Chapter 10: Chapter Ten

Roxa waited, alone in a windy courtyard, at the spot where she and Mila were supposed to rendezvous for a full half-bell, pacing and fretting, worst-case scenarios cycling through her head unceasingly,before she gave in and used the dowsing spell she’d prepared over a week ago. It consisted of a glass jar, a string, some careful sorcery, and a single long, dark hair from Mila’s pillow.

She hadn’t told Mila she’d made it, and it was certainly a breach of privacy, but now Roxa was glad she’d done it. Shekept seeing that spiteful look on Penelope’s face, kept hearing the nauseating sound of her friend’s breath get cut off. She rushed therelease and had to unsnarl the spell and do it again, trying to ignore the images flashing in her mind and the sick feeling in her stomach.

Finally, the string jerked and pointed east, and she took off at a jog, trying to pace herself. Harmine was a maze, and she had to barrel impatiently down several corridors that took her in oblique directions to her course in order to finally come out on the wide concourse that led to the Archives. The string, stiffly extended straight ahead in front of her inside the jar, began to lean downwards as she approached. Seeing it, Roxa understood, and she slowed and pocketed the dowser, grimacing with relief and irritation.

The doors were impossibly huge and heavy, but they had been counter-weighted so precisely that they glided open with a single yank. Roxa slipped in and froze, face to face with none other than Penelope, on her way out. The prefect was pale with fury and resplendent in furs that did nothing to diminish her curves. She glared at Roxa balefully, seemingly unsurprised by this abrupt encounter.

“Tell your little girlfriend that her trick won’t work twice,” she snarled, then swept by Roxa and out the door.

Roxa, her heart now thundering in her chest, hurried deeper into the massive complex, fumbling for the dowser again. But she didn’t need it.

~ ~ ~

Roxa burst into their favorite reading hole to find Mila huddled in an armchair, holding a sheet of parchment and staring at it broodingly.

“Oh great lady of the waters, you’re all right,” she gasped, sagging against the door.

Mila had the decency to look sheepish. “I’m sorry, Roxa. I got...badly distracted, and by the time I realized I’d forgotten—”

Roxa waved away her apology. “I saw Penelope! What happened?”

Mila shrugged. “I saw her at the same time she saw me. I’m lucky we were on the main level, at the beginning of the Ramp, instead of deep in the Stacks with nobody else around. She started coming towards me like she wanted to teach me a lesson or something, but there was an Archive assistant on the floor. I asked him very loudly where the Archive Factor’s office was, as I was carrying an urgent message, and waved this damn thing around like a flag.”

She held the parchment up and Roxa immediately spotted a big, flashy alchemical seal.

“Quick thinking,” Roxa admitted. “She looked mad enough to spit.” She walked closer. “So, um, what is that?”

Mila proffered the parchment like it was a bag of snakes. Roxa took it, read it, and gave it back frowning. “There was a price.”

It wasn’t a question. Mila nodded slowly, andtold her.

“Fuck.” Roxa was pacing. “Of course she would recruit you.” She spun on her heel. “It won’t end with the favor. That’s just an opening. She’ll seek to exploit it and reel you further into her debt.”

“How?” Mila demanded.

Her friend sighed. “She could give you an impossible task, or maneuver you into a position where you need her protection. Or, if the favor involved rule-breaking, once you deliver on it she could hold it over you as blackmail. Anything, really. The important thing is that if you’re not a step ahead of her, you’ll trip, and she’ll have you.”

Mila responded with a sharp, short, bleak laugh.

Roxa shot her a despairing look. “I know. Mila, why on earth did you need to get into this course so badly? It can’t be worth this, whatever it is, right? Maybe it’s not too late to back out of this. Maybe the class will be offered again in a few terms, with less restriction. You could wait—”

“No! I am not going to wait,” Mila choked, “Don’t ask me to, Roxa.”

Roxa had grown up handling horses. She heard the strangled tightness in Mila’s voice, and instinctively knew what to do.She spread her hands, palms open, her voice gentle and calming, “Okay, that’s fine, hey, I’m sorry.”

Mila looked down, ashamed of her outburst. “I-I’m sorry, Roxa, I do want to tell you why, but—”

Roxa hushed her softly. “I won’t ask again, I promise.”

Mila looked at her plaintively, and sniffled.

“Do you,” Roxa asked carefully, “want to be held, by me—”

“Yes,” Mila said instantly.

~ ~ ~

The Apomasaics course began at the start of the new term. Mila showed up to the first lecture, part of her waiting for the other shoe to drop—but her name was there on the list. She took a seat among the rest of the selected, all the rest of them Yavanese. Mila was the only racialized person in the room—not a first, by any means, but in this class setting it spoke volumes. Then Aralia entered and there were two of them.

Aralia mounted the lecture platform briskly, unreadable as a brick wall. In the hush following her arrival, shescanned the rows of faces before her and gave no sign at all that she’d seen Mila and paid no discernible attention to her.

At the other extreme was thatfirst-year petrel hatchling that had caught her attention weeks ago in the courtyard outside the dining hall. They had stiffened visibly in their seat at the back when they caught sight of Milaand then tried to pretend disinterest. She wondered briefly if they thought they were being subtle.

Mila had nursed a secret fear that she’d entered into a bad deal, that Apomasaics would disappoint her, that it somehow couldn’t deliver. But as soon as Aralia began, it was like a floodgate had opened. The technical theory was astounding in itself. Mila left the first day with her writing hand cramping, her dark eyes lit, and her jaw set.

She threw herself into the material like it was food and she was starving. It was a good thing she didn’t have to hide her obsession from Roxa, because she wouldn’t have been able to. Her roommate wasn’t much of an alchemist and Mila knew that was probably all that was holding Roxa back from deducing pretty much everything on her own. She knew that she should have told Roxa a believable lie for why she needed to get into this class, instead of leaving the question suspiciously open.

In fact, the only other thing that was taking up as much brain space for Mila as Apomasaics was trying to forecast and anticipate Roxa’s reaction if her roommate figured out what she really was—orif Mila disclosed first. It began to rule her nightmares, as well as her dreams.

Some days it seemed as if their friendship was unsinkable, and all her fears were mere paranoia. Mila would be resting her head sleepily on Roxa’s shoulder as they were both studying in their window nook, the kettle would start to fuss, and she would rouse and catch Roxa looking at her with an expression of such quiet wonder and pleasure that her heart would do a little flip and her cheeks would heat up.

Other days, Mila would sit down at her desk and see yet another fascist slogan carved into it, or hear the cold disgust in the voice of the Special Research assistant as he talked about degeneracy and ice would flood her veins as she imagined Roxa recoiling from her, raging at her, or just turning her back, chilly and distant and formal. When she thought about that, Mila’s insides felt like they were sinking to the sea floor.

These fears didn’t drown Mila, however. If anything, they propelled her hatred of the Imperial Democracy to new heights. She could already see how potent a tool Apomasaics would be in the hands of Imperial eugenicists and social hygienists. In their hands, it would be wielded with chilling effect to cement their truth-claims.

The laboratory segment spent weeks on a portion of the curriculum that seemed to have been written as a kind of groveling salute to the Imperial Social Hygiene Review Board. It was barely veiled allegiance propaganda—techniques to cleanse bodies of their taints, to induce manly characteristics during puberty, to sterilize the wombs and testes of degenerates, to curb urges towards perversion, to increase the fertility and reproductive potential of those bodies deemed eugenically strategic. Mila forced her face so carefully blank that she developed a cramp in her upper lip from keeping it uncurled.

And yet, much of what they learned could have been borderline heretical to Imperial social hygiene, if not for the carefully tailored spin their teachers put on it. And indeed, there was a rotating cast of stiff-necked, sharp-eyed men in nondescript but well-made clothing who showed up every class to do nothing but prowl and watch and listen. Every time one of them paused by Mila’s station or pacedslowly behind her, sweat needled her brow. There was, in fact, a level of institutional surveillance, security and secrecy around the whole of Apomasaics that she had not been remotely prepared for.

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None of this could make Mila falter, however, because to her, Apomasaics was perfect. It was everything. She was so taken by it, by its scope, by its power, by its promise, that she could barely keep herself from getting swept up in jubilation multiple times each day as they revealed more and more of their secrets to her. Apomasaics was everything she’d ever dared dream of.

It just needed some careful jailbreaking.

~ ~ ~

One night towards the end of term, Mila was in their room in Stormcroft, listening to the rain tap against the black glass and factoring in her private notebook. She was now close to having a working alchemical schema—it just needed a little more massaging.

There remained a few knotty equations that needed balancing and then the whole thing would snap together crisp and airtight. She loved this about alchemy, loved the feeling of conjuring a puzzle from the most basic building blocks and principles of matter and unmatter and turning it neatly inside out, leaving reality rearranged, transformed.

She was bent over the page, scribbling, when the sorcery ward on the door flashed and went out. The door swung open and Roxa backed in with two covered plates, both steaming.

“Yum,” Mila said, putting down her pen. Then she saw Roxa was scowling. “What’s wrong?”

Roxa rolled her eyes and set down the plates. “Nothing, just had to listen to these two smug vipers from Fairhollow plotting behind me in line.”

“Oh? What were they plotting?” Mila uncovered the plate nearest her and made a little sound of appreciation. It was her favorite Yavanese deep dish pie recipe—a golden, flaky crust holding a richly flavored chicken, potato, beet, carrot and raisin filling, loaded with savory herbs.

Roxa grumbled, digging around in her pocket for eating utensils.

“Come on, you always bring the best gossip.”

“Oh, fine. Well, first they were talking about news from Drago. Student riots, militia counter-demonstrations. Some power struggle in the Masculinist Hierophancy. Then they got edgy and started talking some fiery gender politics. My eyes got such a workout from rolling, I swear. Something along the lines of ‘Men have got their Virtues enshrined in Imperial institutional policy, but what about Women?’—and they decided then and there to capitalize themselves as Women, I shit you not.”

“Oh, did they?” Mila tried to scoff casually, but her heart had started beating faster.

Roxa shook her head in disgust. “Some real firebrands we got here, Mila. All the virtues of capitalized Women I had to listen to, just waiting in line to get some food. Listen to this. Men already have Honor, so they assigned themselves Purity. Men have Pride so they went and got Dignity. Apparently Modesty is spoken for, now. And Hospitality. And did you know Wisdom is a virtue of capitalized Women? Then they got their greedy little hands on Mercy, too. Oh, Lady’s Cascading Tits, they were so pompous! ‘an equal and pure reflection across the natural binary.’” She made a retching sound.

“So you don’t share their...um...feelings about ‘the natural binary?’” Mila asked carefully. Her heartbeat was so loud in her ears that it was a wonder Roxa couldn’t hear it.

“Are you kidding?” Roxa threw her hands up. “Do you even realize how much prattling on and on about ‘naturalness’ I had to listen to? Like, are these posh cunts really deluded enough to think they can capitalize a word, arbitrate some fancy requirements for it, and that makes it natural? Like, what?! Do they not realize that they’re—they’re literally making a category happen?”

“They’re constructing it.” Mila nodded, her insides flooding with warm relief.

“Yes, exactly! They’re constructing a category. Erecting one, in fact. Ha!” Roxa crowed with glee at her bawdy pun. “Remind you of anyone? Anyway, the point is, it wouldn’t otherwise exist. And what about that is natural?” She strangled the empty air. “Do they really not get it? Their whole platform is as if they saw a smoldering carriage accident and decided, ‘oh that looks fine, we want one of those for our very own.’”

Mila shrugged. “Maybe they do get it, but they know its a powerful claim to invoke, they see it working for the loyalists, and they know they’ll get away with it. This is the center of their world, after all. Social hygiene and all that.”

“It’s all bullshit!” Roxa protested, her voice rising. Mila raised her eyebrows and pointed at the door. Roxa flung a silencing spell at it without turning around, but her next words were low and clenched and bitter.

“They came to our Duchy when I was nine. For trade, they said. Grain for our lumber. They offered inoculations, schools, roads, sewers. The Duchess let them build one school—I saw what it did to those kids! Social hygiene—it’s control, that’s all it is!” Roxa looked mad enough to spit.

Mila tried to nod somberly, but she couldn’t stop her lipsfrom curving. She wanted to lock Roxa into a crushing hug. She wanted to jump up and down and shout with glee.

Roxa frowned. “Why are you smiling at me like that?”

Mila shrugged and chewed, fighting an irrepressible grin. Roxa dug in to her food, muttering.

For the rest of the evening, Mila was undeniably chipper.

~ ~ ~

The alchemy labs were busiest in the afternoon and evenings. This activity simmered down after the last dinner bell, but there were usually a dozen or so students working until midnight, when the labs closed. In the early morning, however, there was almost nobody. It was also the least popular shift for lab assistants—often only one of them was present.

Mila’s footsteps sounded loudly up and down the wide, empty corridor. She scanned each lab through the thick plate glass windows that separated them from the corridor. Each one was fully lit and sparkling clean—the overnight cleaning staff had already come and gone. There was a student here and there, but for the most part it was completely empty.

She passed another lab, glanced in, and did a double-take. It was the first-year student she’d come to think of as Petrel, bent over a rack of bubbling glass tubes. They looked fully absorbed in their project, and they hadn’t seen her. She walked on, and risked one more glance. Mila wasn’t sure, but she could have sworn Petrel’s cheeks looked fuller. Their face looked brighter, more open.

The thought was driven from her mind as she came to the materials stockroom, where a single assistant dozed behind a desk. Behind him she could see shelves of jars full of powders of every conceivable hue. Beyond the shelves, she could make out racks upon racks of barrels, stretching further than she could see. He roused as she approached.

“Three drams of phylum argent and seven of dendramor, please. For Mila Finnocia.”

She had to repeat her last name before he found the right page in the ledger. He sleepily moved his finger down the column, searching, and Mila impatiently thrust her gloved hand past his and pointed lower on the page. As she did, the surface of her glove brushed his bare wrist, and left a gleaming streak of something that was gone a mere instant later—evaporated or absorbed. Mila surreptitiously watched the boy’s face but he made no sign of having noticed. He blearily made an entry and went yawning to find the precursors she’d requested. He returned after a few minutes with two waxed paper envelopes, clearly labeled and bulging.

As Mila walked away, she shakily released the breath she’d been holding. This was the riskiest rule-breaking she’d attempted yet, but there was no way around it. Dendramor and phylum were generic precursors that were used in dozens of schemas. Requesting them would raise no eyebrows.

She needed rarer, more specific materials to complete her project, however, and she knew that if she requested them the normal way, her cover was as good as blown.Anything more than a cursory scan of her stockroom request records by any alchemist worth his salt would reveal Mila’sgoal as clear as day.

So, she was stealing.

 

 

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