Henric looked more frantic than ever at this and ran from the room, slamming the door behind him. A few moments later, the door opened again, and the hulking Captain Ellsworth, heavily bandaged and shadowed by Ms. Elos, strode in. There was barely room for the three of them inside the tiny space.
Ellsworth regarded Sepha with a strangely guarded look in his eyes and said, “I have a question, and I want you to answer carefully.” He ducked his head to see her better and said, “Do you mean us harm, alchemancer?”
There was a beat of silence as Ellsworth’s words penetrated the haze in Sepha’s mind. “How do you—” she started. Stopped. Took a breath. “No, I don’t mean you any harm.”
Ellsworth let out a string of relieved swears and slumped against the berth’s wall. “Half the crew was of a mind to slit your throat as you slept,” he explained, digging the heels of his hands into his eyes. Sepha’s hand flew to her neck. The willow pendant’s chain was warm against her hand, and she wanted to snatch it off and hurl it against the wall. “They wouldn’t listen to reason. Even when I told them alchemancer or no, we wouldn’t kill a defenseless girl in her sleep. They only calmed themselves when your magician threatened to sink the ship, kill us all.” He went on hastily, “It wasn’t the magic that put them off, not really. It was the bit with the cleptapods, I think, that, ah, made them less than comfortable with—” He paused and gestured at Sepha. “Your magician told me what you are, after the two of you saved the ship. He said the rest was yours to explain.”
Your magician, he’d said.
Because Ruhen was a magician.
Ruhen was a magician, and Destry was dead.
But Ruhen wasn’t hers. Had never been. Why he’d troubled himself to save her from the crew, she had no idea. Unless he wasn’t done playing his part yet. Maybe he was bound to the undead magician by a contract of his own. Compelled to keep her alive, regardless.
The silence had gone expectant. Ellsworth and Elos were watching her, still guarded, still mistrustful, still fearful.
What a strange thing it was, to be feared when she felt so powerless.
Sepha grimaced against the headache that thumped against the base of her skull and said, her voice flat, “There’s a magician on the loose, in the form of a homunculus. He’s been causing trouble in Tirenia. He probably attacked the ship so he could kill Destry,” her voice broke on Destry’s name, “who is—was the Magistrate’s heir.”
There was a stunned silence. Ellsworth swore again and folded his arms across his chest. “She seemed a good and valuable person, regardless of who her mother was. I knew she was someone important. She had a way about her. Gods, but you should’ve told me who she was. I’d never’ve let her fight if—”
“You couldn’t’ve stopped her,” Sepha said. Her voice was a string stretched across the blade of a knife. “I’ve never seen anyone but her mother even try to tell her what to do.”
“How did the magician—the homunculus—find her? Find us?” Ms. Elos asked. “We don’t have a bill of passage. How could he have—”
Sepha held up her right hand. “I’m bound to the magician-homunculus by a contract,” she said. Her mind was too muddled, too slow, for lies. “He can always find me. He must’ve known she’d be where I was. It’s my fault.” Her voice, the string, split. “I’m sorry your mariners died. We left so quickly, there wasn’t time. I never considered that he might—I’m so very sorry.”
Ellsworth seemed to diminish. He twisted his lips to the side and rubbed his hand across the stubble on his jaw with a crackling sound. Then he cleared his throat. “Ah. And what happened to the cleptapods?”
“I sent them away. Banished them, I suppose,” she said, staring at her hands. “They’ll never bother anyone again.”
“You banished all of them?” Captain Ellsworth asked.
“All of them.” She looked straight at the captain, as if daring him to call her a liar, and repeated, “All.”
Ellsworth swore, staring at Sepha with something close to reverence. Behind him, Ms. Elos muttered, “Gods and After help us.”
As Captain Ellsworth stared at Sepha, something like recognition sparked in his blue eyes. He opened his mouth and closed it again. After an uncomfortable moment, he looked away. “You saved us all last night, whether you brought the danger with you or no. I won’t lock you up, and I won’t hand you over to the Magistrate either.”
It had seemed, for a moment, as if he was going to say something else—as if he’d been about to ask her something—but Sepha must’ve imagined it. “You’re not angry with us for not telling you we were on the run?” she asked.
Ellsworth let out a grunt of laughter. “If you weren’t on the run, you’d’ve found different transportation,” he said. “I know what I’m about. Half the people on the crew are on the run from someone.”
“Oh,” Sepha said. That explained the Dear Lady’s armaments, at least. “But if the Magistrate found out—”
“What can she do that she hasn’t already?” he asked. “Detenia invaded Tirenia three hundred years ago, and they punish us for it still. They’ve left us with nothing. Nothing. I’ve no reason to turn you over to those Tirenian bastards, nor to fear them.”
Sepha exhaled slowly.
“What about Ruhen?”
Ellsworth raised his eyebrows. “What about him?”
Sepha’s eyes widened. “What do you mean, what about him? He’s a magician!”
“And you’re an alchemancer,” Ellsworth countered. “Tirenian law is to kill you both, and quick. You should be grateful that the Dear Lady is out to sea, and that I’m no Tirenian.”
Sepha grimaced and looked away. If Ellsworth couldn’t see the difference between her and Ruhen, she wouldn’t be able to explain it to him.
“He saved your life,” Ms. Elos said, her voice trembling as if she felt like she was standing up against someone who could crush her. A mouse to a lion. Something in Sepha’s chest cracked. “Several of us ran up to join the fight, only to see him battling a homunculus. It was something to behold, but Ruhen had the upper hand. Then the homunculus up and vanished, and what did your Ruhen do but run to the rail and call out loudly, and the water itself handed you up to him. It was he pulled the water from your lungs. It was he filled them with air again.”
There was that your Ruhen again.
“He wouldn’t let anyone touch you. Cursed at us when we tried,” Captain Ellsworth added. Defending Ruhen, for some godsdamned reason. “He carried you down here himself and stayed until our medic swore on his own life-blood that you were out of danger. Guarded your door most of the night, just in case. Magician he might be, but he was a friend last night. Just as you were, in your way.”
Sepha sat quietly as they spoke, feeling the heat rise in her cheeks. She couldn’t tell them the homunculus needed her to live, and that was why Ruhen had saved her. That the fight between Ruhen and the homunculus had been a show. That Ruhen had played his part well until last night and had not yet given it up. Her eyes felt dry and hot. Ruhen was cruel for making her live.
“Oh,” she said at last. “Well. May Henric, my homunculus, and I still have safe passage?” Panic spiked through her. “Wait, have you seen my homunculus?”
“Your little fellow’s in the mess,” Ellsworth said. “And as you’ve saved the boat, you can have safe passage wherever you’d like.” He paused. “Ruhen’s in my cabin.”
Sepha curled her hands into fists. “Oh.”
Ellsworth’s eyes narrowed. “I’ll not have an alchemancer and a magician at war on my boat.”
“We’re not at war.”
“Like Darkest After you’re not,” Ellsworth said. “I’ve seen that look before, and it means war. I’m fetching the magician, and you two will figure out how to be civil. Or it’s to shore with both of you, and I wash my hands of the whole thing.”
He eyed her sternly, then brushed past Ms. Elos and disappeared before Sepha could argue.
Ms. Elos moved to follow him but paused by the door. She turned and studied Sepha for a moment. “He didn’t tell you what he was?”
Apparently, word traveled fast aboard Our Dear Lady.
“No,” Sepha said. Her emotions, the bad ones, were fighting past her numbness. She gritted her teeth and squeezed her eyes closed, trying to shut them out.
“Can you blame him?” Ms. Elos asked. Her question punctured Sepha’s anger and it began to deflate.
Sepha’s hand closed around her willow pendant. “Yes,” she whispered.
Ms. Elos sighed quietly. Then she was gone.
Now that Sepha knew Ruhen would soon be on his way, she felt for the tether. He was far, nearly all the way forward on the Dear Lady. And she realized she only had a few minutes to sort out—everything. To sort it all out.
One shaky breath.
Another, and another.
Ruhen was a magician. And everyone knew there was no such thing as a good magician.
But she was an alchemancer. She had magic, and she wasn’t evil. Not on purpose, at least.
So, if—if—Ruhen wasn’t evil and wasn’t working for the undead magician, why had he lied? What else had he lied about? And how could she ever know what to believe?
And how could she talk to him, how could she even look at him, when Destry was dead?
Sepha leaned forward with a groan and rested her forehead on her knees. Her shirt, stiff from brine, scratched her neck and arms. With a sigh, she wrenched herself out of bed and pulled on a clean set of clothes from the knapsack Ruhen had retrieved after her stunt with the library. He’d immediately known she’d have to flee and had made sure she’d have what she needed, and that was something, wasn’t it? She winced as the fabric grazed her raw skin.
Her tether began to shorten. Ruhen was coming. At a walk, at first, then a run. The tether shortened faster and faster. Then it stopped. He was just outside her door.
Sepha opened the door before Ruhen could knock. She didn’t meet his eyes, didn’t wait for him to say anything. She caught a glimpse of his torn shirt and the smooth brown skin beneath, the jerk and halt of his hands as he stopped himself from reaching for her.
Instead of greeting him, she scooted between the wall and the bunk bed and sat back down on her mattress, resting her elbows on her knees.
Altogether too huge for the tiny room, Ruhen eased in and shut the door behind him. He looked terrified and relieved again, as he had at the beginning of things last night. His dark curls were a rumpled mess.
“You look better,” Ruhen said huskily, breaking the heavy silence. Sepha’s breath hitched in her throat. “How do you feel?”
“Terrible.”
Guilt flashed over Ruhen’s face. His eyes, Sepha noticed, were puffy and bloodshot. As if he’d been crying.
Any spark of anger left inside fizzled. Staring down at her hands, she tipped her head toward the empty spot on the mattress beside her.
Warily, as if he thought she might attack him, he approached and sat. The bed creaked and shifted beneath his weight, and Sepha had to lean away to avoid toppling onto him. He leaned away too, and they held themselves stiffly, each fighting the other’s strange gravitational pull.
“You’re a magician,” Sepha said. Her voice was dry, raspy. He was a magician, and Destry was dead.
“I am.” His hands were clasped tightly together in his lap. He had to hunch forward, too big to sit upright on the lower bunk.
“Are you working with the homunculus? Or were you ever?” she asked, trying to close the loopholes in her question. Magicians loved loopholes. She should know.
“No. No, I swear I never was.” She felt him looking at her, but she stared at the painted metal wall straight ahead. “I never worked with him, never met with him or spoke to him or knew of him until I fought him.”
Silence seeped in, water into a punctured hull, and Sepha floated in it for a time. Thinking. Joining up scattered memories into one continuous timeline.
“So, you fought the homunculus at the train,” she said.
Ruhen swallowed. “Yes,” he said. “And I fought him after the fire, too, when he had you turned around. Destry knew. She figured out what I was before we even got to the Institute. She cornered me the first night we were there and made me swear I meant no harm. Told me she’d kill me personally if I hurt anyone.”
There was a ghost of a smile on Ruhen’s lips, but Sepha felt a chill.
Was that true? Had Destry known?
Sluggishly at first, and then faster, her mind ran through the interactions she’d seen between Destry and Ruhen. Every time they’d colluded on something Sepha hadn’t understood. In her room after the fire, on the main deck yesterday, in the wheelhouse last night.
He was telling the truth.
Destry had known what Ruhen was. And she hadn’t considered him an enemy.
If he wasn’t with the undead magician, and if his magic didn’t make him an enemy, should the lies matter?
Yes, they should, hissed the snide voice.
The tether was tight, but it pulled at her as if it wanted to be tighter. The ache at the base of her skull thumped once. An admonishment.
It was probably a mistake, but Sepha leaned toward Ruhen and rested her forehead against his temple.
Relief shuddered through her at the touch, and she and Ruhen released the same ragged breath. Something inside her, something that felt like magic, gave a sharp wrench.
Sepha swallowed. “Did you,” she began, but her mouth was too dry. She licked her lips and tried again. “Did you ever lie about this?” she asked, gesturing between them. “Did you make this happen?”
“No, Sepha, I swear I didn’t,” Ruhen said. He reached for her then, stretching one arm around her and tucking his hand around the curve of her waist. Pulled her close, so that their legs rested against each other. “Whatever this is, I swear I didn’t fake or force it. I’m not even sure it’s the contract doing it. I’m in the dark, Sepha. It wasn’t me.”
Sepha held herself stiff and forced herself not to relax into his touch.
Everything was so jumbled. Ruhen was a magician, and Destry had known. Ruhen claimed not to be in league with the homunculus, claimed not to have made the tether that bound her to him. Claimed, claimed, claimed. But truthfully? She couldn’t know. It could all be more lies.
But it was such a relief to touch him, to be near him.
Destry had thought Ruhen was safe.
Ruhen had saved Sepha from the Willow.
He had fought the undead magician beside the train, and at the Institute, and last night.
And he had saved her life last night. More than once.
Ruhen was a magician, but that didn’t mean he was in league with the undead magician. Ruhen was a magician, but that didn’t mean he was evil.
Some of the jumble shifted into a semblance of order, and part of Sepha—a large and terrified part—breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe she hadn’t lost Ruhen and Destry in the same night.
But then the snide voice spat, Ruhen’s a magician, and Destry is dead. And look at you now.
Sepha blinked her sudden tears away, but the surging guilt was not so easily cast aside. A gulf was opening before her, or a deep trench, or a grotesque, beaky maw.
Ruhen’s a magician, and Destry is dead.
“Tell me,” Sepha said, giving him a chance the same way he’d given her a chance after the fire. “Tell me everything.”
A pause.
“I don’t know where to start,” Ruhen said, sounding helpless.
“I don’t care where you start.”
Ruhen seemed to diminish.
“Just talk,” Sepha said, letting her head droop onto his shoulder. “Just talk.”
In the emptiness that followed, Sepha thought she could hear Ruhen’s heart thudding.
“Well,” he said, speaking slowly, as if he wanted her to stop him. She didn’t. “I
wasn’t born in Tirenia. I was born in Serramne, in the realm where magicians belong.”
Everything went still.
“My mother had given my father twelve sons, but he badly wanted a daughter. When my mother got pregnant a thirteenth time, Father decided that if it was a girl, he’d have his sons killed, so that she would inherit all of his wealth.”
Ruhen opened his mouth, seemed to rethink what he’d planned to say, and went on. “Mother sent us away in the middle of the night before Father suspected anything. A few months later, she sent word—she’d had a girl. We could never come home.
“Father was searching for us,” Ruhen continued, “so Mother sent an alchemancer to where we were hiding. The alchemancer sent us here.”
Ruhen paused, maybe to give Sepha a chance to absorb what he’d just said. “There are alchemancers where you’re from?” she asked, after a moment.
“Yes. They’re the peace-keepers in Serramne. It’s only here that alchemancers and magicians are murdered.”
“Oh,” she said. There didn’t seem to be much else to say.
“Well, the alchemancer sent us here, and we lived all over the place. Never stayed anywhere longer than a few months. My brothers weren’t good to begin with, but when we were sent here, they became truly evil. Our sister had stolen everything from us, so they decided to steal whatever they wanted from then on, too. Sometimes, things got out of hand, and they killed people. Or maybe they just started to like doing it after a while. I don’t know.”
Ruhen’s brothers weren’t just magicians, but were murderers, too.
“My brothers didn’t make me kill anyone, but they made me serve them. After a few years, it became clear that I was more powerful than any one of them, but I was never strong enough to fight all eleven of them. Never strong enough to save any of their victims.” He swallowed. Looked down. Continued. “They hurt me, sometimes, until I learned how to stop them.
“I started sneaking into the nearest cities, taking books from the libraries. I figured if I could pass the exams, I could fake my way into becoming a Court Alchemist. All I had to do was follow the rules and make it seem like I was using alchemy, not magic.” Ruhen’s tone went flat. “My brothers began to disappear, one by one, and never came back. Military Alchemists got some of them. I don’t know about the rest.” A pause. “But it got easier to sneak out. I was able to study more. My home was the Darkest After, but I could finally see a way out.”
The Lady Alchemist Page 22