The Alchemist

6

Should I tell you that I fought? That I didn’t break? That I resisted torture and blandishment and took no part in the purge that followed? That I had no hand in the blood that gushed down Khaim’s alleys and poured into the Sulong? Should I tell you that I was noble, while others pandered? That I was not party to the terror?

In truth, I refused once.

Then Scacz brought Jiala and Pila to visit. We all sat together in the chill of my cell, huddling under the water drip from stones, smelling the sweet damp rot of straw, and listening to the wet bellows of Jiala’s lungs, the fourth participant in our stilted conversation.

Scacz himself said nothing at all. He simply let us sit together. He brought wooden stools, and had a guard provide cups of mint tea and at first I was relieved to see Jiala and Pila unharmed, but then Jiala’s coughing started and wouldn’t stop, and blood spackled her lips and she began to cry, and then I had to call the guard to take them away. And even though the man was fast in coming, it was still too slow.

The last vision I had of Jiala was of Pila carrying her small form, her wracking cough echoing against cold stones.

And then Scacz came down to visit me again. He leaned against the wall, studying my dishevelment through the bars.

“The cold of the dungeon disagrees with her lungs,” he observed.

The repair of the first balanthast was the price of Jiala and Pila’s well being, but Scacz and our Jolly Mayor were not finished with me. In Jiala they had the perfect lever. In return for the magic and healing that only Scacz could provide, I created the tools and instruments they desired. My devices purchased life for myself and my family, and death for everyone else.

Blood ran in the streets. Rumors in my prison said that the Mayor’s halls were redder than a sunset. That bodies burned in bramble piles, the fat of their cooking twining with the yellow smoke of bramble to fill the skies with funeral pyres. The Executioner was so busy that on some days, a second and even a third were summoned to take over the efforts of the axeman who had grown exhausted with his work. Some days, they didn’t even bother with the effort of a public spectacle.

Scacz had laughed at that.

“When we couldn’t find these furtive little spell casters, we needed fear to keep the magic in check,” he said. “Now that we can hunt them down, it’s better to let them practice for a little while, and then seize everything.”

As long as I furnished the tools of the hunt, I was not harmed. Scacz and the Mayor had so many uses for me. I was a prized hawk. Free enough, within certain confines. The dynamic between us was as taut as the strings on a violin. Each of us would pluck at those strings, seeking gain, testing the other’s boundaries, trying the tenor of the note, the question of its strain. The workings of my mind and its creations tugging against the value of Jiala and Pila’s well being. And so we each tugged and pulled at that catgut strand.

I was not a prisoner, precisely. More a scholar who worked all day and all night in a confined place, building better, more portable balanthasts. Constructing devices better tuned to sniffing out magic. Sometimes, I myself forgot my situation. When the work went well, I was as focused as I had ever been in my workshop.

I am ashamed to admit that there were even times when I reveled in the totality of focus that my cell provided. When there is nothing to do but work, a great deal of work can be done.

“Come now. I brought sweets. You like them,” Pila urged. She sat outside the bars of my workshop, offering.

I sat, staring. “I’m not hungry anymore.”

“I can see that. You’re getting skinny.”

“I was skinny before.”

Pila watched me sadly. “Please. If you won’t eat for yourself, then at least eat for me. For Jiala.”

Unwillingly, I stood and shuffled over to her.

“You look unwell,” she said.

I shrugged. Of late, I had been having nightmares. Oftentimes, I would dream of a river of my victims. Dreamed them pouring down the streets to where the Executioner stood waiting, the hooded butcher chopping off heads as they flowed past, his axe swinging like a scythe, heads spinning in all directions. And I stood at the source of that river, casting each person into the flow. Illuminating them in blue fire before tossing them into the current, sending them tumbling toward that final cataract of the axe.

Pila stretched her hand through the bars, and clasped my cold fingers. Her skin showed wrinkles and her palms showed surprising dryness. I thought that maybe those hands had been soft, that she had been young once, but I could hardly remember. She clasped my hand, and against all the promises I made myself, I collapsed against the bars, pressing her fingers to my cheek.

That I hungered for her warmth was something I could barely stand. Majister Scacz had offered us “relief” as he called it, but he did so with such a leer that after the first time, I could do it no more, and spat in his face when he next suggested the idea. Which enraged him so much that he barred Pila from visiting for nearly six months. Only when I threatened to cut my own throat with a bulb of glass did he finally relent and allow her visits again, if only through the bars. I kissed Pila’s fingers, starved for her kindness and humanity in a place that I had turned brutish and bloody.

A few feet away, a guard sat, his body ostentatiously half-turned away from us, providing a semblance of privacy. This particular one was Jaiska. He had a family and his mustaches were long for his three sons, all of whom had followed him into the guards. Decent enough, and willing to give us a little privacy as we whispered to one another through the bars.

Not like Izaac, who loved to regale me with the executions he had seen, thanks to my inventions. Izaac said that within fifty miles of Khaim, no householder had passed untested by the balanthast. Heads not only decorated the city gates, but also the broad bridge that leaped the Sulong and now linked Khaim with its lesser kin. There were so many heads that the Mayor had gotten tired of mounting trophies and now simply ordered bodies tossed into the river to float to the sea.

“How is Jiala?” I asked.

“Better than you,” Pila said. “She thrives. And grows. Scacz still refuses to let me bring her, but she is well. You can trust that. Scacz is evil but he loves your work and so he cares for us.”

“Other people’s heads in exchange for keeping our own.” I stared at my workshop. “How many now have I killed? How much blood is on my hands?”

“It’s no use thinking about. They were using magic, which was always forbidden. These are not guiltless people who go to the Executioner’s axe.”

“Don’t forget that we were among them as well. Are among them, thanks to Scacz.”

“There’s no use thinking on it. It will only drive you mad.”

I looked at her bitterly. “I’ve been here for two years already, and if I haven’t found refuge in madness yet, I doubt I will.”

She sighed. “In any case, it’s slowing now. There are fewer who test the Mayor’s powers of detection.” She leaned close. “Some say that he now only finds magic on people who are too wealthy or powerful. Those ones he snuffs out, and confiscates their families and property.”

“And no one fights?”

“A few. But he has supporters. The farmers near the bramble wall say the vines have slowed. In places, they even cut it back. For the first time in generations, they cut it back.”

I scowled. “We could have cut back miles, if the Mayor had simply used the balanthast as it was intended.”

“It’s no use thinking on.” She pushed a cloth-wrapped bundle of bread through the bars. “Here,” she said. “Please. Eat a little.”

But I shook my head and walked away from her offering. It was a petty thing. I knew it even as I did so. But there was no one else to lash out against. A petty rebellion for the real rebellion I had no stomach for.

Pila sighed. I heard a rustling and then her words to Jaiska. “Give these to him when he changes his mind. Some for you as well. Don’t let him starve himself.”

And then she was gone, leaving me with my workshop and my killing devices.

“Don’t scorn her,” Jaiska said. “She stands by you and your daughter when she could walk away easy. Old Scacz likes to bother her. Comes and bothers her.”

I turned. “What do you mean?”

He shrugged. “Bothers her.”

“She doesn’t say so.”

“Not to you. Wouldn’t want you to do something stupid.”

I sighed, feeling childish for my display. “I don’t deserve her.”

Jaiska laughed. “No one deserves anyone. You just win ’em and hope you can hang onto ’em.” He offered me the bread. “Might as well eat while it’s fresh.”

I took the bread and cut a slice on a work table. Cut one for him as well. The scent of honey and rosemary, along with the reek of neem and mint and the burn of coals from my glass fire.

“It’s a strange world we live in,” I said, waving at my worktable. “All that time spent trying to find magic, and now, suddenly Scacz asks for balanthasts to kill bramble again. Maybe he’ll finally decide to cut away the bramble wall.”

Jaiska snorted. “Well. In a way.” He took another bite of bread and spoke around the mouthful. “He cuts new lands into the bramble for his and the Mayor’s friends. The people who inform for them. Their favored guards.”

“Are you going to get new lands?”

Jaiska shrugged. “I’m just a sword. Keep my head down. Don’t work magic when the hunters are out. Hope my sons all learn their sword swinging right. Don’t need lands. Don’t need honors. Don’t do traffic with the Mayor.”

I grimaced. “That’s wisdom, there. I, on the other hand, thought I’d be a savior of our land.”

“Bramble’s mostly stopped.” Jaiska said. “Hardly anyone except Scacz uses magic anymore. Not in any real way. Can’t remember the last time I saw bramble sprouting in the city. We’re saved. In a way.”

“It isn’t the way I hoped.”

Jaiska laughed at that. “For being so clever with the devices, you’re a damn silly-headed bastard.”

“Pila said something similar to me, once.”

“Because it’s true, alchemist.”

At the new voice, Jaiska leaped to his feet. “No offense, sir.”

Scacz swept into view. “Go find something to do, guardsman.”

“Grace.” Jaiska touched his brow and fled.

Scacz sat down on the stool that Jaiska had vacated. His gaze came to rest on Pila’s gift. “I’d ask you for some of that lovely bread, but I’m afraid you’d put bramble threads in it.”

I shook my head. “Bramble threads would be too good for a creature like you.”

“Ah. Yes. A creature. Indeed.” He smiled. “A powerful creature, actually. Thanks to you. The most powerful majister in the land, now. The Majisters of Alacan all have their heads fitted to spikes.” He sighed. “It really is an addiction. The feel of power flowing through… no one understands that. Siren song for those of us who have the knack. But then, you already knew that.”

“I don’t miss it,” I said.

Scacz snorted. “Maybe. But the lure is certainly there. For many. For most. We could never allow the people to believe that your balanthast was actually a solution. False comfort there. As soon as they sipped a little magic from the pool, they would have demanded to drink deep. And then,” he made a motion with his hands, “willy-nilly everyone would have been spelling here and there, charming and spelling and making flying carpets, and we’d all have a lovely time. Until the bramble overwhelmed us.”

“It wouldn’t have,” I said. “We’re not stupid.”

Scacz laughed. “It’s not as if the people of Jhandpara-of all the old empire-were unaware of magic’s unfortunate effects. From the historical manuscripts, they tried mightily to hold back their base urges. But still they thirsted for magic. For the power, some. For the thrill. For the convenience. For the salvation. For the wonderful luxury.”

He made a motion, and a castle appeared above his hand, glowing. It floated in clouds, with dragons of every color circling it.

“How could anyone give this up?” he asked. “The people of Jhandpara had no discipline. Even the ones who wished to control themselves lacked the necessary will. And so our Empire fell.”

In Scacz’s hand, the castle tumbled from its clouds, crashing into deep bramble forests below. Bramble spread over arched palaces, over coliseums, over temples to the Three Faces of Mara, growing tall and terrible. Dust and rubble clouds obscured the scene as more cloud castles fell.

Scacz brushed his hands together, obliterating the scene and knocking off a rain of dust that landed on his robes.

“Magic brings bramble,” he said. “And even you, alchemist, hungered to use it.”

“Only a little. To save my daughter.”

“Every spell maker has a reasonable excuse. If we grant individual mercies, we commit collective suicide. A pretty puzzle for an ethical man like you.”

“You think we’re the same, then?”

“Magic is magic. Bramble is bramble. I couldn’t care less what hairs a philosopher splits. Now, every night, I sleep knowing that bramble will no longer encroach. So I sleep very well indeed.” He stood. Nodded at my new balanthast. “Hurry with your new device, alchemist. As always, your daughter’s well-being depends upon it.”

“Why not let me go?”

“Why would I do such a thing? Then you might go and carry this knowledge of balanthasts to some other city. Perhaps give others the illusion that discipline is no longer needed.” He shook his head. “No. That would not do at all.”

“Khaim is my home,” I said. “I have no wish to leave. I could construct balanthasts. You say you want to cut back the bramble now. At last, our goals align.”

“Our goals already align, alchemist.” Scacz turned away. “Hurry with your tools. I have fiefs I wish to disburse.”

“And if I refuse?”

Scacz turned back. “Then I simply will stop caring whether your daughter coughs up that river of blood of hers. The choice is yours. It always has been.”

“You’ll never let me go.”

Scacz laughed. “I can’t think why I would. You’re far too useful.”

That night I lay in my bed, surrounded by the weirdly comfortable smells and drips of my prison workshop, turning the problem of the Majister over in my head. I could not bargain with the dragon mind of Scacz. And despite his words, I suspected my time was running out.

Building balanthasts to create bramble fiefdoms was not the green grass of a new beginning, but the signal smoke of a bitter end. Once a brigade of balanthasts was prepared, there would be no more need of me.

I lay listening to the night guard’s snores, and began to plan. Assembling pieces and components into a larger whole. Not a plan fully realized, but still… an intrigue. A tangle of misdirection, and at the end of its winding way, a path, perhaps, out of my Halizakian box. I considered the alleys and angles, testing chinks in the armor of my logic.

If I was honest, there were many.

But Pima, Jiala and I had already lived too long in the center of Khaim’s bloody vortex. The storm would eventually tear us to pieces as well. Scacz might be a man of his word, but he was not a man of charity. The Mayor and Scacz thought in terms of trade, and when I had nothing left to offer, they would do away with me.

In the morning, I was up and constructing.

“Jaiska,” I said. “Go find Scacz. Tell him I’ve had an inspiration.”

When Scacz appeared, I made my proposal. “If you let me walk outside occasionally, I will make your detectors more powerful. I can extend their reach considerably, I think. And build them so that a man need not even handle them. They could run continuously, in market squares, all along the thoroughfares, at city gates.”

Scacz looked at me suspiciously. “Why so amenable all of a sudden?”

“I want to live well. I want to see the sun and the sky, and I’m willing to bargain.”

“You think to escape.”

“From a great majister like you?” I shook my head. “I have no illusions. But I cannot live forever without fresh air.” I held up an arm. “Look at me. I’m wasting away. Look how pale I become. Shackle me how you like, but I would breathe fresh air.”

“How will you improve your design?”

“Here.” I rolled out parchment and dipped my quill. Scratched out the bones of a design. “It would be a bit like a torch, standing. A sentry. It would issue a slow smoke from its boiler. Anyone who walked near would be caught.” I pushed the rough sketch through the bars.

“You’ve been holding this back.”

I met Scacz’s gaze. “You should realize that keeping me alive and happy has benefits.”

Scacz laughed at that, liking the bargain he thought we were making. “Does your hold on survival feel tenuous, alchemist?”

“I want assurances, Scacz. And a life. A life better than this.”

“Oh? There’s something else you desire?”

“I want Pila to be able to visit me again.”

Scacz leered, then shook his head. “No. I think not.”

“Then I will not improve your detectors.”

“I could torture you.”

I looked at him through the bars. “You have all the power, Majister. I ask for a favor and you return with threats. What else can I offer you? A better balanthast as well? Something that works faster and better than the ones you currently have? I can design ones that are light and portable. They could clear fields in days. Imagine the magics you could wield if bramble was hardly a threat at all.”

And the hook was set. After all, what good is it to be the finest majister in the land when you cannot wield the finest, most impressive magics? Scacz’s hunger to use his powers chafed against the natural limits that bramble imposed.

And so I set to work on my newly conceived balanthasts and my detectors. My workroom filled with supplies, with copper rolls, with bellows and tongs, with brass and nails, glass bulbs and vacuum tubes, and Scacz came to visit daily, eager for my promised improvements.

And Pila came to visit, as well.

In the darkness, we clutched close and I murmured in her ear.

“This cannot work,” she whispered.

“If it does not, you must go without me,” I said.

“I won’t. It will do no good.”

“Do you love Jiala?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then you must trust me. Trust me as much as you did when I labored for so many years to get us into this mess.”

“It’s madness.”

“A madness I created. And I must stop it. If I cannot, you must run. Take the spell for Jiala’s health and go. Run as far as you can. For if I fail, Scacz will pursue you to the very ends of the earth.”

In the morning, Pila left with a kiss and a copper token of my affection, bound around her wrist, a little bit of the workshop, leaving with her.

Over the course of weeks I worked, feverish. And at night, I met with Pila and whispered formulas and processes in her ear. She listened close, her long black hair tickling like feathers on my lips, the lustrous strands cloaking us as we played at intimacy and worked at salvation.

My detectors went up in the city, gouting out foul smoke and blanketing Khaim in their reactants, and once again blood ran in the streets. Scacz was well pleased. He granted me the privilege of letting me out of my cage.

I was so unfit that I ran out of breath simply walking up the stairs out of the dungeon. And then I gasped again when we reached the grounds and gazed over the city.

The flames of the detectors glowed here and there, blue fireflies sending out scented smoke that clung to anything magical at all. The bridge to Lesser Khaim blazed astonishingly bright, a beacon of magic in the thickening darkness.

“You have wrought something beautiful,” Scacz said. “Khaim will always be known as the Blue City, now. And from now on, we will grow.” He pointed into the sky, and I could see where the beginnings of a castle clung to wisps of accumulating clouds.

I sucked in my breath in astonishment.

“It’s damnably difficult to summon and collect the clouds,” Scacz said. “But it will be quite pretty when it’s completed.”

I felt as if I was staring at fabled Jhandpara. I could almost hear the music and taste the joy of the Mount Sena wine I had quaffed so long ago.

When I found my voice, I said, “You must bring the old balanthasts back to me so that I can adjust them. I will have to trade out their combustion chambers for the power that they will now wield.”

Scacz smiled and rubbed his hands together. “And then I will truly be able to set to work on my castle. I won’t have to check my powers at all.”

“The Majister of the Blue City,” I said.

“Indeed.”

“I’d very much like to see it when it’s done.”

Scacz looked over at me, thoughtful. “If these balanthasts perform as you describe them, alchemist, then the very least I can do for you is to give you domicile above the earth.”

“A prison in the air?”

“Better than one on the ground. You will have a most astonishing view.”

I laughed at that. “I won’t argue. In fact, I will hurry the moment.” I turned to leave, but then paused, voicing an afterthought. “When the balanthasts arrive, I’ll also need several pots of bramble. To test and make sure my designs are correct.”

Scacz nodded, distracted, still staring up at the triumph of his castle. “What’s that?”

“Bramble,” I said patiently. “For the testing.”

Scacz waved an acknowledgment, and the guards led me back down to my dungeon.

A few days later, I asked Jaiska to summon Scacz for the final demonstrations.

I had lined up a number of bramble plants in pots. “It would work better if we were at the bramble wall,” I grumbled, “but this should suffice.”

Along one wall, I had all the balanthasts of the city, lined up. Each one newly altered, its delivery tubes and chambers reshaped to their improved purpose. I took one of the gleaming instruments from its rank and plunged its nozzle into the bramble pot. The bramble’s limbs quivered malevolently, as if it understood the evil I planned for it. The dry pods rattled as the pot shifted.

I lit the match, and pressed it into the new combustion chamber. Much faster and easier to ignite, now.

A low explosion. The plant thrashed briefly, and then disappeared in a puff of acrid smoke. There was simply nothing left of it at all.

I laughed, delighted.

“You see?”

Scacz and Jaiska stared, dumbfounded. I did it again, laughing, and now Scacz and Jaiska laughed as well.

“Well done, alchemist! Well done!”

“And it is prepared much more quickly now,” I said. “These chambers on top mix the ingredients, so that they are always at the ready. Open this valve, and…” I lit another match. Explosion. Vented smoke. The potted bramble soaked up the balanthast’s poison and disappeared in a squeal of burning sap and writhing smoke.

I grinned. Did it again and again, working something greater than magic in my workshop. Jaiska stamped his feet and whistled. Scacz’s smile widened into a greedy astonished grin. And then I, laughing and in my folly, drunk on my success, grabbed a bramble with my bare hands.

A silly, reckless thing. A moment of inattention, and all my genius was destroyed.

I yanked my hands away as if the bramble was on fire, but its threadlike hairs clung already to my bare skin. The sleeping toxins numbed my hands, spreading like fire. I fell to my knees. Tried to stand. Stumbled and crashed into the balanthast, tumbling it and knocking it over, shattering it.

“Fool!” Scacz shouted.

I tried to get up once more, but fell back instead, tangling with bramble again. Its thorns pricked me, its threads clung to my skin, poisoning, clutching and hungry for me. Burrowing sleep into my heart, pressing down upon my lungs.

Darkness closed on my vision. It was terrifyingly fast. I crawled away, stupid with the toxins, reached through the bars. Scacz and Jaiska shied from my thread-covered hands.

“Please.” I whispered. “Use your magic. Save me.”

Scacz shook his head, staying well away from my touch. “No magic works against bramble’s sleep.”

“Please.” I croaked. “Jiala. Please. Keep her well.”

Scacz looked at me with contempt. “There’s really no point, now, is there?”

My limbs turned to water. I slumped to the flagstones, still reaching through the bars as he went blurry and distant.

The Majister stared down at me with a bemused expression.

“It’s probably better this way, alchemist. We would have had to chop your head off, eventually.” He turned to Jaiska “As soon as he’s done thrashing, gather up the balanthasts. And don’t be so stupid as he was.”

“What about his body? Should I take him to his wife?”

“No. Dump it in the river with the rest.”

I was too far gone to panic. Bramble stilled my heart.