Twenty-Four: Aqua regia

In that moment, in that forest rotten with magic and burnt sorrel, I pushed away all of Mother’s words about acceptance and heirship. I wanted to scream, and throw, kick and punch and demand why why WHY Mother had seen fit to cripple my future.

“Sorin?” the queen asked, both gentle and impatient. She sounded like my childhood, like the woman who had brought Magda and me hot tea late at night when we stayed up telling each other ghost stories. Like the woman who’d chided us for playing too long by the river, thereby delaying her dinner because she’d not eat without us.

“Mother kept me from you.” I’d meant to ask, but it came out as a statement.

The queen nodded. “She did.”

“She kept me from Magda.” My voice caught as if Mother’s hands were around my throat.

“She did.”

“Why?”

The way the queen’s fingers spread across her thighs, and the look of hunger I saw as she eyed my pouches, pushed me to sit back. I rammed my balled fits into my hips and clenched my jaw. “Why?”

“Because you belong to her, by guild law. Because she covets your skills. Because she would not see the guilds die—would not have you wander off like so many guilder heirs to factory jobs that require less skill.”

“I would have stayed!” I pounded my fist into the ground. “I would have stayed for Master Rahad, for alchemy, for…” For Magda, I finished, silently.

“I know.” The queen moved the bucket to the side and wiped the back of her hand across her forehead. “So let’s talk about that, you and I. I have a position open, it would seem, for a royal alchemist, but Walerian tells me this is perhaps no longer what you want.” Half of her mouth turned up into a smile. “Are you afraid of alchemy, Sorin, after that trouble on the glacier?”

“You know about Master Rahad?” I asked, although, really, if Walerian reported to her, he’d likely seen the body as well. “Do you know how he died?”

Irritation flashed across the queen’s face so quickly I almost thought I’d imagined it. “He and I had a disagreement. He was supposed to go back to the capital, but it seems the ice took him instead.” She frowned, and it highlighted the lines around her mouth and the hollowness of her cheeks. I was not, I reminded myself, simply talking to an older version of Magda. “He’d never been the best of apprentices either.” Her eyes bored into mine, and I couldn’t bring myself to look away. It felt like she could see all the way through me, to the trees beyond the burnt circle in which we sat. “You’d be much better, I’d think. Especially after all of Amada’s training.”

“A…apprentice,” I stuttered.

“Mmm.” The queen nodded and smiled, although it didn’t quite reach her eyes.

“You an alchemist?” I asked. I searcher her neck for a tattoo, but the skin was as smooth and brown as it had always been. “Does Magda know? Does the kingdom know?”

“I doubt it. But don’t look at me like that, Sorin, like I’ve just killed your pet monkey. Iana was an alchemist, a guilded alchemist at that. Most queens have to be, after a fashion. We’ve a legacy of old magic to contain, and that’s hard to do with no knowledge of the unbound guilds.”

“So you’re all witches.” It wasn’t a question, and the disgust was more than evident in my voice.

“Your mother is a witch,” the queen returned with a biting tone. “I am an alchemist.”

“They’re both obscene.”

The queen chewed on her lower lip for a moment, contemplating her answer. Good. Let her wrestle with the same definitions I’d had to since the glacier.

“Not obscene, necessarily,” she said finally. “Alchemy is a bit more…efficient. You’ve found that out, haven’t you, with your explosive fungal pigments.”

The way she looked at my belt felt almost predatory. I put a hand over the full pouch of the blue-green and scooted down the log.

The queen laughed, startling a nuthatch on a barren branch above our heads and sending it flying into the afternoon sky. She reached into the pocket of her leather pants and pulled out a satchel of yellow-brown powder. “Foxfire spores. Come now, do you really think you’re the only alchemist to ever play with fungi?” She shook a thimbleful onto the cap of a nearby amanita mushroom, and then blew across the top. The mushroom began to glow a sickly yellow. “Just a small change. A reaction, as you say.” Her eyes danced. “But this bone oil of yours, now that is interesting. Master Rahad walked me through the steps as you showed him. It’s opened up a new world for us, and for alchemy.”

The queen leaned in. Her breath gusted over my face, hot and humid in the dry air, but I didn’t back away. I was desperate for her words.

“Who knows what other secrets you have? I’ve watched you, Sorin, and I’ve wanted you for a long, long time. Consider what being my apprentice would mean for your future, not just in alchemy, but with Magda.”

“I…” I stood, my mouth still agape. The queen stood as well. We breathed in tandem for what felt like hours as I wrestled with the data. To study with the queen… I let my mind drift toward that future. I’d be close to Magda. I would have access to the royal libraries and Master Rahad’s laboratory—my laboratory. I would be close enough to see Mother if I wanted to. But…but but but.

“Why are you here?” I whispered into the dry air. “Why are you here when there are dead guilders? Missing grandmasters. When Master Rahad’s body is frozen to a glacier, and you don’t even care. And why am I here, with alchemists and witches in a desiccated forest, probably surrounded by the amulets the old king used to seep magic into the glacial melt water, to poison the population of Gasta Flecha?”

“Alchemy, my young friend.” This time when she smiled, I saw her joy, and when she clasped her hand to my shoulder, warmth filled my body. With Mother, moments like this had always been hard-won. Here, with the queen, her affection came so easily I felt drunk. I wanted to submerge myself into her enthusiasm, and acceptance, perhaps not of my body, but of what I had achieved with alchemy. Did it matter, really, if magic and alchemy were different points on the same line if the Queen of Sorpsi controlled both? I had no interest in magic—never would—but it was hard not to be enticed. Every part of my life to this point had been about my pigments and their potential. Maybe it didn’t have to be thrown away after all.

“You’d really take me as an apprentice?”

The queen offered me her hand. I searched her eyes, thinking I might find some deeper truth, but all I saw was the woman who had raised me as much as Mother had. I put my hand in hers, and we stood, the soft smile never leaving her face. She took my belt from the ground and fastened it around my waist, taking care to refasten each pouch in the front where I could easily reach them.

“You are brilliant, Sorin,” she murmured as she knelt before me, the burnt sorrel crumbling into her pants.

Tears collected in the corners of my eyes. “My queen,” I mumbled.

She rose, took my hand again, and together, we walked into her hide tent. The inside was sparse, but a pile of thick wool blankets clustered in the center. I recognized the purple-and-red one as the top covering of the queen’s bed. Magda and I had played under its enormous width more times than I could remember. Made from baby alpaca, the soft fibers felt like a bed of tulip petals. The sense of familiarity was so strong that I closed my eyes and inhaled. I caught the familiar scent of woodsmoke, a base note of cedar—no doubt from Mother—and the faintest bit of the lemon soap the maids used to wash the palace textiles.

The queen led me to the blankets, and I sat without being asked. I slipped, effortlessly, into the oasis the queen provided. The tension from the glacier, the tension in my muscles, my mind, evaporated. There was no magic about, for I felt no heat, but time seemed slower. Even my heartbeat calmed.

“Sit with me tonight, my new alchemist,” the queen said. She wrapped the purple-and-red blanket about my shoulders, and her tenderness knit together so many wounds that still seeped in my heart. “Tell me about my daughter, and your journey here, and your pigments. Tomorrow, I’ll show you why you left home, and why you have no reason to return. An industrial revolution is beating at our borders, and I intend to welcome it, with you, and your alchemy, at my side.”