This is all your fault, said the snide voice. It was right.
“Good people of Three Mills,” the Magistrate called into the microphone. Her voice sounded tinny and high-pitched through the sound amplifiers, which stood on either side of the small stage. “I have completed my circuit of your little, ah, hamlet, and am deeply impressed. I am proud that our country can boast of such fine citizens!”
There was a smattering of applause.
“However,” the Magistrate said, and her metallic voice clanged as it echoed around the square, “two of your number have made a claim that I can hardly believe while attempting to gain a new contract with our fine army. As they were unable to verify this claim, I was forced to create a test for this child here.”
The crowd fell silent. Their faces, opal and amber and umber and ebony, oriented themselves toward Sepha as if she were a magnet, and they so many pieces of iron filings. It occurred to Sepha that Ruhen might be in the crowd, and she wanted, more than ever, to dissolve into nothing.
“Since I am a trusting woman and would love to see the wondrous things this child can do,” the Magistrate went on, “I have requested something magnificent. Just for today, just for her, I will lift the ban on alchemical production of pure gold. Sepha, if she can, shall transmute straw—normal, everyday straw—into gold!”
No one cheered. This was a mill town, a town supported by amateur alchemists. Everyone knew this was an impossible task, even for Sepha. Straw and gold were too dissimilar for such a transmutation to work, and gold was famously tricky to produce in the first place. The rain had stopped as suddenly as it had started, and the sodden welcome banners wept rainwater onto the crowd below.
“If the child can do it, I shall name her my Lady Alchemist, and she shall have equal rank and privilege to my own Court Alchemists.”
Despite her fear, Sepha’s heartbeat quickened.
“But if she fails,” the Magistrate continued, “well, I will have no choice but to sentence the child and her father to death and discontinue the army’s business with the mill. This may seem harsh,” she said loudly, over gasps of shock and the loud cries of You wouldn’t!, “but it is necessary! We cannot allow our society to become one in which businessmen lie to government officials with impunity in order to gain access to your hard-earned money! False claims of this nature are a crime against every tax-paying citizen of Tirenia. As such, this sort of malicious fraud is the highest crime of all and is to be punished without mercy.
“Let us hope, therefore,” concluded Madame Magistrate, “that the child is as good as her word. She claimed, after all, that she can make anything from anything. If she has not completed her task by noon tomorrow, well, then we shall know the truth.”
Sepha stood very still. The Magistrate’s words draped over her, heavy and hard. She couldn’t understand, could not comprehend what was happening.
Someone took her by the elbow and led her inside the courthouse. Dimly, she sensed there was some sort of uproar behind her. She could hear Father shouting.
Sentenced to death …
Transmute straw to gold …
With a feeling like a sudden wind, Sepha came back to herself.
She was inside a large holding cell, enclosed by metal bars on three sides and a brick wall on the fourth. There were people outside the cell, lots of them, and they were all looking at her without appearing to look at her. Frequent furtive glances and fingernails chewed soggy.
Sepha recognized faces she’d passed on the street, but she didn’t know any of them. These were government people, not mill people. She wouldn’t find any help here.
Someone Sepha couldn’t see shouted, “They’ve found some straw! They’re putting it in Cell Two-Seven.”
A woman and man glanced at each other in surprise. “Cell Two-Seven? Is that right?” called the man.
“That’s what they said,” came the answer.
“What …” Sepha started, but her mouth was cottony, and no sound came out. She tried again. “What’s Cell Two-Seven?”
The woman regarded Sepha sadly for a moment, and then said, “It’s our biggest cell. In the Level Two basement. It’s the only cell we’ve got that can hold an alchemist in. Something about the construction.”
As if she feared she’d said too much, the woman ducked her head and walked away.
Well.
They’d found the straw, and a place to put it. And a place to put her. A place for her to wait out the long hours until noon tomorrow. And then—
Sepha gripped the metal bars of her holding cell, wishing for all the world that she was a real, true alchemist. She’d draw an alchem right here and now. It would be so easy to escape from this cell. But she was stupid, so stupid, because even after using those alchems every day for five years, she couldn’t draw a single one of them. She’d tried a million times, but they invariably turned out wrong: more swirled and continuous than the sharp geometrical symmetry of a good, proper alchem. Unusable.
Sepha pressed her head against the bars, angling her face toward the tiled floor so no one could see the hot, furious tears spilling out of her eyes. A drop of blood splashed onto the floor. Godsdamnit! She’d ripped through the fresh scab on her forehead, pressing against the bars like that, and now she was bleeding again.
Another drop. Another, and another. The drops coalesced into a large, semicircular blob.
Like half an alchem.
A transformation alchem flashed in Sepha’s mind. Her eyes flicked furtively upward. No one was looking at her. If she was going to try to escape, now was the time; and blood, after all, was as good as ink. She could get rid of the bars and make a run for it, if everyone was distracted enough. If not, the bars could form a good weapon …
Three more drops. Now there was enough to complete a simple alchem, if she could manage to draw one.
Sepha casually dropped one hand to the floor and wetted a finger in her own blood. Stroke by stroke, she spread it into a full circle. She’d never managed to draw an alchem before. But this time, she would, because she had to.
She focused on her memory of the transformation alchem, but it began to waver.
Stroke, stroke, stroke.
The more desperately she focused, the less she could remember. Panic began to rise.
Strokestrokestroke.
It was the same every time. She’d start off all right, but then—
Sepha stared down at her alchem.
Botched. Botched to oblivion.
Useless!
Biting down a scream of frustration, Sepha wiped her finger across her bleeding forehead. She’d try again. She’d try and try, until—
Boots appeared on the other side of the bars.
Sepha hastily wiped away the botched alchem. But it was too late.
“That wouldn’t’ve gone very well,” a man said. “Come with me.”
The man ushered Sepha down a bright corridor, then down some stairs that seemed to last forever.
Sepha walked through the doorway at the end of the stairs, knowing without asking that it was the door to Cell Two-Seven, the only cell that could keep an alchemist in.