Sepha heard the whispers just as she rounded the last storage rack and smiled with relief when she saw who waited for her.
Every last miller was there, in full defiance of their unasked-for day off. This demonstration was too important to miss, so they’d come here, unpaid, to see what would happen. Sepha’s throat started to ache. What with running late and almost dying in the forest, this was exactly what she needed. Support from her friends on the most important day of her life.
The millers had formed a perfect arc around the enormous transmutation alchem Sepha had chalked onto the ground. It had taken her hours because she’d had to consult a drawing every step of the way. A huge slab of steel was inside the alchem, just where she’d placed it yesterday. Good.
The squelch and squeak of Sepha’s boots was the only sound in the world as she hurried over to stand between the millers and the alchem. They all murmured with either relief or annoyance as she took her place in front of them.
“Sepha!” hissed Renni, the alchemists’ foreman. “Where have you been? And what’ve you been up to? You’re—” the woman gestured helplessly. “You’re covered in mud!”
“No time to explain,” Sepha whispered back, forcing a smile at Renni. “Has the tour started yet?”
“It’s just about over,” Renni said. “I don’t like to think of what would’ve happened if you’d gotten here any later.”
They both shuddered.
Then there was no more time to talk, because Father’s voice carried to them from somewhere just past the racks.
“And over here, Madame Magistrate, are the Alchemical Stations.”
Everything inside Sepha went quavery at the sound of Father’s voice. It slunk across the room and settled between her bones, where it resonated with the snide voice inside her mind—the Father that berated her when Father wasn’t there to do it himself.
Half a second more, and Father himself appeared, ushering forward a man and a woman.
The moment Sepha saw her father, she felt the too-familiar sensation of shrinking within herself. Her heart didn’t plunge when she saw him; it diminished.
She watched as his eyes fixed on the millers behind her, then flicked over her, his mouth settling into a scowl. Her muddy clothes weighed a thousand pounds. Why had she come straight to the mill? Surely it would’ve been better to stop at home first, to change. Surely being late would’ve been better than being filthy! Why hadn’t she thought of that earlier?
You never think, that’s why, drawled the snide voice. Stupid, worthless girl.
Father would make her pay for this later. But now was not the time to think about that.
With a bracing breath, Sepha shifted her focus from Father to the woman beside him. The woman was tall, with spiraling gray curls. She surveyed the room through thick-rimmed, circular spectacles and walked a half-step ahead of Father, as if she was the one who owned the mill instead of him. Sepha didn’t need to ask to know that this woman was the Magistrate, the nameless ruler of Tirenia.
Born to leave her identity behind when she assumed her place at the head of Tirenia’s government, the Magistrate was something more than a figurehead but something less than a Queen. It was the Magistrate’s job to make the difficult or unpleasant decisions that Tirenia’s court officials were unwilling to make. In fact, if even part of what Sepha had heard was correct, the Magistrate had a penchant for making very unpleasant decisions, indeed.
But now was not the time to think about that, either.
Sepha’s eyes slid past the unfamiliar man beside the Magistrate and landed on the tiny man who stood beside him. This little man was hardly bigger than a toddler, and his face was frozen in a small, placating grin.
A homunculus!
Sepha had heard of them before but had never seen one. Homunculi were proportioned exactly like normal adult men but measured no more than three feet tall. They said that alchemists made them, that they were perfectly obedient servants. They also said that homunculi could not think, speak, or choose. Homunculi were soulless, were walking, breathing tools, and Sepha thought they were fascinating.
“This is my daughter,” Father said, gesturing at Sepha. He seemed to chew on the word daughter before spitting it out. He frowned fiercely at Sepha, but continued in his cheeriest tone, “Are you prepared to do your demonstration for Madame Magistrate?”
“Yes, sir,” called Sepha, cringing at the waver in her voice.
The heavy rain pounded against the mill’s leaky roof as Father and the Magistrate’s retinue approached Sepha and the millers.
Then they were there, on the opposite side of the alchem. Sepha shifted a few steps to the side so she could see them over the hulking block of steel in the alchem’s center. Father was glaring harder than ever, and it took her a moment to understand why. With a start, Sepha remembered her manners and dropped into a deferential bow. “Madame Magistrate,” she said as she straightened, “if you please, I am ready to begin my demonstration.”
“At your leisure, I’m sure,” the Magistrate said, and the man beside her laughed.
Everything seemed to tip toward Sepha as if she were the low point in the room. Father’s glare had leached all of her confidence away, and she wanted to disappear.
But this demonstration was something only she could do. It was all up to her, and she would not fail. She could do it, starting with the speech she’d memorized.
“Today,” Sepha began, “I will show you how Mill Facility A takes common steel and transmutes it into tirenium, the strongest alloy in the world. As you know, nothing but a weapon made of this selfsame metal can pierce it, and nothing but the hottest fires can melt it. Until now, alchemical production of tirenium-reinforced equipment has been too expensive to perform on a large scale. As I’m about to show you, that need no longer be the case.”
Sepha paused, expecting some sort of response, even a nod, but everyone just kept staring at her. She pursed her lips and continued. “Between us, you see an unshaped piece of unrefined steel. When I am done, a portion of it will be transmuted into tirenium, and the rest will be transmuted into other alloys as necessary. I will then transform and conjoin these materials to form the shell of a full-scale army tank. I will accomplish all of this with the transmutation alchem you see before you. As you will see, this sort of production will save on weeks of labor and consolidate production of major army equipment to us, your sole manufacturer.”
She got a response this time, even though she hadn’t been expecting one. The bald, bearded man beside the Magistrate exclaimed, “Preposterous!”
Sepha opened and closed her mouth, unsure of what to say. Father, surprisingly, interceded for her. “You won’t be saying that in a moment!” he cried. It seemed as if he’d been expecting this sort of reaction.
“I tell you, it cannot be done!” cried the bald man. “Transmutation alchems are designed for the express purpose of transmuting one material into another. They cannot be used for multiple transmutations at once, nor can they be used to transform or bring about any other changes in materials! The very idea is unthinkable!”