The Lady Alchemist

by Samantha Vitale

  Then she saw that the winking cove was approaching fast. At this speed, the water’s surface might as well be stone for how much it would cushion their fall.

  “Slow us down!” she cried to her roiling beast, and it bounded joyfully out to do so. The air around them became, if not solid, much more viscous. Their fall slowed and stabilized. She felt the loss of the wind more strongly than she’d felt the loss of Meadow, and she halfway wanted to undo her magic, just to feel the power again.

  But no. Ruhen and Fio would not like that. She couldn’t, right now, remember any other reason not to let herself fall.

  Ruhen grabbed her shirt, she reached for Fio’s hand, and they fell, fast but not deadly fast, toward the base of the cliffs.

  Isolde leaned out the window, arms outstretched, and the stones moved. Chunks of rock leapt from the face of the cliff and sped toward them, enormous projectiles that would kill with even a glancing blow. Sepha released her hold on Fio and stretched out her uninjured arm, screaming, “Protect us!” to her roiling beast.

  Her beast burst from her ecstatically, strong and eager. The stones bounced away as if they’d hit a solid surface. She was made of power, and she wanted to use it all.

  Ruhen’s arms were around her, a bear hug around her hips, and Fio’s were around her leg, and she heard Ruhen shout something in a loud voice. There was a sound like torrential rain on a canopy of leaves, and they were enveloped in something cool and almost clear and not quite solid.

  Sepha glanced confusedly at Ruhen and saw that he looked as wildly alive as she felt. Then she understood. The substance that was cushioning them, that was pulling them down, was water.

  Stones crashed down around them, comets with tails of bubbles purling in their wake, but not one of them hit its mark. There was a pocket of air around her face, and Fio’s and Ruhen’s, and the stones’ bubble-tails gravitated toward the air pockets, keeping them well supplied with oxygen.

  “Ruhen?” Sepha asked.

  Ruhen loosened his bear hug so he could look up at her. He seemed larger, his shoulders broader, and Sepha could feel the excess power radiating off him. In the dim light, his eyes glinted the deep silver of a fish’s scales.

  Ruhen seemed to understand her unasked question. “We’re at the bottom of the cove,” he said. His voice, muffled by water, was deeper than usual. “Trust me.”

  With a sudden lurch, a new current picked them up and carried them through the dimness. After a few moments, they began to climb, skirting just above the cove’s rising bed.

  They rose faster and broke the surface of the water. Sepha gasped for breath, sucking in the fresh air, glad to be out of the suffocating darkness. Up and all around was cliff instead of sky. Ruhen had taken them to the tiny gap that led from the cove to the sea.

  “Almost there,” Ruhen said. There was the open sea, which, for Ruhen, meant safety.

  But then a great, heavy groaning came from the stones around and above them.

  A boulder splashed into the water, and then another. Like grains of sand slipping through an hourglass, the cliffs began to disintegrate, stone by stone.

  Sepha released all of the magic that she had left and deflected the plummeting stones. “Go!” she screamed. “Go! Go! Go!”

  Ruhen’s magic pulled, and the three of them shot out into the sea just before the cliffs exploded into a hailstorm of stones. The cliffs collapsed behind them, filling the secret cove and spilling out into the sea.

  The water carried them quickly away, but Sepha couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, even long after they left the ruined cliffs far behind. She was sinking into herself, and she was cold, colder, until her teeth chattered. Even with a pocket of air, the water was suffocating her, stifling what little magic she had left—

  Ruhen, noticing her rising panic, pulled them to the surface so that their heads were above the water as they surged away from the Sanctuary. The wind wailed in Sepha’s ears, and its hollow song revived her and her roiling beast alike. The sharp pain in her arm came into full focus. She hissed and said, “Heal it,” to her roiling beast.

  Her beast surged to her arm, gathering around the center of the stabbing pain. A searing heat and a drastic drop in her roiling beast’s power, and her arm was mended.

  She and Ruhen were quiet with the same seething anger, and Fio clung miserably to Sepha’s arm.

  “Henric betrayed us,” Sepha said.

  “He did,” Ruhen answered.

  Then, grimly, “That was no alchemy.”

  Ruhen fixed his eyes on hers. “No. It wasn’t.”

  Less than an hour later, Sepha, Ruhen, and Fio slogged onto a short shore beside a fast river that leapt into the sea. Just past the shoreline was a dense wood and strange, jutting mountains shaped like crumpled pieces of paper.

  “They were magicians the whole time!” Sepha said, wringing her hair out onto the sand before she remembered she was an alchemancer and didn’t have to. “Dry us off please,” she said to her beast, and it burst out in a visible starburst of heat that made their clothes immediately steam dry.

  “Alchemancers, if I had my guess,” Ruhen said darkly. “Something about their magic felt different. I didn’t like it.”

  Sepha frowned. Their magic had been all wrong, although she couldn’t describe exactly why.

  “Can they find us?” Fio asked.

  Sepha looked at Ruhen with her eyebrows raised. “No,” Ruhen answered. “They couldn’t find us unless they put a charm or trace on us beforehand, and they didn’t do that.”

  “How can you be sure?” Sepha asked.

  In answer, Ruhen stepped closer and took her willow pendant between his fingers. “Charm,” he said, giving it the lightest tug. Then he took her right wrist and ran his fingertips along her palm—the palm that burned whenever Dnias was near. “Trace.” Sepha swallowed. “They didn’t give us anything, so we know there’s not a charm. And you would feel a trace.”

  Still holding her wrist, Ruhen nodded toward the lush forest beyond the beach. “We should get out of sight either way, though.”

  They strode into the forest with Fio just behind. “What’s the plan, Sepha?”

  “I need to get Dnias’s soul out of that body,” Sepha said.

  “Right.”

  “And alchemy is the only way to do it, if I don’t want to kill the homunculus.”

  “Please don’t kill the homunculus,” Fio said from behind her.

  Sepha shot him a reassuring glance and continued, “And sending Dnias to the After is no good.”

  “Why?” Fio asked.

  “Because another soul would have to come to take his place, and I don’t want another magician’s soul in that body,” Sepha said. “I’d need a second name, anyway, which I don’t have.”

  “So, what can you do?” Ruhen asked. His voice was hoarse, his hand tight around her wrist. “We only have until sundown, Sepha, and that’s less than twelve hours.”

  The realization solidified in her mind at the same time she said it aloud. “I have to send his soul to the Almost.”

  Ruhen stopped so fast, Sepha crashed into him. “You have to do what?”

  “I have to send Dnias to the Almost.” It all came together, seamless and complete, in Sepha’s mind. Everything she’d learned, all the disparate pieces of information she’d earned with time and death and tears, were now conjoined into one perfect whole. “I can trade Dnias’s soul for the homunculus’s soul. The one whose body he stole. Then the homunculus will own his own body again, and Dnias will be stuck in the Almost, where no one will think to look for him because no one knows it exists!”

  Ruhen and Fio gaped at her, stunned into silence.

  “Brilliant,” Fio breathed.

  Sepha grinned. “Fio, can you go to the Almost and find the name of the homunculus whose body the necromancer stole? Is that possible?”

  Fio nodded.

  “Good. Then I need you to find him and ask him
if he’s willing to return to his body.”

  “How will he know when to come?” Fio asked.

  “I’ll summon him by name with my alchem,” Sepha said. “You’ve got to get him to agree and tell you his name. Can you persuade him?”

  Fio gulped. “I can try. He might refuse. Most homunculi would.”

  “I know,” Sepha said, chewing her lip. A chilling thought occurred to her. “If I send the necromancer’s soul to the Almost, will he be able to get into the body of any empty homunculus?”

  “That’s not how it works,” Fio said, frowning. “I can only come to my body. If you send the necromancer’s soul to the Almost, he’d only be able to return to the one he’s in now. Which would mean—”

  “—that the homunculus’s soul would never be able to leave his body again,” Sepha finished for him. Ruhen swore softly.

  “His body would be a prison,” Fio said. “He really might refuse.”

  “But if he’s willing to do it, he’ll save all of Tirenia. I don’t know how else to get the necromancer’s soul out of that body without killing the homunculus himself.” Sepha swallowed. “And I would take care of him. He would have no cruel master to worry about.”

  Fio’s gaze wandered to the surrounding forest, to Sepha’s hands, to his scuffed pair of once-new shoes. He nodded. “I’ll find him and try to convince him. I’ll do my best.”

  “Thank you, Fio,” Sepha said. The thought of Fio being once more reduced to a hollow shell was nearly impossible to bear. “Come back as soon as you can. I can’t do anything without that name.”

  Fio nodded again. With a strange expression, he said, “Take care of my body while I’m gone.”

  “I will!” Sepha said. “Are you leaving now?”

  But Fio didn’t answer. His face had gone slack and grim, and the intelligent glint in his eyes had faded completely away. Fio was gone.

  Sepha stared at the empty husk of Fio, momentarily frozen.

  With a quick, smooth movement, Ruhen picked Fio up and tucked him beneath one strong arm. “I’ve got him, Seph,” he said. “Let’s keep moving. No time to waste.”

  He was right. Sepha charged through the lush wood, with Ruhen close behind. There was a music to the place, of water dripping from layers of leaves, birds singing their warnings, furtive scrabblings in the underbrush. On another day, she would’ve found it marvelous. But it wasn’t another day.

  The two of them crashed through the thick underbrush, hacking recklessly at the obstructing green growth. Fio’s body was obscenely limp beneath Ruhen’s arm, like a doll or a corpse. Sepha flinched. Gods, it wasn’t a corpse, she knew that, but she’d gotten so used to that sly spark in Fio’s eyes that its absence sure as After felt like death.

  Sepha shook her head. Fio wasn’t gone forever. He would be back. Soon.

  “We need to find a clearing,” Sepha said, squinting at the thick canopy above her. From the few slices of sunlight that made it through the leaves, she could tell that it was noon, or maybe even later. Gods, there was so little time left! “The air is so close down here.”

  In answer, Ruhen only nodded and hefted Fio’s limp body over his shoulder before forging on again.

  The clearing came upon them suddenly, as if it wanted to catch them by surprise. It was bounded on one side by the river, which danced shortly away down a cliff. In the center of the clearing gleamed a structure that might once have been a Dànist shrine. Its white marble columns, which still stood upright to support a roof that no longer existed, gleamed in the early afternoon light.

  “What is that?” Sepha breathed. There was a stillness in the clearing that she didn’t want to disrupt.

  “Where we make our stand, I think,” Ruhen murmured. Together, they crossed through the clearing toward the shrine. Tall grasses dragged at Sepha’s boots, and the noise of their passing reverberated sacrilegiously around them.

  The shrine was rectangular and open on one side to the world. The remaining three sides were walled in with the same white marble as the columns. Inside, against the back wall, two life-sized statues sat on matching marble thrones, their lifted hands touching palm to palm. Their faces had long since worn away. A bird had nested on one of the heads, crowning it with twigs. Before the statues was a small stone altar. Empty, thank all the good in the After.

  “Lael and Amin,” Sepha murmured. It could only be them. The legends all said they worked their best alchemy when they were hand to hand.

  “You don’t think they’ll mind if we stay here, do you?” Ruhen asked.

  There was a slight smile on his lips as he said it, as if he wanted Sepha to think he was joking, but she knew why he’d asked. It was stiller inside the shrine than it had been in the clearing, and it felt very much as if the statues were watching them.

  Sepha studied the worn faces for a moment. “I think they’d like the company.”

  “Good,” Ruhen said, “because we don’t have anywhere else to go.” He muttered something, and a hole appeared in the air. Reaching one arm through it, he pulled out their two knapsacks.

  Sepha smiled. “That was a good plan.”

  Ruhen flashed a forced smile and set both knapsacks on the ground. “Now what?”

  Sepha took a deep breath. “Now, I need an alchem.”

  Ruhen opened his mouth, and Sepha steeled herself to hear the same thing she’d heard a thousand times. But instead of You can’t, Ruhen said, “What alchem will you use?”

  Sepha passed a hand over her forehead, her mouth, and said, “I don’t know. I don’t think Seaside’s alchem will work. Forcing such an uneven exchange, a magician for a homunculus, while also using the wrong alchem—it’s too much. Even for me.”

  Ruhen nodded, as if this wasn’t an enormous problem. He sat beside the knapsacks and pulled out Seaside’s journal. “You’ll have to make one, then.”

  Sepha huffed. Sat. “Mmhmm.” Her magic was practically singing. She’d just spent hours beneath the wind’s kiss after days of lack, and now she was full to bursting with power.

  She tamped it down.

  She had to concentrate. She’d need all of her magic later. In case everything went wrong.

  “The alchem has to work. We’ll only get this one chance. If he manages to change my contract and get away before I get him, then …” She let the sentence die where it was.

  Sepha’s thoughts raced in a frantic, unhelpful circle. She needed an alchem, and she’d never successfully drawn one before. Only one shot for it to work. Otherwise, she’d have to kill Dnias and murder an innocent homunculus. Which she couldn’t bear to do. So, she needed an alchem …

  “When my mother’s alchemancer sent us here,” Ruhen said suddenly, “the alchem he used was strange.”

  Sepha raised her eyebrows in a wordless question. Ruhen raised his eyebrows right back and dipped his head to meet her eyes. “It didn’t look like a regular alchem.”

  Frustrated, Sepha asked, “What are you trying to say?”

  “I’m trying to say that maybe alchemancers are supposed to use different alchems. Maybe that’s why you always had to trace yours. Because your body was trying to tell you they were wrong for you all along.”

  Sepha gaped. She felt the same way she had when she’d realized her beast fed off the wind, as if some integral part that had long been offset had finally clunked into place. She’d always thought her inability to draw alchems was because of her word blindness. But now that Ruhen had suggested otherwise—

  “I think you might be right.”

  “Well,” Ruhen said, pulling Seaside’s pen from where it’d been tucked into the journal’s loose spine, “only one way for you to find out.”

  Sepha took a quick breath, then took the journal and pen from Ruhen.

  Now, more than ever, she had to focus. Ignore the snide voice and just act.

  She had to draw an alchem. One that would connect this world to the Almost.

  She had to draw an
alchem to save Tirenia, even though she hadn’t been able to draw one to save herself.

  Ludicrous.

  Nothing for it.

  Sepha twirled Seaside’s pen once in her hand, then flipped to the last page the doomed alchemist had written on. The one with the alchem that had called Dnias here. The alchem gave her a horrible, prickly feeling, the clearest and strangest not-right-ness. She stared at the jutting lines, trying to glean what she could from their shape. She turned the page.

  For the first time, she tried to draw an alchem of her own—not an exact copy of another, but one of her own imagining.

  And as she drew, she thought.

  She thought first of how she’d never been able to draw alchems and of her mind-boggling stupidity. Then she thought of Father: the way his snide voice had followed her from one end of Tirenia to the other, and the way she’d begun to ignore it. The niggling idea that, if Isolde could be trusted, Father—well, Ludov—wasn’t her father at all.

  She thought of Destry and wondered if she would still be alive if Sepha hadn’t frozen in that last crucial moment. Then she dismissed the thought. It was unhelpful. Destry was still dead and would always be, regardless. Saving Tirenia was the least Sepha could do to make up for it.

  Sepha finished an alchem and looked at it. Unlike a normal alchem, which was rigidly symmetrical, composed of concentric circles and angular geometric shapes, this one was a single flowing line that curled around itself, circular and wildly asymmetrical. It was wrong, but wrong in a more comforting way than Seaside’s alchem. This alchem was wrong for what she needed now, but it was the right kind for her. Ruhen had been right.

  The afternoon wound on, and she didn’t move from her spot on the floor. She drew alchem after alchem and scrapped each attempt for reasons she didn’t trouble herself to understand. She would know when she’d configured one correctly. She didn’t know how she would know; she only knew that she would.

  The slanting yellow sunlight had gone dim, filtered through a sweeping bank of dark clouds, when there was a sudden gasp and the scuff of small feet. Fio, eyes sharp and sly, approached Sepha and tapped her on the shoulder.