The Lady Alchemist

by Samantha Vitale

  “Ruggio will come,” Fio said, and she gave him a tight hug.

  Ruhen and Fio paced the clearing as she drew. They’d both done their parts and could do nothing but wait. All she could do was draw, but she was running out of time and running out of pages. She realized she was watching them move while she drew, and let out her breath in a huff. Gods, she was botching things! She had to focus!

  Sepha rubbed her eyes and reached down to turn the page.

  But then her gaze snagged on the alchem she’d just drawn.

  This was it.

  The alchem swirled and eddied, a whirlwind captured on paper, and she knew in a knowing beyond knowing that it would work.

  “Ruhen,” she said, her voice so tightly strung that he heard her from halfway across the clearing.

  Ruhen and Fio both came running and hunched over her page, staring at the alchem she’d created.

  “Is that—”

  “It’s the alchem,” Sepha said, nerves jolting through her body. Then, immediately after, with calm confidence, “This is the kind of alchem I’m supposed to use. I know it’ll work.”

  Ruhen gave her a searching look. He was afraid for her, she realized, but determined, too. She had no doubt that if she failed, he would kill Dnias. Take on that guilt for himself. Which she couldn’t allow.

  “I know it’ll work,” she repeated.

  Ruhen offered her half a smile. “Good,” he said, “because it’s almost sundown.”

  Sepha took a shaky breath and handed Ruhen the pen. “Can you write their names?” she asked. She could write on her own, of course, but she didn’t want to mix up any of the letters. “There,” she said, pointing out the proper place, “and there.”

  Ruhen wrote the names in his cramped, precise handwriting, and Sepha carefully tore the alchem from the book. Rolled it up in her hand. And stood.

  “Are we all ready?” she asked.

  Ruhen nodded, and Fio shook his head. With a quiet word, she sent Fio into the woods, out of harm’s way.

  She had her alchem, her plan, and the names Ruggio and Dnias. The only thing she needed now was Dnias himself.

  As they waited, the sky grew dimmer, too dark even for the hour. A high bank of purple-gray clouds had rolled in, and the trees were shifting uncomfortably beneath the differential pressure of the coming storm. The clearing’s carpet of weeds flattened and swirled, and, in the light that filtered through the clouds, the world was saturated with blue and green and gray. Thunder rumbled in a nearly continuous roar, and the world seemed about to tear itself apart with worry.

  Just as the sun dipped below the horizon, Sepha’s right hand seared with bone-deep pain.

  He was coming.

  The air near the tree line warped and twisted, and the necromancer popped out. He landed catlike on the forest floor and looked around warily.

  “Where is body?” he asked. His eyes darted around the clearing.

  It was as if he were following a script Sepha had written for him. Sepha bit her lips together, trying not to smile.

  “I haven’t made it yet,” she said. “I didn’t want you to think I had gotten the body by some means other than alchemy. I’ll produce it here and now, if you don’t mind.”

  Dnias laughed. “You grow wise,” he said, bowing obsequiously to her.

  Gods damn him.

  Sepha inclined her head and lifted her rolled-up alchem.

  Ignoring the heavy feel of Ruhen’s anxious eyes upon her—and the dreadful knowledge that her entire future, and Tirenia’s, rested upon this one pivotal moment—she unrolled her alchem. The paper pulsed with potential energy against her palm, and she pursed her lips to hide the sound of her suddenly uneven breathing.

  It was nearly time.

  Sepha was aware, overly so, of everything around her. She saw the secret smirk on the homunculus’s lips, the one which told her Dnias thought he’d already won. Saw the trees, in the full bloom of spring, stroke their leaves against each other, anxiously waiting.

  She felt the wind against her skin. And her roiling beast within.

  But most of all, she was aware of her alchem, outlined with the magician’s name: Dnias.

  It was strange to put a name to the soul that had followed her around the world. Strange to have such power over him, with him completely unaware. But strangest of all was the fact that the necromancer, the essence of him, could be summed up in so small a word: Dnias.

  Time slowed as Sepha finished unrolling her alchem. The clearing was freezing, her hands were like ice, and time came lurching to a stop. But then the moment heated, expanded, and broke.

  Nothing for it.

  Placing her hands surreptitiously just so, she pointed the alchem at the magician, as if it were a giant, focusing lens.

  It was silent, but for the wind.

  It was dark, but for the blue-gray light that made it past the clouds.

  Then the alchem became power in three dimensions, a portal too large to be contained on a flat sheet of paper. And Dnias was standing just within the border.

  There was a shift in the world, and Dnias sensed the trap.

  With an unearthly growl, he dove away from her, shouting the words that would shape his attack. Sepha crumpled her alchem in her fist, leaping to the side as a line of earth erupted jaggedly toward her.

  “Go get him!” she shouted to her magic, which ripped out of her like a howling gale and blasted the homunculus into the air. He fell hard to the ground. When he clambered to his feet, there was a frantic look in his eyes, one of surprise and terror.

  Destry had been right. The necromancer had not known Sepha had magic.

  “Don’t let him escape!” Sepha shouted to Ruhen. He instantly obeyed, kneeling and stretching his arms out wide. He roared his magic into existence, and an enormous, nearly-not-there bubble shimmered around them. A closed door.

  The necromancer would not be opening any holes through this air.

  With a peal of thunder, the storm broke. The clouds cracked open like Mill Facility A’s roof, and a torrent of rain pounded down on the clearing.

  “Traitor!” the necromancer cried, not to Sepha but to Ruhen. “She’s not … our kind!”

  “Murderer!” Ruhen bellowed. “You are none of my kind!”

  Dnias laughed, that swallowed sound, and growled, “She’s … a murderer … too.”

  Sepha froze.

  “The dead … have no … secrets,” he said. “I know … everything.”

  The world stopped. All Sepha saw was that lacy hem disappearing over the rim of the roof. The dark eyes, filled with sadness or desperation or the fraying edges of a soul ripped apart.

  Dnias grinned, a manic leer. “We … are … the … same.”

  For the thousandth time, Sepha’s mind was reduced to that howling wasteland. But that wasteland had changed, maybe permanently, from one of terror to one of rage. She hated this undead necromancer, this monstrosity who thought he knew her, who had ripped her life to shreds and sent her reeling. Now, he was digging into her past, as if he owned her past as well as her future. Before she knew it, she was bellowing to her savage beast, “Get the necromancer!”

  Her beast ripped out of her with a violence she’d never felt before. The moment was ice, and she saw Dnias’s face as he realized his great mistake. He should not have made her think about her mother.

  Sepha’s magic threw the homunculus violently against a tree. There was an empty moment as the aftershock vibrated through the wood. Then the tree burst into splinters and crashed to the ground. Dnias crashed down along with it.

  Dnias scrambled to his feet and shouted, “Stop … stupid girl! Think!”

  “Think about what? About how many people you killed in your first life? About how many more you’ve killed since you came back?” She stalked toward him, aware that he was thinking of his next attack, but not worried in the slightest. Rainwater streamed down her face, soaked her clothes, squelc
hed in her boots. A frightful, lovely wind tore at her clothes, sliced clean through her. Stoking her beast to fury. “Or maybe I should think about how you tricked me into a contract that would force me to have a child whether I wanted one or not. Or how you would use my child’s body to destroy Tirenia and take it for your own.”

  “Fool!” Dnias rasped. He clenched his hands into fists, and said, “They’ll … kill you. Kill … your lover. Why save them?” He gasped, struggling to talk. “Join me.”

  Sepha slowed to a stop. The Military Alchemists were after her. She and Ruhen would be in danger for the rest of their lives.

  Why was she fighting for Tirenia?

  It took an effort, with the wind and rain and Dnias and her own roiling beast to distract her, but Sepha began to remember.

  For her firstborn child, who deserved to live its own life.

  For Destry, who would’ve changed everything if she’d lived to be Magistrate.

  For the mariners and all the other innocents Dnias had killed.

  For Ruggio, the homunculus whose body Dnias had stolen, who’d never had a say in the matter.

  For everyone else in Tirenia, the people who had no idea they needed to be protected. The people who were oblivious of the necromancer’s threat and would likely never hear of it.

  And last, and most of all, for herself. For all the days she’d spent frantic in the library, trying and failing to read. For all the nights she’d lain awake weeping. For the tether, for the headaches, for the contract’s interfering thrumming. For the person she’d been when she made the contract, the person she hadn’t been for a long time and would never be again.

  The Magistrate, Isolde, the alchemists of every ilk, didn’t deserve Sepha’s help. But this wasn’t about them. Had never been.

  Sepha didn’t bother to answer Dnias out loud. With a muttered word, she unleashed her magic.

  Her roiling beast lunged forward and took the necromancer in its teeth. It dragged him, his heels leaving furrows in the ground, toward where the river became a waterfall. It dangled him over the edge, forcing him to look straight down to his death.

  Sepha imagined killing him. Contemplated breaking his bones one by one until he begged her to send him back to the After. Every inch of her was sharpened and weaponized, and she was dying to try her new strength on the necromancer’s stolen body.

  But Ruggio. The plan.

  She couldn’t kill the necromancer, not like this.

  With a frustrated roar, Sepha pulled, and Dnias came tumbling toward her. Then he was prostrate at her feet, snarling up at her, fighting to stand but much too weak to do it. She stretched his body out flat, and all his mighty struggles were nothing, nothing, compared to the power she had over him. He shouted, and a line of trees blasted up into the sky. He bellowed, and the river leapt from its bed and coursed straight for them.

  And she undid it all with hardly a whisper.

  He shouted again, so loud his voice broke, but his magic was feeble. He’d used it all up. Whatever he’d tried to do, it hadn’t worked.

  She was an alchemancer—gods, she was! And he? He was only a necromancer, housed inside a homunculus. He didn’t stand a chance.

  Sepha unrolled her alchem and flattened it over his chest, sneering at the fear and disbelief in his wildly rolling eyes. She placed her fingers just so. Then she closed her eyes.

  It was silent. It was dark.

  Through her eyelids, she could see Dnias’s soul as if it were solid as a body. It shone with a dark purple glow, and she could see from the pulsing of it, from the power of it, that it had permeated the homunculus’s body, that it was in complete control.

  But not for long.

  Sepha focused. There was a dark and smoky moment, but then Sepha saw him in her mind’s eye: Ruggio, the homunculus whose body Dnias had stolen. Waiting in the Almost for her to summon him here.

  Using the names around the alchem’s rim as tethers, Sepha began the exchange.

  There was a prolonged pulse such as Sepha had never felt before, and she heard Dnias cry, “Damn you to the devils! They’ll take … everything!”

  Her contract flashed and burned inside her chest, but she held fast.

  The pulse intensified and became so strong that Sepha’s arms began to go numb, and her chest began to ache. The exchange—a necromancer for a homunculus—was too unequal, and her entire being groaned beneath the strain. Alchemy was not enough.

  Then her roiling beast funneled its own strength into her mind, her hands. Let her open the door to the Almost so wide, she could shove the necromancer’s soul past the threshold. Her alchem, her alchemancy, pulled the magician’s soul from the homunculus’s body, whispering, nearly audibly, Dnias. Dnias, Dnias.

  Sepha saw, with whatever sight was possible through closed eyes, the dark purple of the necromancer’s soul separate, granulate, and seep into the lines of her alchem, swirling around the alchem’s center like water going down a drain. The more of his soul disappeared, the hotter her contract burned, until she thought she might turn into ash before the end. But still she held fast.

  As the last of the purple disappeared, the alchem glowed bright green and seeped into the homunculus’s body. There was an enormous clap like an immense door slamming, then a vibration that set the earth shaking. Then there was nothing.

  Ruggio’s soul had arrived.

  Which meant Dnias had gone.

  The sudden emptiness beside her heart told her that her contract was gone, too.

  The blank paper in her hands seared suddenly white-hot and burst into flames. Sepha released it and scrambled backward, opening her eyes for the first time since she’d begun.

  There was wind and rain, and her arms were heavy and useless. Her chest was empty and loose. The necromancer was gone, and so was her contract, and she was free. Her firstborn, if she ever had one, would be safe, and so would Tirenia. She was shaking, and gods, her alchem had worked, and gods, such power, such darkness, she’d nearly crushed poor Ruggio’s body just because she could, and maybe she was still a monster despite it all—

  Sepha’s tether tightened.

  Ruhen scooped her into his arms and held her tight against him. “You did it, Seph,” he whispered, again and again.

  The necromancer was gone, gone to the Almost, and he would never come back.

  There was a small rustling in the forest, barely discernible above the torrential rain, and Fio burst into the clearing. With hardly a glance toward Sepha, he barreled toward Ruggio, who was sitting in the grass, squinting up into the clouds.

  “Ruggio!” Fio cried, his voice hoarse and strained. “How do you feel?”

  Ruggio’s eyebrows tilted downward, and he said, simply, “I feel.”

  Fio’s mouth broke into a grin. “I told you that you would!”

  Grasping Ruhen’s wrist as if she’d disintegrate without him, Sepha walked over to Ruggio. She knelt beside him, and said, “Thank you, Ruggio. I couldn’t’ve done it without your bravery. A thousand times, thank you.”

  Ruggio was still for a moment. “He took my body from me,” he said, then flattened his mouth into a line. It was explanation enough.

  “And you took it back,” Fio said.

  Ruggio’s answering smile was nothing like Dnias’s manic leer.

  Dnias was gone.

  It was over.

  Sepha left the two souled homunculi dancing in the rain and pulled Ruhen into the shrine. Ruhen muttered something, and suddenly the rain seemed to bounce off a roof that wasn’t there. Another muttered word, and the floor of the shrine was dry. The tether unspooled as Ruhen went to his knapsack and yanked out a thick, warm blanket.

  They folded themselves onto the ground with their backs to the altar. Without saying a word, they huddled beneath the blanket and hid from the world.

  The storm raged and raged, and Ruhen cradled Sepha against him. As if she were a fragile thing, not an alchemancer who’d brutalized a hel
pless homunculus and banished a dead necromancer’s soul. As if she hadn’t just saved Tirenia from a terrible fate.

  As if he knew that, beneath it all, she felt weak and muddled and, more than anything else, exhausted.

  The tether was tight, even though it shouldn’t exist anymore. The contract was definitely gone; there was an echoing emptiness beside her heart where it used to be. So why was there still that tether, and that rightness, and that relief?

  “How do you feel?” Ruhen murmured against her hair, as they both stared up into the dappled gray-blue of the storm.

  Sepha took a deep breath, excavating the many layers of herself, mining for the truest answer. “I feel relieved,” she said at last, “that I’ve gotten rid of Dnias. But we never found out what Isolde was planning, and she and Rivers are both alchemancers, and—”

  Ruhen tsked at her. “I’m not concerned about any of that,” he said. “None of them have a hold on you like the necromancer did. Besides,” he said, a bit of pride leaking into his voice, “you’ll be a better alchemancer than they are in no time. And you know what I am. None of them can do a thing to us. They’d have to find us first, anyway, and no one knows where we are. We’re safe.”

  Sepha bit her lip. He was right, but …

  “It’s too much to hope for, that the Magistrate might have captured Isolde and Rivers, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Ruhen said. “Even outnumbered, Isolde and Rivers could still have escaped.”

  Sepha sighed. “If whatever Isolde has been planning comes to war against the Magistrate, they could rip Tirenia apart.” She thought of Destry, who had been deeply protective of her beloved country. She thought of Destry, who was dead. “We have to do something about it.”

  The wind blew momentarily fierce inside the shrine, swooping and swirling around them.

  “Even though most people in Tirenia would kill us both as soon as blinking?” Ruhen asked, when the wind died down.

  “Don’t do it for them,” Sepha said. “Do it because you couldn’t do anything else.”

  Ruhen looked down at her and smiled. “Reckless as ever,” he said, dragging his thumb across her lips and sending her blood racing.