Sepha stood just inside the threshold as the heavy metal door swung shut. Once she heard the click that meant she was trapped for good, she allowed herself to look up and around.
And around.
The cell was less like a cell than an underground warehouse. Every surface of the room, glowing faintly orange from the light of the bulbs that hung from the ceiling high above, was etched with long curves and scrollwork. The etchings weren’t alchems, at least none that she could recognize. But if they weren’t alchems, what were they?
Sepha stopped wondering about the etchings when, with a cascading sense of panic, she took in the mountain of straw that covered most of the floor and reached nearly to the ceiling.
The straw she was expected to transmute into gold.
Sepha’s legs, still wobbly from the Wicking Willow, buckled, and she crumpled to the floor. She sat, legs splayed, hands in her lap, and stared dumbly at the straw. Until this moment, she hadn’t quite believed it. She had to transmute straw to gold. This straw. And if she didn’t—
The door opened. Footsteps. Then a voice, flat and female. “Madame Magistrate told me you don’t know how to draw the transmutation alchem.”
“Mm?” Sepha grunted, turning her head to see who was speaking.
It was a young woman, tall and pale, with blue eyes and a slightly beaky nose. Her chin-length hair was almost white. She wore a golden ring and a deeply black, silver-buttoned jacket. Around her waist, crisscrossing into an X, were two leather holsters stocked with ammunition, ingots, and rolled-up pieces of paper.
She was a member of the Court Alchemists’ Guild and a Military Alchemist, to boot.
Sepha had never met a Military Alchemist before and had never wanted to. They had a reputation for being brutish and violent, and were even more dangerous than the weapons Sepha made at the mill. Military Alchemists were the monsters mothers used to get their children to listen. They were warnings whispered in the dark. They were the surest enforcers of peace in Tirenia, because they were the alternative.
The woman surveyed Sepha and continued, an inscrutable expression on her face, “Madame wanted me to draw the transmutation alchem for you. But you’re sitting in the only free space, so you need to move.”
Sepha was too numb to ask questions, but just there enough to feel bemused and bristling. With an almighty effort, she clambered to her feet and stalked to the wall. The young woman produced a thick stick of chalk from one of her holsters and began to draw a giant transmutation alchem on the floor. The woman worked calmly, efficiently, as if she did this every day.
Maybe she did.
Sepha scowled.
Before long, the woman was done. She inspected her completed work, gave a satisfied nod, and then strode toward Sepha. “I have to search you,” she said.
“Why?” Sepha asked. There was a serrated edge to her voice—an unwise aggression—but she didn’t care.
The young woman seemed unperturbed. “You’re an alchemist. You probably have metal on you. And since the wager is for you to turn the straw into gold …”
“You think I’d try to get away with turning my stock into gold instead,” Sepha finished for her, shaking her head. The idea hadn’t even occurred to her. She would’ve done it in a heartbeat, if it had. “I don’t have any on me.” She thought ruefully of the axe Ruhen had lost in the woods. Wouldn’t have done her any good, anyway.
“An alchemist without any metal,” the young woman said, arching her eyebrow. “This is a strange day.”
She eyed Sepha’s thick sweater and frowned. Sepha barely had time to note the woman’s fingerless gloves—the stained leather must protect her palms from calluses and freshly spilled blood alike—before she took Sepha’s arm and shoved her loose sleeve all the way up. Sepha winced as her rising sleeve revealed faded bruises shaped like fingertips. The woman blinked and narrowed her eyes, but she didn’t say anything. Sepha didn’t, either.
After she’d checked Sepha’s other sleeve with similar results, the woman flicked her eyes up to meet Sepha’s and said, “Lift your sweater, please.”
Sepha pursed her lips, lifted her sweater to her ribs, and pretended that the woman was not staring at the yellow-green remains from a week ago, when she hadn’t managed to dodge Father’s thrown fist. The woman’s frown deepened into a scowl. Her eyes met Sepha’s again in a silent, searching glance. In a carefully flat voice, she said, “That’s quite a lot of bruises.”
Sepha yanked her sweater back down. Her cheeks went crimson, but she lifted her chin and said, “But no metal.”
“No,” the woman said. “No metal.” She patted her hands down Sepha’s legs, feeling for telltale lumps, and then she straightened and repeated, “No metal.” She looked at Sepha said, “Madame Magistrate wanted me to tell you she expects you to transmute all of the straw into gold. Good luck.”
As the woman turned, a spike of panic ran through Sepha. This was her last chance. This woman was the last person she would see before—
“This isn’t right!” Sepha cried. The woman turned back. “If you kill me and my father, the whole town will suffer.”
The woman tipped her chin toward the straw. “Then get to work.”
Then the woman was gone, and Sepha was alone with the mountain of straw.
Time passed, or maybe it didn’t. It was impossible to tell in this huge, windowless room whether it was even day or night. Sepha was exhausted, but maybe that was to be expected. She’d almost died that morning but hadn’t. She would die tomorrow instead.
But would she really?
Even in this vast underground cell, Sepha could hardly believe what was happening. That her life could end in less than twenty-four hours.
She imagined the scene: the gallows, maybe, or a firing squad. A blindfold. Blank moments spent breathless, waiting. And then pain, and then nothing, and then the After.
Would she really allow herself to die?
Sepha was on her feet before she even bothered to answer the question. The very first thing to do was to find out if these walls really were alchemy-proof. She strode to the nearest swirled etching on the wall—it was as unfamiliar as ever—and placed her fingers along the rim. She closed her eyes and pretended, hard, that the etching was an alchem.
It was silent. It was dark.
She thought of the material inside the wall behind the etching. She imagined it becoming dense, denser, until it took up only a few inches, leaving behind an enormous hole through which she could escape.
And made the exchange, trading the material she had for the material she needed.
There was a halfway feeling, a sense of almost, and it was as if the etching gathered itself up and shoved her. Sepha’s eyes popped open as she stumbled backward, fingers tingling.
There was no hole. She hadn’t made the exchange.
She shook her hands and tried again, this time imagining the materials in the wall bending and warping, shifting aside to leave an opening large enough for her to squeeze through. And made the exchange.