“This cannot work,” she whispered.
“If it does not, you must go without me,” I said.
“I won’t. It will do no good.”
“Do you love Jiala?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then you must trust me. Trust me as much as you did when I labored for so many years to get us into this mess.”
“It’s madness.”
“A madness I created. And I must stop it. If I cannot, you must run. Take the spell for Jiala’s health and go. Run as far as you can. For if I fail, Scacz will pursue you to the very ends of the earth.”
In the morning, Pila left with a kiss and a copper token of my affection, bound around her wrist, a little bit of the workshop, leaving with her.
Over the course of weeks I worked, feverish. And at night, I met with Pila and whispered formulas and processes in her ear. She listened close, her long black hair tickling like feathers on my lips, the lustrous strands cloaking us as we played at intimacy and worked at salvation.
My detectors went up in the city, gouting out foul smoke and blanketing Khaim in their reactants, and once again blood ran in the streets. Scacz was well pleased. He granted me the privilege of letting me out of my cage.
I was so unfit that I ran out of breath simply walking up the stairs out of the dungeon. And then I gasped again when we reached the grounds and gazed over the city.
The flames of the detectors glowed here and there, blue fireflies sending out scented smoke that clung to anything magical at all. The bridge to Lesser Khaim blazed astonishingly bright, a beacon of magic in the thickening darkness.
“You have wrought something beautiful,” Scacz said. “Khaim will always be known as the Blue City, now. And from now on, we will grow.” He pointed into the sky, and I could see where the beginnings of a castle clung to wisps of accumulating clouds.
I sucked in my breath in astonishment.
“It’s damnably difficult to summon and collect the clouds,” Scacz said. “But it will be quite pretty when it’s completed.”
I felt as if I was staring at fabled Jhandpara. I could almost hear the music and taste the joy of the Mount Sena wine I had quaffed so long ago.
When I found my voice, I said, “You must bring the old balanthasts back to me so that I can adjust them. I will have to trade out their combustion chambers for the power that they will now wield.”
Scacz smiled and rubbed his hands together. “And then I will truly be able to set to work on my castle. I won’t have to check my powers at all.”
“The Majister of the Blue City,” I said.
“Indeed.”
“I’d very much like to see it when it’s done.”
Scacz looked over at me, thoughtful. “If these balanthasts perform as you describe them, alchemist, then the very least I can do for you is to give you domicile above the earth.”
“A prison in the air?”
“Better than one on the ground. You will have a most astonishing view.”
I laughed at that. “I won’t argue. In fact, I will hurry the moment.” I turned to leave, but then paused, voicing an afterthought. “When the balanthasts arrive, I’ll also need several pots of bramble. To test and make sure my designs are correct.”
Scacz nodded, distracted, still staring up at the triumph of his castle. “What’s that?”
“Bramble,” I said patiently. “For the testing.”
Scacz waved an acknowledgment, and the guards led me back down to my dungeon.
A few days later, I asked Jaiska to summon Scacz for the final demonstrations.
I had lined up a number of bramble plants in pots. “It would work better if we were at the bramble wall,” I grumbled, “but this should suffice.”
Along one wall, I had all the balanthasts of the city, lined up. Each one newly altered, its delivery tubes and chambers reshaped to their improved purpose. I took one of the gleaming instruments from its rank and plunged its nozzle into the bramble pot. The bramble’s limbs quivered malevolently, as if it understood the evil I planned for it. The dry pods rattled as the pot shifted.
I lit the match, and pressed it into the new combustion chamber. Much faster and easier to ignite, now.
A low explosion. The plant thrashed briefly, and then disappeared in a puff of acrid smoke. There was simply nothing left of it at all.
I laughed, delighted.
“You see?”
Scacz and Jaiska stared, dumbfounded. I did it again, laughing, and now Scacz and Jaiska laughed as well.
“Well done, alchemist! Well done!”
“And it is prepared much more quickly now,” I said. “These chambers on top mix the ingredients, so that they are always at the ready. Open this valve, and…” I lit another match. Explosion. Vented smoke. The potted bramble soaked up the balanthast’s poison and disappeared in a squeal of burning sap and writhing smoke.
I grinned. Did it again and again, working something greater than magic in my workshop. Jaiska stamped his feet and whistled. Scacz’s smile widened into a greedy astonished grin. And then I, laughing and in my folly, drunk on my success, grabbed a bramble with my bare hands.
A silly, reckless thing. A moment of inattention, and all my genius was destroyed.
I yanked my hands away as if the bramble was on fire, but its threadlike hairs clung already to my bare skin. The sleeping toxins numbed my hands, spreading like fire. I fell to my knees. Tried to stand. Stumbled and crashed into the balanthast, tumbling it and knocking it over, shattering it.
“Fool!” Scacz shouted.
I tried to get up once more, but fell back instead, tangling with bramble again. Its thorns pricked me, its threads clung to my skin, poisoning, clutching and hungry for me. Burrowing sleep into my heart, pressing down upon my lungs.
Darkness closed on my vision. It was terrifyingly fast. I crawled away, stupid with the toxins, reached through the bars. Scacz and Jaiska shied from my thread-covered hands.
“Please.” I whispered. “Use your magic. Save me.”
Scacz shook his head, staying well away from my touch. “No magic works against bramble’s sleep.”
“Please.” I croaked. “Jiala. Please. Keep her well.”
Scacz looked at me with contempt. “There’s really no point, now, is there?”
My limbs turned to water. I slumped to the flagstones, still reaching through the bars as he went blurry and distant.
The Majister stared down at me with a bemused expression.
“It’s probably better this way, alchemist. We would have had to chop your head off, eventually.” He turned to Jaiska “As soon as he’s done thrashing, gather up the balanthasts. And don’t be so stupid as he was.”
“What about his body? Should I take him to his wife?”
“No. Dump it in the river with the rest.”
I was too far gone to panic. Bramble stilled my heart.
7
Having your flesh burned with blue flame is not my preferred method to awaken, but it is a great improvement over death.
Another gust of flame washed over me. It burned through my blood, blistered my lungs, tunneled about in my
