Page 30 of Inkpot Gods

This place has been sealed away for a year, left to be forgotten after the alchemists who had been working in Berkeley fled the city, chased away by their own creations and by an entire pantheon of angry Lunar deities. Leaving may have been the smartest thing they ever did, as it meant some of them were able to get out while they were still breathing.

(The ones who didn’t were collected and repurposed by the ones who did. There is no retirement in the alchemical world. Only recycling, into smaller and smaller versions of the self, carved up and portioned out by the survivors.)

The long corridors stand empty, the rooms echo with silence, shadows gathering on every flat surface. And yet there are no cobwebs in the corners, no dust on the abandoned equipment, no small scuttling things with dozens upon dozens of legs scurrying through the shadows. Water drips from a cracked pipe in one of the main lab areas, collecting drop by drop. It has already filled the room to a level of almost two feet, but there is no mold, no fungus, and nothing seeks to claim the artificial pool as its new kingdom. There are very few true dead zones in the world, few places where no forms of life can find a foothold. This has become one of them.

Once, people lived here. Worked here. Even thrived here. Once, this was a center for learning and terrible innovations. Everything ended in an hour, and is still over, still settling into the grave of its own ambitions.

The sound of metal scraping against stone is almost offensive as it cuts through the stillness, too loud and unforgivable to be permitted. In the deepest dark at the back of the largest lab, something stirs.

It does not live. It does not dream. But it awakens.

Bit by bit, it uncurls its spindly limbs. Bit by bit, it unmakes its own mausoleum. It is neither ghost nor ghast, is something undefinable and impossible, and the fruition of a plan put in place so very long ago that there is no accounting for the changes between here and now.

It turns, slowly, to consider its dead and frozen kingdom. It will find no restoration here.

Silent, it slides into the water without a ripple. Now is the time to rest and recover. Whatever will come will come. The future can still be changed, and the past … the past will remain a foundation on which to build every thing that follows.

Imperfection

TIMELINE: DECEMBER 3, 1881.

It has been nine years since John Baker swept down on a small village in the forested wilds of Massachusetts and snatched up the niece he barely knew like a diving kestrel snatches a mouse from the grass, clutching her tightly in his talons and sweeping her away from everything she’d ever known. Nine years of lessons and lies, nine years of the strangest drought ever to take hold of Boston. The servants complain about it constantly, with no small amount of smugness in their tones; his property has always included a luxuriously large greenhouse, the walls made of thick-paneled glass that amplifies and focuses the sun.

More importantly, because the greenhouse is enclosed, inside, he’s able to control the weather. The air is always hot and moist, and herbs and simples thrive in the near-tropical conditions he creates. If only half of them are for use in the kitchen, no one has to know that but his staff, who would never dream of commenting. They have rosemary and basil for their table while the houses around them go without, no matter how wealthy their masters might be, and if they also have foxglove and nettles and dead man’s trumpets, well, those are easy enough not to harvest for the stew.

Asphodel—she has been Asphodel now for longer than she was Floretta, and on the rare occasions she has to remember the name she once went by, she regards it with curiosity and some small measure of disdain, like a snake might regard its shed and rotting former skin—walks the greenhouse most mornings, preferring the humid warmth of the world inside the glass to the punishing sun of the world outside. She is a hothouse flower in her own manner these days, rarely seen outside without a parasol to cover her head and keep the sun away.

(Even in times of drought there must be rain. It thundered last summer, just before her fifteenth birthday, and she spent the full duration of the storm in the backyard, dancing in the rain like she had no idea when she was ever going to see it again. She’s always seemed most alive during storms. John has watched her when he’s had the chance, when he wasn’t struggling to harness the storm to his own ends. She’s always lovely, his strange orphan niece, but when the rain comes down and the heavens split wide, he thinks she might be beautiful. He thinks her beauty might be the kind that destroys the world.)

Nine years in his keeping has trained a wild woodland nymph into a respectable Boston socialite, sixteen years old and set to make her debut into society in just two years more. Her hair is still copper, tamed into thick curls that cascade over her shoulders and down her back; her eyes are still layered blue like river water running over stones. If her tongue is also sharp enough to flense skin from flesh, and her clever hands more suited to scalpels than embroidery needles, those things don’t show in her face, and she’s well-trained enough to keep her mouth shut and smiling when she has to.

Asphodel will never be an alchemist in her own right—her femininity is too indelible, and cannot be stripped out of her through any means he’s been able to discover, even when she’s begged him, voice raw and aching in the air. But she’ll make a fabulous alchemist’s wife once he’s had the chance to break her to the idea.

There have been no Moons since Deborah, although the little room has been far from unused; his art requires a certain amount of blood and bone, and a winsome teenage girl is a fabulous lure for a hunter. They’ve dismantled several unlucky souls in that same space, portioning them into canopic jars and white glass vials, and Asphodel has always been eager in her work, always cunning-handed and more than willing to bloody her pretty, slender hands.

Now, morning has broken on a dry, frozen December day. Lines of ice slash across the grounds, but there is no snow. Snow, which is only frozen water in the end, has been in short supply these last few years. The trees are suffering.

At the request of his groundskeeper, John has consulted with the local rainmaker, a toothless old alchemist who used to live in farm country, where he made his fortune calling rain out of empty clouds. The man is famous in certain circles, for his ability to control the weather. He wasn’t able to summon up so much as a drizzle.

“Something’s taken a dislike to Boston,” he said, almost leering. “Something doesn’t think we deserve the rain. Can’t say what it was, or who, but something has it out for us, and won’t let me through. There’s powers greater than alchemy in this world.” His eyes turned canny then, focusing on John. “This all started about when you brought that girl of yours home. Could be a virgin sacrifice would break through the wall.”

“We’re men of science, not superstition,” John snapped in return. “Asphodel is a good girl with a good head on her shoulders. She’s going to make a fine alchemist’s wife one day, and whoever wins her hand is likely to climb to the height of our field solely on the basis of her support. We’re not … slitting her throat to bring back the storms. The notion is absurd.”

“There’s something connecting her to the strangeness in the weather. If we snap that connection, things may return to normal.”

“I came here to request rain, not discuss the sacrifice of my ward. This conversation is over.”

He’d stood then, leaving his brandy behind as he turned and stormed out of the old alchemist’s office, leaving him and his outdated old ways behind.

That was almost two months ago. The old man’s house burned down a week after their meeting, the rainmaker still inside. It was the sort of accident that makes the papers for days after, a true tragedy, especially since all the homes surrounding his were left untouched by the flames, which had been intense enough to devour the structure whole.

The idea of arson was never suggested. No one had been seen going into or coming out of the old rainmaker’s house all day, and that sort of fire would have been impossible to orchestrate without someone on-site. Miss Cottingsly had smelt of lamp oil and smoke for days afterward, and had been required to stay in the kitchen when the constabulary came to inform John of his colleague’s death, out of the path of anyone who might have had their suspicions raised.

It perhaps says something about John’s character that he thought murder was a perfectly measured response to the mere suggestion that Asphodel might be part of the force keeping Boston drier than a bone, and could serve them best by being removed. She is his, his property from stem to stern, and until he hands her to another man for safekeeping, he won’t tolerate even the impression of a threat against her.

He can’t.

But this is December, and Asphodel walks the back garden alone, slipping out of the kitchen door with her shawl pulled tight around her shoulders, heading for the greenhouse. John watches her from the dining room window until she vanishes around the glass corner of her destination. Only then does he look away. He won’t be able to see her once she’s inside. He never can.