Sepha was well aware that most of what she did was supposed to be impossible. She also knew that none of the other millers had ever been able to perform multiple exchanges with one alchem all at once, like she could. But, impossible or not, she’d done it. A lot. And she didn’t like being called a liar.
“I’ve practiced this a hundred times, sir,” Sepha said to the bald man. One of the millers behind her said, “And I saw it with my own eyes!”
Father scowled at Sepha as if it were her fault that the miller had spoken out of turn.
Sepha swallowed. Forced her voice to be calm and even. “I promise it can be done.”
It was only then that Sepha saw the man’s ring. Thick and golden, it bore the stylized A of the Court Alchemists’ Guild. He was a Court Alchemist, and if he was part of the Magistrate’s retinue, he must be a good one.
Her cheeks heated.
Ignoring the fact that she’d just corrected a Court Alchemist, Sepha knelt beside her alchem and took a deep, steadying breath.
With the millers crowding around as they always did and the mill’s familiar scents of scorch and smoke and metal and rot, Sepha could almost pretend this was just a normal day. Just another lunchtime game, where the millers tried to stump her, and she tried to amaze them.
She could do this.
Her fingers were already just so, her eyes closed in concentration, when the roof gave a deep, creaking groan.
A drop of water splashed onto the rim of her alchem. Sepha looked up and barely had time to leap aside before the section of roof directly above her alchem cracked open like an egg. The millers shouted and scrambled away as a torrent of water crashed down around them. The deluge obliterated the alchem’s chalked lines and nearly drowned the Magistrate’s tiny homunculus, who hadn’t moved to avoid the water. No one had told him to.
Sepha stood, spluttering, and found herself face-to-face with the Magistrate, who looked speechless with rage.
“I can fix it!” Sepha cried, thinking wild thoughts of chalk and diagrams and textbooks to consult. “Just give me a little time!”
It was the wrong thing to say.
With an infuriated glance at Father, the Magistrate turned away, bidding her Court Alchemist and homunculus to follow with a terse, “Come.”
Father opened and closed his mouth helplessly for a moment before he rounded on Sepha. “If you don’t save this, so help me, you’ll wish you had died that day!” He curled his lip at her, daring her to speak.
She didn’t. She couldn’t.
Instead, she scrambled after the Magistrate, feeling frantic, stupid, desperate. After everything she’d gone through to get here this morning, her demonstration had been ruined just like that!
And worse, far worse, worst of all, Father was angry.
At her.
She didn’t catch up to the Magistrate until she was already outside. The Court Alchemist was holding an umbrella over the Magistrate, and the edge of it was funneling water onto the homunculus’s head.
Still muzzy with shock from the Wicking Willow, Sepha shouted, “Wait!”
The Magistrate spun on her heel so quickly that Sepha nearly collided with her. “I don’t wait, girl.”
More terrified of Father than the Magistrate, than anything in the world, Sepha said, “Yes, I know, and I am so sorry. But please give me another chance. I promise you won’t be disappointed.”
“The Magistrate is not interested in more promises,” the Court Alchemist said. His mouth twisted in disgust. “Especially not from a con-girl who cannot even draw her own alchems!”
Sepha went crimson. Apparently, Father had told them the humiliating truth that Sepha couldn’t draw her own alchems unless she traced them. Apparently, Father had thought this was necessary information for the ruler of their entire country to know.
“If I were you,” the Court Alchemist continued, “I would be grateful to have been prevented from proving myself a liar. I would take this as a sign, and I would shut my mouth.”
He should shut his mouth!
“I wasn’t lying,” Sepha snapped. She directed her gaze at the Magistrate, forcing herself to ignore the Court Alchemist. If Sepha didn’t fix this, she’d be better off finding another Wicking Willow than facing Father’s rage. “Please. If you give me one more chance, I can show you.”
The Magistrate looked, if anything, angrier than before, and Sepha saw the contract and Three Mills’ future slipping away. She saw the work drying up and the mill growing emptier every day. Saw the people she’d grown up with leaving by train, saw the flowers in their window boxes going gray. Saw how angry Father would be if all of this happened because of her.
The words came rushing out before she could think them through.
“You can even set the terms,” Sepha said. “I can make anything from anything.”
The Court Alchemist’s eyes widened. His face paled.
But the Magistrate’s lips curled into a catlike grin. “You can … make … anything. From anything.”
Sepha opened her mouth and closed it again.
Stupid! hissed the snide voice.
“So, you can make a starling from sunlight, can you?” the Magistrate asked. Her eyes were bright with malice. “You can make a phoenix from fire? Or perhaps you can make truth from a lie.”
All of the blood drained from Sepha’s head and went straight to her gut. Her limbs lit up with adrenaline, leaving her trembly and stupid.
“Well,” Sepha said, “I—”
“I’ll go easy on you,” the Magistrate interrupted. She tipped her head to one side and sucked on her teeth, considering Sepha. She could well imagine how she looked, how filthy and stupid, and she held still. The Magistrate craned her neck, another catlike arch, and looked around the mill-yard.
Her gaze fell upon a line of wagons that were empty but for the straw that had padded their erstwhile freight.
“I should very much like to see you transmute straw,” the Magistrate said, tasting her words and seeming to find them sweet, “into gold. And if you say you can’t,” she added, before Sepha could respond, “then I shall know you weren’t entirely truthful with me, shan’t I?”
The world shrank, reduced to rain and rotted rooftops and stupidity and slips of the tongue.
The Magistrate nodded to herself and said, her voice a gravelly purr, “You will come with me.” She glanced at someone behind Sepha. “Both of you.”
Sepha stood with the Magistrate on a small wooden platform in front of Three Mills’ courthouse. Three Mills’ mayor, a round and largely irrelevant man, hovered behind the Magistrate, his face glistening from rainwater or sweat. Father and the Magistrate’s Court Alchemist were there, too, as well as the Magistrate’s soaking wet homunculus.
The entire town was gathered in the square, eager to see the Magistrate herself, to hear what she might have to say about Three Mills and the proposed contract. Sepha tried not to look directly at any of the curious faces before her. She had to concentrate, anyway, on not being sick.