The Lady Alchemist

by Samantha Vitale

  “And I was born by a river,” Rivers said.

  Sepha’s eyes narrowed. “But you know our names,” she said, and her words came out like an accusation.

  Meadow grimaced. “We do,” he said, “but it can’t be helped. We’ll try to forget them, but you can be sure we won’t try to harm you. Incidentally, Isolde has never taken a false name. She’s not a bit threatened by any of us.”

  The wrongness she’d felt in the cove came back in full strength. Her roiling beast uncoiled, pressing outward, and she forced it back down.

  “Should she be threatened by any of you?” Sepha asked.

  Rivers’s smile was a bit too sharp. “Of course not,” she said. “We are utterly harmless. Isolde doesn’t let violent people become Spirit Alchemists, you see. She hardly lets ambitious people in, either. We’re as placid as dairy cows and completely uninterested in hurting anyone. Each of us became Spirit Alchemists because we want to see a better world: a world without criminals, a world in which people who were born criminals have hope. Because of our research, we will one day be able to erase serial crime without capital punishment or even imprisonment. We want the most peace for the most people, so surely that should put you at ease. Peace precludes harm.”

  “Well said, my dear,” Meadow said, beaming. Rivers smiled at him with a doting gaze, as if he were a pet she was particularly fond of.

  Sepha shot a look at Ruhen. His eyes met hers with a look that said, nearly audibly, Not good.

  Sepha agreed. Rivers’s wording had been too careful. Being uninterested in hurting anyone wasn’t the same as actually not hurting anyone. Voice carefully calm, she asked, “You believe people are born criminals?”

  Rivers and Meadow held eye contact for half a beat. Meadow turned to Sepha and said, “Some. Not many. But yes. Some people are born criminals.”

  Was it her imagination, or had Meadow been very careful not to look in Ruhen’s direction?

  Sepha was saved from having to respond when Henric walked into the room. He stopped just inside the threshold, saw Ruhen and Sepha, and scowled. He turned to leave, but Ruhen said, “Don’t go. We’re done.”

  Together, Ruhen and Sepha stood.

  A frown flashed across Meadow’s face, so quickly that Sepha thought she might’ve imagined it. “I’ll show you back to your rooms,” he said, smiling. This time, his smile seemed forced.

  “I remember the way back,” Sepha said.

  “So do I,” Ruhen added.

  Meadow hesitated, and his eyes shifted from Sepha to Rivers and back again.

  Rivers spoke for him. “If you do know your way back, that’s fine. Just be careful not to wander. We harbor criminals here. Walk down the wrong hall, open the wrong door, you could let a murderer loose.” Her gray eyes were wide and guileless, her face apologetic, as she continued, blandly, “You could be killed.”

  Ruhen clenched the loose fabric of Sepha’s shirt in his hand, suddenly rigid at the almost-threat, and Sepha moved to stand between him and the Spirit Alchemists. “Thanks for the warning. We’ll go straight back to our rooms. No nighttime wanderings.”

  Meadow smiled, seeming relieved. “It really is for your safety.”

  Sepha returned Meadow’s smile with a tight one of her own. “Tomorrow, then,” she said. “I can’t wait to learn more about Spirit Alchemy.”

  It was a lie and a truth. She did not damn’er-to-After want to learn how to perform Spirit Alchemy; but there was a pull in her mind that told her she’d better learn to stomach it. After all this talk of souls, Sepha was sure the Spirit Alchemists had something to do with the undead magician. And she would find out what.

  Henric stepped aside as they walked out the door. He didn’t meet Sepha’s eyes.

  The walk back to their rooms was a quiet one. Sepha was horrified at what she’d heard, but she couldn’t imagine how Ruhen must feel. These Spirit Alchemists thought he was a criminal. And their job was to rehabilitate criminals like him so they wouldn’t be criminals anymore. By ripping their souls apart.

  And he had come here for her.

  When they got to their rooms, they stood outside Sepha’s door, each leaning a shoulder against the dark wood. Unable to say what she needed to, Sepha reached out and rested her hand against Ruhen’s chest.

  His heartbeat quickened.

  He folded one hand over hers and reached up to trace her jawline with his thumb—a touch that sent relief and rightness thrilling down the length of her. Sepha closed her eyes but opened them again when she felt that awful contract thrum beside her heart. Ruining everything, as always.

  Oblivious, Ruhen leaned down to rest his forehead against hers. An achingly familiar touch. A touch she had missed.

  “This is bad,” he said.

  “Very,” she agreed. She closed her eyes, tried to focus on Ruhen’s sea smell, his autumn wind smell, instead of on the fact that his mouth was only a few inches away from hers. “We’ll give ourselves a few days to find out what we can, and then …”

  “We leave,” he finished for her. “Together,” he added, and his voice lilted upward.

  “Together,” she agreed. There was no point pretending. With things the way they were, wherever one of them went, the other wouldn’t be far behind. “Find somewhere safe, a hundred miles from the nearest alchemist.”

  “Mm,” he agreed, and his hands slid around her waist. She moved closer to him until they were pressed against each other, closer than they’d been since that night in the wheelhouse. Her hands strayed up his arms to his shoulders, down to his chest and up again, and his hands began a circuit, too, rising until his thumbs grazed along her ribs.

  Sepha felt a surge of desire, and the contract thumped gleefully beside her heart. Releasing a ragged breath, she said, “I’m really tired. I—I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  His hands tightened briefly, but then he released her. He said, huskily, “Goodnight, Sepha.”

  He was still so close, looming over her, his thunderhead eyes saying too much, too loudly. And the tether had cinched so tight. “Goodnight.”

  It was sometime after lunch, and Sepha wished she hadn’t eaten.

  She’d spent the morning with Rivers and Ruhen, touring the safe parts of the Sanctuary. Henric hadn’t showed. Rivers had mentioned, in passing, that Henric had many things to tend to because of Destry. Sepha couldn’t imagine what things, but she didn’t ask. It didn’t matter, as long as he wasn’t around to glower at her.

  What did matter was that she’d been at the Sanctuary for three days. Three full days without a glimpse of anything related to pulling souls back from the After. Three full days without even a breath of wind. She was beginning to feel drained. Brittle.

  Now she was in a large, brightly lit room lined on one side with tiered wooden benches. In the middle of the stone floor was a formidably large chair with leather straps and manacles. Its legs were welded to the ground, the natural ores in the stone melding with the chair’s dull metal.

  Painted onto the floor around the chair was an alchem so complex Sepha didn’t even bother to study it. It was simultaneously sharp and circular, and something about it made Sepha’s bones ring hollow.

  She was sitting in the front row of the benches. She’d spent the last few days enduring endless tours and lectures. This was the first time they were letting her watch real Spirit Alchemy. She wished she could feel excited, but the wrongness was back, so she felt on edge instead.

  To her left was Ruhen. To her right, Rivers. Behind Sepha, more Spirit Alchemists filled the benches. They all knew Sepha’s name, had greeted her by it. They’d said Ruhen’s name, too, sneeringly. He’d taken the insult calmly, as he always did. But if Sepha had had any magic left, it would’ve leapt out of her, snarling-mad, and wreaked havoc in the dismal room.

  But it had been three days since she’d felt the wind, and her magic was down to the dregs.

  A hush rolled over the room.

  The practica
l Spirit Alchemy began.

  Meadow stood and gestured to two armed men who flanked the door. They disappeared and momentarily returned with a man, bald and scarred, who, rather than looking angry or wicked, only looked exhausted. He hung limp between the Spirit Alchemists as they dragged him to the chair and strapped him in.

  “We have to drug them,” Rivers whispered. “We aren’t Military Alchemists, after all.”

  Once the bald man was settled and manacled, Meadow beckoned to Park, a woman hardly older than Sepha. “This one’s yours, right, Park?” he asked.

  “He is indeed,” Park said, smiling serenely, and strode down to stand beside the chained man. She turned to face the Spirit Alchemists. “I have meditated with Dunshire for three days since our last attempt and have concluded that the defect in his soul most closely relates to wrath. I intend to transmute this excess of wrath into peace. This will be my fifth attempt at transmuting Dunshire. Please comment.”

  “How did you determine wrath,” the Spirit Alchemist called Mountains rumbled, “rather than pure violence or chaos?”

  Park smiled. “When I questioned him, it seemed that his crimes stemmed from his hatred toward Tirenia’s occupation of Detenia. His violent actions were rooted in wrath.”

  Mountains nodded his approval.

  “Are you sure his name is Dunshire?” asked the Spirit Alchemist called City. Her voice was like a golden bell. “If you’ve had his name wrong this whole time—”

  “I’ve checked the papers and questioned him thoroughly,” Park said, seeming not in the least affronted by the question. “Thanks, City. Anyone else?”

  Silence.

  Park looked at Meadow, who nodded. Wiping her hands on the front of her shirt, Park knelt and painted Dunshire’s name along the outer rim of the alchem on the ground.

  Dunshire began to weep.

  Ruhen’s hands clenched into fists.

  Oblivious to Dunshire’s sobs, Park placed her fingers just so. She closed her eyes and focused.

  There was no pulse.

  Instead, there was a sudden ear-popping pressure. A static charge enveloped the room, pricking at Sepha’s skin and making the hairs on her arms stand up straight. Sparks jumped from the floor to the welded chair and zipped up and down Dunshire’s body in a horrible, blue-white current. Dunshire’s sobs escalated into a loud, gargling wail as his body went into a shuddering rictus, his hands white-knuckled on the arms of his chair.

  Sepha didn’t know what this was, but it sure as After wasn’t alchemy. Whatever Park was trying to do to Dunshire, it was never going to work. It was wrong, wrong, and Sepha leapt to her feet and lunged at Park. Static shocks zapped her as two sets of hands grabbed her and forced her back into her seat. No matter how Sepha kicked and scrabbled, Ruhen and Rivers wouldn’t let her go.

  Park heaved herself onto her feet and inspected Dunshire.

  He was wailing so hard, he gagged and vomited all over himself. Spittle dangled from his lips.

  There was a moment of silence, then Rivers said, quite calmly, “He does look more peaceful.”

  “Do you think?” Park asked over Dunshire’s sobs.

  “A week’s observation should tell us for sure,” Meadow said. “Who’s next?”

  Sepha’s mouth hung open as they unstrapped the still-weeping Dunshire from the chair and dragged him out of the room. At Meadow’s grunted directive, a homunculus mopped the vomit from the floor.

  And the Spirit Alchemists were so very calm.

  “Mine’s next,” Mountains said. “Might’s well get it over with.” He rose with a loud grunt and made his way heavily down the tiers.

  He stood at the front of the room, clasped his hands behind his back, and began to speak, rocking from heel to toe as if he were a child doing a recitation in school. His criminal was a man named Norwich who was particularly afflicted with lust. Lust for power, Mountains said. Lust for relations. Lust for everything he oughtn’t to have. This was to be the first attempt at transmuting Norwich, Mountains said.

  They brought Norwich in and strapped him to the chair.

  Mountains blotted out Dunshire’s name and painted Norwich’s beside the blotting.

  Sepha was taut and brittle, sitting all the way forward on the bench. Ruhen’s hand was firm around her elbow and she knew, knew before Mountains even set his fingers—

  There was that oppressive pressure and the pricking, jumping static.

  Another botched attempt. Norwich passed out.

  City’s turn. Botched, vomited.

  Waters’ turn. Botched, bled from the eyes and ears and nose.

  One by one, the Spirit Alchemists took their turns. A few criminals survived unscathed. Most didn’t.

  The Spirit Alchemists were murmuring consolations and encouragement, and they had no sense, no sense at all, that they’d taken part in torture. To them, it was all a grand scientific experiment, and these criminals were only case studies.

  For some reason, Sepha’s mind leapt from Spirit Alchemy to her failed attempt at human transmutation. Something clunked into place.

  Life could not be alchemically created, separated, conjoined, or destroyed. Just as Sepha hadn’t been able to transmute just a piece of a person, it must be impossible to transmute just a piece of a soul. Living bodies, living souls, were elemental. They were things unto themselves. They couldn’t be broken down or altered, not by any alchemical means.

  “This will never work,” Sepha said, and the Spirit Alchemists fell silent. She looked around and said, “You know this doesn’t work. You can’t use alchemy to break souls into smaller pieces. It isn’t possible. Souls are souls. Alchemy can’t change them.”

  “You couldn’t be more wrong,” came Isolde’s cold voice from the doorway. She strode into the room, and the silence went expectant.

  Sepha met Isolde’s gaze. “If I’m wrong, tell me how many criminals you’ve successfully rehabilitated. When’s the last time you fixed someone with alchemy?”

  Isolde narrowed her eyes. Malice sparked in them. “I remember the first time I successfully mitigated someone’s magic,” she said, with a hard smile.

  Sepha blinked. “You—what?”

  “I used alchemy to replace her magic with something else,” Isolde said. When she cocked her head to the side, she looked like a bird of prey. “It was, oh, almost nineteen years ago. I’d been struggling with my craft. My sister had just given me this area for my own, and I hardly had any alchemists to help me. It was me, and tunnels, and criminals, and my research.

  “Then, one day, my sister sent me a woman. An alchemancer, to be precise. She was, oh, approximately your height, Sepha. Dark hair. Young. Freshly pregnant. She’d got herself into some kind of trouble, and my dear sister wanted me to remove her magic.”

  Everything in Sepha went still. The world narrowed until it contained only the words that came out of Isolde’s mouth.

  “I don’t recall her name, of course—it was so long ago,” Isolde went on. “But she was one of the first who meditated with me. Seemed as eager to be rid of her magic as I was to rid her of it. It only took me, oh, a dozen or so attempts before she lost all ability to perform magic.

  “Without her magic, she was harmless. I sent her off to, what was it, a milling town, or something. Heard she married a nice miller. Had a healthy child not long after.” There was a cruel glint to Isolde’s eyes. “So you cannot tell me, Sepha, that my life’s work is a failed project. She was the first person I rehabilitated, but she was not the last.

  “I am a bit embarrassed of this story,” Isolde said, ducking her head and pressing her palms together in front of her heart. “I should’ve left her alone, alchemancers being as rare as they are. But I was young and foolish, and very excited about my craft, as I’m sure you understand.”

  Sepha’s mind was an empty, windless wasteland. Ipha had been hollow and broken, pieces missing but still mothering, living under Father’s thumb, everyone around
her unaware. She had jumped, and her magic hadn’t saved her.

  Had Isolde done something to Mother?

  “You couldn’t have,” Sepha breathed. “You couldn’t’ve done it. It isn’t possible.”

  Isolde arched an eyebrow. “Not alone, possibly. Spirit Alchemy is less formulaic than other alchemies. It requires active participation from the subject. My alchemy has only ever worked to that extent when the subject was willing.”

  “How do you know they weren’t faking, then?” Sepha asked, feeling ragged. The dregs of her magic stirred in a feeble rebellion, too weak to do any harm but still there, still outraged. “How can you prove it was your alchemy that worked? Maybe they just got rid of their magic on their own because they were tired of you tormenting them!”

  The Spirit Alchemists burst into chaos. They all shouted at Sepha at once. Even Meadow and Rivers were glaring at her.

  But Isolde had … to Mother …

  “I’m sure Sepha meant no offense, Isolde,” Ruhen said, tucking his hand around Sepha’s waist. His voice was strung tight. “But I think we’ve seen enough for today. Thank you for the demonstration. With your permission, we’ll head back to our rooms. No wandering, of course.”

  Isolde gave a tight nod. Her lips were pursed into a thin line, her eyes shrewd and malicious as ever. Ruhen pulled her down the long halls and into her own room.

  Ruhen sat beside Sepha on her bed and waited.

  Sepha took a breath. Then she told Ruhen about Ipha. Mother. How she’d lived, and how she’d died. To her surprise, she wasn’t the slightest bit afraid that Ruhen would blame her. He didn’t, of course. He only rubbed her back and murmured her name. Pressed his lips to the top of her head.

  “Do you think she gave up her magic on purpose?” Sepha asked.