The Alchemical Child

Chapter Six

It took far too long for Sage to leave for her morning seminar. While the sun rose lazily over the river, she washed and changed her coat, made porridge for breakfast, packed her bags and remade her unslept bed. But it was all a distraction from the tremors running to the tips of her fingers.

A sharp pain suddenly pierced Sage's chest as she stood behind her bolted door. She had checked twice through an upstairs window to make sure that there was nobody walking along the embankment, yet the thought of leaving the quiet of her home was making her throat clench with an unfounded fear.

Even through the mundane tasks of her morning, Sage's mind hadn't left the letter locked inside her desk. The weight of every word crushed down on her, they rumbled the ceiling and leaked through the floorboards. They were suffocating her every other thought.

Hermes grappled up Sage's bicycle and pressed his head into her palm. He chirped softly, enveloping her fingers under a wing until they stopped trembling.

"Thank you," Sage breathed, stroking a finger down his copper-feathered neck.

He fluttered his good wing, tumbling backwards into the saddle and digging in his talons.

"You can't come to the University with me," Sage said, prising him off. "No pets allowed."

His cogs stopped winding, beak clamping shut as his eyes fixed in place.

Sage smiled. "That's not going to fool anybody."

He whirred back to life with a disgruntled squawk, then flitted onto the clock and hopped five times.

"Yes, I'll be back in time for tea. We can mend your wing before bed."

Hermes bobbed his head, then stared at the door.

Sage groaned, counted to three, and tugged open the door. The mud crackled with frost beneath the bicycle and its wheels skidded slightly as she fastened her satchel and the grimoire, then set off along the embankment.

The chill air helped to clear Sage's head, and as she passed the garden plot, she let the letter drift further from her mind. She watched a squirrel snuffle sleepily into a juniper bush and shooed a fox from a patch of carrots.

The city centre was almost as quiet, as if nobody wanted to step out into the cold before they could properly swaddle themselves in woollen hats and furred gloves. Sage wrapped her coat closer, tucking her fingers into her palms as she peddled beneath the arch to the University.

All around, the grass lay as smooth and silent as it had the night before. There were no tracks in the frost or ringing of bells across the city. It was surreal, like the ritual that Sage had witnessed only hours before had never happened. The Crown Prince had died, and now the city moved on, minds always ticking towards the future and letting the past melt like ice beneath their feet.

Shuddering, Sage cycled unsteady over winter-slick cobblestones towards Newton Courtyard. It was early enough that all of the best bicycle posts would be free, and she could lock hers beneath a convenient gargoyle and protect it from potential snowfall. But she came to a squealing stop behind the Metallurgy Labs.

The librarian stood in the courtyard, leg kicked back against a wall while he buttoned up his Steward coat. Sage watched his agile fingers shift from his collar to his ears, where he began to remove several golden piercings. He left the studs in his eyebrow for last, which Sage thought might be painful, though he didn't even flinch. He simply dropped his piercings into a pocket, then lingered a moment amongst the arches.

He was gazing at the clouds clustered together in the violet sky and smudging out the sun. His dark hair tumbled down his neck, away from the sharp planes of his cheek and jaw. Sage wondered what he saw in the clouds but, when she peeked upwards, he turned from the courtyard into the University.