There was an echoing, enlarged sound like water dripping in a cave. The Willow’s flying roots slowed, wafting in some invisible current. Then the roots curled up on themselves, collapsing toward the tree until, with a bursting pressure, the whole thing winked out of sight.
The Willow was gone. Only the ruined field remained.
Sepha and the man had survived.
With a quick, shaky breath, Sepha pushed herself up to sitting. She had nearly died—she’d been that close to dying—because of a godsdamned Wicking Willow right outside Three Mills.
Beside her, the man sat up too, swearing under his breath.
“Thank you,” Sepha said, staring wide-eyed at the tumbling riot of earth and stones and fallen trees before shifting her gaze to the man. “I would’ve walked straight into it if it wasn’t for you.”
At first, he seemed not to have heard her. He was looking at her without seeming to see her, his dark eyes unfocused. Then, with a few rapid blinks, he came back to himself. “Uh,” he said, flexing his right hand as if it pained him, “no problem.”
A sticky silence welled up above the sounds of wind and rainfall as Sepha and the man stared at each other.
He looked twenty or so, hardly older than Sepha’s seventeen-nearly-eighteen. He was tall and broad, with brown skin and dark hair that curled in loose spirals despite the heavy rain. And his clothes, dark and drenched, plastered against him—and his eyes, brightly black and rimmed with long lashes—and his lips, full and upturned—
Sepha’s cheeks went crimson.
Don’t be stupid! snapped a snide voice inside Sepha’s head. She ran a hand through her wet, clinging hair, feeling foolish. The man looked away.
“A Wicking Willow!” he said, sounding as if he was half in shock. Sepha thought she might be, too. Her body felt loose, and her mind was sluggish, snagging on unhelpful details. Like the clinging weight of the man’s drenched gray shirt.
“Do you—” Sepha started, but it came out hoarse. She tried again. “Do you think the magician is still around? The one who made it?”
Not that she’d be able to run, even if the magician was nearby.
“I didn’t see anyone but you,” the man said. He smiled weakly, a glimpse of crinkles beside his eyes, and added, “I might’ve thought you were the magician, but then you were almost eaten by a tree.”
Sepha let out something that might’ve been a laugh if she hadn’t been so out of breath. If she hadn’t just almost died. “No, I’m not a magician, of course not,” she said. “I’m an alchemist.” Everyone knew that alchemy and magic didn’t mix.
The man laughed too. “I know,” he said. “The axe.” He blinked and looked at his empty hands. “I must’ve dropped it.”
Sepha waved off his apologetic glance. Nothing mattered less right now than a lost axe.
With a groan, the man stood. Sepha took his offered hand, and he hauled her to her feet. “Thanks,” she murmured, craning her neck to look at him. She could see now that his eyes weren’t quite black. They were an indeterminate color something like tarnished silver, a smooth and shifting dark gray. A gray that matched the roiling thunderheads overhead.
She knew him, she realized. Well, she recognized him. He’d appeared in town a few weeks ago and always seemed to be hanging about the library. She had consequently never spoken to him.
Sepha realized that she was still holding his hand and abruptly dropped it. Her cheeks heated.
Those thunderhead eyes shifted to a point on her forehead and widened. “You’re bleeding!” he said. “Are you all right?”
His hand froze in the air near her face, as if he were fighting an impulse to wipe the blood away.
“I’m fine,” Sepha lied, raising a hand to her forehead, where the offending blood was trickling toward her eyebrow.
The man briefly frowned as he noted her lie and decided to let it be. “Ruhen Salmarre,” he said instead. “That’s my name, I mean.”
“I’m Sepha. Sepha Filens.” The pain in her ankle was a dull ache. There would probably be an enormous bruise there, marking where the root had grabbed her. “Do you think it got anyone before we—”
Sepha couldn’t bring herself to finish the question.
Ruhen gave a helpless shrug. “No way to know.”
The rain fell harder, and an icy wind reminded Sepha that she was drenched, cold, and far from home. The Magistrate was bound to think she was ridiculous for doing her demonstration in such a … state …
Sepha’s face went very hot, then very cold.
Her demonstration!
“I have to go,” Sepha said. If she was late, Father would be furious. Furious. “Sorry. Thanks.”
“Is something else wrong?” Ruhen asked, sounding alarmed.
“No. Yes. I have to go. Sorry.”
Sepha turned toward town and broke into a lopsided sprint, leaving Ruhen behind.
The Magistrate was touring the mills. And the fate of Three Mills depended on the Magistrate’s favorable opinion.
Sepha had to get back for her demonstration. No matter what.
Sepha launched herself through the double back doors of Mill Facility A and slammed them shut behind her. For a moment, she stood in the growing puddle of her own drippings, reveling in the fact that she was inside and out of the torrential rain.
The mill, usually frenetic with metallic clangs and orange-white sparks escaping from the huge furnaces, was silent but for the dull roar of the rain pounding on its sagging roof. In what was surely both a first and a last, Father had given the millers the morning off. The consideration was less for the millers’ sakes than for the Magistrate’s. When in full operation, the mill was dangerous. Even Father would rather lose a day’s production than risk injuring the Magistrate.
Sepha wrung out her hair and the heavy, wet fabric of her sweater and pants, scraping off the worst of the mud. She combed through the razor-straight length of her hair and wove it into one long braid. As for her forehead … she could only hope the rain had washed away any remaining blood.
Smoothing out the wrinkles from her sweater, Sepha took one deep breath, then another. She forced the thoughts of vivid purple leaves, pulsing gray roots, and hissing amber acid from her mind. Instead, she set her mind on the demonstration. The contract. Saving Three Mills.
Sepha squelched past the hulking tanks that normally made the air shimmer with the heat of the molten metal they contained. Today, though, they were cool and empty. Beyond the tanks were smelters and racks of fully worked metals awaiting shipment, and past those was Sepha’s haunt: the Alchemical Stations.
When Father had pulled her out of school for good—she’d had no mind for letters or numbers, all of which refused to stay still on the page long enough for her to read them (Teacher had called it “word blindness,” while Father had called it “mind-boggling stupidity”)—she’d become an apprentice to the mill’s alchemists. It had been hard work for a twelve-year-old, but it had been a blessing in the end. If she’d stayed in school, she would’ve had to wait years to learn alchemy. But she hadn’t had to wait, and because of what she’d learned at the mill, the Magistrate was now here.