The Lady Alchemist

by Samantha Vitale

  “I think so,” Ruhen said. “I think you’re right about Spirit Alchemy. What they just showed us—it can never work. If her magic went away, it’s because she wanted it to.”

  “Why, then?” Sepha asked. She was angry. No, not angry. Furious. At the Spirit Alchemists, at her mother, at everything. “Why would she give it up?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Sepha blinked frustrated tears from her eyes. “Why didn’t she tell me about any of this?”

  Ruhen sighed and shook his head. For once, he didn’t push her to talk. She could’ve kissed him for that, but she didn’t.

  The light that streamed in through her craggy window was silver-blue. It was too early to sleep, but Sepha lay down on her side and tugged Ruhen down with her.

  “Can you stay with me tonight?” Sepha asked.

  It was a few seconds before Ruhen responded. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Seph,” he said. “I don’t want to take advantage.”

  Sepha shook her head. “I don’t need you here because I’m sad,” she said, rolling over to face him. “I need you here because I want to kill them.”

  Ruhen, gods and After bless him, only raised his eyebrows. “You want to kill who?”

  “All of them. Mostly Isolde. But all of them.”

  A smile teased the corners of his lips. “It’s an interesting idea,” he said. “But one could argue that murdering all of them for something Isolde might have done to your mother nineteen years ago may be an overreaction.”

  “I’ll hold Henric hostage,” Sepha said, pretending she hadn’t heard Ruhen. “Use him to get past the Military Alchemists. And after that, we’re free.”

  “Free,” Ruhen echoed, turning her around again and pulling her against the wall of his chest. His voice rumbled through her, his breath tickling her ear as he murmured, “Let’s talk about free. What’ll that be like?”

  Sepha smiled. “We’ll get a very big boat, with lots of room for Fio to run around.”

  “Oh, good. Fio will be there.”

  “And lots of other homunculi for him to talk to.”

  “Considerate.”

  “We’ll sail around Tirenia over and over, and we’ll sell merchants things that work like magic.”

  “But how will we—” Ruhen started, pretending to be confused. Then, “Ohhhh. Brilliant, Seph.”

  Sepha breathed a laugh, and Ruhen squeezed her close, hiding his face in her shoulder. They stayed like that for a while, holding each other, trying and failing to erase what they’d seen that day.

  After a long time, Ruhen said, “We’ll make it right.”

  It was Ipha Sepha thought of when she responded, “We have to.”

  The next day, Sepha rose early and nearly tripped over Ruhen, who had apparently banished himself to the floor sometime during the night. Trying not to take advantage, she guessed. Her heart gave a strange squeeze at the thought.

  Her tether unspooled as she went to the washroom and back. Soon, if all went well, the tether would be gone. She’d gotten so used to it, the ability to always find him no matter what, and she didn’t relish the idea of losing it. But the tether came at too high a price. It had to go, even if it meant Sepha lost Ruhen in the process.

  A rectangle of white caught her eye. Someone had slid a note under her door during the night. She picked it up and read, with immense difficulty:

  Sepha. Meet me at my laboratory at eight o’clock in the morning. Private lectures from now on, Isolde’s orders, don’t blame me. Tell Ruhen I said hello, turn right out of your room, continue past your room to the first door on the right. —Meadow

  Sepha paused, on the verge of waking Ruhen up and insisting they leave now. The note was a threefold message: the obvious one, telling Sepha where to be; the less direct one, telling Sepha they knew Ruhen was with her; and the most insidious one, reminding her that they knew her name, and Ruhen’s. Gods, she hoped she’d been right to come here! She’d had lesson after lesson, and still hadn’t learned anything that suggested the Spirit Alchemists could bring souls back from the After.

  But Destry had been so sure, and Destry had been right about everything else.

  Sepha pulled on her boots, placed Meadow’s note beside Ruhen so he would know why she’d gone, and struck out to find Meadow’s laboratory. The long corridor snaked away before her, unrolling in an uneven, disorienting way. She was headed deeper into the Sanctuary than she’d been yet.

  The farther Sepha went, the stranger the corridor felt. In looks, it was much the same as the corridors she’d already seen; the floor was smooth, if not flat, and the rough-hewn stone walls were lined with copper pipes, lit here and there by naked bulbs. No other corridors or doors appeared, but Sepha had the strangest feeling that there were intersections and doors, and that she was simply missing them. As if someone was telling her which turns to take by removing all of her other options.

  Sepha shook her head. Nonsense. This was a tunnel through hard stone, lit by electric bulbs, maintained by alchemists. This was not a maze, ruled by some crafty magician, full of secret walls and hidden doors. This tunnel was not a trap.

  Involuntarily, Sepha remembered the wrongness of the cove outside, the manic glint in Isolde’s eyes.

  This was a place of alchemy, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a trap.

  Sepha continued along the corridor, accompanied by the scuff of her boots against stone. She kept walking until she hit the first door on the right—which, in fact, was the first door she’d seen at all. The door, plain wood with a matte metallic handle, claimed in neatly painted letters to be Laboratory 012. Meadow’s laboratory.

  Sepha tried the handle. It was locked. She knocked. No one answered. She glanced down the corridor, which continued uninterrupted for a long way before veering to the left.

  This place was not right.

  There was something—

  There was something wrong: the shreds of tattered souls, the murderers who were locked up and the torturers who’d locked them up, the alchem that was sharp and smooth and deadly but claimed to be a path to peace.

  A wrongness as powerful as the rightness she felt with Ruhen.

  A wrongness that scraped against her softly roiling beast like stolen bones on a metal hull.

  Sepha waited outside Laboratory 012 until the wrongness propelled her into motion. She knew how to find Meadow’s laboratory and no one else seemed to be awake, so she might as well do a little exploring.

  She felt less brittle this morning, as if a helpful wind had crept into her room during the night. Feeling tentatively hopeful, Sepha reached inside for her roiling beast. She found it right away and sensed it awaking, rolling over and stretching like a cat whose spot of sunlight had drifted while it slept.

  Trailing a hand along the piped side of the corridor, Sepha walked on, telling herself she would continue to the bend in the hall to see what was around it and then come back. The uneven surface of the wall heated her fingertips with an almost painful friction as she plodded onward.

  A claw of wrongness scraped against her roiling beast. Her beast recoiled and lashed out, all talons and teeth and protectiveness, and Sepha’s fingers sank through the wall’s visible surface and into the invisible nothing beyond it.

  She stopped and stared at her hand; or, rather, at her wrist, which was apparently resting against the wall, handless. Slowly, experimentally, she reached in farther and watched her arm disappear to the elbow.

  A hidden something, and Sepha had found it.

  A hidden something, and Sepha would not be Sepha if she didn’t find out what it was.

  Taking a deep breath, telling herself this wasn’t reckless in the slightest, Sepha stuck her head through the wall. She emerged on the other side and saw another corridor much like her own, only it led steeply downward. She walked cautiously down the corridor. Around a sharp bend, it terminated at a wooden door much like Meadow’s. Laboratory 151, this one said.

>   The door was locked. Which meant whatever was behind it was twice-hidden: once by the lock, and again by the wrong-magic that camouflaged the corridor.

  But why would they hide this room? Who here could do magic—and why would they hide this room?

  Her roiling beast seemed to purr, and Sepha asked it, “Can you open this door?”

  Perhaps the past few windless days had made her beast docile. There was a click as it complied, unlocking the door without destroying a thing.

  Sepha pushed the door open and saw, beyond it, an untidy laboratory. A giant alchem on the floor with a welded, leather-strapped, manacled chair inside it. A table against the wall, stacked high with books and loose papers. And, beneath the chair, a reddish tinge that looked like blood imbibed by the porous stone.

  There was the scuff of footsteps somewhere behind her. She pulled the door shut and asked her beast to lock it. And then a voice: “What are you doing here?”

  Sepha, whose heart had given a great lurch, turned around to see Meadow standing at the turn in the corridor.

  “Looking for your laboratory,” Sepha lied. She tried to will Destry’s confidence into her voice as she said, “The note said first door on the left.”

  “First on the right,” Meadow said, frowning. Sepha could see his struggle; he couldn’t ask her how she’d found this place without admitting they were using magic to hide things from her. After a moment, he gave up and said, “Let’s go.”

  They plodded in silence to his laboratory, which, it turned out, was just as untidy as Laboratory 151, although it lacked the reddish tinges.

  Meadow relaxed a bit now that they were in safer territory and said, “I hope you weren’t upset by—by yesterday. Maybe it was unwise, letting you see everything so soon. It does take some getting used to.” He paused. “Friends?”

  Sepha forced her lips into something that ought to look like a smile. “Friends,” she said, and Mother’s eyes flashed in her mind.

  Meadow clapped, making Sepha jump, and said, “All right. Spirit Alchemy.” He started in on what became an hours-long, rambling lecture on the intricacies of Spirit Alchemy, which quickly left Sepha far behind.

  As Meadow spoke, Sepha considered her options. Now she knew with absolute certainty that there were secrets here. Remembering how much time she’d spent being ushered around by Meadow and Rivers, escorted from one activity to the next, Sepha suddenly realized that she really was being distracted, but not from the Military Alchemists.

  But distracted from what?

  If there was something they didn’t want her to know, she could be sure that it was important. If she went to Laboratory 151, she might find the answers she needed.

  Meadow was sure to tell Isolde where he’d found her, and they’d probably move everything to a more secret location as soon as possible. If she wanted to find out what was in that room, she would have to go back soon.

  Tonight. She would go back tonight.

  That night found Sepha, Ruhen, and Fio back in the secret corridor before the locked door.

  When she’d explained what she wanted to do, Ruhen hadn’t even questioned it. He’d understood. After what the Spirit Alchemists had allowed them to see, anything they thought was worth hiding was worth finding.

  They hadn’t talked about last night. About how they’d held each other. How they’d fallen asleep in each other’s arms, in the same bed—at least until Ruhen had moved to the floor.

  But now was not the time. They left the words unspoken.

  The door to Laboratory 151 was locked. Sepha feigned nonchalance as she unlocked it, but Ruhen wasn’t fooled. He gave her a quick squeeze, and she pushed him away, smiling.

  The room beyond the door looked exactly as it had that morning, and Sepha breathed a sigh of relief. She’d half-suspected they’d already cleared it out and gotten rid of whatever the secret was.

  “What should we look for?” Ruhen asked, his eyes flicking from the enormous alchem to the grubby table piled high with books and papers.

  “Anything that can tell us what this alchem is for,” Sepha said, shutting and locking the door behind them. By the time she’d finished talking, Ruhen was already at the table with a book open, riffling through the pages.

  “What about me?” asked Fio.

  “Listen by the door,” Sepha said. “Tell us if you hear someone coming.”

  Fio grumbled at this, and as he returned to the doorway, Sepha caught the words prejudice and watchdog and could’ve been sleeping. She smiled and strode over to the alchem.

  It wasn’t a transmutation alchem, she decided after a moment. Nor was it transformation, separation, or any other class she’d ever seen. After studying it, she decided it most resembled a conjoining alchem, although it was unlike any she had seen before. There was an unusual amount of script around the outside—a name, or perhaps two—but the letters shifted and swam. She couldn’t make them out.

  Sepha gave up frowning at the alchem and joined Ruhen by the table instead. “Anything?”

  “Just textbooks and calculations,” Ruhen grunted. “Nothing specifically about what’s being done here.”

  “Hrrmph,” Sepha grumbled, and reached for a book. She and Ruhen flipped through book after useless book until Fio interrupted them.

  “What about this?”

  Fio was holding up a large, heavy book. There was no title. Loose leaves interrupted the bound pages, edging diagonally outward.

  Sepha took the book and flipped through it. It was hand-written, with entire pages devoted to what looked like rough drafts of the alchem on the floor behind her. “It’s a research journal!” she cried. “This will have everything we need.”

  “Where was it?” Ruhen asked, looking curiously at Fio.

  “Under the table.”

  Sepha ducked down to peek under the table. There, clear as day for anyone with the height or inclination to look, was a slot just the right size for the journal.

  “Fio, I could kiss you!” Sepha said.

  “Please don’t,” Fio said, eyeing Ruhen with mock anxiety.

  A reverberating voice from the hallway interrupted Ruhen’s reply. “I don’t know how she found it, Rivers!” Sepha recognized the speaker as Meadow. From the sound of it, he was approaching Laboratory 151’s locked door.

  “If I know anything about her,” Rivers said, her voice dark, “she’ll be back here tomorrow morning just because you told her not to.”

  Sepha, open-mouthed and paralyzed, stared at Ruhen. They were trapped, and her beast had no strength left. Unlocking the door had taken almost all of its energy. What would happen to them if they were caught here?

  Luckily, Ruhen recovered from his surprise faster than Sepha did. He herded Sepha and Fio to the wall beside the door and muttered something unintelligible under his breath. His magic flowed out and formed a shimmering barrier that wrapped around the three of them; then it vanished completely.

  “They won’t see us,” he said, pressing close against Sepha, shielding her with his body as well as his magic. His palms were flat against the wall on either side of her, and all she could see was him. “Don’t make a sound.”

  “… should’ve known,” Rivers said, directly outside the door.

  “How could I have known she’d decide to wander?” Meadow asked. There was a sliding metallic sound as he inserted the key into the lock. The door swung open and banged against the wall, and Rivers and Meadow strode into the room.

  “Where do we start?” Rivers asked.

  “Alchem, I suppose,” Meadow said.

  Meadow disappeared into the hall as Rivers slowly surveyed the room. Her eyes glazed over when she looked into their corner, but she didn’t look closer. She didn’t see them at all.

  Meadow returned with two mops and a bucket of water. The two Spirit Alchemists went to work erasing the alchem, and Sepha grasped the journal tightly to her chest, reassuring herself that it was real. Soon, all of the othe
r evidence would be gone.

  Barely holding in a sigh of relief, Sepha looked up at Ruhen with half a smile. Her smile disappeared when she saw the tension on his face, the sweat beading on his temples. His camouflaging magic was too taxing, the cost too high. If they didn’t get out soon, they’d be discovered.

  “Damn,” Meadow said, and Sepha wrenched her gaze away from Ruhen. “It won’t come up. What did he paint this with?”

  “No idea,” Rivers said, sounding annoyed.

  Meadow stopped mopping and said, “How about this. We take the books and table and leave the alchem. She’s not clever enough to figure out what it’s for. Besides, the sooner we finish here, the sooner we can …”

  “All right,” Rivers said after a moment, having apparently understood whatever it was Meadow hadn’t said.

  They turned their backs to the door and put their hands on their hips, studying the monolithic table, strategizing how to negotiate it out the narrow door.

  This was their chance.

  Hoping Ruhen had enough magic to keep them covered, Sepha tugged Ruhen toward the door. Fio followed, and the three of them slipped out of the laboratory, through the secret corridor and into the main hall beyond.

  They’d done it.

  And soon, they’d know what the Spirit Alchemists were hiding.

  * * *

  “No success today,” Ruhen read from the journal. Water still dripped from his sodden curls. He’d dunked himself into the bath as soon as they’d returned to his room. Sepha hadn’t asked for an explanation, and he hadn’t offered one. “Did what Rivers suggested re: spirit-summoning. Didn’t work. Don’t know how to summon a specific type of dead soul, let alone a dead necromancer. Alchemy seems inadequate for this task. Below is the alchem that failed me today.”

  Ruhen paused. He’d been reading for an hour at least. Every entry, each of which was simply signed ‘Seaside,’ was much like this one: I failed today and don’t know why; will try again tomorrow.

  It was getting harder to stay awake. They were on the floor in Ruhen’s room, situated so that his bed was between them and the door. A small assurance of privacy, should anyone attempt to disturb it. Despite the cold night and hard floor, Sepha’s eyelids still felt as if they weighed more than the rest of her head combined. The absence of Ruhen’s warm and rumbling voice, more than the words he’d just read, pulled her a bit closer to wakefulness. “What’s wrong?” Sepha mumbled.