Chapter III

Tower of the poisoners, Hathes

Alivet was somewhere stifling. Heat enveloped her, bathing her in perspiration. Alivet opened her eyes and a face swam above her, lizard eyes alight with curiosity.

“You’re awake,” a woman’s voice said. “How are you feeling?”

“I don’t know,” Alivet said, and the woman laughed, low and not altogether kind.

“I know you,” Alivet said, for it was the woman from her dream of the parc verticale, with the striped, translucent skin.

“Of course you do. I have visited your dreams. My name is Gulzhur Elaniel. And you will be coming to see me very soon.”

“How?” Alivet asked.

“Through your dreams, of course. How else?”

“But you’re not real.” Alivet was starting to wake up now. The woman’s face was fading like a leaf in autumn.

“Come,” Gulzhur Elaniel said, frowning. “You know better than that, Alivet. You know that the truth may be attained through dreams: the drugged visions that plants give you, or simply those that come to you at night, when you lie defenceless. Even in sleep, you seek out the truth. How much more eagerly will you seek it out when you are awake? I know about the Search. I know the store your people place in the royal roads of the unconscious.”

“Listen—.” Alivet started to ask the woman how she knew about the Search, but then Gulzhur’s glistening face was gone and she was awake.

“Alivet? Can you hear me?” She knew that voice. Ghairen was leaning over her. Her throat was raw and dry and her head throbbed like a drum. She was still fully dressed, wrapped in her own skirts as though mummified. She remembered clinging to him, shaking in his arms, and she felt the heat rush to her face.

“I can hear you. Don’t shout.” What was he doing here in her bedroom, so early in the morning? Don’t start thinking, Alivet told herself.

“I’m sorry. I’ve been worried about you.” A cool hand brushed her forehead. Memories of fire and blood came flooding back.

“Celana—is she all right?” Alivet doubled up, coughing.

“Yes, she’s all right. Her arm is burned and she has a cut hand, and you both breathed in a lot of smoke, but otherwise you’ll be fine.”

“Has she told you what happened?” How much did Ghairen know? Alivet wondered.

“No. I gave her a sedative and put her to bed. What was she doing in the alchematorium?” Ghairen’s glance was sharp.

“She just wanted to see what I was doing, I think,” Alivet said. It was hardly a convincing explanation, but Ghairen appeared to accept it.

“I’ll talk to her later,” he said. “Are you well enough to get up? There’s something I want to show you.”

“What is it?”

“It’s in the alchematorium.”

She had not seen Ghairen in this mood before, a kind of suppressed excitement, almost fey. It was as though the fire had clarified her perceptions, pared her down to the essence of the world. The immutable processes of alchemy: this is the phase of crystallisation, where dreams start to become real.

“Very well,” Alivet said. “Show me.”

She could smell the smoke even before she set foot in the alchematorium. The hallway stank of its sourness. Her throat ached. Ghairen hastened along beside her, his robes stirring up a drift of ash.

“Look at this,” he said and held open the door.

Alivet stepped through into the alchematorium. The fire had scorched the wall nearest to the door, coating it with a thick layer of soot. The room reeked of smoke and the smothering odour of the fire-powder, a cloyingly sweet smell. Alivet put her sleeve to her face. The remnants of the crucible that had contained the antinomy mixture lay upon the workbench like shattered, frozen bubbles. But the workbench itself was glistening with a layer of frosted red snow. As Alivet stared, a shaft of sunlight arched through the window. The substance grew as bright as fire, as if touched by a taper, and Alivet cried out, momentarily blinded. She put a hand to her eyes. Red sparks flickered across the dark field of her palm. She turned to see that Ghairen, too, was shielding his face.

“What is it?”

“I was hoping you could tell me,” Ghairen said.

Together, they drew the blinds down across the windows, but the substance still continued to spark and gleam. There was no need to use a lamp. The substance provided an illumination of its own, like a heap of garnets in firelight. Alivet took a spatula and scraped some of it up from the workbench. It was hard and brittle, a kind of crystalline grit.

“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” she said.

“Neither have I. But you see how it behaves, Alivet? You see how it holds the light?”

Alivet nodded. “I think we may have found your carrier.”

“But what caused it? Was it the antimony? What exactly was in that mixture?”

“The residue of the tabernanthe, and antimony. It’s true that I was working towards a phase of crystallisation, but I don’t see how it could have produced something like this.” But even as she spoke, Alivet was seeing the alembic shatter and Celana’s blood running over the polished surface of the workbench.

“The blood,” she said, aloud.

“What?”

“Celana cut herself when the alembic broke. Her hand was bleeding. It was her blood that reacted with the mixture, not anything I put in it. A drop of human blood, a sacrifice to the spirit of the plant.”

“Have you heard of such a process taking place before?”

“No—the use of blood is forbidden in alchemy. It’s one of the first principles. It’s viewed as black science.”

“It will need to be tested,” Ghairen said. His face was a study in abstracted calculation and Alivet, to her dismay, realised what was going through his mind. Would a small quantity of this unusual substance be enough to defeat the Lords, or would they need more? And if they needed more, who would be the one to supply the blood? Alivet feared for Celana and herself. She said quickly, “I’ll test it.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m the one who has the experience with hallucinogens. Isn’t that why you brought me here?”

Ghairen gave her a dubious look. “You’re not in the best of health right now.”

He seemed genuinely concerned for her welfare, but doubtless it was just that he wanted the best results from the test. Once again she pushed away the memory of that evening in Ghairen’s bedroom, of his voice murmuring in her ear. He did not care about her, she told herself, but was simply trying to lull any suspicions that she might have; seduce her into complicity, or friendship, or more.

“I’ll be fine,” she said, quickly.

Ghairen was obliged to agree. He fetched the shiffrey servitor to clean the alchematorium while Alivet set about carefully removing the substance from the workbench. It would have to be in a suitable form for ingestion. Given its antinomic antecedents, Alivet thought that burning a very small amount in a brazier and inhaling the smoke might be the best method. But she did not want to do the test in the alchematorium, with its current atmosphere of acrid fumes. She said as much to Ghairen.

“You can undertake the test in your own room, or in mine, if you wish. It’s quiet; you’ll be undisturbed.”

She made the mistake of looking into his face. His expression was carefully bland, but she knew she was not the only one with memories. It would be too tempting to forget about all this hallucinogenic scheming and just sink back down onto Ghairen’s divan to lose herself in his arms. For some reason, however, the image made her think of Madimi Garland: a salutary shock.

“I’ll use my room,” Alivet said.

The coals of the brazier glowed in the darkness, almost as brightly as the substance that Alivet now carried inside an alembic: the powder formed of antimony, tabernanthe, blood and pain. Ghairen was right, the substance absorbed light into itself and then released it, dispelling the shadows that clustered about the room. Now, he sat beside her, watching anxiously.

It seemed that Celana had not yet woken from the sedative. Alivet had asked to visit the sleeping girl to check for herself that Celana was not badly hurt, but Ghairen had refused.

Alivet, however, had been insistent and at last the Poison Master, for the sake of peace, had allowed her through into Celana’s room. It was similar to her own, rich and sombre. A scatter of bronze leaves chased across the walls. Celana lay on the bed, dressed in her shift, with one arm bandaged. She breathed peacefully and Alivet did not have the heart to disturb her.

“You see?” Ghairen had said, with a touch of impatience. “Just as I told you.”

“That’s a relief,” Alivet had replied. Indeed, it was nothing more than the truth; she would have been unable to concentrate on the test with the worry of Celana twinging at the back of her mind like a toothache.

The brazier was beginning to smoulder, sending a thread of smoke up into the room and making Alivet’s throat sore all over again. Perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea to inhale the stuff, but it was too gritty to be soluble into a tincture and she did not like the idea of injecting the substance. She had seen too many fellow citizens succumb to the allure of the swamp poppy; the tiny needles with their intricate wooden handles littered the shores after festivals, but the opium brought little that was new to the Search, though it was true that it was a useful sedative.

So the brazier it was. Alivet stirred the coals with a metal rod, sending a shower of sparks fluttering up the sides. She made sure that the four feet of the brazier were firmly planted on the stone base that Ghairen had provided for the purpose. The last thing she wanted was to leap up in the grip of a trance and knock the thing over. One fire was already too many. A straight-backed chair stood next to the brazier. Settling herself upon it, Alivet took a pinch of the glittering red powder from the alembic with the tongs and scattered it over the coals.

Given the brightness of the powder, she was careful not to look at it directly and this proved wise. From the corner of her eye, she saw the coals flare up, catching the light. Ghairen gave her an encouraging smile. The room was suddenly as bright as day. Her own cowering shadow marched across the panelled walls. The flare died down to a more muted glow, and when Alivet glanced cautiously at the brazier she saw that the coals themselves were red and sparkling. Alivet took the water-jug and let a few drops fall into the heat. The brazier hissed like a serpent and a column of smoke reared up. Alivet leaned into it and breathed deeply. She repeated the procedure twice more, then sat back.

Her head was filled with fumes: she detected the iron scent of blood, but also a deep, bright sweetness. It was as though light had been transmuted into smell. Alivet closed her eyes.

Gradually, by degrees, her body became detached from her consciousness. Alivet left it and slipped sideways into the air. It was very easy to leave herself behind in this way, a far simpler matter than the endless unbuttoning required by her clothes. She looked back and saw her body still seated by the brazier: prim in the restrictive garments, eyes serenely closed, hands folded in her lap. Ghairen was leaning forward, studying her face, but making no move to touch her. Alivet turned away from her body and found that the room had disappeared.

Where the wall of the poisoners’ tower had been, and the city of Ukesh beyond, she was now gazing out across a field of stars. It was the most beautiful sight she had ever seen: suns strung like rubies across the sea of night, great spinning clouds that were the webs in which those suns were born. A planet burned like fire behind her, but she had no time to look. Great presences swept by, their tails flickering between a thousand points of light. She was falling in the wake of an immense being, its gaze fixed on some impossible horizon. Comets blazed in its path and spun about its head like tendrils of fiery hair.

Alivet, her mouth open, knew that she was screaming, but there was no sound at all in this teeming vastness. A green world loomed below her, marbled with seas and mountains and plains, veiled in cloud. I know that place! She fell towards it—and then something hissed inside her head. Alivet turned and found she was looking into an immense double countenance: male on one side, female on the other. Its mouths were open, it was spitting with hatred. Alivet, after the first shock, recognised the mayjen: the spirit of the plant from which—or so the shiffrey alchemist had told her—Ghairen’s poison had come.

“But you’re gone!” cried Alivet, and the mayjen said with ringing triumph, “No, I was given to you.”

It reached out a clawed hand and touched a finger to Alivet’s shoulder. She was spun away with great force, turning and turning in the roaring field of stars …

… and was spat out into an unfamiliar room at a pair of striped feet.