Mercy, and Other Costly Mistakes (nsfw)
20. Reckoning
Gargulec
impact!
- Location
- a garden
20. Reckoning
"Wake up."
Immediately the last night reasserted itself, exploding out into a tangled, thorny mess of images, impressions, and feelings. They were all chokingly bitter, aside from those that really hurt, which tasted sweet instead. No matter how much she tried, there was no holding onto the dissipating remnants of sleep; she tried to screw her eyes shut and refuse the rush of consciousness. Instead, she only immersed herself in it.
She remembered hands, careful and attentive, ushering her out of the feast, freeing her from that damn dress, holding her as she sobbed unconscionably and aimlessly. They helped her wash herself, they led her through a thick fog of words, and promises and explanations that could find no purchase in the miasma of her mind, and finally, they laid her down on a bed, under a warm blanket, in a room so far above the ground, and so far away from home. She remembered the names and faces that those hands were attached to. Eusebia. Prunikos. She even remembered the immense, guilt-shot sense of relief of having them take care of her, having them save her from the inevitable consequences of her own mistakes.
But most of all, she remembered the dull, directionless anger swelling with each moment parting her from that fucking below-spawn.
"Wake up!"
Grudgingly, Ifi opened her eyes, to see Pris lean over her, hair tied into a neat bun, face severe. She cut a dark figure against the golden daylight filling the room behind her. The alchemist mumbled half-coherently, and dug herself up, blinking rapidly to get the last dregs of sleep away from her eyes. There was so much charm glass around her, veining up the walls and to the ceiling, slowly pulsing out the High City's intimate heartbeat.
"My lady wife apologizes for waking you up," Pris added, stepping back from the bed. "But there is someone…"
The elixir woman's voice had changed, Ifi realized, a pinprick of professional pride puncturing through the haze surrounding her. She leaned forward, just to make sure.
"...someone here to see you. So please, get dressed and join us. This really can't wait. There are fresh clothes on the dresser."
There could be no mistake. Of course, the alchemist knew, it was probably rude to try to listen for the remains of the tell-tale masculine timbre in Pris' voice, and of course, she could just about pick a note or two of it in that rich contralto, but only because she knew where to look. Anyone else would surely be fooled, especially under the remains of Pris' lowborn slur. The tincture worked far better than expected.
"Right," she nodded, grasping the fleeting sense of accomplishment like a lifeline. "Wait," she realized belatedly. "Someone is waiting for me?"
The span between a burst of hope, and its rapid receding, hurt.
"Master Glassmaker wants to have a chat."
It hurt a lot – enough to make her miss the hook so blatantly present in those words.
"So please hurry," Pris finished, face pulled into a deep frown. "You've tested her patience enough already."
Ifi nodded, watching the other woman walk out of the room to give her privacy. Strangely, as much as she should be worrying about a visit from the City's most powerful, something else pinned her attention. Though Pris wore a plain, neck-high dress, a corset still cinched her waist and chest, laced high and tight. The alchemist stared at the row of knots lining the woman's back, a sick kind of longing blooming in the corset's afterimages.
Her own blue dress lay neatly folded on the dresser, right next to the clothes prepared for her for today – and right next to the rest of last night's accessories. The hook gleaned, polished to mirror sheen; Ifi swallowed, realizing her jaw still felt stiff, and her throat crushed. The impressions of the Feast lingered on the body. The heels – the absurd heels she barely managed to walk in – waited nearby. Her feet still hurt from them.
If she could find it in her to cry right there, she would. But her eyes were dry; though bile swelled at the sight, what followed was no great outpouring of sadness. Just that anger, that cold, indistinct feeling seizing her up and refusing to allow anything else in. With shaking hands, she reached for the clothes offered to her by the lady of the house, and started to change.
Her feet hurt her, her legs were shaking. Her back felt stretched and sore, and she could barely move her neck and her jaw. Last night would not wash away with just a single night of sleep – nor would yearning leave. As she struggled to put on the plain dress, all she could do was to have her mind wander. And what images it reached! Cold, porcelain hands taking this soreness as an offering, squeezing and rubbing it in; insatiable, but loving hunger feeding on the last dregs of night's pain; a cruelly caring voice praising her, for she did well, she had been brave, she made it through-
"Fuck," Ifi exhaled, grabbing the dresser's edge and staring at the exhausted battlefield of her face. Even there, the feast remained visible, its mark left in scratches and indents impressed into her skin by the gag's jeweled harness. "How could you?"
The question helped – it provided focus for the mounting anger. It clung to the idea of Shard, of that stupid, awful creature who had to break every promise, who had to make every mistake, who was too stupid to notice how much she was hurting others, or worse yet – refused to care. Who gave Ifi every hope under the sun, and – for a scant few hours – the taste of happiness. Who, in the end, only reminded the alchemist of that very happiness' impossibility.
"I hate you," Ifi spat into the mirror, her voice a trebling mess.
That was an obvious lie, and its obviousness was the reason why the alchemist wanted nothing more but to shatter the mirror, break the dresser into splinters, and howl in numb fury at how she could not rid herself of longing for that dumb, demonic, duplicitous beast named Shard. But such fantasies have a course that seldom leads through enactment. She exhaled, and made herself a promise she instantly knew she was never going to keep. Still, to her own reflection she pledged that this time, she would give up and forget. For real. For good. Again. Forever.
If that was meant to get the anger to recede, it only pulled up more bile up her throat. But at least she finished dressing, splashed some water over her face from a charm-refilled basin, and left the room. She let Pris guide her down a spiraling staircase, through a modest living room, and then through a glass door onto the sun-drenched apartment's balcony.
"Remember that we've helped you," the elixir woman stated coldly, letting her outside. "Be mindful of what you say to her."
Whatever that remark was meant to imply fled from Ifi's attention at the first breath of the air outside. It tasted nothing like Ifi was used to. Clear, sharp, fresh – it carried no hint of smoke, of sweat, of the effusions of the city, of its industry, of soot and smog that legions of workers scrubbed daily from the white facades of the Middle City. She inhaled sharply, letting the icy wind in, the cold instantly drawn out by the bright-burning day – and by the spiraling glass pattern embedded into the balcony's floor, emanating warmth and turning away gales. And beyond the balcony's edge, there opened a view onto a forest of slender towers, charm-studded and linked by a cat's cradle of walkways and hanging gardens. So far above the world, the HIgh City appeared nothing short of a skyward archipelago.
"Not now," Pris whispered, leading her towards a low table, and expectant faces.
Not without effort, Ifi peeled her eyes away from the stunning vista, and towards her host – and Master Glassmaker seated next to her, currently stirring sugar into a coffee cup. Ifi recalled her from the feast as a distant, small figure with a ringing voice; what she didn't realize was just how massacred a full half of that woman's face was. At some point, it burned until it melted, sloughing off before solidifying into a disfigured topography of hills and valleys rendered in scar tissue. Ifi had seen older alchemists who had lived through laboratories going up in their faces; none of that compared. It was a miracle that Master Glassmaker was still alive, let alone smiling at her.
Though, it had to be said, with the glacial-blue jewel set into the woman's eye-socket, the smile could hardly come across as warm, or inviting.
"And there she is," she announced, raising her cup in a mock-toast. "Come, sit. Now is the time for your trial."
Far too belatedly, Ifi realized – with an awful lurch of her stomach – that she should have been holding onto worries far larger than just the mute anger at what Shard did to her. Escorted by the stare of the lifeless, jewel eye, she shuffled into a wicker chair, right next to taut-faced Eusi.
"Master Glassmaker," Pris' wife announced, affecting a tone so formal as to make Ifi's back straighten on sheer reflex, "let me introduce you to Ifigenia Juno of the Subtle Fellowship of Brewers, presently a guest of my house. Ifigenia, this is Master Glassmaker. She wishes to ask you about last night's events."
A light meal waited on the table – forest fruit and yogurt, fresh bread and excellent coffee. But aside from Master Glassmaker herself, no one seemed to be eating. Pris held herself straight as an arrow, hands folded on her lap, face blank. Eusi kept frowning, nervously playing with a silver spoon in her hands shooting furtive glances at the burned woman, who only continued to smile.
"It's an honour," Ifi bowed her head, "of which I am unworthy."
Words – distant and distorted memories of Master Glassmaker's speech from the Feast – echoed in her head, foretelling murder. And yet, that same fury she woke up to continued to expand and bloom into new, choking forms.
"I'd ask what happened to you last night," Master Glassmaker said, tone playfully cruel, "that you look so dogshit today. But I think I know – conspiracy to overthrow the rightful hierarchy of the High Table, wasn't it?"
Eusi started to protest; Master Glassmaker didn't let her. With a slasher grin, the burned woman watched as the alchemist curled down on herself, stewing in the notion that perhaps the bigger threat than getting gutted by Shard was what the below-spawn's real enemies could do to her.
"For that the punishment would be too obvious to merit mentioning," Master Glassmaker continued, "though it certainly will be quite a sight to behold."
She let her voice hang, passing the silence that followed by grabbing a handful of berries and popping them into her mouth, letting the juice stain her lips blue. Somewhere far below, the bells of the Middle City rang, reaching to the heights as little more than a series tinny chimes.
"Unless, of course, this is all a big misunderstanding," Master Glassmaker added, finally swallowing. She flashed Ifi another mirthless smile. "After all, my good friend Villis tells me that you were not an accessory to that conspiracy, but just an… accessory."
She chuckled lightly. But it was not a joke, Ifi realized – without even having to see the imploring stare Eusi directed her way. It was a lifeline.
"It's true," Pris said suddenly, voice no less firm than the form her body was held to. "The demon seduced her, and used her. She bears no responsibility for the conspiracy, and-"
"Dear," Master Glassmaker raised a finger, "I want to hear it from her, not you."
Ifi had made a virtue for herself out of paying no heed to politics, to the games of the mighty, and the fates of the High Table. But for all of her recent, foolish mistakes, she understood well enough what was expected of her right now, and how she was going to save her life. And against that knowledge, she could only feel powerless, and so very angry. It was all Shard's fault; all the result of the below-spawn's idiotic machinations which had to terminate in Ifi denouncing–
–of all the ways to realize it and to put a name on it, this one had to be among the worst. The name and the word should bring joy, but instead they bore with them nothing other than a promise of a long life lived in misery and longing, in waking up to an absence, and going to sleep in fear of dreams of what could have been–
–which had to terminate in Ifi denouncing the monster she could not stop loving. In defiance of reason, and everything else. And to know that – to recognize that necessity – was to make her feel like the weakest creature under the sun. And to know that – to recognize the injustice – was to let her anger finally find a voice.
"She used me," Ifi said, meeting Master Glassmaker's dead stare head on. "I saved her life. I nursed her back to health. I offered myself to her. And she used me, anyway. She dragged me all the way up here and broke every promise she had made. I trusted her over, and over again, and every time it turned out to be a mistake."
All of this was true, after a fashion. None of it was given as a lie. But it tasted so rancid to say. Each word cut Ifi up; and there were more coming, the ones that bore the real burden of her fury. She tried to bite on all of them, and still some got out.
"I would have been good to her," she finished, the little fragile testament to how it all felt, and to where the real seat of Shard's treachery stood.
Master Glassmaker listened to all of it carefully, the smile gradually warming up with each word Ifi cried out. In the end, it came close to being without malice.
"Well," she declared oh-so-very carefree, "I'm glad to hear. And, just to make sure, it was also her manipulation that led to Eusebia providing her with an invitation to the Feast of Indulgence? My distant cousin had no way of knowing who was puppetting you, yes?"
"Yes," she lied with as much conviction as she could muster. Eusi and Pris exhaled audibly.
"Perfect!" Master Glassmaker clapped her hands, beaming. "So there's that, all resolved, and not a single hanging to be had! I'll be going now. You are a terrific host, Eusebia. I should visit more often."
"The pleasure is all mine," Eusi replied, stilted and dry. "Our doors are always open."
Wicker scraped against the floor; Master Glassmaker straightened to her full, meager height, Pris, strangely tense, standing up to escort her to the door. Ifi sat in silence; after the surge of anger, what remained was a sinking kind of emptiness, no longer held aloft by the quick-burning fury.
"Is she dead?"
The question slipped from her mouth without passing through thought first. Eusi turned rapidly, twisting herself in fear; Pris shot her a hateful glare. But Master Glassmaker didn't seem to notice – or care – for the pleading note so very apparent in the alchemist's voice.
"Shard?" she shrugged, from the balcony's door. "Not yet. But don't you worry your little broken heart, miss alchemist. Right now, she is certainly wishing to be."
Afterwards, silence stretched, hostile to words. Master Glassmaker left, and for a time, Ifi and Eusi sat alone on the balcony, looking away from each other, and from the city. The view was really incredible; even through the fog of loss surrounding her, the alchemist could not hold back wonder. But however spectacular the slender white towers of High City were, or the hanging gardens linking them together with long strings of verdant green, it was what stretched beyond that she could not look away from.
With the bright sun and sharp winds keeping the sky empty and clear, she could see, far alongside the horizon's edge, the jagged gray line, a vast outline that could only be the Northern Limit. At first, Ifi couldn't believe it and thought it was some trick of the light, but no matter how much she squinted and rubbed her eyes, the image refused to go away. Tucked into a wicker chair on Eusi's balcony, the alchemist saw, for the first time in her life, the vast mountain chain that ringed the City's world. Past those impassible, snow-capped peaks the world ended, turning into a churn of monster kings and barbarous tribes. It was enough to keep her attention pinned, and for a moment, away from all the other thoughts poisoning her. After all, she had never imagined she would get as much as a glimpse of that faraway wall. It was her brother who called to adventure, to travel; she had always expected to spend her entire life without leaving the Middle City, let alone the City itself.
It was one thing knowing how vast the world could get, and the other seeing it. Though she knew she would never leave – there was little point left to dreaming – it still comforted her to imagine that somewhere past the mountains, there might exist a land where she could hide from memories, and from longing.
Pris returned eventually, carrying a bottle of dark-red liquor and three small glasses. Eusi downed hers in one gulp, and only then let herself look back at Ifi. She looked drained.
"I really should have been more careful with you," she sighed, but without reproach. "I should have realized just how dangerously clueless you really were."
Pris settled into a chair next to her, holding her glass without drinking. She let her wife speak, staring idly at some point in space. Eusi filled the air with exasperated, exhausted apologies for failing to notice that there was someone manipulating Ifi. If only she and Pris had managed to get the full story out before, then this could have been avoided, all this fear and all the hurt. If only Shard had been stopped from her abortive attempt at restarting the strife at the Table. Of course, Eusi couldn't really begrudge the alchemist for falling for the Lair-Mother child's lies; she was, after all, just a junior alchemist, too caught up in the petty world of the Middle City to know better. Ifi listened, half-attentively. On any other day, she would easily find in herself the indignation to rebuke being treated like an errant, stupid child, all her mistakes excused by small-mindedness of craftsmen. But in anger's wake, today had left her with little but piercing guilt.
So she tried to drape herself in Eusi's patronizing sympathies, and assume them as the truth of what happened. She tried to focus on Shard's betrayal, on being left and abandoned, but what came instead was the ringing cry of "I'm sorry". And love. Love, that monstrous, cruel feeling; love, the evidence of the failure of her reason.
"She was good to me," she tried to justify herself with a feeble lie. "She was lovely, and I needed her," she explained, a bit more sincerely.
"I know," Eusi nodded. "Which is why I have a… proposition for you."
Next to her, Pris abruptly pulled herself back from the table, as if stung. Hastily, she stepped to the balcony's edge and leaned against it, still refusing to look at either her wife, or the alchemist. Eusi glanced at her, confusion flashing through her face, before returning to Ifi.
"Your tinctures worked wonders," she said. "And I've been thinking if there is more you could do for Pris?"
Again, the golden-haired Glassmaker threw a glance at her wife; the elixir woman kept her quiet, seemingly focused on some point in space, beyond the scope of the conversation, or Eusi's praise.
"As in?" Ifi asked, for a moment distracted from the crush of the day.
"As in we could take you as a servant," Eusi explained. "Our own captive alchemist, so to speak."
Captive. The word was a lightning strike. It flashed Ifi's memory back to when she first met Eusi and Pris, and to all the playful hints that the Glassmaker woman left for her. And that – that even aside becoming a High Family's retainer. The alchemist could only gasp. Maybe there was going to be more to her life than yearning, maybe-
She imagined herself in one of Pris' torture dresses. She then imagined porcelain hands holding her in it. She winced, shame cutting through the daydream like a knife. But no, she was not going to let it strangle her again. She made herself a promise to forget that monstrous below-spawn, and this was the first step.
"I…" she began, trying to find the correct words to express the magnitude of her gratitude.
"Lady wife," Pris interrupted, turning back to face them. "I am sorry, but I must object."
The golden-haired Glassmaker recoiled, as if slapped.
"Pris, what?" was all she could get out, clearly shocked. "What's this all about?"
"This is my home, too. And I object to taking this woman into our service."
Eusi hid her face in her hands, exhaling in frustration. Pris kept herself still, imperious, impervious. And Ifi – again – found herself thinking about that wretched moment between being given hope, and having it ruined. It was a rhythm she really should have gotten used to long ago, and yet, it still hurt all the same.
"Pris, I beg you," Eusi uttered finally, "we've talked about it! This very morning! And you were fine with it. Why do you have to be difficult all of sudden?"
"Because I am your wife," Pris hissed. "Not your servant. And things have changed since this very morning."
Eusi glanced at Ifi, as if trying to offer her a wordless apology, then exhaled again. The alchemist just smiled desperately, the familiar pattern repeating itself in a perfectly predictable fashion.
"What has changed? Can you at least tell us what is this new objection of yours?"
"Gladly, lady wife," there was rage – barely restrained and vibrating like a string pulled close to snapping – in Pris' voice. "Up until moments ago, I wasn't fully aware of what kind of person she," she chomped down on the word, lacing it with enough callous contempt as to make Ifi flinch, "she is."
And when the flinch had passed, Ifi caught a flint-like hardness glinting in Pris' eyes; if before, the elixir woman had looked at her with distant sympathy, now it was something far more proximal – and far keenly felt.
"The one reason we are not being hanged for the kindness of your heart towards guild strays," Pris continued, "is because Villis, of all people, put a word in her favour."
"He only told Alisa the truth!"
"He covered for her," the elixir woman snarled back. "He lied on her behalf."
There was no hesitation and no doubt in that – and finally, the alchemist realized why. She sagged in her chair, the wave of anger returning as fetid, depleted resignation. For Pris, alone of them all, saw the love that lurked behind Ifi's words, hopes, and desires. She saw it, she understood it, and she found it worthy of nothing short of contempt. Ifi couldn't meet her stare anymore. She turned her eyes away, back towards the distant mountains. There was something reassuring about their faraway indifference.
"She was manipulated! You said so yourself!" she heard Eusi protest.
"You know damn well why I said it, lady wife," Pris' voice grew quiet, glacially cold. "But Alisa's not here anymore, so you don't have to pretend. You've heard what she said, haven't you? 'She was lovely to me'?"
It didn't matter that the alchemist didn't know what it was, exactly, that set Pris off. Why she could only meet Ifi's love for Shard with cold contempt. It felt unfair. But it almost certainly wasn't. Loving a monster does not undo what it did to others.
Around her, the argument continued, tuning into the distantly familiar cadences of a lover's spat.
"So what of that?"
"Do you seriously not understand? Do I have to remind you?"
"Sure, remind away!"
"I grew up in the fuck mud! In the Glassmakers Ward!"
"So what?"
"So your politics, your demonic alliances and dalliances? They were our fear and our death! We bled for your every little triumph, and cursed the hand that held the leash! And Villis-"
Hungrily, desperately, Ifi tried not to listen – she so wanted to believe that Eusi and Pris were above it all. That their love would never cut. That they were beyond hurting each other over past mistakes and present missteps. That she was not a party to any of it.
"Villis clearly didn't mind!"
"Then he is a better man than any of us, because there is no way in the world I will ever forget what those claws meant to us, back then! And she – he saves her life, and she still talks about her lost, lovely Shard?"
"Can I go?" Ifi asked, chuckling nervously, panickedly. She just wanted to leave. Forget. Just as she had promised herself. "I'll just-"
"Don't you fucking dare!" Pris howled, the chord finally snapping in her voice; it bounced and echoed off the High City's towards. "I'm not done with you!"
Absurdly, Ifi noted – with the same pride as in the guest-room – that even in a full shout, her tinctures held. Only the lowborn slur reasserted itself in full force, years of sliding off words and vowels. She shut up, and stood still. And quietly wondered if there was out.
She lost Shard already. She didn't want to lose Pris, too.
"You," Pris pointed her finger like a claw, straight at Ifi's chest, "will haul your demon-lover ass to Villis, and you will tell him how good that monster was for you and beg him to forgive you!"
"Pris, enough!" Eusi's shout too joined the booming echoes.
"And," the elixir woman didn't let it knock her off-course, "and if he really is over it all, if he really forgives you for kissing those blood-stained hands, then fuck it, you can stay here for all I care. But until then, get out of my house!"
"Wake up."
Immediately the last night reasserted itself, exploding out into a tangled, thorny mess of images, impressions, and feelings. They were all chokingly bitter, aside from those that really hurt, which tasted sweet instead. No matter how much she tried, there was no holding onto the dissipating remnants of sleep; she tried to screw her eyes shut and refuse the rush of consciousness. Instead, she only immersed herself in it.
She remembered hands, careful and attentive, ushering her out of the feast, freeing her from that damn dress, holding her as she sobbed unconscionably and aimlessly. They helped her wash herself, they led her through a thick fog of words, and promises and explanations that could find no purchase in the miasma of her mind, and finally, they laid her down on a bed, under a warm blanket, in a room so far above the ground, and so far away from home. She remembered the names and faces that those hands were attached to. Eusebia. Prunikos. She even remembered the immense, guilt-shot sense of relief of having them take care of her, having them save her from the inevitable consequences of her own mistakes.
But most of all, she remembered the dull, directionless anger swelling with each moment parting her from that fucking below-spawn.
"Wake up!"
Grudgingly, Ifi opened her eyes, to see Pris lean over her, hair tied into a neat bun, face severe. She cut a dark figure against the golden daylight filling the room behind her. The alchemist mumbled half-coherently, and dug herself up, blinking rapidly to get the last dregs of sleep away from her eyes. There was so much charm glass around her, veining up the walls and to the ceiling, slowly pulsing out the High City's intimate heartbeat.
"My lady wife apologizes for waking you up," Pris added, stepping back from the bed. "But there is someone…"
The elixir woman's voice had changed, Ifi realized, a pinprick of professional pride puncturing through the haze surrounding her. She leaned forward, just to make sure.
"...someone here to see you. So please, get dressed and join us. This really can't wait. There are fresh clothes on the dresser."
There could be no mistake. Of course, the alchemist knew, it was probably rude to try to listen for the remains of the tell-tale masculine timbre in Pris' voice, and of course, she could just about pick a note or two of it in that rich contralto, but only because she knew where to look. Anyone else would surely be fooled, especially under the remains of Pris' lowborn slur. The tincture worked far better than expected.
"Right," she nodded, grasping the fleeting sense of accomplishment like a lifeline. "Wait," she realized belatedly. "Someone is waiting for me?"
The span between a burst of hope, and its rapid receding, hurt.
"Master Glassmaker wants to have a chat."
It hurt a lot – enough to make her miss the hook so blatantly present in those words.
"So please hurry," Pris finished, face pulled into a deep frown. "You've tested her patience enough already."
Ifi nodded, watching the other woman walk out of the room to give her privacy. Strangely, as much as she should be worrying about a visit from the City's most powerful, something else pinned her attention. Though Pris wore a plain, neck-high dress, a corset still cinched her waist and chest, laced high and tight. The alchemist stared at the row of knots lining the woman's back, a sick kind of longing blooming in the corset's afterimages.
Her own blue dress lay neatly folded on the dresser, right next to the clothes prepared for her for today – and right next to the rest of last night's accessories. The hook gleaned, polished to mirror sheen; Ifi swallowed, realizing her jaw still felt stiff, and her throat crushed. The impressions of the Feast lingered on the body. The heels – the absurd heels she barely managed to walk in – waited nearby. Her feet still hurt from them.
If she could find it in her to cry right there, she would. But her eyes were dry; though bile swelled at the sight, what followed was no great outpouring of sadness. Just that anger, that cold, indistinct feeling seizing her up and refusing to allow anything else in. With shaking hands, she reached for the clothes offered to her by the lady of the house, and started to change.
Her feet hurt her, her legs were shaking. Her back felt stretched and sore, and she could barely move her neck and her jaw. Last night would not wash away with just a single night of sleep – nor would yearning leave. As she struggled to put on the plain dress, all she could do was to have her mind wander. And what images it reached! Cold, porcelain hands taking this soreness as an offering, squeezing and rubbing it in; insatiable, but loving hunger feeding on the last dregs of night's pain; a cruelly caring voice praising her, for she did well, she had been brave, she made it through-
"Fuck," Ifi exhaled, grabbing the dresser's edge and staring at the exhausted battlefield of her face. Even there, the feast remained visible, its mark left in scratches and indents impressed into her skin by the gag's jeweled harness. "How could you?"
The question helped – it provided focus for the mounting anger. It clung to the idea of Shard, of that stupid, awful creature who had to break every promise, who had to make every mistake, who was too stupid to notice how much she was hurting others, or worse yet – refused to care. Who gave Ifi every hope under the sun, and – for a scant few hours – the taste of happiness. Who, in the end, only reminded the alchemist of that very happiness' impossibility.
"I hate you," Ifi spat into the mirror, her voice a trebling mess.
That was an obvious lie, and its obviousness was the reason why the alchemist wanted nothing more but to shatter the mirror, break the dresser into splinters, and howl in numb fury at how she could not rid herself of longing for that dumb, demonic, duplicitous beast named Shard. But such fantasies have a course that seldom leads through enactment. She exhaled, and made herself a promise she instantly knew she was never going to keep. Still, to her own reflection she pledged that this time, she would give up and forget. For real. For good. Again. Forever.
If that was meant to get the anger to recede, it only pulled up more bile up her throat. But at least she finished dressing, splashed some water over her face from a charm-refilled basin, and left the room. She let Pris guide her down a spiraling staircase, through a modest living room, and then through a glass door onto the sun-drenched apartment's balcony.
"Remember that we've helped you," the elixir woman stated coldly, letting her outside. "Be mindful of what you say to her."
Whatever that remark was meant to imply fled from Ifi's attention at the first breath of the air outside. It tasted nothing like Ifi was used to. Clear, sharp, fresh – it carried no hint of smoke, of sweat, of the effusions of the city, of its industry, of soot and smog that legions of workers scrubbed daily from the white facades of the Middle City. She inhaled sharply, letting the icy wind in, the cold instantly drawn out by the bright-burning day – and by the spiraling glass pattern embedded into the balcony's floor, emanating warmth and turning away gales. And beyond the balcony's edge, there opened a view onto a forest of slender towers, charm-studded and linked by a cat's cradle of walkways and hanging gardens. So far above the world, the HIgh City appeared nothing short of a skyward archipelago.
"Not now," Pris whispered, leading her towards a low table, and expectant faces.
Not without effort, Ifi peeled her eyes away from the stunning vista, and towards her host – and Master Glassmaker seated next to her, currently stirring sugar into a coffee cup. Ifi recalled her from the feast as a distant, small figure with a ringing voice; what she didn't realize was just how massacred a full half of that woman's face was. At some point, it burned until it melted, sloughing off before solidifying into a disfigured topography of hills and valleys rendered in scar tissue. Ifi had seen older alchemists who had lived through laboratories going up in their faces; none of that compared. It was a miracle that Master Glassmaker was still alive, let alone smiling at her.
Though, it had to be said, with the glacial-blue jewel set into the woman's eye-socket, the smile could hardly come across as warm, or inviting.
"And there she is," she announced, raising her cup in a mock-toast. "Come, sit. Now is the time for your trial."
Far too belatedly, Ifi realized – with an awful lurch of her stomach – that she should have been holding onto worries far larger than just the mute anger at what Shard did to her. Escorted by the stare of the lifeless, jewel eye, she shuffled into a wicker chair, right next to taut-faced Eusi.
"Master Glassmaker," Pris' wife announced, affecting a tone so formal as to make Ifi's back straighten on sheer reflex, "let me introduce you to Ifigenia Juno of the Subtle Fellowship of Brewers, presently a guest of my house. Ifigenia, this is Master Glassmaker. She wishes to ask you about last night's events."
A light meal waited on the table – forest fruit and yogurt, fresh bread and excellent coffee. But aside from Master Glassmaker herself, no one seemed to be eating. Pris held herself straight as an arrow, hands folded on her lap, face blank. Eusi kept frowning, nervously playing with a silver spoon in her hands shooting furtive glances at the burned woman, who only continued to smile.
"It's an honour," Ifi bowed her head, "of which I am unworthy."
Words – distant and distorted memories of Master Glassmaker's speech from the Feast – echoed in her head, foretelling murder. And yet, that same fury she woke up to continued to expand and bloom into new, choking forms.
"I'd ask what happened to you last night," Master Glassmaker said, tone playfully cruel, "that you look so dogshit today. But I think I know – conspiracy to overthrow the rightful hierarchy of the High Table, wasn't it?"
Eusi started to protest; Master Glassmaker didn't let her. With a slasher grin, the burned woman watched as the alchemist curled down on herself, stewing in the notion that perhaps the bigger threat than getting gutted by Shard was what the below-spawn's real enemies could do to her.
"For that the punishment would be too obvious to merit mentioning," Master Glassmaker continued, "though it certainly will be quite a sight to behold."
She let her voice hang, passing the silence that followed by grabbing a handful of berries and popping them into her mouth, letting the juice stain her lips blue. Somewhere far below, the bells of the Middle City rang, reaching to the heights as little more than a series tinny chimes.
"Unless, of course, this is all a big misunderstanding," Master Glassmaker added, finally swallowing. She flashed Ifi another mirthless smile. "After all, my good friend Villis tells me that you were not an accessory to that conspiracy, but just an… accessory."
She chuckled lightly. But it was not a joke, Ifi realized – without even having to see the imploring stare Eusi directed her way. It was a lifeline.
"It's true," Pris said suddenly, voice no less firm than the form her body was held to. "The demon seduced her, and used her. She bears no responsibility for the conspiracy, and-"
"Dear," Master Glassmaker raised a finger, "I want to hear it from her, not you."
Ifi had made a virtue for herself out of paying no heed to politics, to the games of the mighty, and the fates of the High Table. But for all of her recent, foolish mistakes, she understood well enough what was expected of her right now, and how she was going to save her life. And against that knowledge, she could only feel powerless, and so very angry. It was all Shard's fault; all the result of the below-spawn's idiotic machinations which had to terminate in Ifi denouncing–
–of all the ways to realize it and to put a name on it, this one had to be among the worst. The name and the word should bring joy, but instead they bore with them nothing other than a promise of a long life lived in misery and longing, in waking up to an absence, and going to sleep in fear of dreams of what could have been–
–which had to terminate in Ifi denouncing the monster she could not stop loving. In defiance of reason, and everything else. And to know that – to recognize that necessity – was to make her feel like the weakest creature under the sun. And to know that – to recognize the injustice – was to let her anger finally find a voice.
"She used me," Ifi said, meeting Master Glassmaker's dead stare head on. "I saved her life. I nursed her back to health. I offered myself to her. And she used me, anyway. She dragged me all the way up here and broke every promise she had made. I trusted her over, and over again, and every time it turned out to be a mistake."
All of this was true, after a fashion. None of it was given as a lie. But it tasted so rancid to say. Each word cut Ifi up; and there were more coming, the ones that bore the real burden of her fury. She tried to bite on all of them, and still some got out.
"I would have been good to her," she finished, the little fragile testament to how it all felt, and to where the real seat of Shard's treachery stood.
Master Glassmaker listened to all of it carefully, the smile gradually warming up with each word Ifi cried out. In the end, it came close to being without malice.
"Well," she declared oh-so-very carefree, "I'm glad to hear. And, just to make sure, it was also her manipulation that led to Eusebia providing her with an invitation to the Feast of Indulgence? My distant cousin had no way of knowing who was puppetting you, yes?"
"Yes," she lied with as much conviction as she could muster. Eusi and Pris exhaled audibly.
"Perfect!" Master Glassmaker clapped her hands, beaming. "So there's that, all resolved, and not a single hanging to be had! I'll be going now. You are a terrific host, Eusebia. I should visit more often."
"The pleasure is all mine," Eusi replied, stilted and dry. "Our doors are always open."
Wicker scraped against the floor; Master Glassmaker straightened to her full, meager height, Pris, strangely tense, standing up to escort her to the door. Ifi sat in silence; after the surge of anger, what remained was a sinking kind of emptiness, no longer held aloft by the quick-burning fury.
"Is she dead?"
The question slipped from her mouth without passing through thought first. Eusi turned rapidly, twisting herself in fear; Pris shot her a hateful glare. But Master Glassmaker didn't seem to notice – or care – for the pleading note so very apparent in the alchemist's voice.
"Shard?" she shrugged, from the balcony's door. "Not yet. But don't you worry your little broken heart, miss alchemist. Right now, she is certainly wishing to be."
Afterwards, silence stretched, hostile to words. Master Glassmaker left, and for a time, Ifi and Eusi sat alone on the balcony, looking away from each other, and from the city. The view was really incredible; even through the fog of loss surrounding her, the alchemist could not hold back wonder. But however spectacular the slender white towers of High City were, or the hanging gardens linking them together with long strings of verdant green, it was what stretched beyond that she could not look away from.
With the bright sun and sharp winds keeping the sky empty and clear, she could see, far alongside the horizon's edge, the jagged gray line, a vast outline that could only be the Northern Limit. At first, Ifi couldn't believe it and thought it was some trick of the light, but no matter how much she squinted and rubbed her eyes, the image refused to go away. Tucked into a wicker chair on Eusi's balcony, the alchemist saw, for the first time in her life, the vast mountain chain that ringed the City's world. Past those impassible, snow-capped peaks the world ended, turning into a churn of monster kings and barbarous tribes. It was enough to keep her attention pinned, and for a moment, away from all the other thoughts poisoning her. After all, she had never imagined she would get as much as a glimpse of that faraway wall. It was her brother who called to adventure, to travel; she had always expected to spend her entire life without leaving the Middle City, let alone the City itself.
It was one thing knowing how vast the world could get, and the other seeing it. Though she knew she would never leave – there was little point left to dreaming – it still comforted her to imagine that somewhere past the mountains, there might exist a land where she could hide from memories, and from longing.
Pris returned eventually, carrying a bottle of dark-red liquor and three small glasses. Eusi downed hers in one gulp, and only then let herself look back at Ifi. She looked drained.
"I really should have been more careful with you," she sighed, but without reproach. "I should have realized just how dangerously clueless you really were."
Pris settled into a chair next to her, holding her glass without drinking. She let her wife speak, staring idly at some point in space. Eusi filled the air with exasperated, exhausted apologies for failing to notice that there was someone manipulating Ifi. If only she and Pris had managed to get the full story out before, then this could have been avoided, all this fear and all the hurt. If only Shard had been stopped from her abortive attempt at restarting the strife at the Table. Of course, Eusi couldn't really begrudge the alchemist for falling for the Lair-Mother child's lies; she was, after all, just a junior alchemist, too caught up in the petty world of the Middle City to know better. Ifi listened, half-attentively. On any other day, she would easily find in herself the indignation to rebuke being treated like an errant, stupid child, all her mistakes excused by small-mindedness of craftsmen. But in anger's wake, today had left her with little but piercing guilt.
So she tried to drape herself in Eusi's patronizing sympathies, and assume them as the truth of what happened. She tried to focus on Shard's betrayal, on being left and abandoned, but what came instead was the ringing cry of "I'm sorry". And love. Love, that monstrous, cruel feeling; love, the evidence of the failure of her reason.
"She was good to me," she tried to justify herself with a feeble lie. "She was lovely, and I needed her," she explained, a bit more sincerely.
"I know," Eusi nodded. "Which is why I have a… proposition for you."
Next to her, Pris abruptly pulled herself back from the table, as if stung. Hastily, she stepped to the balcony's edge and leaned against it, still refusing to look at either her wife, or the alchemist. Eusi glanced at her, confusion flashing through her face, before returning to Ifi.
"Your tinctures worked wonders," she said. "And I've been thinking if there is more you could do for Pris?"
Again, the golden-haired Glassmaker threw a glance at her wife; the elixir woman kept her quiet, seemingly focused on some point in space, beyond the scope of the conversation, or Eusi's praise.
"As in?" Ifi asked, for a moment distracted from the crush of the day.
"As in we could take you as a servant," Eusi explained. "Our own captive alchemist, so to speak."
Captive. The word was a lightning strike. It flashed Ifi's memory back to when she first met Eusi and Pris, and to all the playful hints that the Glassmaker woman left for her. And that – that even aside becoming a High Family's retainer. The alchemist could only gasp. Maybe there was going to be more to her life than yearning, maybe-
She imagined herself in one of Pris' torture dresses. She then imagined porcelain hands holding her in it. She winced, shame cutting through the daydream like a knife. But no, she was not going to let it strangle her again. She made herself a promise to forget that monstrous below-spawn, and this was the first step.
"I…" she began, trying to find the correct words to express the magnitude of her gratitude.
"Lady wife," Pris interrupted, turning back to face them. "I am sorry, but I must object."
The golden-haired Glassmaker recoiled, as if slapped.
"Pris, what?" was all she could get out, clearly shocked. "What's this all about?"
"This is my home, too. And I object to taking this woman into our service."
Eusi hid her face in her hands, exhaling in frustration. Pris kept herself still, imperious, impervious. And Ifi – again – found herself thinking about that wretched moment between being given hope, and having it ruined. It was a rhythm she really should have gotten used to long ago, and yet, it still hurt all the same.
"Pris, I beg you," Eusi uttered finally, "we've talked about it! This very morning! And you were fine with it. Why do you have to be difficult all of sudden?"
"Because I am your wife," Pris hissed. "Not your servant. And things have changed since this very morning."
Eusi glanced at Ifi, as if trying to offer her a wordless apology, then exhaled again. The alchemist just smiled desperately, the familiar pattern repeating itself in a perfectly predictable fashion.
"What has changed? Can you at least tell us what is this new objection of yours?"
"Gladly, lady wife," there was rage – barely restrained and vibrating like a string pulled close to snapping – in Pris' voice. "Up until moments ago, I wasn't fully aware of what kind of person she," she chomped down on the word, lacing it with enough callous contempt as to make Ifi flinch, "she is."
And when the flinch had passed, Ifi caught a flint-like hardness glinting in Pris' eyes; if before, the elixir woman had looked at her with distant sympathy, now it was something far more proximal – and far keenly felt.
"The one reason we are not being hanged for the kindness of your heart towards guild strays," Pris continued, "is because Villis, of all people, put a word in her favour."
"He only told Alisa the truth!"
"He covered for her," the elixir woman snarled back. "He lied on her behalf."
There was no hesitation and no doubt in that – and finally, the alchemist realized why. She sagged in her chair, the wave of anger returning as fetid, depleted resignation. For Pris, alone of them all, saw the love that lurked behind Ifi's words, hopes, and desires. She saw it, she understood it, and she found it worthy of nothing short of contempt. Ifi couldn't meet her stare anymore. She turned her eyes away, back towards the distant mountains. There was something reassuring about their faraway indifference.
"She was manipulated! You said so yourself!" she heard Eusi protest.
"You know damn well why I said it, lady wife," Pris' voice grew quiet, glacially cold. "But Alisa's not here anymore, so you don't have to pretend. You've heard what she said, haven't you? 'She was lovely to me'?"
It didn't matter that the alchemist didn't know what it was, exactly, that set Pris off. Why she could only meet Ifi's love for Shard with cold contempt. It felt unfair. But it almost certainly wasn't. Loving a monster does not undo what it did to others.
Around her, the argument continued, tuning into the distantly familiar cadences of a lover's spat.
"So what of that?"
"Do you seriously not understand? Do I have to remind you?"
"Sure, remind away!"
"I grew up in the fuck mud! In the Glassmakers Ward!"
"So what?"
"So your politics, your demonic alliances and dalliances? They were our fear and our death! We bled for your every little triumph, and cursed the hand that held the leash! And Villis-"
Hungrily, desperately, Ifi tried not to listen – she so wanted to believe that Eusi and Pris were above it all. That their love would never cut. That they were beyond hurting each other over past mistakes and present missteps. That she was not a party to any of it.
"Villis clearly didn't mind!"
"Then he is a better man than any of us, because there is no way in the world I will ever forget what those claws meant to us, back then! And she – he saves her life, and she still talks about her lost, lovely Shard?"
"Can I go?" Ifi asked, chuckling nervously, panickedly. She just wanted to leave. Forget. Just as she had promised herself. "I'll just-"
"Don't you fucking dare!" Pris howled, the chord finally snapping in her voice; it bounced and echoed off the High City's towards. "I'm not done with you!"
Absurdly, Ifi noted – with the same pride as in the guest-room – that even in a full shout, her tinctures held. Only the lowborn slur reasserted itself in full force, years of sliding off words and vowels. She shut up, and stood still. And quietly wondered if there was out.
She lost Shard already. She didn't want to lose Pris, too.
"You," Pris pointed her finger like a claw, straight at Ifi's chest, "will haul your demon-lover ass to Villis, and you will tell him how good that monster was for you and beg him to forgive you!"
"Pris, enough!" Eusi's shout too joined the booming echoes.
"And," the elixir woman didn't let it knock her off-course, "and if he really is over it all, if he really forgives you for kissing those blood-stained hands, then fuck it, you can stay here for all I care. But until then, get out of my house!"
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21. Unforgiveable
Gargulec
impact!
- Location
- a garden
21. Unforgiveable
Acrid smog continued to shroud the Glassworkers' Ward, in spite of the alleged work stoppages. Narrow streets choked under a blanket of dark smoke laced with silicate dust. Even the rooftops offered little reprieve. The Lower City was too squat to rise above the stinking haze, choosing instead to sit close to the ground; it made Shard of White Obsidian think of some kind of a bottom-feeding parasite, some eyeless, spineless slug from the deepest caverns. Every moment wasted here filled her with seething frustration. The rooftops croaked under her weight as she jumped from one ramshackle hovel to another, not even pausing to enjoy the small pleasures of being on a prowl. Stupidly, she had put on a new red kurta, and now the Lower City's odour was sure to suffuse it; this sort of filth rarely washed out, and so it would probably have to go straight into the furnace as soon as she returned home. And then, she promised herself, she would have a gaggle of servants scrub her and polish her shell to a mirror sheen, so that not a speck of this dump would remain staining her sleek body.
But alas, there was no returning to the towers without first handling that onerous Glassmaker business. She growled at the night, her voice vibrating with wordless frustration. Why her? Had she not outgrown dirtying her hands in the Lower City? Why her, and not that brute Cuts, or some other sibling of hers? But Master Glassmaker, that old mass of greed and blubber, kept yapping about the importance of this all, and the need to send his best servant there. So, once again, Shard found herself made into a simple catspaw, the pantomime of obedience expected of her denying her the pleasure of telling that mortal idiot to handle his business himself.
Her target was in view, a light spout illuminating smog with oil lamps and cheap charmlights. Some half-rotten dump where the lowborn congregated to rot their simpleton brains with the runoff of the Middle City's breweries. To call it a building seemed an insult to architecture: to the Lair-Mother's child, it appeared more like a mound of barely-arranged planks and sheets of corrugated metal loosely arranged in the shape of a tavern. As everything in the Lower City, it was little more than a pile of refuse that the City had vomited out and let the vermin move into.
Low noise of massed voices and frantic speeches seeped through the half-open door; a pair of muscle-bound thugs stood guard, heavy clubs no doubt making them feel like they mattered. They smoked, adding the stench of their cheap cigarettes to the already fetid atmosphere. In her perch above, Shard let her claws extend, the golden polish depressingly dull in the smoke. It was an honest struggle not to jump down and gut those brutes where they stood, but the Lair-Mother's child managed to tamp down on her hunger. What was that Master Glassmaker told her? I want the work to resume, he declared wagging his fat finger at her, and that takes workers, dear Shard. Rid me of trouble-makers, not labourers!
Her claws dug into the soot-stained wood of the roof; again, she had to fight the urge not to howl in frustration. She couldn't believe she was made to miss the Charmcutters' Gala for this! Master Charmcutter had recently acquired a real snake-woman maid from beyond the Western Limit and Shard had been waiting days to put hands on her!
But no, no, no. Instead, she was to terrify some worthless lowborn, a task that a bunch of guild muscle could accomplish just as well with some ardent application of the whip. She hissed, loud enough to make the brutes notice – but before they noticed her, she was already standing in front of them, claws on full display. Their fear exploded out, simple, but oddly fulfilling. For all of her frustration, Shard couldn't deny that this work had its advantages.
"He's inside!" one of the guards shouted, falling to her knees. "We're just- we're not with him! Don't kill us!"
"I won't," Shard replied with a shrug, stepping past them.
She gave the silent one a wide slash across the stomach, her back arching happily as pleasure jolted up her arm. The wound was shallow, but at least the man would learn to be more prompt the next time. His stifled scream accompanied her as she tore down the door, and stepped into the unbearable pit of lowborn flesh beyond.
Two, maybe three dozen bodies stood squeezed inside, tables pulled aside to make room. Glassworkers all, some still wearing their working clothes, heavy boots and burn-marked shirts. The shout at the door alerted them – heads turned, and when they saw who it was, all the noise died. Perfect silence surrounded Shard as she stepped inside, heavy with so much terror that Shard had fight not to overstuff herself just yet and ruin the coming main course.
"The first one to leave dies," she announced, flicking blood off her claw at some nearby fool.
The lowborn tumbled back; someone stuffed a fist into her mouth to keep her from screaming. It was pleasing, the Lair-Mother's child had to admit to herself, just how quietly she could speak and still be heard by everyone.
The instigator – the supposed source of recent trouble – wasn't hard to find. He stood on a stool in the middle, frozen mid-oration. At her arrival, he turned chalk-pale, giving his soot-stained face a monochromatic appearance.
This was the Lower City, and they all understood the rules of what was about to happen. They had to know that only Shard's good will was keeping them all from getting slaughtered like cattle. Stories of what happened to those who tried to fight back against her kind were what they all grew up on; not a single one of them would be keen to be added to those sorry legends. All they could do was hope, still as statues, mute as stone.
She squeezed herself past them, stepping lightly and smiling widely. A hundred eyes followed her every move with rapt, terrified attention.
"So what was this about?" she asked, looking up at the man on the stool and letting her teeth show in a vicious green.
To give him credit, he did not look away. The fumes of the Glassworks had not yet eaten him; he carried himself proudly and breathed freely. There was a youthful shine to his eyes, and even dirtied, he had beautiful golden hair. There was use for boys like that; it was a genuine shame that he hadn't been scouted for a better future than the one now awaiting him. But then again, pretty flesh was rarely ever in shortage.
"Protest," he responded, breathing in.
That took Shard aback. Not only did he speak back, but also showed some courage! What a rare and wonderful treat. Most lowborn knew only how to mewl. She was going to enjoy breaking him.
"Oh?" she brought her blooded hand to her mouth, miming interest. "And what against?"
"I was," he said, swallowing loudly. In the mass of sensations lapping against her shell, she could not pick his fear from that of the assembled mass; still, she had to assume that he was terrified. All the more impressive how level he was keeping his slurring voice. "I was trying to instigate against the latest work order."
Shard's smile faded – this was more than just bravery, she realized. This was conscious, and so dangerous, and so requiring the sternest punishment. Thankfully, this was not the first time she had come across this type. In fact, she was all too familiar.
"But they were uninterested," he added, stressing those words as if Shard was ever going to believe him. "They were laughing at me. They were all going to go back to work tomorrow."
"Such a brave boy you are," Shard hissed back at him, "but you have no reason to worry."
"Please," he continued. It didn't escape Shard's attention that the eyes of the crowd were away from her, and pinned to him, and his sacrificial gestures. "They are all innocent. Only-"
Shard didn't let him finish. She kicked the stool sending him tumbling to the beaten ground pretending to be the tavern's floor. Her claws extended an extra inch as he displayed the temerity to land on his feet.
"You are not dying tonight," her voice sizzled up into the room. "But you are learning."
Her hand shot to the side, grabbing some random throat from the crowd. It didn't really matter who it belonged to. She hoisted a body into the air, for all to see. It belonged to some man; it didn't really matter. It was going to be dead soon. Still, she had a lesson to deliver.
"What's your name?" she asked the soon-to-be-corpse.
"Let him-" the instigator started to plead again.
Shard kicked him in the gut, twisting the voice into a pained groan. Just for a good measure, she put her foot on his throat, applying just enough pressure so that he would not make any pointless noises until required.
"What's your name?" she repeated.
"M-eos," the vermin in her hand moaned, a voice so pathetic that even Shard couldn't sample the fear in it.
"Do you want to die, Meos?" she asked, tossing him from side to side.
"No," he cried. At least someone knew their role in this entire mess. "No! I didn't do anything! I have…"
This was enough noise for now. She squeezed his neck. He felt her claws dig into his flesh, and so shut up. She turned back to the instigator.
"You," she lifted her foot from his throat. "Beg me to kill him. Beg me to do it slowly."
Somewhere behind her, lowborn were scurrying. They knew her attention was elsewhere, and so tried to find a way out without drawing it. As long as they didn't make their attempts too obvious, she didn't really care. She only needed a handful of other bodies for the demonstration she was about to give.
The instigator stared at her, dumbfounded.
"Did you not hear me?" she spat at him. "Now. Beg."
The mewling sack of bones in her hands groaned; she crunched on its throat a bit more; besides it sent pleasant vibrations into her hand.
"He's innocent," the wannabe martyr whispered and moaned. "I'm the one you're after! Let him go, and kill me-"
Shard pushed down; he choked.
"Are you deaf?" she hissed. "You are not dying. You are learning about consequences. Want him to live? Fine!" she swept inside of the tavern with her free hand. "Just say the word. I'll just take everyone else's life instead."
The crowd was thinning, faster than before. Still, not everyone would dare to run. Enough would stay, and carry the story out later. Unless, of course, Shard was wrong about the man at her feet, and she would have to kill everyone instead.
Either way, she would be content.
"You have until the count of five," she announced, looking straight into the instigator's brave, defiant eyes.
"Please…" the soon-to-be corpse moaned.
"Just kill me!" the instigator shouted, and Shard couldn't believe just how intoxicatingly thick this man's despair was.
"One," she crooned.
"Two."
"Three."
He broke.
***
Shard threw the strip of the bloodied skin to the ground, along with the rest of the garbage. Her kurta was definitely ruined now, but at least she had eaten well. Her entire body tingled with excitement, and it was a struggle to hold herself steady on her feet.
The instigator sat nearby; he was the only one remaining in the tavern, everyone else having long since fled. The Lair-Mother's child had no doubts that not only would work resume first thing tomorrow morning, and in the years to come unruly lowborn of the Glassworks' Ward would think twice before letting anyone speak against the peace and order of the City. Even rats learned.
"You can go now," she brushed the man's cheek, spreading some of his victim's blood over his face. "Your education is complete."
He didn't move, or say anything. He just glared with the dumb, animal defiance practically indistinguishable from shock. Briefly, she entertained the idea of actually putting him out of his misery, but that would render the entire evening moot, and besides, there was no point in ridding Master Glassmaker of another worker. They were, allegedly, useful. So instead, she let him think about his mistakes.
"You should have killed me."
The instigator's wards caught Shard in the door. She didn't look back, merely shrugged. Mercy was hardly a habit of hers. She left, and hurried back to the High City, where a long and sorely needed bath awaited her.
Acrid smog continued to shroud the Glassworkers' Ward, in spite of the alleged work stoppages. Narrow streets choked under a blanket of dark smoke laced with silicate dust. Even the rooftops offered little reprieve. The Lower City was too squat to rise above the stinking haze, choosing instead to sit close to the ground; it made Shard of White Obsidian think of some kind of a bottom-feeding parasite, some eyeless, spineless slug from the deepest caverns. Every moment wasted here filled her with seething frustration. The rooftops croaked under her weight as she jumped from one ramshackle hovel to another, not even pausing to enjoy the small pleasures of being on a prowl. Stupidly, she had put on a new red kurta, and now the Lower City's odour was sure to suffuse it; this sort of filth rarely washed out, and so it would probably have to go straight into the furnace as soon as she returned home. And then, she promised herself, she would have a gaggle of servants scrub her and polish her shell to a mirror sheen, so that not a speck of this dump would remain staining her sleek body.
But alas, there was no returning to the towers without first handling that onerous Glassmaker business. She growled at the night, her voice vibrating with wordless frustration. Why her? Had she not outgrown dirtying her hands in the Lower City? Why her, and not that brute Cuts, or some other sibling of hers? But Master Glassmaker, that old mass of greed and blubber, kept yapping about the importance of this all, and the need to send his best servant there. So, once again, Shard found herself made into a simple catspaw, the pantomime of obedience expected of her denying her the pleasure of telling that mortal idiot to handle his business himself.
Her target was in view, a light spout illuminating smog with oil lamps and cheap charmlights. Some half-rotten dump where the lowborn congregated to rot their simpleton brains with the runoff of the Middle City's breweries. To call it a building seemed an insult to architecture: to the Lair-Mother's child, it appeared more like a mound of barely-arranged planks and sheets of corrugated metal loosely arranged in the shape of a tavern. As everything in the Lower City, it was little more than a pile of refuse that the City had vomited out and let the vermin move into.
Low noise of massed voices and frantic speeches seeped through the half-open door; a pair of muscle-bound thugs stood guard, heavy clubs no doubt making them feel like they mattered. They smoked, adding the stench of their cheap cigarettes to the already fetid atmosphere. In her perch above, Shard let her claws extend, the golden polish depressingly dull in the smoke. It was an honest struggle not to jump down and gut those brutes where they stood, but the Lair-Mother's child managed to tamp down on her hunger. What was that Master Glassmaker told her? I want the work to resume, he declared wagging his fat finger at her, and that takes workers, dear Shard. Rid me of trouble-makers, not labourers!
Her claws dug into the soot-stained wood of the roof; again, she had to fight the urge not to howl in frustration. She couldn't believe she was made to miss the Charmcutters' Gala for this! Master Charmcutter had recently acquired a real snake-woman maid from beyond the Western Limit and Shard had been waiting days to put hands on her!
But no, no, no. Instead, she was to terrify some worthless lowborn, a task that a bunch of guild muscle could accomplish just as well with some ardent application of the whip. She hissed, loud enough to make the brutes notice – but before they noticed her, she was already standing in front of them, claws on full display. Their fear exploded out, simple, but oddly fulfilling. For all of her frustration, Shard couldn't deny that this work had its advantages.
"He's inside!" one of the guards shouted, falling to her knees. "We're just- we're not with him! Don't kill us!"
"I won't," Shard replied with a shrug, stepping past them.
She gave the silent one a wide slash across the stomach, her back arching happily as pleasure jolted up her arm. The wound was shallow, but at least the man would learn to be more prompt the next time. His stifled scream accompanied her as she tore down the door, and stepped into the unbearable pit of lowborn flesh beyond.
Two, maybe three dozen bodies stood squeezed inside, tables pulled aside to make room. Glassworkers all, some still wearing their working clothes, heavy boots and burn-marked shirts. The shout at the door alerted them – heads turned, and when they saw who it was, all the noise died. Perfect silence surrounded Shard as she stepped inside, heavy with so much terror that Shard had fight not to overstuff herself just yet and ruin the coming main course.
"The first one to leave dies," she announced, flicking blood off her claw at some nearby fool.
The lowborn tumbled back; someone stuffed a fist into her mouth to keep her from screaming. It was pleasing, the Lair-Mother's child had to admit to herself, just how quietly she could speak and still be heard by everyone.
The instigator – the supposed source of recent trouble – wasn't hard to find. He stood on a stool in the middle, frozen mid-oration. At her arrival, he turned chalk-pale, giving his soot-stained face a monochromatic appearance.
This was the Lower City, and they all understood the rules of what was about to happen. They had to know that only Shard's good will was keeping them all from getting slaughtered like cattle. Stories of what happened to those who tried to fight back against her kind were what they all grew up on; not a single one of them would be keen to be added to those sorry legends. All they could do was hope, still as statues, mute as stone.
She squeezed herself past them, stepping lightly and smiling widely. A hundred eyes followed her every move with rapt, terrified attention.
"So what was this about?" she asked, looking up at the man on the stool and letting her teeth show in a vicious green.
To give him credit, he did not look away. The fumes of the Glassworks had not yet eaten him; he carried himself proudly and breathed freely. There was a youthful shine to his eyes, and even dirtied, he had beautiful golden hair. There was use for boys like that; it was a genuine shame that he hadn't been scouted for a better future than the one now awaiting him. But then again, pretty flesh was rarely ever in shortage.
"Protest," he responded, breathing in.
That took Shard aback. Not only did he speak back, but also showed some courage! What a rare and wonderful treat. Most lowborn knew only how to mewl. She was going to enjoy breaking him.
"Oh?" she brought her blooded hand to her mouth, miming interest. "And what against?"
"I was," he said, swallowing loudly. In the mass of sensations lapping against her shell, she could not pick his fear from that of the assembled mass; still, she had to assume that he was terrified. All the more impressive how level he was keeping his slurring voice. "I was trying to instigate against the latest work order."
Shard's smile faded – this was more than just bravery, she realized. This was conscious, and so dangerous, and so requiring the sternest punishment. Thankfully, this was not the first time she had come across this type. In fact, she was all too familiar.
"But they were uninterested," he added, stressing those words as if Shard was ever going to believe him. "They were laughing at me. They were all going to go back to work tomorrow."
"Such a brave boy you are," Shard hissed back at him, "but you have no reason to worry."
"Please," he continued. It didn't escape Shard's attention that the eyes of the crowd were away from her, and pinned to him, and his sacrificial gestures. "They are all innocent. Only-"
Shard didn't let him finish. She kicked the stool sending him tumbling to the beaten ground pretending to be the tavern's floor. Her claws extended an extra inch as he displayed the temerity to land on his feet.
"You are not dying tonight," her voice sizzled up into the room. "But you are learning."
Her hand shot to the side, grabbing some random throat from the crowd. It didn't really matter who it belonged to. She hoisted a body into the air, for all to see. It belonged to some man; it didn't really matter. It was going to be dead soon. Still, she had a lesson to deliver.
"What's your name?" she asked the soon-to-be-corpse.
"Let him-" the instigator started to plead again.
Shard kicked him in the gut, twisting the voice into a pained groan. Just for a good measure, she put her foot on his throat, applying just enough pressure so that he would not make any pointless noises until required.
"What's your name?" she repeated.
"M-eos," the vermin in her hand moaned, a voice so pathetic that even Shard couldn't sample the fear in it.
"Do you want to die, Meos?" she asked, tossing him from side to side.
"No," he cried. At least someone knew their role in this entire mess. "No! I didn't do anything! I have…"
This was enough noise for now. She squeezed his neck. He felt her claws dig into his flesh, and so shut up. She turned back to the instigator.
"You," she lifted her foot from his throat. "Beg me to kill him. Beg me to do it slowly."
Somewhere behind her, lowborn were scurrying. They knew her attention was elsewhere, and so tried to find a way out without drawing it. As long as they didn't make their attempts too obvious, she didn't really care. She only needed a handful of other bodies for the demonstration she was about to give.
The instigator stared at her, dumbfounded.
"Did you not hear me?" she spat at him. "Now. Beg."
The mewling sack of bones in her hands groaned; she crunched on its throat a bit more; besides it sent pleasant vibrations into her hand.
"He's innocent," the wannabe martyr whispered and moaned. "I'm the one you're after! Let him go, and kill me-"
Shard pushed down; he choked.
"Are you deaf?" she hissed. "You are not dying. You are learning about consequences. Want him to live? Fine!" she swept inside of the tavern with her free hand. "Just say the word. I'll just take everyone else's life instead."
The crowd was thinning, faster than before. Still, not everyone would dare to run. Enough would stay, and carry the story out later. Unless, of course, Shard was wrong about the man at her feet, and she would have to kill everyone instead.
Either way, she would be content.
"You have until the count of five," she announced, looking straight into the instigator's brave, defiant eyes.
"Please…" the soon-to-be corpse moaned.
"Just kill me!" the instigator shouted, and Shard couldn't believe just how intoxicatingly thick this man's despair was.
"One," she crooned.
"Two."
"Three."
He broke.
***
Shard threw the strip of the bloodied skin to the ground, along with the rest of the garbage. Her kurta was definitely ruined now, but at least she had eaten well. Her entire body tingled with excitement, and it was a struggle to hold herself steady on her feet.
The instigator sat nearby; he was the only one remaining in the tavern, everyone else having long since fled. The Lair-Mother's child had no doubts that not only would work resume first thing tomorrow morning, and in the years to come unruly lowborn of the Glassworks' Ward would think twice before letting anyone speak against the peace and order of the City. Even rats learned.
"You can go now," she brushed the man's cheek, spreading some of his victim's blood over his face. "Your education is complete."
He didn't move, or say anything. He just glared with the dumb, animal defiance practically indistinguishable from shock. Briefly, she entertained the idea of actually putting him out of his misery, but that would render the entire evening moot, and besides, there was no point in ridding Master Glassmaker of another worker. They were, allegedly, useful. So instead, she let him think about his mistakes.
"You should have killed me."
The instigator's wards caught Shard in the door. She didn't look back, merely shrugged. Mercy was hardly a habit of hers. She left, and hurried back to the High City, where a long and sorely needed bath awaited her.
Shard not playing with her food challenge: Impossible.
22. Sign
Gargulec
impact!
- Location
- a garden
22. Sign
"And that was my first encounter with Shard."
Although Eusi had directed Ifi to Villis' office – the Permanent Representative of the Fellowship of Glassworkers at the High Table – the man himself refused to meet her there. Instead, he had her wait until he was done with a throng of severe-looking patricians before taking her to a place where, he claimed, no prying eyes would spy on them. That meant a flying ruin.
Before a fire consumed it, the platform they were on used to be one of the many High City's hanging gardens – a domed enclosure suspended between towers. Exotic flowers filled it, coaxed by alchemy into permanent bloom. Their carbonized remains littered the floor, tear-drop spikes of melted glass poking between them. They were what remained of the dome – only the steel frame continued to stand, bent by sheer heat into a twisted canopy of winding metal branches. Ash piled in the places where wind couldn't sweep it out into the void, piling in the cracked ceramic pots. Only charm glass survived apparently untouched, long tendrils of braided glass snaking through the rubble, shining bright blue. They kept the whole platform aloft, preventing it from snapping free of its moorings and tumbling to the bottom of the City. It wasn't enough to prevent it from creaking and groaning with each seaward gust. To call that noise unnerving would be an understatement – which is why Villis maintained that there, alone, they could converse privately, and at length. The alchemist quickly came to regret it.
"Why are you telling me this?" she asked, images of cackling Shard drenched in human blood dancing in her mind, each death dripping merrily from the tips of her rending claws.
"Perspective, I guess?" he said, shifting awkwardly, seeming almost embarrassed by the entire situation.
Perspective. Ifi shuffled closer to the platform's edge. Between the twisted ribs of the shattered dome, the City filled the view far towards the horizon. The dark haze of the Glassworkers' Ward wasn't that hard to find, now that she wanted to take a look. Not that there was much to see: only smog, and a hint of orange light within, where the greatest foundries spread. Heaps of slag, tall as hills, ringed it; smoke climbed their slopes reluctantly, rarely getting to crest them and flow down into the rest of the City. Distantly, Ifi recalled learning of the great expenses that went into ensuring that the Glassworks wouldn't pollute with their fumes. It was a feat of urbanistic ingenuity that the waste of the foundries was what ended up keeping their malign influence away from the heights and powers. It had always felt like something to be proud of.
"So, what happened next?"
Behind her, Villis shrugged.
"I went to Meos' father to ask for forgiveness."
He had grown used to telling this story, Ifi could tell. It wasn't so much as picking at open wounds, not anymore. Everything he said, he delivered with a delicate, nearly apologetic smile that made him appear younger than he was, like a boy narrating his first heartbreak. But there was scar tissue there, there had to be. The alchemist couldn't believe wounds like that to be capable of healing in full.
"Did you get it?" she asked, sensing hesitation.
"No," Villis sighed. "He threw me out."
Ifi nodded slowly, surprised at how well she was taking the implication. No, there could be no forgiveness – not for Shard, and probably not for her. Especially since she couldn't even bring herself to feel guilty, only sad.
"But it wasn't your fault," she tried anyway, mostly for her own sake.
"So?"
"So he shouldn't have treated you like that."
"I kept telling myself that, yeah," he chuckled. "Waste of time. I shouldn't have bothered him. He had nothing to offer to me, and really, I have nothing to give to you, either."
"So your answer is no?" she asked, almost glad to be past hope.
"My answer, miss alchemist," old exhaustion weighed on his voice; he spoke quietly, as if to a child, "is that I don't care, and neither should you."
"But Prunikos-"
"You can pass to Pris," he cut her in, "that if she wanted to stay on that high horse, she shouldn't have married a Glassmaker."
The alchemist pursed her lips; this was as close as Villis came to telling her she was free to stay with Eusi and her wife, and it didn't seem like she was going to get anything more definitive than that. The realization did little to release the anxiety cinching her innards and twisting her guts into ornate knots, but it was probably better than the flat no she had been expecting.
"The reason I am telling you all of this," Villis sighed again, letting go of that brief flash of annoyance, "is that I hope you can get your head around what Shard was. Thank whatever you craftspeople worship you're still alive, and move on. Most people who cross her kind don't get that luxury."
Ifi looked up from the city below, trying to spot the Northern Limit on the horizon again. It vanished, hidden by the flaky clouds now strewn across the sky. The absence stung; it could help her to see something past the City that surrounded her, past its complexity and merciless logic. More and more, she came to understand her brother, and his dreams of escape.
"She was getting better," she protested, in spite of herself.
To her side, Villis groaned, rubbing his temples in mounting fatigue.
"Was she?" he asked, close to exasperated. "Was she really?"
Images flicked before Ifi's eyes in rapid succession. Her body tucked into Shard's, a porcelain hand holding her possessively close. The below-spawn's whined apologies coming at the heels of a mistake after a mistake. The sweet promise of keeping Ifi safe. The immediate breaking of that promise. And yet, the more she dwelt in those memories, the more they managed to burrow themselves into her, not bitter, not enraging, but marked by a profound, unbeatable sense of loss. There were tears in her eyes again.
"She abandoned you at the first opportunity," Villis continued. "She abandoned you for the most remote chance at regaining her status, after her previous idiotic plot came undone. Do you really think your life mattered to her more than mine, or Meos', or anyone else's? Because of what, because you're not from the wards? Who do you think gave Alissa her scars? To her, we're all meat."
Did Shard hold her like a slab of meat? Did Shard see her as nothing more but a stepping stone? There was a part of Ifi that wanted nothing more but to turn to Villis and slap him for the insinuation, to knock this disgusting slur out of his mouth. What did he know? What did he understand? He was a thug who had made it to the top of the world because he was that good at killing, and now he was acting like he was any better than-
"I love her," she whined, as if a confession could change anything, or turn Villis' heart.
"And you will never see her alive again," he responded, cool but not unsympathetic.
There was a part of her that could recognize the truth, no matter how much it hurt. Precisely because of how much it hurt. Something had to give in the way she held herself up; or maybe some muscle twisted her face into a mask of misery. Villis offered his arm in a gesture of comfort; Ifi flinched away, perilously close to the ledge.
"I tried to warn you, so many times," he said, keeping close, hand still extended. Was he expecting her to try to jump? "This was only ever going to end this way, or with you dead. Monsters like her don't change. They only grow desperate."
There was no denying anything he said, only escaping from it, and Ifi, frankly, couldn't find it in herself to keep on running.
"So what would you have me do?"
He looked away, ashamed.
"Give it up. Move on," he suggested, a small crack audible in his voice. "The world doesn't stop for anyone's grief. Didn't for mine, and won't for yours."
How can I, she thought of asking, like an accusation. I'm too weak, she thought of pleading. Go take a dive to the bottom, she thought of demanding. All those words swarmed around her, screaming into her ears the plain, undeniable fact: there was no other advice to be had. It was only ever going to end this way, or with her dead. And she wanted for too many things for the latter to enter consideration. She withdrew into the scorched garden, Villis exhaling audibly.
"Why are you telling me this?" she repeated her question. It was easier to push it out of her mouth than what was really gnawing at her: the cold realization that he was doing more to help her than she had given him any reason to.
"Not sure," he kicked some ash around, scattering it into the wind. "Seemed the right thing, I suppose."
There was much left to say, so when she couldn't find a response, he excused himself and left. She listened to his footsteps crunch against the debris, and then slowly fade into the whine of the erstwhile garden slowly swaying in its cradle chains. Then, that too started to dissolve, in time becoming one with the idle hum of the City that Ifi decided to try to lose herself in.
***
For a time, Ifi could almost believe in it working out.
Pris withdrew her objections. Apparently, Villis sent her a message; she tossed it angrily off the balcony and swore at him, but made no remark against Ifi's presence afterwards. In fact, she treated her like air, which Eusi claimed the alchemist would pass in no time at all.
"Unlike me," she assured, "my wife doesn't know how to hold a grudge."
For what it was worth, the Glassmaker seemed genuinely enthused to enter Ifi into her service, promising that correct papers would soon be drafted and the alchemist given a formal right to residency in the High City. She even showed her the room that she would be lodged in – smaller than the one she occupied in the below, but incomparable in luxury and amenities.
Between showing her around, Eusi kept making jokes. Ever so often, she would allude to Ifi's impending "captivity", warning her that a "thorough examination" would be necessary first. It took Ifi some time to warm to it, but between the suggestive winks, the excellent curry she had been for a late lunch, and the warm pleasure of a long bath that Eusi offered, the alchemist felt some of the pent up pressure of the past few weeks start to release. In its place came the unavoidable crash, and a dream-like wonder at the impossible change about to turn her life around.
Another virtue of the situation was that she found herself far too fatigued to think much, or worry, or remember. Eusi didn't mind her staying for a night longer; in fact, she even tried to convince Ifi to hire someone out to move what little possessions she had to the towers, instead of handling it alone.
"What equipment do you need?" she would ask. "Just make a list. I'll have it assembled within a week."
The idea was tempting, but having slept on it, Ifi decided that it would probably be smarter to wrap up her affairs below, first. Then, she laughed at herself in the mirror, realizing that she was already imagining this contract to be some kind of raunchy sexual servitude, of the kind she would read in books of smut, and then fantasise about when no one could see.
It was a struggle to believe that maybe, just maybe, she wasn't that far off the mark.
"Don't you mind her," Eusi suggested over the breakfast, when Pris again made a display of sulking when Ifi came into view. "Though maybe she will have to beat her frustrations out on you? What do you think, my beloved?"
The elixir woman cracked a smile at that, despite herself. It vanished no sooner than it had appeared on her severe face, but Ifi caught a glimpse of it, and with it, the promise that things were going to work out in the end.
On the slow elevator ride down, she kept thinking back to Villis – and to his scars. Whatever he had lost, whatever he could not be forgiven for, whatever he could not forgive himself; he let it all scab over, thick skin over old hurt. She thought of Shard, too, Shard who was probably already dead, and the thought was such a punch in the gut that she vowed, once more, to never allow it back into her head. The promise broke as soon as she had made it, but she kept assuring herself, and the empty elevator, that it was a matter of time. A matter of enduring. A matter of letting distance open between herself, and yesterday.
She also thought about her father; daydreamed telling him she was going to become a sex-slave at the foot of the High Table's. Oh, how would he love the idea – all his life, pushing her to try to make it to the towers, and receiving this in turn. Of course, she was not going to do it, out of respect for family, if nothing else. Besides, she admonished herself for making too much of Eusi's jokes. It was going to be a work thing, a retainer alchemist for a High Family. Maybe with some benefits, but those benefits were hardly central to the offer, even if they were the main draw.
Still, an odd sort of melancholy kept her company as she made the familiar travel down from the Lower Heights to her shop, sleepwalking through the bustle of the Middle City, the lights of terraces, the tolling of bells, the ceaseless flow of commerce from the roots of the world to its charm-studded canopy above. The closer to home that she got, the lighter her steps were; at the end, she felt like her feet were barely touching the white cobblestone. The terrifying idea of leaving – of throwing her life out – now could not only be glimpsed and touched, but also carried in itself a promise of a release. The alchemist couldn't tell from what, exactly, but freedom seemed at hand.
Between lurid fantasies and discarded woes – the world didn't stop for her grief, and she wouldn't, either – she composed the letter she would write to her father, or considered whether to rent her workshop out, or keep it as a retreat for when the High City got too exhausting. What were her peers going to say? How was Ciara going to react? Questions buzzed around her head, but distantly, as if separated from Ifi's thoughts by an opaque membrane.
When she came close to her doorstep, a worry came over her – there were traces of Shard all over her workshop. They would have to be swept away quickly, hidden or thrown out. Ahead of time, she urged herself not to allow even a single keepsake. The past few weeks were a nightmare, and she was waking to a better life.
The work was hard, but eventually, with enough tears and dull punches against stone walls, she numbed herself enough to stuff all the reminders of her big mistake into some chest, and then throw it in the corner of the kitchen, to remain unopened forevermore. She almost set fire to it, but ultimately couldn't bring herself to. In any case, it was enough, and then there was time to sleep once more, and in the morning begin the arduous process of dismantling her workshop for transport.
She woke up to a runner banging on the door of her shop, clutching a short letter sealed with ebon black lacquer carrying the sign of a wedge bursting into a block. She cracked it open on her kitchen table, right next to her morning cup of coffee. But there was no letter inside. Instead, rolled into the paper there was a piece of white porcelain shell. A few words were scrawled on it in a jagged-edge script.
She is crying out to see you. The Temple of Our Deprived Mother, Lower City.
The underside of the shard was wet with fresh, tar-like blood.
"And that was my first encounter with Shard."
Although Eusi had directed Ifi to Villis' office – the Permanent Representative of the Fellowship of Glassworkers at the High Table – the man himself refused to meet her there. Instead, he had her wait until he was done with a throng of severe-looking patricians before taking her to a place where, he claimed, no prying eyes would spy on them. That meant a flying ruin.
Before a fire consumed it, the platform they were on used to be one of the many High City's hanging gardens – a domed enclosure suspended between towers. Exotic flowers filled it, coaxed by alchemy into permanent bloom. Their carbonized remains littered the floor, tear-drop spikes of melted glass poking between them. They were what remained of the dome – only the steel frame continued to stand, bent by sheer heat into a twisted canopy of winding metal branches. Ash piled in the places where wind couldn't sweep it out into the void, piling in the cracked ceramic pots. Only charm glass survived apparently untouched, long tendrils of braided glass snaking through the rubble, shining bright blue. They kept the whole platform aloft, preventing it from snapping free of its moorings and tumbling to the bottom of the City. It wasn't enough to prevent it from creaking and groaning with each seaward gust. To call that noise unnerving would be an understatement – which is why Villis maintained that there, alone, they could converse privately, and at length. The alchemist quickly came to regret it.
"Why are you telling me this?" she asked, images of cackling Shard drenched in human blood dancing in her mind, each death dripping merrily from the tips of her rending claws.
"Perspective, I guess?" he said, shifting awkwardly, seeming almost embarrassed by the entire situation.
Perspective. Ifi shuffled closer to the platform's edge. Between the twisted ribs of the shattered dome, the City filled the view far towards the horizon. The dark haze of the Glassworkers' Ward wasn't that hard to find, now that she wanted to take a look. Not that there was much to see: only smog, and a hint of orange light within, where the greatest foundries spread. Heaps of slag, tall as hills, ringed it; smoke climbed their slopes reluctantly, rarely getting to crest them and flow down into the rest of the City. Distantly, Ifi recalled learning of the great expenses that went into ensuring that the Glassworks wouldn't pollute with their fumes. It was a feat of urbanistic ingenuity that the waste of the foundries was what ended up keeping their malign influence away from the heights and powers. It had always felt like something to be proud of.
"So, what happened next?"
Behind her, Villis shrugged.
"I went to Meos' father to ask for forgiveness."
He had grown used to telling this story, Ifi could tell. It wasn't so much as picking at open wounds, not anymore. Everything he said, he delivered with a delicate, nearly apologetic smile that made him appear younger than he was, like a boy narrating his first heartbreak. But there was scar tissue there, there had to be. The alchemist couldn't believe wounds like that to be capable of healing in full.
"Did you get it?" she asked, sensing hesitation.
"No," Villis sighed. "He threw me out."
Ifi nodded slowly, surprised at how well she was taking the implication. No, there could be no forgiveness – not for Shard, and probably not for her. Especially since she couldn't even bring herself to feel guilty, only sad.
"But it wasn't your fault," she tried anyway, mostly for her own sake.
"So?"
"So he shouldn't have treated you like that."
"I kept telling myself that, yeah," he chuckled. "Waste of time. I shouldn't have bothered him. He had nothing to offer to me, and really, I have nothing to give to you, either."
"So your answer is no?" she asked, almost glad to be past hope.
"My answer, miss alchemist," old exhaustion weighed on his voice; he spoke quietly, as if to a child, "is that I don't care, and neither should you."
"But Prunikos-"
"You can pass to Pris," he cut her in, "that if she wanted to stay on that high horse, she shouldn't have married a Glassmaker."
The alchemist pursed her lips; this was as close as Villis came to telling her she was free to stay with Eusi and her wife, and it didn't seem like she was going to get anything more definitive than that. The realization did little to release the anxiety cinching her innards and twisting her guts into ornate knots, but it was probably better than the flat no she had been expecting.
"The reason I am telling you all of this," Villis sighed again, letting go of that brief flash of annoyance, "is that I hope you can get your head around what Shard was. Thank whatever you craftspeople worship you're still alive, and move on. Most people who cross her kind don't get that luxury."
Ifi looked up from the city below, trying to spot the Northern Limit on the horizon again. It vanished, hidden by the flaky clouds now strewn across the sky. The absence stung; it could help her to see something past the City that surrounded her, past its complexity and merciless logic. More and more, she came to understand her brother, and his dreams of escape.
"She was getting better," she protested, in spite of herself.
To her side, Villis groaned, rubbing his temples in mounting fatigue.
"Was she?" he asked, close to exasperated. "Was she really?"
Images flicked before Ifi's eyes in rapid succession. Her body tucked into Shard's, a porcelain hand holding her possessively close. The below-spawn's whined apologies coming at the heels of a mistake after a mistake. The sweet promise of keeping Ifi safe. The immediate breaking of that promise. And yet, the more she dwelt in those memories, the more they managed to burrow themselves into her, not bitter, not enraging, but marked by a profound, unbeatable sense of loss. There were tears in her eyes again.
"She abandoned you at the first opportunity," Villis continued. "She abandoned you for the most remote chance at regaining her status, after her previous idiotic plot came undone. Do you really think your life mattered to her more than mine, or Meos', or anyone else's? Because of what, because you're not from the wards? Who do you think gave Alissa her scars? To her, we're all meat."
Did Shard hold her like a slab of meat? Did Shard see her as nothing more but a stepping stone? There was a part of Ifi that wanted nothing more but to turn to Villis and slap him for the insinuation, to knock this disgusting slur out of his mouth. What did he know? What did he understand? He was a thug who had made it to the top of the world because he was that good at killing, and now he was acting like he was any better than-
"I love her," she whined, as if a confession could change anything, or turn Villis' heart.
"And you will never see her alive again," he responded, cool but not unsympathetic.
There was a part of her that could recognize the truth, no matter how much it hurt. Precisely because of how much it hurt. Something had to give in the way she held herself up; or maybe some muscle twisted her face into a mask of misery. Villis offered his arm in a gesture of comfort; Ifi flinched away, perilously close to the ledge.
"I tried to warn you, so many times," he said, keeping close, hand still extended. Was he expecting her to try to jump? "This was only ever going to end this way, or with you dead. Monsters like her don't change. They only grow desperate."
There was no denying anything he said, only escaping from it, and Ifi, frankly, couldn't find it in herself to keep on running.
"So what would you have me do?"
He looked away, ashamed.
"Give it up. Move on," he suggested, a small crack audible in his voice. "The world doesn't stop for anyone's grief. Didn't for mine, and won't for yours."
How can I, she thought of asking, like an accusation. I'm too weak, she thought of pleading. Go take a dive to the bottom, she thought of demanding. All those words swarmed around her, screaming into her ears the plain, undeniable fact: there was no other advice to be had. It was only ever going to end this way, or with her dead. And she wanted for too many things for the latter to enter consideration. She withdrew into the scorched garden, Villis exhaling audibly.
"Why are you telling me this?" she repeated her question. It was easier to push it out of her mouth than what was really gnawing at her: the cold realization that he was doing more to help her than she had given him any reason to.
"Not sure," he kicked some ash around, scattering it into the wind. "Seemed the right thing, I suppose."
There was much left to say, so when she couldn't find a response, he excused himself and left. She listened to his footsteps crunch against the debris, and then slowly fade into the whine of the erstwhile garden slowly swaying in its cradle chains. Then, that too started to dissolve, in time becoming one with the idle hum of the City that Ifi decided to try to lose herself in.
***
For a time, Ifi could almost believe in it working out.
Pris withdrew her objections. Apparently, Villis sent her a message; she tossed it angrily off the balcony and swore at him, but made no remark against Ifi's presence afterwards. In fact, she treated her like air, which Eusi claimed the alchemist would pass in no time at all.
"Unlike me," she assured, "my wife doesn't know how to hold a grudge."
For what it was worth, the Glassmaker seemed genuinely enthused to enter Ifi into her service, promising that correct papers would soon be drafted and the alchemist given a formal right to residency in the High City. She even showed her the room that she would be lodged in – smaller than the one she occupied in the below, but incomparable in luxury and amenities.
Between showing her around, Eusi kept making jokes. Ever so often, she would allude to Ifi's impending "captivity", warning her that a "thorough examination" would be necessary first. It took Ifi some time to warm to it, but between the suggestive winks, the excellent curry she had been for a late lunch, and the warm pleasure of a long bath that Eusi offered, the alchemist felt some of the pent up pressure of the past few weeks start to release. In its place came the unavoidable crash, and a dream-like wonder at the impossible change about to turn her life around.
Another virtue of the situation was that she found herself far too fatigued to think much, or worry, or remember. Eusi didn't mind her staying for a night longer; in fact, she even tried to convince Ifi to hire someone out to move what little possessions she had to the towers, instead of handling it alone.
"What equipment do you need?" she would ask. "Just make a list. I'll have it assembled within a week."
The idea was tempting, but having slept on it, Ifi decided that it would probably be smarter to wrap up her affairs below, first. Then, she laughed at herself in the mirror, realizing that she was already imagining this contract to be some kind of raunchy sexual servitude, of the kind she would read in books of smut, and then fantasise about when no one could see.
It was a struggle to believe that maybe, just maybe, she wasn't that far off the mark.
"Don't you mind her," Eusi suggested over the breakfast, when Pris again made a display of sulking when Ifi came into view. "Though maybe she will have to beat her frustrations out on you? What do you think, my beloved?"
The elixir woman cracked a smile at that, despite herself. It vanished no sooner than it had appeared on her severe face, but Ifi caught a glimpse of it, and with it, the promise that things were going to work out in the end.
On the slow elevator ride down, she kept thinking back to Villis – and to his scars. Whatever he had lost, whatever he could not be forgiven for, whatever he could not forgive himself; he let it all scab over, thick skin over old hurt. She thought of Shard, too, Shard who was probably already dead, and the thought was such a punch in the gut that she vowed, once more, to never allow it back into her head. The promise broke as soon as she had made it, but she kept assuring herself, and the empty elevator, that it was a matter of time. A matter of enduring. A matter of letting distance open between herself, and yesterday.
She also thought about her father; daydreamed telling him she was going to become a sex-slave at the foot of the High Table's. Oh, how would he love the idea – all his life, pushing her to try to make it to the towers, and receiving this in turn. Of course, she was not going to do it, out of respect for family, if nothing else. Besides, she admonished herself for making too much of Eusi's jokes. It was going to be a work thing, a retainer alchemist for a High Family. Maybe with some benefits, but those benefits were hardly central to the offer, even if they were the main draw.
Still, an odd sort of melancholy kept her company as she made the familiar travel down from the Lower Heights to her shop, sleepwalking through the bustle of the Middle City, the lights of terraces, the tolling of bells, the ceaseless flow of commerce from the roots of the world to its charm-studded canopy above. The closer to home that she got, the lighter her steps were; at the end, she felt like her feet were barely touching the white cobblestone. The terrifying idea of leaving – of throwing her life out – now could not only be glimpsed and touched, but also carried in itself a promise of a release. The alchemist couldn't tell from what, exactly, but freedom seemed at hand.
Between lurid fantasies and discarded woes – the world didn't stop for her grief, and she wouldn't, either – she composed the letter she would write to her father, or considered whether to rent her workshop out, or keep it as a retreat for when the High City got too exhausting. What were her peers going to say? How was Ciara going to react? Questions buzzed around her head, but distantly, as if separated from Ifi's thoughts by an opaque membrane.
When she came close to her doorstep, a worry came over her – there were traces of Shard all over her workshop. They would have to be swept away quickly, hidden or thrown out. Ahead of time, she urged herself not to allow even a single keepsake. The past few weeks were a nightmare, and she was waking to a better life.
The work was hard, but eventually, with enough tears and dull punches against stone walls, she numbed herself enough to stuff all the reminders of her big mistake into some chest, and then throw it in the corner of the kitchen, to remain unopened forevermore. She almost set fire to it, but ultimately couldn't bring herself to. In any case, it was enough, and then there was time to sleep once more, and in the morning begin the arduous process of dismantling her workshop for transport.
She woke up to a runner banging on the door of her shop, clutching a short letter sealed with ebon black lacquer carrying the sign of a wedge bursting into a block. She cracked it open on her kitchen table, right next to her morning cup of coffee. But there was no letter inside. Instead, rolled into the paper there was a piece of white porcelain shell. A few words were scrawled on it in a jagged-edge script.
She is crying out to see you. The Temple of Our Deprived Mother, Lower City.
The underside of the shard was wet with fresh, tar-like blood.
Half Moon
In the end, there is no end.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
That is totally a trap.
The only grounds on which I would query that is that I feel like "trap" implies some minimum level of effort to hide the fact that bad stuff will happen to the victim if they walk into it. Whereas I think the Lair Mother is pretty much just inviting Ifi to come and take part in the festivities.
Anyway, I really enjoyed this chapter. Villis is my favourite tired himbo, someone give that man a hug and a puppy to stroke.
Anyway, I really enjoyed this chapter. Villis is my favourite tired himbo, someone give that man a hug and a puppy to stroke.
Half Moon
In the end, there is no end.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Yeah, fair enough. Can't wait for Ifi to walk directly in!
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Oh no, poor Ifi….
Well at least she finally gets to go beat up the Lair Mother now.
Well at least she finally gets to go beat up the Lair Mother now.
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It turns out this was the speedrun version of the tasteful smut VN we've been playing through, where we missed out on the Pris/Eusi and Andronikos side content except for the obligatory plot-related scenes, did not have an affair with Ciara, friendzoned Villis so hard his options did not show up, and only did the obligatory romance scenes with Shard, without unlocking any of the extra scenes by getting her affection high enough.
However, Ifi has been accumulating i-frames* by staying motionless whilst manipulating her Anxiety Meter. This means that despite having only starting gear, when we enter the Lair Mother fight she will be able to instantly charge her Universal Solvent ability, then use a frame-perfect strat to hit the Lair Mother's sprite with the full sixteen pixels of damage, instantly dissolving her. By manipulating level transitions, Ifi can then grab Shard and skip most of the final level content (including Villis coming to save us from Cuts and her sisters as the lair burns down), phasing through the ceiling.
A very important part of the run is using arm pumping to save frames at door transitions. I have not seen @Gargulec mention this yet, but I am sure it will feature heavily soon-
*(Why does a VN have i-frames, you ask? A very good question! Allow me to answer by hitting you over the head with a chair and running away!)
Half Moon
In the end, there is no end.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
...I really wish I could play that. But I'm satisfied reading this instead.
Tiny brain: Ifi goes to the lair alone, winds up with ANGST as Shard dies in front of her, to absolutely no one's surprise
Brain: Ifi contemplates going to the lair, gets talked out of it, and stays in the city to learn what a healthy relationship with people who AREN'T sadistic psychotic murderbeasts is
Galaxy brain: Villis goes to the lair with an Ifi-shaped mannequin; beneath the bondage gear are as many potions of chlorine trifluoride she could produce
Brain: Ifi contemplates going to the lair, gets talked out of it, and stays in the city to learn what a healthy relationship with people who AREN'T sadistic psychotic murderbeasts is
Galaxy brain: Villis goes to the lair with an Ifi-shaped mannequin; beneath the bondage gear are as many potions of chlorine trifluoride she could produce
23. Escape
Gargulec
impact!
- Location
- a garden
23. Escape
However vast the Lair-Mother's dominion was, it could not span the entirety of the subterranean world. Deeper into the bowels of the earth, where the air grew hot and heavy and swirls of strange fungi ornamented the cavern walls, there hid other realms. Of them, the Lair-Mother's children spoke rarely, when they did, in rumour only. After all, few, if any, of them could boast of ever having wandered the stalagmite forests where dark-skinned oreads blend with the living stone living stone, of having visited visited the silk-draped courts of the arachnid princes, or taken part in the slow martial waltzes of long dead royalty enthroned in the antediluvian necropoleis. Shard's siblings could, at most, trade in well-worn stories, exchange words of common warning, and sometimes—albeit rarely—express an indistinct longing for what hides below.
In all of those areas, Blood-Slick Thorn excelled like no one else in Shard's extended family.
"This way," it cheered, dragging Shard by the wrist, through water-slick tunnels long ago carved by the great underground wyrms. "We're near!"
However vast the Lair Mother's dominion was, it too had borders. Beyond the bend of the tunnel, a steep shaft opened, running near-vertically down, its bottom disappearing in a darkness that even Shard's keen senses could not pierce. Thorn skipped to the edge, pulling Shard behind itself.
"The edge of the world," it said, voice light with wonder.
"It's just a hole," Shard shrugged, but her sibling tugged at her arm, forcing her to sit down, perched at the precipice. "There's nothing there."
Thorn's hand darted to the side, claws slicing at the stone and plucking a pebble from the ground. It bounced it in its palm, and then chucked it down the shaft. Moments later, a splashing sound climbed back up, distorted by its echoes.
"A lake?" Shard asked, leaning curiously in, in spite of herself.
"Shh!" Thorn put a finger to her mouth.
Echoes of their words and motions faded slowly, until the perfect underground silence could reassert itself—almost. Distantly, a faint rustle marred it, reaching up from below, lurking at the edge of sound. But the more Shard focused on it, the more obvious the source became: at the bottom of the pit, water did not sit still. It flowed.
"Not a lake," Thorn whispered, as if afraid that its voice would scare that sound away. "A river! And you know what that means?"
Shard didn't, so she allowed Thorn to pull her back from the edge, and explain. She watched her sibling's face, painted into carpets of surface flowers, and immersed herself in its lovely, excited voice. The details mattered less than the timbre and cadence; she barely followed as it piled details upon details on the significance of there being a river. A river which, apparently, had to flow for a source to a sea, and so clearly made for a ready-made trail that one could easily follow, without the risk of ever getting lost in the immense labyrinth left behind by the old wyrms. Who knew, Thorn kept asking, what awaited at the end of that river? What sort of strange and alien realms could they find there, so far away from their spawning chambers, and the cruel decrees of their mother?
"We could escape, Shard," Thorn finished, tapping its claw on Shard's chest. "This is our way out."
At first, the significance of those words failed to register with Shard; what Thorn was suggesting exceeded what she was used to imagining. Instead, she glanced behind herself again, at the sheer drop, and the water-slick walls. Teeth-marks criss-crossed them, but ages of erosion smoothed them too much to make for good hand-holds.
"You would have to climb down, first," she observed, trying to think if her claws could bite into this stone securely enough. What if she missed a hold, and tumbled down? The drop felt long enough that her shell would easily shatter at the meeting with the water's surface below. Shard could almost hear that awful wet crack. She shuddered.
"This is why I brought this," Thorn pointed at the long coils of rope wrapped around its waist, a hook attached at both ends.
The rope, obviously, could snap, and there probably wouldn't be enough of it in the first place. Shard pointed that out, and Thorn quickly found out some new explanation for how they absolutely could descend down to the river, and go with its flow, wherever it may take them. There was a sweet back-and-forth in the conversation, the increasingly ludicrous ideas posited by Thorn drawing out stifled laughter from Shard.
"We don't drown easily," Thorn would say, miming swimming with its hands. "I can hold my breath!"
"For hours?" Shard would reply, smiling against her better judgment. "Days?"
Somewhere between the petty practicalities of their impossible escape, other images sneaked in. Thorn would take a pause from arguing about the rope to talk of it and Shard taking on an oread maid or three, or about showing the arachnid princes what real predation looked like. Those ideas, completely unmoored from the world they knew flowed at once dreamlike and strangely tangible; at times, Shard caught herself peeking over the edge, as if expecting to see the lights of distant kingdoms shimmer from below, inviting her in. The thread of Thorn's dreams kept reeling her in; the more it talked, the less focused its imagination was on hunts, or treasuries pried from decrepit, undead hands, and more on abstract impossibilities. Words like "freedom" flickered on and off in its speech, dancing between what it had to know: that it was all only ever a dream. That they were never going to leave their mother's dominion, that even if they managed to climb down this perilous shaft, even if they managed to swim the river to distant realms, that it would not be enough.
When Shard spoke, her voice was small and harsh, but honest. She tried to explain to her sibling—without breaking its heart—that the oreads would not go into their service, but hunt them in turn through their stone forests, that the arachnid princes would ensnare them and suck the life out of their shells, to later pass them on as gifts to long-dead monarchs in the deepest tombs. It was all a guess, of course, but Shard understood on some visceral level that she and all her siblings belonged to a race of monsters, unwelcome anywhere but in the domains under their mother's sway. And so, all those fugitive fancies were good for a laugh or two, but nothing more. It would be good for Thorn, she stressed, if itremembered that.
Her sibling listened to her attentively, and accepted nothing that Shard was saying.
"Run away with me," it pleaded, reaching for the rope.
Shard grabbed it by the wrist, pulled it away from the spooled cord. Thorn didn't resist the touch; for a moment, Shard almost felt as if it welcomed it.
"Tomorrow," she lied out a promise, hoping that it would be enough to dissuade Thorn from throwing itself away.
Her sibling sighed, then nodded its head in quiet surrender.
"Tomorrow," it repeated, standing up.
They spoke little on the long road back to the central chambers of their mother's dominion. Thorn would sometimes break out into a quiet hum, repeating some melody it brought from the surface. Shard, meanwhile, thought hard about how to make sure that her sibling would abandon its stupid dreams. She kept glancing at it, and each look reminded her that she would rather not surrender herself to a world where Thorn was not present to keep her company. But she knew it well enough to understand that left to its own devices it would, sooner or later, go through with its dreams—and it terrified Shard to realize that she was no longer certain if she had it in herself what it took to refuse to follow in its footsteps, down whatever dark pit Thorn would decide to descend.
Later, finally alone in her nook, Shard finally put a name on the way she was feeling. It was fear; fear of what would happen to Thorn, but no less important of what would happen to herself. She imagined breaking her body after a fall from a slippery hand-hold; she imagined drowning at the bottom of an underground river; she imagined falling victim to foreign kingdoms; she imagined a thousand and deaths lurking outside of the known world, laid in ambush for her and Thorn.
At first, those images were easy to turn away and rebuke, but for each one sent away, two new arose, swarming Shard with catastrophic visions of shared failure. Sleep did not come easily, then not at all all; she crawled out of her little stone niche and wandered the central corridors idly, irately. It was difficult to precisely pinpoint the moment when she arrived at her decision, at that one solution which seemed, however briefly, to serve as an oasis of hope for her and Thorn. They had a mother, did they not? A mother that could teach them to do better.
In hindsight, Shard had to admit that she was deceiving herself, and the lies she spun for her own protection came easily. But in the moment, it felt so very sincere. The Lair-Mother listened to her confession with rapt attention, and though each word Shard said reeked of a tragic mistake, by the time it fell out of her mouth it was already too late.
"I'm just worried for it," she croaked, hiding her face from her mother's gaze.
"Of course you are," the Lair-Mother replied, her voice warm and comforting. "You have done well to come to me. I will take care of both of you."
This was, of course, a lie.
Her siblings dragged Thorn in not long after; at first, it seemed confused by why it was pulled out of its sleep by a swarm of angry, white hands. Then, it noticed Shard prostrated before their mother, and understood at once.
If it said anything then, if it gave voice to the feeling of betrayal, if it cursed its sister for what had to come next, Shard managed to scrub that from her memory since, just as she had attempted with the rest of the night. Unfortunately for her, some things could not be forgotten—easily, or at all.
What stuck in her memory, then? Her mother's inscrutable face; the soft touch of her fingers on the side of her cheek. Thorn's grim silence. The small flock of their siblings come to see the beautiful spectacle of a fall from grace.
"So I am told you dreamed of escape?" the Lair-Mother asked then, stepping back from both of them. "I am told you had a plan?"
Thorn's silence was defiant, or terrified. Perhaps both.
"Call the family," the Lair-Mother instructed one of her children. "There will be a sermon soon. All are expected to attend."
She and her sibling knelt together, without giving a single word. Before them, their mother weighed in her hands implements of execution, and in the depths of her soul, past all the guilt and all the fear, Shard desperately hoped that she would be spared them. She kept glancing at Thorn, expecting to see in it some sign of the same; expecting to hear it beg, or shift blame. It stayed silent.
"And what should I do with such disobedience?" the Lair-Mother added a new question, a chisel in her hand. "Shard, beloved daughter, what should I do with your sibling?"
Once again, Shard tried to see if Thorn would make some gesture, some sound; once again, she saw nothing. Only a tense body passively awaiting its fate.
"Would you disrespect me with this quiet, too?" the Lair-Mother's words strangled with softness. "Please, tell me, what am I supposed to do with this little Thorn in my side?"
Her hand cupped Shard's chin; it pulled it up, forcing her to stare straight into her mother's face.
"You have until the count of five to tell me," she smiled. "Or I will assume you were in league with it."
The easiest way to break someone, Shard found, was to give them a choice.
"One."
Guilt was never a feeling Shard was prone to, and now as she was experiencing its wretched grip, she wished for nothing but to be done with it. Was this really her fault? She had to know what was going to happen, once she brought the matter to the Lair-Mother. Thorn was going to die, and it was her fault.
"Two."
No, it was not. It could not be—it was Thorn's own idiocy that brought it here. If it did not get lost in daydreams, none of it would happen. They could stay together, hunt together, they could outlive the Lair-Mother and find this outlandish dream of freedom some other time. Thorn had no one to blame but itself.
"Three."
All of it was a lie. Shard stared at the chisel in the Lair-Mother's hand, and could not keep herself from imagining it being driven into her shell, splitting her open like a rotten egg. She could not help herself from imagining the pain. It was not going to be brief. And she did not want to die.
"Four?"
Shard opened her mouth to plead.
"We can still escape," Thorn gasped out. "Together."
Its sister understood at once what it was suggesting, and the thought was so terrifying that her own words came out as a panicked shout.
"Thorn must be punished!"
The Lair-Mother's grip on her chin closed like a vice; she did not let Shard look away as she smiled and asked one final question.
"And by who?"
And then, it was done, and all that remained were the inevitable consequences, falling into place one by one, each unavoidably announced by what came before. The string of images, of feelings, and of words, burned itself forever into Shard's memory. She could not forget the hammer and the chisel, and the revolting sense of relief letting her know that she would not be paying for Thorn's dreams. But everything else could still be lost. In the days that follow, she worked to prune herself off the days before the sermon, rendering them first into a blur, and then a nightmare, swiftly dismissed moments after waking. Even regret, blissfully abated with time, waning enough so that she could pretend herself free of it.
It was not until she lay shattered on a steel table, awaiting the inevitable, that she managed to realize—in the brief moments when the waves of pain receded enough to let some of her consciousness rise to the surface—that Thorn was right.
She could have escaped.
She should have escaped.
However vast the Lair-Mother's dominion was, it could not span the entirety of the subterranean world. Deeper into the bowels of the earth, where the air grew hot and heavy and swirls of strange fungi ornamented the cavern walls, there hid other realms. Of them, the Lair-Mother's children spoke rarely, when they did, in rumour only. After all, few, if any, of them could boast of ever having wandered the stalagmite forests where dark-skinned oreads blend with the living stone living stone, of having visited visited the silk-draped courts of the arachnid princes, or taken part in the slow martial waltzes of long dead royalty enthroned in the antediluvian necropoleis. Shard's siblings could, at most, trade in well-worn stories, exchange words of common warning, and sometimes—albeit rarely—express an indistinct longing for what hides below.
In all of those areas, Blood-Slick Thorn excelled like no one else in Shard's extended family.
"This way," it cheered, dragging Shard by the wrist, through water-slick tunnels long ago carved by the great underground wyrms. "We're near!"
However vast the Lair Mother's dominion was, it too had borders. Beyond the bend of the tunnel, a steep shaft opened, running near-vertically down, its bottom disappearing in a darkness that even Shard's keen senses could not pierce. Thorn skipped to the edge, pulling Shard behind itself.
"The edge of the world," it said, voice light with wonder.
"It's just a hole," Shard shrugged, but her sibling tugged at her arm, forcing her to sit down, perched at the precipice. "There's nothing there."
Thorn's hand darted to the side, claws slicing at the stone and plucking a pebble from the ground. It bounced it in its palm, and then chucked it down the shaft. Moments later, a splashing sound climbed back up, distorted by its echoes.
"A lake?" Shard asked, leaning curiously in, in spite of herself.
"Shh!" Thorn put a finger to her mouth.
Echoes of their words and motions faded slowly, until the perfect underground silence could reassert itself—almost. Distantly, a faint rustle marred it, reaching up from below, lurking at the edge of sound. But the more Shard focused on it, the more obvious the source became: at the bottom of the pit, water did not sit still. It flowed.
"Not a lake," Thorn whispered, as if afraid that its voice would scare that sound away. "A river! And you know what that means?"
Shard didn't, so she allowed Thorn to pull her back from the edge, and explain. She watched her sibling's face, painted into carpets of surface flowers, and immersed herself in its lovely, excited voice. The details mattered less than the timbre and cadence; she barely followed as it piled details upon details on the significance of there being a river. A river which, apparently, had to flow for a source to a sea, and so clearly made for a ready-made trail that one could easily follow, without the risk of ever getting lost in the immense labyrinth left behind by the old wyrms. Who knew, Thorn kept asking, what awaited at the end of that river? What sort of strange and alien realms could they find there, so far away from their spawning chambers, and the cruel decrees of their mother?
"We could escape, Shard," Thorn finished, tapping its claw on Shard's chest. "This is our way out."
At first, the significance of those words failed to register with Shard; what Thorn was suggesting exceeded what she was used to imagining. Instead, she glanced behind herself again, at the sheer drop, and the water-slick walls. Teeth-marks criss-crossed them, but ages of erosion smoothed them too much to make for good hand-holds.
"You would have to climb down, first," she observed, trying to think if her claws could bite into this stone securely enough. What if she missed a hold, and tumbled down? The drop felt long enough that her shell would easily shatter at the meeting with the water's surface below. Shard could almost hear that awful wet crack. She shuddered.
"This is why I brought this," Thorn pointed at the long coils of rope wrapped around its waist, a hook attached at both ends.
The rope, obviously, could snap, and there probably wouldn't be enough of it in the first place. Shard pointed that out, and Thorn quickly found out some new explanation for how they absolutely could descend down to the river, and go with its flow, wherever it may take them. There was a sweet back-and-forth in the conversation, the increasingly ludicrous ideas posited by Thorn drawing out stifled laughter from Shard.
"We don't drown easily," Thorn would say, miming swimming with its hands. "I can hold my breath!"
"For hours?" Shard would reply, smiling against her better judgment. "Days?"
Somewhere between the petty practicalities of their impossible escape, other images sneaked in. Thorn would take a pause from arguing about the rope to talk of it and Shard taking on an oread maid or three, or about showing the arachnid princes what real predation looked like. Those ideas, completely unmoored from the world they knew flowed at once dreamlike and strangely tangible; at times, Shard caught herself peeking over the edge, as if expecting to see the lights of distant kingdoms shimmer from below, inviting her in. The thread of Thorn's dreams kept reeling her in; the more it talked, the less focused its imagination was on hunts, or treasuries pried from decrepit, undead hands, and more on abstract impossibilities. Words like "freedom" flickered on and off in its speech, dancing between what it had to know: that it was all only ever a dream. That they were never going to leave their mother's dominion, that even if they managed to climb down this perilous shaft, even if they managed to swim the river to distant realms, that it would not be enough.
When Shard spoke, her voice was small and harsh, but honest. She tried to explain to her sibling—without breaking its heart—that the oreads would not go into their service, but hunt them in turn through their stone forests, that the arachnid princes would ensnare them and suck the life out of their shells, to later pass them on as gifts to long-dead monarchs in the deepest tombs. It was all a guess, of course, but Shard understood on some visceral level that she and all her siblings belonged to a race of monsters, unwelcome anywhere but in the domains under their mother's sway. And so, all those fugitive fancies were good for a laugh or two, but nothing more. It would be good for Thorn, she stressed, if itremembered that.
Her sibling listened to her attentively, and accepted nothing that Shard was saying.
"Run away with me," it pleaded, reaching for the rope.
Shard grabbed it by the wrist, pulled it away from the spooled cord. Thorn didn't resist the touch; for a moment, Shard almost felt as if it welcomed it.
"Tomorrow," she lied out a promise, hoping that it would be enough to dissuade Thorn from throwing itself away.
Her sibling sighed, then nodded its head in quiet surrender.
"Tomorrow," it repeated, standing up.
They spoke little on the long road back to the central chambers of their mother's dominion. Thorn would sometimes break out into a quiet hum, repeating some melody it brought from the surface. Shard, meanwhile, thought hard about how to make sure that her sibling would abandon its stupid dreams. She kept glancing at it, and each look reminded her that she would rather not surrender herself to a world where Thorn was not present to keep her company. But she knew it well enough to understand that left to its own devices it would, sooner or later, go through with its dreams—and it terrified Shard to realize that she was no longer certain if she had it in herself what it took to refuse to follow in its footsteps, down whatever dark pit Thorn would decide to descend.
Later, finally alone in her nook, Shard finally put a name on the way she was feeling. It was fear; fear of what would happen to Thorn, but no less important of what would happen to herself. She imagined breaking her body after a fall from a slippery hand-hold; she imagined drowning at the bottom of an underground river; she imagined falling victim to foreign kingdoms; she imagined a thousand and deaths lurking outside of the known world, laid in ambush for her and Thorn.
At first, those images were easy to turn away and rebuke, but for each one sent away, two new arose, swarming Shard with catastrophic visions of shared failure. Sleep did not come easily, then not at all all; she crawled out of her little stone niche and wandered the central corridors idly, irately. It was difficult to precisely pinpoint the moment when she arrived at her decision, at that one solution which seemed, however briefly, to serve as an oasis of hope for her and Thorn. They had a mother, did they not? A mother that could teach them to do better.
In hindsight, Shard had to admit that she was deceiving herself, and the lies she spun for her own protection came easily. But in the moment, it felt so very sincere. The Lair-Mother listened to her confession with rapt attention, and though each word Shard said reeked of a tragic mistake, by the time it fell out of her mouth it was already too late.
"I'm just worried for it," she croaked, hiding her face from her mother's gaze.
"Of course you are," the Lair-Mother replied, her voice warm and comforting. "You have done well to come to me. I will take care of both of you."
This was, of course, a lie.
Her siblings dragged Thorn in not long after; at first, it seemed confused by why it was pulled out of its sleep by a swarm of angry, white hands. Then, it noticed Shard prostrated before their mother, and understood at once.
If it said anything then, if it gave voice to the feeling of betrayal, if it cursed its sister for what had to come next, Shard managed to scrub that from her memory since, just as she had attempted with the rest of the night. Unfortunately for her, some things could not be forgotten—easily, or at all.
What stuck in her memory, then? Her mother's inscrutable face; the soft touch of her fingers on the side of her cheek. Thorn's grim silence. The small flock of their siblings come to see the beautiful spectacle of a fall from grace.
"So I am told you dreamed of escape?" the Lair-Mother asked then, stepping back from both of them. "I am told you had a plan?"
Thorn's silence was defiant, or terrified. Perhaps both.
"Call the family," the Lair-Mother instructed one of her children. "There will be a sermon soon. All are expected to attend."
She and her sibling knelt together, without giving a single word. Before them, their mother weighed in her hands implements of execution, and in the depths of her soul, past all the guilt and all the fear, Shard desperately hoped that she would be spared them. She kept glancing at Thorn, expecting to see in it some sign of the same; expecting to hear it beg, or shift blame. It stayed silent.
"And what should I do with such disobedience?" the Lair-Mother added a new question, a chisel in her hand. "Shard, beloved daughter, what should I do with your sibling?"
Once again, Shard tried to see if Thorn would make some gesture, some sound; once again, she saw nothing. Only a tense body passively awaiting its fate.
"Would you disrespect me with this quiet, too?" the Lair-Mother's words strangled with softness. "Please, tell me, what am I supposed to do with this little Thorn in my side?"
Her hand cupped Shard's chin; it pulled it up, forcing her to stare straight into her mother's face.
"You have until the count of five to tell me," she smiled. "Or I will assume you were in league with it."
The easiest way to break someone, Shard found, was to give them a choice.
"One."
Guilt was never a feeling Shard was prone to, and now as she was experiencing its wretched grip, she wished for nothing but to be done with it. Was this really her fault? She had to know what was going to happen, once she brought the matter to the Lair-Mother. Thorn was going to die, and it was her fault.
"Two."
No, it was not. It could not be—it was Thorn's own idiocy that brought it here. If it did not get lost in daydreams, none of it would happen. They could stay together, hunt together, they could outlive the Lair-Mother and find this outlandish dream of freedom some other time. Thorn had no one to blame but itself.
"Three."
All of it was a lie. Shard stared at the chisel in the Lair-Mother's hand, and could not keep herself from imagining it being driven into her shell, splitting her open like a rotten egg. She could not help herself from imagining the pain. It was not going to be brief. And she did not want to die.
"Four?"
Shard opened her mouth to plead.
"We can still escape," Thorn gasped out. "Together."
Its sister understood at once what it was suggesting, and the thought was so terrifying that her own words came out as a panicked shout.
"Thorn must be punished!"
The Lair-Mother's grip on her chin closed like a vice; she did not let Shard look away as she smiled and asked one final question.
"And by who?"
And then, it was done, and all that remained were the inevitable consequences, falling into place one by one, each unavoidably announced by what came before. The string of images, of feelings, and of words, burned itself forever into Shard's memory. She could not forget the hammer and the chisel, and the revolting sense of relief letting her know that she would not be paying for Thorn's dreams. But everything else could still be lost. In the days that follow, she worked to prune herself off the days before the sermon, rendering them first into a blur, and then a nightmare, swiftly dismissed moments after waking. Even regret, blissfully abated with time, waning enough so that she could pretend herself free of it.
It was not until she lay shattered on a steel table, awaiting the inevitable, that she managed to realize—in the brief moments when the waves of pain receded enough to let some of her consciousness rise to the surface—that Thorn was right.
She could have escaped.
She should have escaped.
Sadly the Lair Mother's ambitious proposal to build a tram network connecting the Low, Middle, and High Cities controlled by a simple system of hydraulic switches has been derailed by the recent strife at the High Table.
24. Otherwise
Gargulec
impact!
- Location
- a garden
24. Otherwise
All that Ifi needed to come to a decision was clarity, which took the form of a dull yellow potion stuffed in the back of one of her display cases. The wax seal came apart easily; she pried off the old cork and let the ugly odour of sulfur hit her. The herbs she had put in to mask the stench helped little, only making it taste like a laboratory fire. She swallowed quickly, washing it down with half a cup of horribly oversteeped tea, then leaned back in a kitchen chair and counted down heartbeats until the effects kicked in.
A brief spike of nausea smashed through her, going away as soon as it made her flinch. In its wake, the churn of her emotions stilled, solidifying into a heavy sediment that slowly settled in the bottom of her stomach, forming a layer of viscous, revolting sludge. Or, at least, that's how she imagined it; the potion wasn't, strictly speaking, a calming draught, nor was it meant to rid her of the capacity to feel. All it did was numb her thoughts to influence; none of that fear, none of that confusion, none of that want went really away, only transforming into a mute kind of a weight that would slip between her fingers if she tried as much as to grasp at it.
She fumbled to her feet, swaying slightly, the balance of the world playing tricks on her. The broken piece of Shard's shell—if that was what it really was—remained on the table; she would rather not be reminded. Distantly, she noted it should probably disturb her that even the below-spawn's name, and the whole string of associations it summoned, registered as not much more than a series of dull throbs: the sort of a pain one easily learns to live with. With an umbrella in hand she stormed into the drizzle outside, rushing to put as much distance between her life and herself before the potion expired.
Still, there was a kind of wicked poetry—even her blunted brain could recognize it—in the fact that this elixir was a by-product of her ridiculous desires, the very same ones that got her into this mess. It sat at the halfway point to that "mystickal elixir of dumb whoredom" she had cooked up out of a pornographic fantasy; the stupefying power of salts of sulfur mixed with dissociative toxins, but without the overpowering aphrodisiac distillates, nor the thought-destroying lunar vitriol. What exactly this poetry meant, what this halfway stoppage indicated—that was harder to grasp, and in any case she didn't exactly feel like she wanted to comprehend it. Truth be told, she didn't feel anything exactly, her thoughts dissolving and fraying into empty noise before they could fade into emotions. This, in turn, put her in the perfect state for quickly dismantling and packing one's life away.
Not so long ago, the idea that she could just remove herself from the Middle City seemed preposterous: she had so many obligations here, so many business dealings, so many contracts, commissions, agreements large and small that all worked to bind her into the trade bloodstream of the world of the guilds. But now, nothing seemed particularly real, and the moment the hawkish old lawyer of the Subtle Fellowship of Brewers heard the phrase "retained at the High Table" he replaced his frustrated frown with a focused smile. Who cared, after all, for some broken ties if it meant that a member of the guild was so elevated?
"They will keep me in a cage, you know," Ifi offered to him as he was dictating yet another release form to his scribe. "Or at least I hope so."
He hacked a laugh and asked if she was drunk; she tried to laugh back and didn't exactly manage. The signatures she put on the documents came in slanted and unsteady but, as the lawyer assured her, good enough for business. Then, thumping the pile of papers that used to be her life, he explained to her—slowly, as if to a cow—that it all would have to be cleared with the guild council, but that he didn't really expect any issues there. The Fellowship had a good couple of years; they would reimburse Ifi's clients, take in the care of her workshop, and ask for nothing more in return than her acquiting herself well in the service of the side branch of the Glassmakers.
"And besides," the lawyer added, accepting a cup of coffee from his hare-lipped secretary, "you don't even have apprentices. Finally a good thing came out of your… you know."
The alchemist knew, or at least she thought she knew; in the surface of her cup, she watched the thin layer of foam dissipate into the black drink beneath.
"The council meets in a week," he continued, "and then, you're clear to go."
There were more words that Ifi registered, and promptly disregarded. The lawyer said a few things about how he didn't really mind the new social order, and that she should stress that fact to her new employer when she has a chance. Then, he explained at length that it was nonetheless necessary that the Lower City unions not be allowed to operate on the level of the guilds, or else the disruptions to the industry would be too severe, and besides he was unconvinced that the new Master Glassmaker was going to actually go through with all those so-called reforms. Ifi nodded through it all, imagining each word and each thought as a little white flake of detritus slowly floating to the bottom of her coffee cup, and there joining with her feelings in that ever-thickening strata of things abandoned to drown. The cup remained full when she left, though it had turned cold by then.
She had expected to spend the rest of the day bouncing from one broken obligation to another, apologizing to her suppliers and offering refunds to her clients. But her guild was going to take care of it all, and she found herself with more time than she had any idea how to spend; the back-log of orders she had kept in a notepad in her laboratory abruptly and thoroughly stripped of its foreboding significance. So instead, she ambled towards Ciara's home, her unexpected visit greeted rather gracefully by the liveried servants. Ciara herself gladly tore herself away from the midday boredom, receiving the alchemist in a cozy, warm living room she had just finished redecorating. Her curiosity was boundless, and over a few glasses of wine, she dragged the whole story from Ifi, interrupting frequently, fervently, and with much fascination.
"What a story," she exclaimed after Ifi finished narrating the gala. "And what a dress you had! A hook up your…" she paused, affecting a scarlet blush. "Ifi, I would have never expected!"
"It's what matters to me in life," the alchemist replied, the sheer honesty met with an awkward, sidelong glance. "I really hope Eusi will keep me in a cage. Or give me to her wife, you know. I wonder if her wife still has a…"
"You really shouldn't speculate," Ciara interrupted, her smile growing thin and stretched. "It really must have been hard growing up like that, wasn't it?"
She offered the barb by the way of sympathy, and Ifi impaled herself on it in surprise at how dull the pain felt, especially compared to the rough pleasure of honesty.
"I hated it here," she admitted, wetting her lips in the wine glass. The aftertaste of sulfur lingered on her tongue, ruining the bouquet that she wouldn't be able to recognize anyway. "I just want an escape."
"Even from the below-spawn?" Ciara's eyebrow arched. "Didn't you say you were in love?"
The memory of being held against a porcelain body pushed its way into her mind; she thought of the heat of her flesh sinking into the cold shell and warming it by degrees as the possessive hands held her close and tight. The memory had an awful weight, and sank quickly all the way to the bottom.
"I am," she shrugged helplessly, "but she is currently being tortured to death by her kind. At least that's what I suspect. So there is nothing I can do. I really shouldn't be thinking too much about it."
Ciara's laugh was high-pitched and rather friendly, if really nervous. Or that, at least, was how it came across to Ifi. When a servant came in to refill Ifi's glass, Ciara shooed him away, mouthing a quick "she's had enough for the day", which was really not that accurate at all. The alchemist's glass was barely touched—she wasn't drunk at all.
"And besides, she's just an awful person," she added. "Left me alone at the party. Broke all those promises. She's getting what she deserves, for what she did to all the lowborn…"
Her voice trailed off as the profiled face of Ciara caught her attention. Her friend—which was to say accomplice, which was to say a former client—was looking aside, eyes trained on a curio of wrought bronze displayed prominently under her and Makarios' wedding portrait. The alchemist admired the sight shamelessly, in awe of the sharp lines of Ciara's nose, of the carefully styled hair held in place with gold pins, of the casual wealth emanating from every part of that woman's dress and stance. After marriage, Ciara made herself into the perfect display object, and Ifi could only dream that someday, someone would make her such, too. It was gently refreshing to entertain those dreams with the poisonous envy surrounding them subdued to little more than a mild, acrid note.
"It was never going to work," Ciara stumbled over the words, reluctant to look back at the alchemist.
Ifi was nineteen again, explaining to some lovesick man—her memories didn't allow for his name—what she would expect her lover to be like. His expression changed gradually, moving first through idle amusement, then concern, to finally arrive at a deep and abiding sympathy for that wanton girl carrying the terrible, unlivable burden of perversion.
The conversation came unglued after that, and soon enough Ifi found herself wandering the streets again. Generally, she had a pretty good idea where to head next, but even buoyed by her alchemy, she still suffered from enough of old reluctance to avoid the direct route. She stumbled through the familiar streets, floating on sound and motion, so wonderfully far away from herself. And somewhere, far below, Shard was being slowly killed, or was dead already. The shard of the shell, the invitation—there was doubt in Ifi's mind that it was some kind of a trap. What for, she couldn't be sure, what was more concerning was the idea that Shard, so close to death, was actually begging for Ifi's presence. Because if that was true, then it meant that the potion the alchemist took in the morning wouldn't be first. There were two or three more bottles she had stashed away, and then she would cook herself a few batches for the coming weeks. And maybe then, in Eusi's careful hand, she would allow herself a comedown, and everything else that was to come in its wake.
Little crawling motion disturbed the sediment at the bottom of her. Worms lived there, Ifi observed coldly, stopped at the intersection of uphill streets. She was too prompt to imagine it as dead, inert matter. Her feelings festered; they teemed with decay, and a single, unfortunate mistake would break the caked surface sealing them, and release it all in a single, noxious cloud. She picked up her pace; she still had plenty of time before the current dose ran out, but it was nonetheless prudent to make haste.
For the first time in years, the sigh of her father's knife-thin mansion came across without an attended gut-punch of anxiety. She knocked on the door, a rictus grin affixed to her face. Everything followed in a slight, distorted blur. There was Tilda and her overwhelming kindness, the spiraling staircase and the smell of tobacco announcing that she was close to her father's presence, and then, finally, the rustle of his morning newspaper as he looked up from it, the age-mottled face drawn back into an expression of old frustration.
"Are you sober?" he coughed out, angry for reasons that Ifi couldn't divine.
"I will be entering the service of Eusebia Koina," she blurted back at him.
The first reaction was the abrupt release of tension. The alchemist watched as her father first sagged, and then straightened in his char, the perpetual frown bolted onto his face struggling to twist itself into something less hostile. His hands shook as he folded the paper, smacking it against the edge of the desk, his mouth moving to some unspoken words, exhaling out small, dry sounds.
"I can't believe it," he wheezed, fingers smashing out an excited warble against the wood.
Effusive praise burst forth, frothing with reassurances—
"I've always known you were going to make it!"
—pride—
"I did raise you well after all!"
—and dogged satisfaction—
"And you kept bitching that I'm giving you bad advice! You just needed to stop wasting your talent, my girl!"
When was the last time she had seen him this happy? When was the last time she had seen him happy at all? Ifi couldn't remember. The twitching, elderly man showering her with self-satisfied compliments was undoubtedly her father, but the more she looked at him, the more she felt as if sitting in the presence of a stranger. The sounds he was making were words, heavy with meaning and deferred satisfaction, but they meant to him. Her eyes skipped over the leather-bound volumes of alchemical treatises she had once tried to memorize, now doomed to forever gather dust on a vicious merchant's bookshelf.
"Of course, a retainer, that's not sitting at the High Table yet," her father prattled on, "but it is a good first step. The next thing you should do, my dear daughter, is to…"
Ifi was twelve again, listening to him circle around her and sketch out her future. He built towers out of the books she was supposed to read, never once neglect to stress just how expensive and difficult to get those volumes were. Her clear aptitude for the Noble Art was going to elevate the Juno family name.
"You have to promise you won't stop there," his voice reached to her through the veil of memory, reeling her back into the present.
Usually, this would be the moment when her frustrations, when her sense of inferiority would catch up with her, rendering her too angry and too bitter to argue, or to think. There would be yet another shouting match, or yet another exchange of barbs. But it was all sinking now, vanishing into the depths and leaving her acutely, if lethargically aware of what the stakes really were.
"Just promise me, Ifigenia," he insisted, fingers banging against the desk, "you have already wasted too many opportunities."
"I need a moment," she said abruptly, her chair creaking sharpy as she pulled away and darted out of the room.
"Don't trip!" he laughed behind her, expanding with good humour.
On the first landing on the stairwell below, there was a small, round window in the wall, and through it, the High City could be seen—or rather just the monumental bases of its towers, rising above flat roofs of Lower Heights and shading the entire district like a grove of enormous trees. It was a sorry excuse of a view that suited her father very well; in fact, he had explicitly insisted on only having windows trained on this paltry vista, instead of opening on the slow slope of the Middle City, and vast expanse of the Lower City below. The entire arc of his life was an escape ever upwards and a refusal to ever look back. And now, as it was reaching its terminal phase, Ifi stood to inherit it all, continuing to play her pre-determined part in the slow-rolling drama of the City's history.
There was no alternative. No other path than the one already marked out in advance, and fenced off by the knowledge of how things are bound to be. Whatever happened between her and Shard could never work out, because Shard was a monster, and those never change. Whatever happened between her and Shard could never work out, because whatever desires Ifi had were a poor fit for her place in the world, which doesn't stop for anyone's grief. Whatever happened between her and Shard could never work out, because the best Ifi could hope for in life was to briefly bask in someone else's bliss, and maybe gather some scrapings afterwards. Whatever happened between her and Shard could never work out, which was a comfort, because otherwise there would be other ways.
Ifi was seven again, watching an alchemist work her art. In slack-jawed wonder, her eyes were trained on the handful of lead sprouting into a saturnine tree, its leaf-like tendrils swaying gently in the solution, by degrees turning golden. She badgered the alchemist with so many questions afterwards, demanding to know if the gold was real—it was—and if the lead was all gone–-after a fashion, it wasn't. That was her first, and the for the longest time only, love.
Finally, she had her clarity. She rushed back home as quickly as her feet would carry her, stumbling half-drunkenly into her laboratory, throwing all the lights on at once.
Alchemy welcomed her with familiar warm comfort, but now reinforced with the lightning-bright sense of purpose. Dull crystals cracked under her pestle, turning into iridescent powder; she dissolved it on high heat, dust vanishing into a perfectly clear solution. The desire of matter is to attain perfection. There could be no alchemy without this simple truth, rendered in rubricated script at the frontispiece of every treatise on the Noble Art, and learned by every apprentice long before they were allowed to enter a laboratory, let alone an alembic. If gold can be coaxed out of lead, it is only because somewhere buried with the nature of that gray metal lies the desire for it to be greater. This is why masters of alchemy would all teach that perfection is not a state to be chased, not a distant land to be reached, that it is not to be referred to in a future tense. Their lessons showed that it is already here, that it is within grasp, that one only needs to draw it out of its hiding, one only needs to unveil it.
Salts of sulfur went into the distillate; the idea she had sketched out in her head was theoretically sound, but there would be no real opportunity to test it. Furthermore, if it was to work, then it could not be tested, lest its effect be ruined. She ran the distillation again, and as the product gathered in the collection flask, she set out to write all the possible ways her plan could kill her on a piece of paper, marking every failure point with a little skull. Halfway through, she crumpled the paper in her hand and threw it away. It was either going to work, or it was not. Her elixir still blunted her fear, still took the edge off anxiety, but her thoughts were running quicker and quicker.
The gold was still lead, because lead contained within itself the aptitude to become gold. All things perfect contained within themselves the whole of the world, of which they were the crown. That was one way to explain the Noble Art, but over the years Ifi realized this core truth could also be stated differently. She didn't have to believe in the inherent perfection of matter, nor chart her passage from the base to the sublime. All that theory offered scant comfort, if one took it seriously. But the practice—her practice—carried a simpler lesson. Alchemy was a process of changing; of one thing transmuting into another.
Three heating charms crackled under the hot-plate; she put a steel pan on top, and dropped a handful of chipped venomstones onto the hot surface. To think that they used to be the toxin milked from the fangs of far-northern serpent-men, coagulated and bound into the form of dirty brown pebbles one could hardly tell apart from common gravel. The substance reheating them produced wasn't their venom, not exactly; the process of reduction and reconstitution changed it invariably, endowing with new properties, both deadly and medicinal. She scooped half of the goo-like substance into a new dish, and left the rest to cool on the pan, until it was solid enough to scrape off.
No, for Ifi the wonder of transmutation lay not in the potential of things to be better; it was enough to know—empirically, experientially, personally—that they could be different from what they were. Nothing was bound to the form first given to it. Maybe the masters of alchemy thought that just noting the possibility for alterity was not enough to sell their work as the Noble Art that seeks to elevate men closer to the divine. Or maybe it was not for masters of the art, in their warm libraries and well-stocked laboratories, to ponder the terrifying comfort of there always being other ways.
Ifi busied herself around the lab, observing her plan come together in the shape of a handful of clear, odorless liquid, bereft of both the iridescence of seer's bismuth, the stench of salts of sulfur, or the deceptive sweetness of reconstituted snakemen venom. It really looked like nothing; if she had more time, she would find some sort of a dye to put into it, some kind of a flavour to make this potion stand apart. Instead, she collected it into a small vial and sealed it with a piece of cork, turning to the venomstone crust left on the pan, and beginning the laborious process of turning it into the other part of her scheme. Somewhere midway through the process of powdering the crust, her morning elixir finally gave in, and she started crying. Thankfully, the final few reactions she had to run were rote; she could perform them adequately even when sinking into the depths of heartbreak, even when convinced of the fact of her impending death.
Breathtakingly spectacular, the saturnine tree was also forbiddingly expensive, taking reagents worth far more than the gold it could produce—if it produced anything. Just as often, the tree's branches would wilt, lead dissolving into a stinking sludge instead of transforming into a nobler metal. This was the risk inherent to the Noble Art, which distinguished it from mere craft, and the reason why Ifi would scoff at it. She had never felt the risk to be worth it, but watching her experiment finish, she had to quietly admit it, that she never understood it, either. Until today.
When she finished her work, she put on her best robe—which was no different from any other robe she had—along all the insignia of her station. She wiped her face clean of the laboratory grime, drew a new set of kohl eyebrows, and wrote down a short note, should it become necessary. The two flasks she suspended from her neck, like talismans held close to the heart.
Getting a golem carriage to drive her to the Temple of Our Deprived Mother turned out surprisingly easy once she shook enough glass at the steersman. It made for a pleasant ride, too, and surprisingly quick. Out of the window, she watched the Lower City in all of its ramshackle glory, but too drunk on her own fear and heartbreak—and maybe hope—to give it much thought. Whatever observations arose, they lingered at the edge of her thoughts, tiny little pinpricks of guilt and of revulsion at the sight of the City's sprawling foundations. The fact she drew attention didn't bother her at all—the worst thing that could come out of it was that Villis would learn of her decision, and in truth, she welcomed that idea.
The temple itself was a rotund brick stupa seated in the middle of a small square. The buildings ringing it all looked long-abandoned, boarded shut and collapsed under their weight. When Ifi looked over her shoulder to find the city lights above, they filtered reluctantly through the heavy haze carpeting the Lower City, the towers visible less as concrete structures and more as cyclopean pillars of glow, yellow, red, blue. They looked like a dream.
"Please wait until I return, or until morning," she instructed the steersman, encouraging her with a clinking pouch of glass pounds.
The woman tipped her hat and nodded, knowing better than to ask questions. Ifi dropped out of the carriage, feet sinking slightly into the rain-softened mud below. There were tracks in it, though the alchemist could not tell how fresh; enough of them to signify a small crowd, all leading towards the dark entrance into the temple. The old door hung bent its hinges, threatening to snap off at any moment.
With the first of her potions tightly in her hand, she approached. A young boy in a flat cap and surprisingly well-kept overalls stepped out from his hiding spot in the crook by the door; she stopped, glancing at him nervously.
"The temple's closed, ma'am, and…" he began, before his eyes settled on Ifi's badge of office. "Oh," he blurted, glancing at the towers above. He gave her one more look, this time almost surprised. "Good luck."
Before she could ask him anything, he was off, feet splashing in the mud, rushing to somewhere far away, and leaving her alone with the dark temple, and the strange kind of quiet that ruled those half-abandoned streets. She swallowed nervously, then uncorked her potion. It really smelled like nothing, and went down like water. If her intuitions were correct, she would have at most a few minutes before it started taking effect, and about an hour before it killed her.
The last fact made it all the more easier to step into the dark inside. She opened her mouth to cry out a challenge, but found her throat clenched with fear strong enough to make her sweat. Thankfully, the dark took notice on its own. Cold porcelain closed on her shoulders, razor-sharp claws easily parting the fabric of the robe and scraping against the skin. She knew what this kind of touch could do, all too well.
"Oh," a voice entirely unfamiliar and completely without mercy announced as the swarm of hands dragged her into the killing-room below, "this will be a feast."
All that Ifi needed to come to a decision was clarity, which took the form of a dull yellow potion stuffed in the back of one of her display cases. The wax seal came apart easily; she pried off the old cork and let the ugly odour of sulfur hit her. The herbs she had put in to mask the stench helped little, only making it taste like a laboratory fire. She swallowed quickly, washing it down with half a cup of horribly oversteeped tea, then leaned back in a kitchen chair and counted down heartbeats until the effects kicked in.
A brief spike of nausea smashed through her, going away as soon as it made her flinch. In its wake, the churn of her emotions stilled, solidifying into a heavy sediment that slowly settled in the bottom of her stomach, forming a layer of viscous, revolting sludge. Or, at least, that's how she imagined it; the potion wasn't, strictly speaking, a calming draught, nor was it meant to rid her of the capacity to feel. All it did was numb her thoughts to influence; none of that fear, none of that confusion, none of that want went really away, only transforming into a mute kind of a weight that would slip between her fingers if she tried as much as to grasp at it.
She fumbled to her feet, swaying slightly, the balance of the world playing tricks on her. The broken piece of Shard's shell—if that was what it really was—remained on the table; she would rather not be reminded. Distantly, she noted it should probably disturb her that even the below-spawn's name, and the whole string of associations it summoned, registered as not much more than a series of dull throbs: the sort of a pain one easily learns to live with. With an umbrella in hand she stormed into the drizzle outside, rushing to put as much distance between her life and herself before the potion expired.
Still, there was a kind of wicked poetry—even her blunted brain could recognize it—in the fact that this elixir was a by-product of her ridiculous desires, the very same ones that got her into this mess. It sat at the halfway point to that "mystickal elixir of dumb whoredom" she had cooked up out of a pornographic fantasy; the stupefying power of salts of sulfur mixed with dissociative toxins, but without the overpowering aphrodisiac distillates, nor the thought-destroying lunar vitriol. What exactly this poetry meant, what this halfway stoppage indicated—that was harder to grasp, and in any case she didn't exactly feel like she wanted to comprehend it. Truth be told, she didn't feel anything exactly, her thoughts dissolving and fraying into empty noise before they could fade into emotions. This, in turn, put her in the perfect state for quickly dismantling and packing one's life away.
Not so long ago, the idea that she could just remove herself from the Middle City seemed preposterous: she had so many obligations here, so many business dealings, so many contracts, commissions, agreements large and small that all worked to bind her into the trade bloodstream of the world of the guilds. But now, nothing seemed particularly real, and the moment the hawkish old lawyer of the Subtle Fellowship of Brewers heard the phrase "retained at the High Table" he replaced his frustrated frown with a focused smile. Who cared, after all, for some broken ties if it meant that a member of the guild was so elevated?
"They will keep me in a cage, you know," Ifi offered to him as he was dictating yet another release form to his scribe. "Or at least I hope so."
He hacked a laugh and asked if she was drunk; she tried to laugh back and didn't exactly manage. The signatures she put on the documents came in slanted and unsteady but, as the lawyer assured her, good enough for business. Then, thumping the pile of papers that used to be her life, he explained to her—slowly, as if to a cow—that it all would have to be cleared with the guild council, but that he didn't really expect any issues there. The Fellowship had a good couple of years; they would reimburse Ifi's clients, take in the care of her workshop, and ask for nothing more in return than her acquiting herself well in the service of the side branch of the Glassmakers.
"And besides," the lawyer added, accepting a cup of coffee from his hare-lipped secretary, "you don't even have apprentices. Finally a good thing came out of your… you know."
The alchemist knew, or at least she thought she knew; in the surface of her cup, she watched the thin layer of foam dissipate into the black drink beneath.
"The council meets in a week," he continued, "and then, you're clear to go."
There were more words that Ifi registered, and promptly disregarded. The lawyer said a few things about how he didn't really mind the new social order, and that she should stress that fact to her new employer when she has a chance. Then, he explained at length that it was nonetheless necessary that the Lower City unions not be allowed to operate on the level of the guilds, or else the disruptions to the industry would be too severe, and besides he was unconvinced that the new Master Glassmaker was going to actually go through with all those so-called reforms. Ifi nodded through it all, imagining each word and each thought as a little white flake of detritus slowly floating to the bottom of her coffee cup, and there joining with her feelings in that ever-thickening strata of things abandoned to drown. The cup remained full when she left, though it had turned cold by then.
She had expected to spend the rest of the day bouncing from one broken obligation to another, apologizing to her suppliers and offering refunds to her clients. But her guild was going to take care of it all, and she found herself with more time than she had any idea how to spend; the back-log of orders she had kept in a notepad in her laboratory abruptly and thoroughly stripped of its foreboding significance. So instead, she ambled towards Ciara's home, her unexpected visit greeted rather gracefully by the liveried servants. Ciara herself gladly tore herself away from the midday boredom, receiving the alchemist in a cozy, warm living room she had just finished redecorating. Her curiosity was boundless, and over a few glasses of wine, she dragged the whole story from Ifi, interrupting frequently, fervently, and with much fascination.
"What a story," she exclaimed after Ifi finished narrating the gala. "And what a dress you had! A hook up your…" she paused, affecting a scarlet blush. "Ifi, I would have never expected!"
"It's what matters to me in life," the alchemist replied, the sheer honesty met with an awkward, sidelong glance. "I really hope Eusi will keep me in a cage. Or give me to her wife, you know. I wonder if her wife still has a…"
"You really shouldn't speculate," Ciara interrupted, her smile growing thin and stretched. "It really must have been hard growing up like that, wasn't it?"
She offered the barb by the way of sympathy, and Ifi impaled herself on it in surprise at how dull the pain felt, especially compared to the rough pleasure of honesty.
"I hated it here," she admitted, wetting her lips in the wine glass. The aftertaste of sulfur lingered on her tongue, ruining the bouquet that she wouldn't be able to recognize anyway. "I just want an escape."
"Even from the below-spawn?" Ciara's eyebrow arched. "Didn't you say you were in love?"
The memory of being held against a porcelain body pushed its way into her mind; she thought of the heat of her flesh sinking into the cold shell and warming it by degrees as the possessive hands held her close and tight. The memory had an awful weight, and sank quickly all the way to the bottom.
"I am," she shrugged helplessly, "but she is currently being tortured to death by her kind. At least that's what I suspect. So there is nothing I can do. I really shouldn't be thinking too much about it."
Ciara's laugh was high-pitched and rather friendly, if really nervous. Or that, at least, was how it came across to Ifi. When a servant came in to refill Ifi's glass, Ciara shooed him away, mouthing a quick "she's had enough for the day", which was really not that accurate at all. The alchemist's glass was barely touched—she wasn't drunk at all.
"And besides, she's just an awful person," she added. "Left me alone at the party. Broke all those promises. She's getting what she deserves, for what she did to all the lowborn…"
Her voice trailed off as the profiled face of Ciara caught her attention. Her friend—which was to say accomplice, which was to say a former client—was looking aside, eyes trained on a curio of wrought bronze displayed prominently under her and Makarios' wedding portrait. The alchemist admired the sight shamelessly, in awe of the sharp lines of Ciara's nose, of the carefully styled hair held in place with gold pins, of the casual wealth emanating from every part of that woman's dress and stance. After marriage, Ciara made herself into the perfect display object, and Ifi could only dream that someday, someone would make her such, too. It was gently refreshing to entertain those dreams with the poisonous envy surrounding them subdued to little more than a mild, acrid note.
"It was never going to work," Ciara stumbled over the words, reluctant to look back at the alchemist.
Ifi was nineteen again, explaining to some lovesick man—her memories didn't allow for his name—what she would expect her lover to be like. His expression changed gradually, moving first through idle amusement, then concern, to finally arrive at a deep and abiding sympathy for that wanton girl carrying the terrible, unlivable burden of perversion.
The conversation came unglued after that, and soon enough Ifi found herself wandering the streets again. Generally, she had a pretty good idea where to head next, but even buoyed by her alchemy, she still suffered from enough of old reluctance to avoid the direct route. She stumbled through the familiar streets, floating on sound and motion, so wonderfully far away from herself. And somewhere, far below, Shard was being slowly killed, or was dead already. The shard of the shell, the invitation—there was doubt in Ifi's mind that it was some kind of a trap. What for, she couldn't be sure, what was more concerning was the idea that Shard, so close to death, was actually begging for Ifi's presence. Because if that was true, then it meant that the potion the alchemist took in the morning wouldn't be first. There were two or three more bottles she had stashed away, and then she would cook herself a few batches for the coming weeks. And maybe then, in Eusi's careful hand, she would allow herself a comedown, and everything else that was to come in its wake.
Little crawling motion disturbed the sediment at the bottom of her. Worms lived there, Ifi observed coldly, stopped at the intersection of uphill streets. She was too prompt to imagine it as dead, inert matter. Her feelings festered; they teemed with decay, and a single, unfortunate mistake would break the caked surface sealing them, and release it all in a single, noxious cloud. She picked up her pace; she still had plenty of time before the current dose ran out, but it was nonetheless prudent to make haste.
For the first time in years, the sigh of her father's knife-thin mansion came across without an attended gut-punch of anxiety. She knocked on the door, a rictus grin affixed to her face. Everything followed in a slight, distorted blur. There was Tilda and her overwhelming kindness, the spiraling staircase and the smell of tobacco announcing that she was close to her father's presence, and then, finally, the rustle of his morning newspaper as he looked up from it, the age-mottled face drawn back into an expression of old frustration.
"Are you sober?" he coughed out, angry for reasons that Ifi couldn't divine.
"I will be entering the service of Eusebia Koina," she blurted back at him.
The first reaction was the abrupt release of tension. The alchemist watched as her father first sagged, and then straightened in his char, the perpetual frown bolted onto his face struggling to twist itself into something less hostile. His hands shook as he folded the paper, smacking it against the edge of the desk, his mouth moving to some unspoken words, exhaling out small, dry sounds.
"I can't believe it," he wheezed, fingers smashing out an excited warble against the wood.
Effusive praise burst forth, frothing with reassurances—
"I've always known you were going to make it!"
—pride—
"I did raise you well after all!"
—and dogged satisfaction—
"And you kept bitching that I'm giving you bad advice! You just needed to stop wasting your talent, my girl!"
When was the last time she had seen him this happy? When was the last time she had seen him happy at all? Ifi couldn't remember. The twitching, elderly man showering her with self-satisfied compliments was undoubtedly her father, but the more she looked at him, the more she felt as if sitting in the presence of a stranger. The sounds he was making were words, heavy with meaning and deferred satisfaction, but they meant to him. Her eyes skipped over the leather-bound volumes of alchemical treatises she had once tried to memorize, now doomed to forever gather dust on a vicious merchant's bookshelf.
"Of course, a retainer, that's not sitting at the High Table yet," her father prattled on, "but it is a good first step. The next thing you should do, my dear daughter, is to…"
Ifi was twelve again, listening to him circle around her and sketch out her future. He built towers out of the books she was supposed to read, never once neglect to stress just how expensive and difficult to get those volumes were. Her clear aptitude for the Noble Art was going to elevate the Juno family name.
"You have to promise you won't stop there," his voice reached to her through the veil of memory, reeling her back into the present.
Usually, this would be the moment when her frustrations, when her sense of inferiority would catch up with her, rendering her too angry and too bitter to argue, or to think. There would be yet another shouting match, or yet another exchange of barbs. But it was all sinking now, vanishing into the depths and leaving her acutely, if lethargically aware of what the stakes really were.
"Just promise me, Ifigenia," he insisted, fingers banging against the desk, "you have already wasted too many opportunities."
"I need a moment," she said abruptly, her chair creaking sharpy as she pulled away and darted out of the room.
"Don't trip!" he laughed behind her, expanding with good humour.
On the first landing on the stairwell below, there was a small, round window in the wall, and through it, the High City could be seen—or rather just the monumental bases of its towers, rising above flat roofs of Lower Heights and shading the entire district like a grove of enormous trees. It was a sorry excuse of a view that suited her father very well; in fact, he had explicitly insisted on only having windows trained on this paltry vista, instead of opening on the slow slope of the Middle City, and vast expanse of the Lower City below. The entire arc of his life was an escape ever upwards and a refusal to ever look back. And now, as it was reaching its terminal phase, Ifi stood to inherit it all, continuing to play her pre-determined part in the slow-rolling drama of the City's history.
There was no alternative. No other path than the one already marked out in advance, and fenced off by the knowledge of how things are bound to be. Whatever happened between her and Shard could never work out, because Shard was a monster, and those never change. Whatever happened between her and Shard could never work out, because whatever desires Ifi had were a poor fit for her place in the world, which doesn't stop for anyone's grief. Whatever happened between her and Shard could never work out, because the best Ifi could hope for in life was to briefly bask in someone else's bliss, and maybe gather some scrapings afterwards. Whatever happened between her and Shard could never work out, which was a comfort, because otherwise there would be other ways.
Ifi was seven again, watching an alchemist work her art. In slack-jawed wonder, her eyes were trained on the handful of lead sprouting into a saturnine tree, its leaf-like tendrils swaying gently in the solution, by degrees turning golden. She badgered the alchemist with so many questions afterwards, demanding to know if the gold was real—it was—and if the lead was all gone–-after a fashion, it wasn't. That was her first, and the for the longest time only, love.
Finally, she had her clarity. She rushed back home as quickly as her feet would carry her, stumbling half-drunkenly into her laboratory, throwing all the lights on at once.
Alchemy welcomed her with familiar warm comfort, but now reinforced with the lightning-bright sense of purpose. Dull crystals cracked under her pestle, turning into iridescent powder; she dissolved it on high heat, dust vanishing into a perfectly clear solution. The desire of matter is to attain perfection. There could be no alchemy without this simple truth, rendered in rubricated script at the frontispiece of every treatise on the Noble Art, and learned by every apprentice long before they were allowed to enter a laboratory, let alone an alembic. If gold can be coaxed out of lead, it is only because somewhere buried with the nature of that gray metal lies the desire for it to be greater. This is why masters of alchemy would all teach that perfection is not a state to be chased, not a distant land to be reached, that it is not to be referred to in a future tense. Their lessons showed that it is already here, that it is within grasp, that one only needs to draw it out of its hiding, one only needs to unveil it.
Salts of sulfur went into the distillate; the idea she had sketched out in her head was theoretically sound, but there would be no real opportunity to test it. Furthermore, if it was to work, then it could not be tested, lest its effect be ruined. She ran the distillation again, and as the product gathered in the collection flask, she set out to write all the possible ways her plan could kill her on a piece of paper, marking every failure point with a little skull. Halfway through, she crumpled the paper in her hand and threw it away. It was either going to work, or it was not. Her elixir still blunted her fear, still took the edge off anxiety, but her thoughts were running quicker and quicker.
The gold was still lead, because lead contained within itself the aptitude to become gold. All things perfect contained within themselves the whole of the world, of which they were the crown. That was one way to explain the Noble Art, but over the years Ifi realized this core truth could also be stated differently. She didn't have to believe in the inherent perfection of matter, nor chart her passage from the base to the sublime. All that theory offered scant comfort, if one took it seriously. But the practice—her practice—carried a simpler lesson. Alchemy was a process of changing; of one thing transmuting into another.
Three heating charms crackled under the hot-plate; she put a steel pan on top, and dropped a handful of chipped venomstones onto the hot surface. To think that they used to be the toxin milked from the fangs of far-northern serpent-men, coagulated and bound into the form of dirty brown pebbles one could hardly tell apart from common gravel. The substance reheating them produced wasn't their venom, not exactly; the process of reduction and reconstitution changed it invariably, endowing with new properties, both deadly and medicinal. She scooped half of the goo-like substance into a new dish, and left the rest to cool on the pan, until it was solid enough to scrape off.
No, for Ifi the wonder of transmutation lay not in the potential of things to be better; it was enough to know—empirically, experientially, personally—that they could be different from what they were. Nothing was bound to the form first given to it. Maybe the masters of alchemy thought that just noting the possibility for alterity was not enough to sell their work as the Noble Art that seeks to elevate men closer to the divine. Or maybe it was not for masters of the art, in their warm libraries and well-stocked laboratories, to ponder the terrifying comfort of there always being other ways.
Ifi busied herself around the lab, observing her plan come together in the shape of a handful of clear, odorless liquid, bereft of both the iridescence of seer's bismuth, the stench of salts of sulfur, or the deceptive sweetness of reconstituted snakemen venom. It really looked like nothing; if she had more time, she would find some sort of a dye to put into it, some kind of a flavour to make this potion stand apart. Instead, she collected it into a small vial and sealed it with a piece of cork, turning to the venomstone crust left on the pan, and beginning the laborious process of turning it into the other part of her scheme. Somewhere midway through the process of powdering the crust, her morning elixir finally gave in, and she started crying. Thankfully, the final few reactions she had to run were rote; she could perform them adequately even when sinking into the depths of heartbreak, even when convinced of the fact of her impending death.
Breathtakingly spectacular, the saturnine tree was also forbiddingly expensive, taking reagents worth far more than the gold it could produce—if it produced anything. Just as often, the tree's branches would wilt, lead dissolving into a stinking sludge instead of transforming into a nobler metal. This was the risk inherent to the Noble Art, which distinguished it from mere craft, and the reason why Ifi would scoff at it. She had never felt the risk to be worth it, but watching her experiment finish, she had to quietly admit it, that she never understood it, either. Until today.
When she finished her work, she put on her best robe—which was no different from any other robe she had—along all the insignia of her station. She wiped her face clean of the laboratory grime, drew a new set of kohl eyebrows, and wrote down a short note, should it become necessary. The two flasks she suspended from her neck, like talismans held close to the heart.
Getting a golem carriage to drive her to the Temple of Our Deprived Mother turned out surprisingly easy once she shook enough glass at the steersman. It made for a pleasant ride, too, and surprisingly quick. Out of the window, she watched the Lower City in all of its ramshackle glory, but too drunk on her own fear and heartbreak—and maybe hope—to give it much thought. Whatever observations arose, they lingered at the edge of her thoughts, tiny little pinpricks of guilt and of revulsion at the sight of the City's sprawling foundations. The fact she drew attention didn't bother her at all—the worst thing that could come out of it was that Villis would learn of her decision, and in truth, she welcomed that idea.
The temple itself was a rotund brick stupa seated in the middle of a small square. The buildings ringing it all looked long-abandoned, boarded shut and collapsed under their weight. When Ifi looked over her shoulder to find the city lights above, they filtered reluctantly through the heavy haze carpeting the Lower City, the towers visible less as concrete structures and more as cyclopean pillars of glow, yellow, red, blue. They looked like a dream.
"Please wait until I return, or until morning," she instructed the steersman, encouraging her with a clinking pouch of glass pounds.
The woman tipped her hat and nodded, knowing better than to ask questions. Ifi dropped out of the carriage, feet sinking slightly into the rain-softened mud below. There were tracks in it, though the alchemist could not tell how fresh; enough of them to signify a small crowd, all leading towards the dark entrance into the temple. The old door hung bent its hinges, threatening to snap off at any moment.
With the first of her potions tightly in her hand, she approached. A young boy in a flat cap and surprisingly well-kept overalls stepped out from his hiding spot in the crook by the door; she stopped, glancing at him nervously.
"The temple's closed, ma'am, and…" he began, before his eyes settled on Ifi's badge of office. "Oh," he blurted, glancing at the towers above. He gave her one more look, this time almost surprised. "Good luck."
Before she could ask him anything, he was off, feet splashing in the mud, rushing to somewhere far away, and leaving her alone with the dark temple, and the strange kind of quiet that ruled those half-abandoned streets. She swallowed nervously, then uncorked her potion. It really smelled like nothing, and went down like water. If her intuitions were correct, she would have at most a few minutes before it started taking effect, and about an hour before it killed her.
The last fact made it all the more easier to step into the dark inside. She opened her mouth to cry out a challenge, but found her throat clenched with fear strong enough to make her sweat. Thankfully, the dark took notice on its own. Cold porcelain closed on her shoulders, razor-sharp claws easily parting the fabric of the robe and scraping against the skin. She knew what this kind of touch could do, all too well.
"Oh," a voice entirely unfamiliar and completely without mercy announced as the swarm of hands dragged her into the killing-room below, "this will be a feast."
But you see, we aren't dealing with the average useless bottom anymore!
Because Ifi has risen above her limits, and realised the legend. The legend the Lair Mother fears.
Ifi has become the Legendary Super Sub.