out of the contract.”

  Sepha gaped at Destry. “What?”

  “He’d never have made that bargain with you if he knew you had magic,” Ruhen explained. Ruhen and Destry’s inexplicable conversation after the fire suddenly made sense. This is what they’d been talking about. “He still might not know. It’ll be good to keep him in the dark.”

  Sepha’s thoughts were scattered, scrambling. “I couldn’t use my magic even if I wanted to,” she admitted. She didn’t know if the shame that colored her cheeks was because she had magic or because she didn’t know how to use it.

  “Good.” Destry’s eyes hardened. “You watch out for her,” she said to Ruhen. “Keep her safe this time.”

  “I will,” Ruhen said, his jaw set. “And you as well, if you’ll let me.”

  “No need,” Destry said, and left without another word.

  Yet another unspoken thing had passed between Destry and Ruhen, some understanding beneath the short verbal exchange. She stared at the door through which Destry had disappeared, wondering whether she should ask about it. Wondering whether it mattered.

  Wondering whether anything mattered anymore when it was likely that they were all about to die.

  About to die.

  The thought should’ve sent Sepha into a panic and filled her mind with a hundred ways to escape, to prevent, to delay.

  But her only thought was of Ruhen and regret.

  At the same moment Sepha spun around, Ruhen said, “Sepha, there’s something—”

  He saw the look on her face and went still. His throat bobbed.

  Sepha closed the space between them, curled her hands around the loose folds of his shirt, and pressed her lips against his.

  It only took half a second for her brain to catch up, to notice Ruhen’s stillness, and she pushed away.

  “Sorry,” she said, looking anywhere but at him. She raised a hand to her lips. She’d just kissed Ruhen! Just like that! “We’re about to die, and I wasn’t thinking. I—”

  Then Ruhen was there, one hand at her hip, the other sliding to her neck, tipping her face toward his.

  He kissed her back.

  Only for a moment.

  And she was ablaze.

  This time when they broke away, Ruhen rested his forehead against hers. Their lips were inches and universes apart. Sepha’s breath snagged in her throat as she hooked one arm around him and sent the other hand trailing up his chest. His hands moved, too, heavy and slow, and a blossoming heat that transmuted her flesh to pure liquid trailed after his touch.

  And rightness, and relief, and danger, and desire. Breath and touch and autumn and the sea.

  He’d kissed her! She’d kissed him, and he’d kissed her back! And now—now, she wanted to—

  The words “Kiss me” had barely left Sepha’s mouth when he obliged, kissing her so powerfully, so urgently, that she gasped in surprise. He must have noticed, because he smiled against her and kissed her more strongly than ever. His lips were needful and firm, his touch overwhelming enough for her to lose herself in it. A thrill shot from her lips all the way down to her toes, and her knees nearly buckled. Nothing else existed. Nothing else, nowhere.

  When he pulled away at last, it was only so he could press his lips against her cheek, her jaw, her neck. Sepha’s eyes fluttered shut as relief and something else thrilled through her again and again. When the thrum of her contract became too clear a warning, Sepha rested her hand against Ruhen’s cheek and pulled away.

  They shared a sheepish grin. In the dim room, Ruhen’s face was all softness and desire, and maybe a tou
ch of fear.

  “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that,” Ruhen said hoarsely.

  Feeling not entirely herself, Sepha smiled. “Tell me, then.”

  Ruhen’s hands tightened on her waist above her holsters. “Since just after the Willow. When I looked at you, and you looked at me. Since then.” He bit his lip, and Sepha watched his mouth move as he said, “And you?”

  Sepha’s cheeks went crimson. “Almost as long.”

  Ruhen hid his face in her hand and pressed a kiss against her palm. A frown passed over his face, and he opened his mouth to speak.

  The Dear Lady gave a sudden jolt, as if it had collided with something huge and strong.

  Sepha and Ruhen scrambled apart. A sudden panic replaced the heart-pounding frenzy in Sepha’s core as the wheelhouse began to reverberate with a rolling metallic sound. Something hard was scraping along the side of the boat.

  “Cleptapods!” she whispered, because she didn’t have enough breath to scream, and she scrambled to the windows. The ship’s deck was completely deserted. Captain Ellsworth must have ordered everyone belowdecks. And so here she and Ruhen were, the only idiots who weren’t safely hidden away.

  But where were the cleptapods? Sepha ran from one side of the room to the other, searching the water, which was lit by the ship’s bright floodlights. All the while, the dreadful scraping continued.

  There! To the starboard side, she could see a great swelling in the water of something enormous just beneath the waves. Then, as if it had felt her eyes upon it, a cleptapod broke the water’s surface.

  Huge tentacles rose up and calmly explored the main deck, their sinuous curves hampered by the ribbing of stolen bones. Then came the body, bulbous and huge, a demon who’d escaped from Darkest After, covered with thousands and more thousands of human bones.

  The cleptapod, seemingly in no hurry, latched onto the side of the Dear Lady with its huge suckers and allowed itself to be pulled along with the boat, which was still churning too quickly through the water.

  A strangled shrieking sound behind Sepha made her spin around. “Ruhen?” she cried.

  “It wasn’t me,” Ruhen said, sounding confused. “It was Fio.”

  Fio? Sepha ran to where the homunculus crouched beneath the table. He looked terrified.

  “No!” he shrieked horribly. “No, no, no,” he whispered to himself, rocking back and forth and working his fingers anxiously.

  “Go hide, Fio,” Sepha said. “Don’t come out until the cleptapods are gone.”

  Fio shot out from under the table and sprinted away. The door slammed behind him, the sound as loud as a thunderclap on the apparently deserted boat.

  “Sepha,” came Ruhen’s urgent voice.

  “What?” she whispered, and then saw what had frightened him: two cleptapods were approaching from either side of the boat, onerously pulling their massive, bulbous bodies arm over arm toward the wheelhouse.

  Sepha and Ruhen, the only prey stupid enough to hide in a room lined with windows, had been spotted.

  “What should we do?” Ruhen asked. They’d both ducked behind the solidity of the helm, a measure that hadn’t seemed to fool either cleptapod.

  “I don’t know,” Sepha whispered.

  “We don’t have a lot of options,” Ruhen said. “Do we fight, or do we hide?”

  Gratified that he wasn’t trying to force her into hiding (and simultaneously wishing he would insist on it so she could just be a coward, for once), Sepha said, “Fight. But with what?”

  “Harpoon,” Ruhen answered. “There are two harpoon guns on the boat. You just have to be able to get to them.”

  Sepha could sense what he was going to say next, and whispered, “Ruhen, no!”

  “Sepha, you can get there easier than I can. I can be a good distraction.”

  “Ruhen, I can’t let y—”

  “You can. This is the plan. We’re doing it.” He tipped his head up to peek out the window and said, “Both guns are all the way forward. Do you think you can get to them?”

  He wrapped his hands around her arms, as if by holding them he could keep her safe for just a moment longer. Sepha looked into his eyes, which were now brimming with a different sort of ferocity, and was surprised to see something like sadness hiding behind it. It was the sadness that scared her more than the cleptapods, more than the magician, more than anything. Ruhen, she realized, knew he was going to die.

  “I can do it,” she whispered. “Can you be careful?”

  In answer, he kissed her once more, a kiss as gentle as the last one had been fierce. “I’ll be as careful as I can, Sepha Filens of Three Mills. Ready?”

  Sepha nodded. A silent lie.

  Together, they snuck out the door, slunk along the far edge of the wheelhouse, and peeked around the corner to scope out a likely route. Not far off, the floodlights glinted blue-white off the exoskeletons of human bones. Rivulets of briny water, suspended until now in hollow sockets and skulls, seeped down and splattered loudly onto the deck.

  Though only two cleptapods gripped the boat, Sepha sensed that many more were waiting beneath the unquiet surface of the water. Waiting for the moment when the boat, cracked like an egg, would sink into their watery realm, and they could harvest their drowned dinner at their leisure.

  After taking as long a look as they dared, Ruhen and Sepha retreated to the relative safety of the wheelhouse’s far side. “Wait here,” he said, pressing her against the wall. For a ludicrous moment, Sepha thought he might kiss her again, but he only leaned close enough for his breath to tickle her ear, and whispered, “I’ll go get their attention. Try to wait for an opportune moment.”

  Feeling as winded as if she’d just sprinted a mile, Sepha whispered, “Be safe.”

  He squeezed her arms in reply and ducked away, and Sepha’s tether unspooled as Ruhen disappeared around the corner of the wheelhouse and inched into the openness beyond.

  Sepha waited, alone in the night and unsure what she was waiting for. She could hardly think for fear. She stared wildly in one direction, then another, startling at every half-imagined sound. She felt half-frozen and shook so violently she was sure her rattling teeth could be heard for miles. She clamped her mouth closed to shut herself up.

  But the rattling continued.

  An icy thrill of terror froze her the rest of the way through.

  It had not been her teeth doing the rattling, but other people’s teeth and skulls and toes. They clacked ominously as one of the cleptapods moved an exploratory appendage toward her. Sepha held her breath and pressed herself against the cool, smooth wheelhouse wall, her heart beating nearly as loudly as the clacking bones.

  The tip of the cleptapod’s arm appeared and slowly, almost lovingly, wrapped itself around the wheelhouse’s edge. The arm stuck where it was placed, only a few feet away from Sepha.

  The smallest part of the cleptapod’s arm was lined with what looked like forearm bones, laid with astounding precision, and planted an inch or two inside the cleptapod’s flesh at each end, so that the bone was flat against the cleptapod’s arm. Between the bones, the cleptapod’s flesh glinted violently orange. Farther up the arm were broken-off pieces of rib cages, thigh bones, and pelvises, strategically placed according to the curve of the cleptapod’s body.

  Sepha stared at the arm and realized, horrorstruck, that this cleptapod alone was armed with the bones of hundreds of people. How many thousands had the cleptapods killed? How many more would they kill?

  And would her own bones soon grace the arm of a cleptapod, like some sick sort of bracelet?

  The thought of it—of all the deaths, not just her own—flooded her with revulsion, and her icy terror melted away.

  She stopped wondering if she would die.

  She started wondering how she would kill them.

  The arm released its grip on the wall with an unpleasant thuck and resumed its calm exploration. Its very tip, passing inches above
Sepha’s head as she dove to the ground, grasped the wheelhouse door’s handle. With one easy pull, it wrenched the door free. It tossed the door lazily aside and reached into the wheelhouse, as if to confirm the room was indeed empty.

  A second arm, crackling as loudly as the first, reached in from the other side. As one, the two arms pulled on the empty door frame, tearing the wall open as if the wheelhouse were a birthday present and the walls simply the wrapping.

  Sepha pressed her face against the deck’s rough surface as the wheelhouse wall buckled and bent, its metal sheets shrieking in protest. If Ruhen didn’t distract them soon, the cleptapods would kill her by accident as they pulled the wheelhouse apart.

  Then the deck gave a sudden, violent jerk, as if it had been knocked aside by an enormous wave.

  The cleptapods released the wheelhouse, and Sepha took this for the sign she’d been waiting for. A storm on top of everything else, the snide voice grumbled, but she silenced it. Anything that could distract the cleptapods was good enough for her.

  Emboldened by the sudden change of luck, Sepha charged around the corner of the wheelhouse and was shocked to find her path completely clear of cleptapods. The sudden wave must have ripped the boat from their grasp.

  “Yes,” she breathed. She sprinted toward the forward bow, where she hoped a harpoon gun would be armed and ready. She glanced to the right and saw Ruhen standing bold and in the open, his arms outstretched. Then the water surged beneath them, and the boat rocketed upward so fast that Sepha stumbled and fell.

  Swearing at the pain in her hands, Sepha pushed herself up and continued down the length of the boat. In the aftermath of the magician’s attack, the main deck’s cargo was loose and chaotic, creating an obstacle course between her and the harpoon guns.

  The ache in Sepha’s right hand intensified. The air near Sepha twisted open and spewed the undead magician onto the deck.

  “You!” she screamed, too angry to say anything else, and charged toward the tiny magician.

  “Sepha, no!” she heard Ruhen shout from a long way off. “The guns! Get to the guns!”