The Alchemist

by Paolo Bacigalupi

  “It takes a great deal of trouble to make one,” Scacz observed.

  “Oh yes,” I said fondly, patting the venting tubes that ran along its outer surface and collected the gases of the burning neem.

  “How many do you think you can make?”

  “At first?” I shrugged. “Perhaps it will take me a month to make another.” The Mayor and Scacz both showed their consternation, and I rushed on. “But I can train other metal workers, other glassblowers. I need not do every piece of work. With others working to my specification. With a larger workshop, many more could be made.”

  “We could train the crafters who make the new arquebus,” Scacz said. “Their work is obviously pointless. A weapon that can only be fired once and is so fussy, does not even pack the power of a decent crossbow and is slower still. But this?”

  The mayor was nodding. “You’re right. This is worth our effort. Those silly weapons are nothing to this.”

  Scacz took another sip of his wine, running his hand over the balanthast. A slow caress. “The potential here… is astonishing.” He looked up at me, inquiring. “I think I would like to test it for a little while. See what it does.”

  “Majister?”

  Scacz patted me on the back. “Don’t worry. We’ll be very careful with it. But I must examine it a while. Ensure that it truly uses no magic that will come back to haunt us.” He looked at me significantly. “Too many solutions to bramble have simply sought to use magic in some glancing way. To build a fire, for example, and then when the bramble is burned, it turns out that so much magic was used in the making of the fire that the bramble returns twice as strong.”

  “But the balanthast doesn’t use magic,” I protested.

  Scacz looked at me. “You are a majister to know this, then? In some cases, a man will think he is not using magical principles, because he is ignorant. You yourself acknowledge that something unique is afoot with this device.” He picked up the balanthast. “It’s just for a little while, alchemist. Just to be sure.”

  The Mayor was watching me closely. “Don’t worry, alchemist. We will not slight your due reward. But for us, the stakes are very high. If we invest our office in something which brings the doom of Takaz instead of the salvation of Mara… I’m sure you understand.”

  I wracked my mind, trying to find a reason to deny them, but my voice failed me, and at that moment, Jiala started to cough again. I glanced over at her, worried. It had the deep sound of cutting knives.

  Scacz began to gather up the device. “Go on,” he said. “See to your daughter’s health. She is obviously tired. We will send for you quite soon.”

  Jiala’s coughing worsened. The two most powerful men in the city looked down at her. “Poor thing,” the Mayor murmured. “She seems to have the wasting cough.”

  I rushed to contradict. “No. It’s something else. The cold is all. It starts the cough and makes it difficult to stop.”

  Scacz pried the balanthast away from me. “Go then. Take your daughter home and warm her. We will send for you, soon.”

  All the way home, Jiala coughed. Deep wracking seizures that folded her small body in half. By the time we arrived at our doorstep, her coughing was incessant. Pila took one look at Jiala and glared at me with astonished anger.

  “The poor girl’s exhausted. What took you so long?”

  I shook my head. “They liked the device. And then they wanted to talk. And then to toast. And then to talk some more.”

  “And you couldn’t bring the poor girl back?”

  “What was I supposed to do?” I asked. “‘Thank you so much, Mayor and Majister, I must leave, and no, the lost wines of Jhandpara are of no interest to me. Name a price and I will sell you the plans for my balanthast, good day?’”

  Jiala’s coughing worsened. Pila shot me a dark look and ushered her down the hall. “Come into the workshop, child. I’ve already lit the fire.”

  I watched the two of them go, feeling helpless and frustrated. What should have been a triumph had become something else. I didn’t like the way Scacz behaved at the end. Everything he said had been perfectly reasonable, and yet his manner somehow disturbed me. And the way the Mayor spoke. All his words were correct. More than correct. And yet they filled me with unease.

  I made my way up the stairs to my rooms, empty now except for piles of blankets and a chest of my clothes.

  Was I turning paranoid? Into some sort of madman who looked beneath everyone’s meaning to some darker intention? I had known a woman, once, when I was younger, who had gone mad like that. A glassblower who made wondrous jewel pendants that glittered with their own inner fire, seeming to burn from within. A genius with light. And yet there was something in her head that made her suspicious. She had suspected her husband, and then her children of plotting against her, and had finally thrown herself in the river, escaping demons from the Three Hundred Thirty-Three Halls that only she could see.

  Was I now filled with the same suspicions? Was I going down her path?

  Mayor and Majister had both spoken with fair words. I unbuttoned my vest, astounded at how threadbare it had become. The red and blue stitching was old and out of mode. How broken it was. As was everything except the balanthast. It, at least, had gleamed. I had put so much hope into this idea, had spent so many years…

  A knock sounded on my door.

  “Yes?”

  Pila leaned in. “It’s Jiala. Her coughing won’t stop. She needs you.”

  “Yes. Of course. I’ll come soon.”

  Pila hesitated. “Now, I think. It’s very bad. There is blood. If you don’t use your spells soon, she will be broken.”

  I stopped in the act of fixing my buttons. A thrill of fear coursed through me. “You know?”

  Pila gave me a tight smile. “I’ve lived with you too long not to guess.”

  She motioned me out. “Don’t worry about your fancy clothes. Your daughter doesn’t care how you dress.”

  She hurried me down the stairs and into the workroom. We found Jiala beside the fire, curled on the flagstones, wracked by coughing. Her body contorted as another spasm took her. Blood pooled on the floor, red as roses, brighter than rubies.

  “Papa…” she whispered.

  I turned to find Pila standing beside me with the spellbook of Majister Arun in her hands.

  “You know all my secrets?” I asked.

  Pila looked at me sadly. “Only the ones that matter.” She handed me the rest of my spell ingredients and ran to close the shutters so no sign of our magic would be visible, reportable to the outside world.

  I took the ingredients and mixed them and placed the paste on Jiala’s brow, bared her bony chest. Her breathing was like a bellows, labored and loud, rich with blood and the sound of crackling leaves. My hands shook as I finished the preparations and took up Majister Arun’s hand.

  I spoke the words and magic flowed from me and into my child.

  Slowly, her breathing eased. Her face lost its fevered glare. Her eyes became her own again, and the rattle and scrape of her breath smoothed as the bloody rents closed themselves.

  Gone. As quickly and brutally as it had come, it was gone, leaving nothing but the sulphur stink of magic in the room.

  Pila was staring at me, astonished. “I knew,” she whispered. “But I had not seen.”

  I blotted Jiala’s brow. “I’m sorry to have involved you.”

  Jiala’s breathing continued to ease. Pila knelt beside me, watching over my daughter. She was resting now, exhausted from what her body had used up in its healing.

  “You mustn’t be caught, Papa.” Jiala whispered.

  “It won’t be much longer,” I told her. “In no time at all, we’ll be using magic just like the ancients and we won’t have to hide a thing.”

  “Will we have a floating castle?”

  I smiled gently. “I don’t see why not. First we’ll push back the bramble. Then we’ll have a floating castle, and maybe one day we’ll even grow wines on the slopes of
Mount Sena.” I tousled her hair. “But now I want you to rest and sleep and let the magic do its work.”

  Jiala looked up at me with her mother’s dark eyes. “Can I dream of cloud castles?”

  “Only if you sleep,” I said.

  Jiala closed her eyes, and the last tension flowed from her little body. To Pila, I said, “Open the windows, but just a little. Let the magic out slowly so no one has a chance to smell and suspect. If you are caught here, you will face the Executioner’s great axe with me.”

  Pila went and opened one of the windows and began to air the room, while I covered Jiala with blankets. We met again at the far side of the workshop.

  At one time, I had had chairs in this room, for talk and for thought, but those were long gone. We sat on the floor, together.

  “And now you are part of my little conspiracy,” I said sadly.

  Pila smiled gently. “I guessed a long time ago. She clearly has the wasting cough, but she never wastes. Most children, by this time, they are dead. And yet Jiala runs through the streets and comes home without a cough for weeks at a time. At least before she fell into bramble. The cough seemed to stay at bay unnaturally.”

  “Why did you not call the guards?” I asked. “There is a fine reward for people like me. You could have lived well by selling your knowledge of my foolishness.”

  “You don’t use this magic selfishly.”

  “Still. It curses the city. The Mayor is right about that much. The help I visit upon Jiala, means that hurt is visited upon Khaim. Some neighbor of ours may find a bit of bramble growing in his flagstones. A potato woman in the field will till up a new bramble root, attracted by my healing spells. The bramble wall marches ever closer, and cares not at all what intentions I have when I use magic. It only cares that there is magic to feed upon.” I stood stiffly and went to squat by the fireplace, rolled a log so that it crackled and set up sparks. Pila watched me, I could feel her eyes on me. I glanced back at her. “I help my child and curse my neighbor. Simple truth.”

  “And many of your neighbors do the same,” Pila said. “Simple truth. Now come and sit.”

  I rejoined her, and we both watched the fire and my sleeping daughter. “I’m afraid I cannot save her,” I said, finally. “It will take great magic to make the cough go away, entirely. Her death is written in the dome of the Judgment Hall, and I fear I cannot save her without great magic. Magic such as someone like Scacz wields. And he will not wield it for the sake of one little girl.”

  “And so you labor on the balanthast.”

  I shrugged. “If I can stop the bramble, then there’s no reason not to use the great magics again. We can all be saved.” I stared at the flames. Firewood had grown expensive since bramble started sprouting in the nearby forest. I grimaced. “We’re caught in Halizak’s Prison. Every move we make closes the walls down upon us.”

  “But the balanthast works,” Pila reminded me. “You have found a solution.”

  I looked over at her. “I don’t trust them.”

  “The Mayor?”

  “Or the Majister. And now they have my balanthast. Another Halizakian box. I don’t trust them, but they are the only ones who can save us.”

  Pila touched my shoulder. “I have watched you for more than fifteen years. You will discover a way.”

  I sighed. “When I add up the years, I feel sick. I was certain that I would have the balanthast perfected within a year or two. Within five. Within ten, for certain. In time to save Merali.” I looked over at my sleeping daughter. “And now I can’t help wondering if I’m too late to save even Jiala.”

  Pila smiled. “This time, I think you will succeed. I have never seen something like the balanthast. No one has. You have worked a miracle. What’s one more, to save Jiala?”

  She pushed her dark hair back, looking at me with her deep brown eyes. I started to answer, but lost my voice, struck suddenly by her proximity.

  Pila…

  With my work, I had never had time or moment to really look at her. Staring into her eyes, seeing the slight smile on her lips, I felt as if I was surfacing from some deep pool, suddenly breathing. Seeing Pila for the first time. Perhaps even seeing the world for the first time.

  How long had I been gone? How long had I simply not paid attention to my growing daughter, or to Pila’s care? In the firelight of the workshop, Pila was beautiful.

  “Why did you stay?” I asked. “You could have gone on to other households. Could have made a family of your own. I pay you less than when you did little other than washing and cleaning, and now you run the household entire. Why not move on? I wouldn’t begrudge it. Other households would welcome you. I would recommend you.”

  “You want to be rid of me just as you reach success?” Pila asked.

  “No—” I stumbled on my own words. “I don’t mean to say…” I fumbled. “I mean, others all pay more.”

  She snorted. “A great deal more, considering that I haven’t taken pay for more than a year.”

  I looked at her, puzzled. “What do you mean?”

  She gave me a sad smile. “It was a necessary economy, if we were to keep eating.”

  “Then why on earth didn’t you leave?”

  “You wished me to leave?”

  “No!” All my words seemed to be wrong. “I’m in your debt. I owe you the moon. But you starve here—you can’t think that I do not appreciate. It’s just that you make no sense—”

  “You poor fool,” Pila said. “You truly can’t see further than the bell of your balanthast.”

  She leaned close, and her lips brushed mine.

  When she straightened, her dark eyes were deep with promise and knowledge. “I chose my place long ago,” she said. “I watched you with Merali. When she was well, and when she fell ill. And I have watched you with Jiala. I would never leave one like you, one who never abandons others, even when it would be easy. You, I know.”

  “All my secrets,” I whispered.

  “All the ones that matter.”

  5

  The next day, the Mayor again invited me to his great house on the hill, to demonstrate the mechanics of the balanthast.

  Pila helped me with my finest once more, but now she leaned close, smiling as she did, our cheeks almost brushing, my mustaches quivering at the proximity of this woman who had suddenly come into view.

  It was as if I had been peering through clouded glass, but now, had finally polished a clear lens. Our fingers met on the buttons of my vest and we laughed together, giddy with recognition, and Jiala watched us both, smiling a secret child’s smile, the one that always touched her face when she thought she held some furtive bit of knowledge, but which showed as clearly on her expression as the fabled rocket blossoms of Jhandpara showed against the stars.

  At the door, I hugged Jiala goodbye, then turned to Pila. I took a step toward her, then stopped, embarrassed at my forwardness, caught between past lives and new circumstance. Pila smiled at my uncertainty, then laughed and came to me, shaking her head. We embraced awkwardly. A new ritual. An acknowledgment that everything was different between us, and that new customs would write themselves over old habits.

  I held Pila close and felt years falling away from me. And then Jiala crashed into us, hugging us both, together. Laughing and squeezing in between. Family. Finally, family again. After too long without. The Three Faces of Mara, all of us a little more whole, and grateful.

  “I think she likes us this way,” Pila murmured.

  “Then never leave me.”

  “Never.”

  I left that empty house feeling more full of life than I had in years. Silly and full of laughter all at once. Thinking of weddings. Of Pila as a bride. A gift I had never hoped to find again. The weight of loneliness lifted from me. Even the bramble cutting crews didn’t depress me. Men and women hacking bits of it from between the cobbles. Sweeping the city to make sure that vines didn’t encroach. I smiled at them, instead. With the balanthast, people would at last be safe. Could a
t last live their lives as they saw fit.

  In ancient Jhandpara, majisters imbued carpets with magic so that they could speed from place to place, arrowing across the skies. Great wide carpets, as big as a room, with silver tea services and glass smoking vessels all set out for their friends. Crossing the empire in the blink of an eye. Flying back and forth from their floating castles and their estates in the cool north, to their seasides in the gentle south. And children did not sicken and die, and there was no wasting cough. All things were possible, except that magic made bramble, and bramble dragged flying carpets from the sky.

  But now I had the solution, and I had Pila’s love, and I would have Jiala forever, or for at least as long any parent can hope for a child.

  Not cursed at all. Blessed.

  Out on the Sulong River, work was proceeding on the floating bridge. I couldn’t help imagining what it would be like to have not just the one, but perhaps even three floating bridges. We could heat our homes in the winter with green magic flames. We could speed across the land. We could reclaim Jhandpara. I laughed in the sharp spring air. Anything was possible.

  As I entered the Mayor’s house, the steward greeted me with quick recognition, which put me more at ease. My fears of the night before had been erased by sleep and Pila’s influence and the warming spring sunshine.

  The steward ushered me into the audience gallery. I was surprised to find a number of notables also there, assembled in gold and finery: magistrates of the courts, clove merchants and diamond traders, generals and old nobility who traced their lineages back to Jhandpara. Even the three ancient Majisters of fallen Alacan. More people peered out from under the columned arches surrounding the gallery’s marble and basalt flagstones. Much of Khaim’s high and influential society, all gathered together.