A Golden Fury

by Samantha Cohoe

  “Who are you?” I demanded, willing Dominic to be silent.

  “I am Valentin Wolff. I am looking for Miss Theosebeia Hope.”

  He pronounced my name very precisely, as though he had practiced. And surely he must have, as he got it right, which no one ever did without practice. He was German, from the accent. Prussian, no doubt. Will’s employer had found him.

  But why was he looking for me?

  The Prussian walked toward me slowly, and in the darkness I distinguished his broad, heavy shoulders and the walking stick he held in his hand. He surveyed the room, looking me over the same way he did the dying fire, the chest, the brazier in the corner.

  “Alles,” he said to the men behind him. “Wir brauchen alles, sagte er.”

  All this. We will need it all, he said.

  “You are Theosebeia,” said Valentin, returning to English. “You will come with us.”

  “I would rather not.”

  Valentin paused, and I thought he might be smiling. It was hard to tell in the darkness.

  “You are a clever girl, he said,” said Valentin. “He said you would come. If you cannot help your friend, we will kill him.”

  There was little point in pretending, but I did it anyway, just in case.

  “What are you talking about? What friend?”

  He took another step toward me, and now he was close enough that I could just make out his smile.

  “William Percy. He is a thief and a fraud, but he thinks you will wish to help him. But perhaps you do not?”

  I glanced at the door, where Dominic stayed quiet. I would go, of course, but what to do about Dominic? He might die of thirst before we were free to come back for him.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “You will help William Percy pay his debt to Burggraf Ludwig. If this debt is discharged, William Percy’s life will be spared, and you will of course be free to go.”

  “And what does William Percy owe to Graf Ludwig?”

  “He owes him the Philosopher’s Stone.”

  A chill swept over me. My breath wouldn’t come. I forced out words without it.

  “And Will … told you I would make it?”

  Valentin inclined his head in assent.

  I reached for the doorframe. Suddenly I wasn’t sure my legs would hold me. Could Will have told them about me, to save his life? I had thought he wouldn’t ask it of me. But if this were true, then he was not even going to ask. He had forced my hand.

  My mind recoiled at the thought. I wouldn’t believe it. I couldn’t.

  “You’re a liar,” I said to Valentin as calmly as I could. “But I will come.”

  “Thea, don’t!” cried Dominic from behind the door.

  The Germans pushed me aside and rattled the door that hid Dominic. When they couldn’t open it, one of them stepped back and began to kick it down. Another decision was made for me.

  “Who is this?” asked Valentin when his partner emerged, pulling Dominic with him. “And why did you lock him up?”

  “Thea, you can’t.” Dominic looked at me with desperation. His forehead shone with sweat in the last of the firelight. “You know what will happen. Will shouldn’t ask this of you.”

  “Perhaps not,” said Valentin. “But, if you do not choose to help him, we will find another way to convince you.”

  “Don’t hurt her!” exclaimed Dominic.

  Valentin bowed his head and frowned at the thought.

  “I hope that will not be necessary,” he said to Dominic. “Perhaps we could hurt you instead.”

  Valentin glanced at me to gauge my reaction. Whatever my face showed seemed to satisfy him.

  “Wir nehmen ihn auch,” he said.

  We take him also.

  Dominic had told me he didn’t know German, but he seemed to know well enough what this meant. He lashed out against the man holding him, landing a punch to the jaw before the German had time to react. Valentin took my arm and pulled me back. Each of the Prussians was half again as big as Dominic, and yet Dominic felled one of them with another blow. When the second pushed him into the wall, Dominic threw him off. Valentin watched dispassionately while his two fellows got up and tried again. He drew me close to him and leaned his head down to my ear.

  “Is it some of your alchemist’s witchcraft, that he is so strong?” he asked in a low voice. His face brushed mine, and I shuddered and jerked away, but Valentin held me.

  The two Germans had finally realized they had to coordinate their attack. Each seized one of Dominic’s arms and threw him face-first to the ground. I winced as his head bounced off the floorboards with a sickening crack. I tried to pull free of Valentin, again without success. The other Germans produced rope and bound Dominic’s hands behind his back.

  “Please, let me see if he is hurt,” I said to Valentin.

  “There is a surgeon at the Burggraf’s house who will see to him,” said Valentin. “You should have warned us that you had enhanced his strength with your sorcery.”

  “I didn’t,” I said. “He is sick, and he is going to get sicker.”

  “Sick with strength? An unusual sort of sickness.”

  I watched helplessly as one of the Prussians threw Dominic over his shoulder. Dominic’s eyes were closed, and his mouth leaked blood. Valentin escorted me out after him, while the third German stayed behind to gather up the supplies. Valentin’s grip on my upper arm was vise-tight and painful, but it wasn’t what made me follow him.

  Outside, twilight had deepened into night. A carriage waited, stylish and out of place, and looking much too large on the slum’s narrow street. Valentin lifted me in and climbed in beside me. He released my arm and grasped my hand instead. I tried to pull it away, but he tightened his grip.

  “I am sorry for this—” Valentin cocked his head in thought. “Unverschämtheit.”

  “Impertinence.” I translated without thinking.

  “Sprechen sie Deutsch?” he asked.

  I tried to look confused, and shook my head.

  “This is an impertinence. I thought that might be the word you were searching for.”

  “Ah, yes.” Valentin’s eyebrows relaxed. “I am sorry for this—impertinence.” He said it as carefully as he had said my name. “But I must be certain you will not attempt to throw yourself from the carriage.”

  I edged away from him but left my hand lying limp on his leg, where he held it. I stared at Dominic, unconscious and bound across from me, and then out the window as the muddy alley rolled past. The tall wooden tenements blocked the last of the day’s dying light, and a dirty fog fell over us. I was starting to feel as though it was never daytime in London.

  “I won’t,” I said.

  The streets grew steadily broader and cleaner as we passed out of the slums. Burggraf Ludwig’s house was in the West End of London, which seemed like a different world than Will’s, not just a different neighborhood. The streets here were paved with tidy cobbles instead of muddy slush. Tall gas lamps cast soft yellow light at regular intervals along the way. Instead of cramped wooden tenements, too close and tall to show the sky, the streets were lined with grand houses, spacious lots, and tall iron gates bearing proud brass crests. One of them swung open to let us in. The Burggraf’s house stood back from the road, shrouded in stately trees. Valentin released my hand when the gates swung shut behind us. I stepped out of the carriage and glanced back at the manned gate and high walls and concluded that he was right. There was no need to restrain me now. Well trained as I was, no one had ever thought I might need to know how to scale a wall. It had not seemed a skill necessary for the successful practice of alchemy, until now.

  I stepped inside the white marble entryway, where a sparkling chandelier hung down from two floors above, casting the bright, clear light of dozens of candles. Fluted Greek columns flanked the graceful, curving staircase. The stately, black-and-white-checked floors gleamed with polish. Everything was light, white, and sparkling clean. The contrast between Will’s den and
this house could not have been more pronounced. In spite of myself, I drew in a long breath of clean, fresh air. Then I turned to Valentin.

  “I want to see Will,” I said. My voice rang off the high ceiling that soared above us.

  “You may see him when the surgeon has finished tending to him,” said Valentin. “You will not want to see him until then. We left him somewhat messy.”

  I glared at Valentin. “What have you done to him?”

  Valentin cocked his head at me and looked surprised. “Did you think your friend gave us your name without resistance?” he asked.

  “Do you mean—” My stomach lurched with horror and hope. “You tortured him? That’s why he told you about me?”

  The relief I felt to have proof that Will had not betrayed me willingly died quickly as I imagined what it meant. Messy, Valentin had said. I glared up at him. In the light of the chandelier, I saw his face clearly for the first time. He looked younger than I expected, younger than my father. Much younger. He could not have been much older than twenty-five. He was not ugly, despite a scar that ran down his forehead and through his eyebrow. His hair was the color of dry dirt strewn with straw, and his straight bearing and dark blue waistcoat gave him a military look. If I had seen him first on the street instead of uninvited in the garret, I would have trusted him by instinct. It was strange to notice that at the same moment I learned he had tortured Will.

  “What did you do to him?” I demanded again, my horror rising. “How could you? He’s not well, surely you saw that!”

  “No, he is not well,” said Valentin. He looked at me, his eyes a little wide, as though he, too, were seeing me clearly for the first time. “It seems alchemy is not a healthy profession. You are very young,” he added without pausing.

  “I … what?” I snapped.

  “Forgive me,” said Valentin. “You are … not what I had thought. Permit me to ask, what is Will Percy to you?”

  “As you said, he is my friend.”

  “Forgive me,” he said again. “But you live with him.”

  My face burned crimson, but I forced embarrassment from my voice.

  “I do not.”

  Valentin stared at me a moment longer, looking as though he was about to say more. Then he thought better of it and extended his arm to the staircase.

  “This way,” he said.

  We climbed two flights, my hand trailing on the elegant bannister. I looked up and saw the sky through the glass dome that capped the ceiling. I had been in many fine houses—enough to know that this was not merely grand, but stylish as well. Just below the dome, a balcony guarded by a gleaming bronze balustrade looked down on us. I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and saw the swish of skirts just disappearing from view. On the third floor, we crossed the broad length of the house, passing a German sentry standing as still as the gray-dappled marble columns that overlooked the staircase. Valentin made for one door, while across from it the German who had carried Dominic in stood guarding the other.

  “Dominic is in there?” I asked Valentin.

  “Dominic,” he repeated, and I realized with chagrin I had given him a name he didn’t know. “Yes. Dominic is in there.”

  A pang of worry shot through me.

  “Is he hurt?”

  “I think not gravely,” said Valentin. “He may have lost a tooth. The surgeon will see to him in a moment.”

  “If he becomes violent, please don’t hurt him again,” I said.

  “Do you expect him to become violent?”

  I glanced at the burly German guarding Dominic’s door, the one who had thrown him to the floor and knocked out his teeth. I noticed with satisfaction that he bore his own marks from the encounter. An enormous bruise blackened one of his eyes, and his lower lip was swelling and split. But he stood tall despite that, ignoring his painful face, his arms straight at his side. His hair was pulled back as neatly and tightly as Valentin’s, and his clothes were nearly identical to those of the guard across the hallway.

  “What are you people?” I asked, turning back to Valentin. His hand was on the doorknob, but he hadn’t opened the door.

  “We are employees of Burggraf Ludwig, who owns this house, as I have told you,” he replied.

  “You are soldiers,” I said.

  Valentin inclined his head in assent. “Once we were.”

  “But you kidnap women and torture sick men,” I said. “Have you no honor?”

  “You believe we are men of honor, because we were soldiers?” asked Valentin.

  He opened the door, and placed his hand on the small of my back, steering me into the room. A library opened before me, inlaid up to the high ceiling on every wall with dark mahogany bookcases. Rich red curtains were pulled back from the tall windows, which let in just enough light to read by. The pleasant smell of good leather, paper, and pipe smoke was cut through by something else, something sharp and ugly.

  Will sat in a burgundy chair by the fire, trembling and pale. I wasn’t sure what it was I smelled, but it came from him. He looked up at me, an expression of agony on his face.

  “I’m sorry, Bee,” Will groaned from the chair. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to tell them. I didn’t mean to tell them anything.”

  I walked toward him more quickly than I wanted to, forcing down my hesitation. I knelt beside his chair and tried to take his hand in mine, but he winced and jerked it away. His fingers were covered in white bandages. The smell—strong, unhealthy, and chemical—was coming from them. It was some kind of disinfectant.

  “Oh Will, what did they do?” I whispered.

  “Nothing,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. The surgeon said they’ll grow back. That isn’t why I told them—”

  “Don’t, Will,” I said. “I understand. I don’t blame you.”

  And I was resolved to try not to, though a twisting, hollow feeling inside made me wonder if I could. I tried not to consider whether I would have betrayed him after merely having a few fingernails ripped out. If I had let myself dwell on it, I would have had to admit that I did not believe I would.

  “You don’t understand!” It was nearly a shout, and proved too much for him. He started to cough. His whole body convulsed with it, and I looked away. It hurt to see him so broken down. It was a dull ache that hadn’t left me since he opened the door, one that flared up into acute pain with every convulsion. When he was finished I forced myself to look at him again. He was wiping blood from his mouth, breathing hard and shallow.

  “They knew you were at my house,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “They saw you go in. They said they would hurt you until I made the Stone. So I told them I didn’t know how, but you did.” He broke off again, staring down into the bloody handkerchief in his unbandaged hand. “I’m sorry, Bee. I shouldn’t have, I know I shouldn’t have. But I couldn’t bear for them to hurt you. The things they said they would do—”

  He broke off again. His coughs were wet and deep and painful. I shot another angry glare at Valentin. It felt good, and easy, to be furious with him. He was a monster, torturing Will and threatening me until he told them what he had told them. Valentin frowned and looked away, but he didn’t deny it.

  “Fortunately you are willing,” said Valentin with a trace of irony. “So no outrages will be necessary.”

  There was a quiet knock on the door, and Valentin stepped out.

  Will’s dark blue eyes locked on to me with an open intensity I’d never experienced before without a bottle of champagne to prepare me. They were still beautiful, but their usual intelligence was overshadowed with fear so deep I could have fallen into it. It wasn’t fear of Valentin, or fear of torture. Those things weren’t the worst terrors he faced. It was fear of death, and it began to thread its way from him into me.

  “I’m dying anyway. Another month or two of my life isn’t worth your sanity.”

  His words were flat. They were lies. He was no more ready to die than I was ready to let him. Valentin slipped back into the room, and I stood
to face him.

  “I can make the Philosopher’s Stone for your master,” I said. “But the process will cost me my mind.”

  Valentin’s eyebrows crawled up his forehead as far as they could go. “That seems unlikely.”

  “I’ve seen it twice now. Almost three times, if Dominic is not far from that fate. There is a curse on it.”

  “How unfortunate,” he said. His straining eyebrows did not relax.

  “What?” I snapped. “You’ll torture a man to make him produce a legendary substance that produces unlimited wealth and cures any malady, but you balk at the idea that the process might have an ill effect?”

  “You mistake me, Miss Hope,” said Valentin. “It is my employer who believes in the legendary stone, that, as you say, produces such wonders. I am not paid to believe.”

  “Fine. Your master and I believe, let that be enough. I will give him what he wants, though you doubt it, and when I do he will grant me a few favors. First, he will allow Will to heal me of my madness, and then…” I did not look at Will. I did not need to in order to feel the desperate hope coming from him. “And then you will allow Will to heal himself. And Dominic. Then you will take the Stone, and Will’s contract is fulfilled. Do you agree?”

  “Certainly,” said Valentin with a wry smile. “It seems a most acceptable arrangement. If you have gone mad, and the stone you produce can heal you, then it will be proved to be what you say, will it not? And naturally the wonderful object would discharge William Percy’s debt.”

  “And—” I tried to sound confident, though I knew this was likely too much to ask. “And we will need to go to France. My mother is there, also mad. I must cure her, as well.”

  “That will not be possible,” said Valentin. “But if you are able, you may bring your mother to Burggraf Ludwig’s estate in Prussia. The magical substance can heal her there as well as in France, one presumes.”

  “Fine,” I said. “And you may mock me all you like, as long as you take the necessary precautions. You saw how unnaturally strong Dominic was, and his madness has only begun. It would be a shame if I killed you because you did not believe me.”

  “I shall have chains made that would restrain the most fierce monster,” said Valentin.