The Alchemical Child

Chapter Eleven

The notecard in the envelope was brief and baffling. It was addressed to the University's Chancellor and offered a placement in the palace for an alchemical advisor. Three days a week from nine until two. No more detailed than that. At the bottom, Sage's name was written in a block typeface, as if to laugh at her for ever believing that there had been some mistake.

But there had to have been a mistake, because Sage had no connections in the city, let alone the palace. She had secured her previous placement at the Belvedere Institute because no other Student had wanted it. Late hours, meticulous attention, solitary experimentation—that was what Sage was good at. Not prancing around the palace for monarchs and the Council.

She tossed the notecard onto her desk, where she had been sitting in a stupor for hours. A page of translated Faustus was sifted to the side as she dropped her cheek to the wood and groaned. The monarch's golden seal winked back at her, brilliant and strange within her dusty workshop. Hermes peered at it warily from over the grimoire.

"What am I going to do?" she muttered. The mechanical bird nibbled her ear.

Sage felt more lost than she ever had in the Alchemical Library.

She longed for the tentative optimism she had felt when she started studying at the University. The potential of greatness that was hidden behind every class door and beneath every book cover. She even missed the loneliness of her first-year, and the quivering discomfort that had encouraged her to build Hermes and drown herself in her studies, gaining a Magister's scholarship at the cost of all the other lives that could have been hers. Now, she didn't worry about loneliness, because she knew that she was meant to be alone.

The realisation had been dark and overwhelming. It was not like the alchemical knowledge that had excited her during her initial Student years, it was a petrifying knowledge of the self. The recognition and acceptance that Sage was wound differently from others, built with another kind of clockwork which ticked at an alternate pace. She was alone and she was petrified. Everything in her life stood still but the world around her insisted on grinding onwards.

And now that world was dragging her along behind it.

Sage opened her desk drawer and placed Valerie's letter next to the palace notecard. It was disconcerting to see how much of her life she had no control over. How much could change in a matter of days. She looked again at her sister's sloping writing and was suddenly seized with a dream of a different life. One where she travelled as Valerie did, seeing the lands and their people, keeping to a schedule of her own devising. Learning for the simple sake of learning.

Then she shook her head, because she was not Valerie and that would never be her life. She needed structure, an idea of what the future would hold and a plan of how to get there. That had been the charm of the University—arranged lecture hours, set deadlines and reading lists. Sure and steadfast. But then Sage's eyes shifted to the notecard, and everything that had once comforted her crumbled. Because nothing had ever been sure in the life that she had chosen. Gillian had told her as much in the café: if she dreamed of a future in alchemy, she would have to fight for it.

And Sage was not a fighter. She wasn't even a dreamer. She was just so, achingly tired.

She went upstairs, undressed, and got into bed. Hermes was twittering beside the window, complaining about the cold. Sage drew the blankets over her head and closed her eyes, willing a dreamless sleep to take hold of her mind, if only for a few hours.

When she woke, it was past midday. Sundays were usually when she would fetch groceries and hunt for deals in the marketplace. The quietest day in the always bustling city. Instead, she wrapped herself in sheets and plodded to the kitchen. There was enough in the fridge to feed her, though nothing that could compare to the tartine from Basil's. But Sage didn't mind, as the thought of so much butter made her churning stomach feel queasier.

She decided on left-over soup, warmed over the stove, and curled up close with an armful of books. If not more confident, she felt a little steadier in the small kitchen. It was a realm apart from the spires of the palace. She chose the first book and started to review a chapter on common sigils when Hermes fluttered down the stairs. He cocked his head.

"It's not for my thesis. I've decided I'm going to go to the palace tomorrow and at least see what they want. A little more money couldn't do us any harm, could it?" 

While she stared into her beige bowl of soup, Hermes hopped onto her shoulder and turned towards the door.

"There's no point in going to the library when I've got books at home I can prepare with. There weren't even any instructions on the card, so who knows what they'll want from me. Besides, it's cold outside, and here, you and I get to sit beside the fire together."

Hermes was appeased at that and snuggled into her neck. But Sage's fingers were stiff turning to the next page as she knew she hadn't spoken the whole truth. She was avoiding the University because the thought of seeing the fae librarian again made her shiver harder than the thought of snow. After all, he had been the catalyst of change—the first thing that had disrupted Sage's life and the library that had once been a sanctuary. And there was something piercing about his eyes, as if he could read her better than she could read any book from the stacks. 

As if he saw her settled darkness, and had started stoking fires.

A/N A shorter chapter today, but an important one! Only one more chapter after this until the beginning of Part Two: The Mortal Soil.