Page 62 of Inkpot Gods

“As I was saying,” says Roger. “I’m Roger Middleton, and I’m the Chair of the Linguistics Department at UC Berkeley. I understand you’re a student there. You’ll probably see me on and around campus—I like it there, so I tend to spend a reasonable amount of time in my office. I am also, thanks to the man who made me, the living embodiment of Language. I can speak anything if you give me a few minutes to listen and adapt to it. I can read anything if you give me just a little bit longer than that. And reality follows my instructions.”

“Meaning…?” asks Lilianne.

“Meaning I try very hard to suggest and ask, rather than instruct, which is a funny position for a teacher to take, but there we are. If I tell you to do something, you’ll do it. You won’t have a choice. I told your shoulder to stop bleeding, and it stopped, long enough for Judy to get her layer of peach pulp over the wound. Putting you back together was very much a group effort.”

A group effort Lilianne doesn’t fully understand, given the way Erin is looking at her, like she’d far rather rip her apart than help to keep her in one piece. She doesn’t say anything. She’s learning, quickly, that these people will keep talking as long as they’re not interrupted: she can learn more by letting them ramble on than she can by trying to guide them. For now, anyway.

“Yes, yes, we’re all very special and clever,” says Dodger. “I’m Roger’s twin sister, Dodger Cheswich—and yes, we have different last names. Reed made us, but he wasn’t exactly the child-rearing type. He had us adopted by families on opposite sides of the country, as far apart as he could get us without sending us to different continents.”

“He would have done that if he hadn’t been so determined to make you in the shadow of the American Alchemical Congress,” says Erin. “This is where Asphodel Baker was thwarted, and where she once defined the field of play. He had to thumb his nose at them in his own creator’s domain.”

She slants a glance at Lilianne, like she’s waiting to see how the young alchemist will react to what might be two large revelations: that James Reed was also an alchemical construction, the first known cuckoo, or that he’d been made by Asphodel Baker, best known as an author of children’s literature.

Lilianne is trying not to antagonize these frankly terrifying people, but all she can do upon receiving that look is shrug. “Yes, and?”

She knows about Asphodel Baker. She chose her name because of Asphodel Baker (and because her mother’s mother was named Lily, and if she was going to trade the name they gave her in for a newer model, it seemed kind to keep some connection to the family that has been so supportive and loving during her transition). And she’s an alchemist! Every female alchemist knows about Asphodel Baker. It’s one of the first things they learn when they start their studies: the alchemical world exists, the American Congress is mired so deep in sexism and tradition that it barely acknowledges women can read, and Asphodel Baker was the best alchemist North America ever produced.

She was a rare talent, a prodigy, one of those storybook savants who arise once a generation, if that. Asphodel definitely fell on the “if that” side of the equation, because it’s been five generations since her birth and no one’s seen another alchemist like her. There may never be anyone like her ever again.

James Reed was an influential-enough figure that he features in basically every alchemical text written over the last hundred and fifty years, but he always appears as a fully grown individual, no family, no history, no past. Just James Reed, apprentice to Asphodel Baker—first and last apprentice she ever claimed in the public forum. He was her legacy. The reports disagree on whether he was only her student or also her son, also her lover, also her creation.

Lilianne came down on the side of “lover and creation” a long time ago, seeing James Reed as possibly the only person Asphodel could ever have allowed herself to love: a man of her own manufacture, who knew what she wanted him to know and started from a place she understood, even if all self-aware creations must one day move beyond their beginnings. He was his own man, but he was also hers, and knowing what she knows about Asphodel Baker, that must make him the only man she could ever truly love.

Everyone is staring at her now. Lilianne wilts a little, trying not to squirm in her seat. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I thought everybody knew about Asphodel Baker. She’s sort of, well. She’s something of a hero to women in alchemy. She was a trailblazer.”

“Hear that?” asks Erin of Roger and Dodger, tone snide. “She blazed trails.”

“Is that what the kids are calling it these days,” mutters Roger, without the upturned lilt at the end of his sentence to indicate a question. His “is” was apparently rhetorical. He focuses on Lilianne. “We don’t get to tell you how to think or what to do with your life. We could. I could. We all know that, and we’re too ethical to go ‘blazing trails’ through your free will. If I told you to go home and never think about alchemy again, you’d do it. You’d do whatever I told you to, and you’d think it was your own idea if I worded it the right way—which I would absolutely do. I am very, very, very good at being specifically the kind of monster I was made to be, following Asphodel’s blueprints. She wasn’t a hero. She wasn’t the Queen of Wands. She was the mother of monsters.”

“When he starts breaking out the Up-and-Under, that means he’s serious, and someone’s going to have to rock him to sleep tonight,” says Dodger, tone flat. “He’s not wrong, though. Asphodel wrote those books to keep her teachings safe for future generations, and she’s both the Queens we see over the course of the series, Wands and Swords. Both of them have parts of her to share. The Queen of Wands wants everyone to be safe inside the Impossible City, which is Asphodel wanting to lift people up, to teach them. But the Queen of Swords wants everyone to be under her control, mind, body, and soul, which is also Asphodel. She split herself in two, just like she split the Doctrine, because it was the only way to make her small and simple enough to live on in children’s literature.”

“That’s ridiculous,” says Lilianne.

“Is it?” asks Dodger. “Because I didn’t finish my introduction. Everyone else got to go end to end, but not me. So this is me, reclaiming my time. I’m Dodger Cheswich. I’m Roger’s twin sister, and I am the living incarnation of Mathematics, which translates way too frequently into being the living incarnation of Time. Try not to think about it too hard. I don’t work on campus, unlike half these weirdoes”—she indicates everyone else with a sweep of her hand—“but I was a student there. I finished off the healing on your shoulder by pushing everything to move faster, so that the tissues had months to recover in minutes. Genetically, Asphodel Baker is my mother, and if she ever decides to crawl out of whatever shallow grave Reed dropped her in, I’ll be front of the line to break her nose.”

“Just her nose?” asks Erin, voice mild and curious. “I’d think you’d be a lot more creative than just a nose.”

“I’m trying to be mindful,” says Dodger.

Erin laughs, the sound as wild as a grackle’s cry.

Lilianne squirms. “All right. Not that I don’t appreciate you coming to save us—I do, I really, really do—but now that we’re done being in danger, can I go?”

“Sorry, no,” says Roger. “We need you to tell us everything you know about the lab you found, and the alchemists who used to work there. It’s important. And we’re not going to let you leave until you do.”

Lilianne looks around at the motley assemblage surrounding her, and for the first time since waking up in their library, she feels truly, inescapably trapped.

Healing

TIMELINE: AUGUST 23, 2018.

Things get awkward after that. Lilianne isn’t sure how to talk to people who seem intent on holding her captive, and her captors seem content to let her process the situation and explain it to them later. It’s not until David pushes away from his spot at the counter and starts for the door back to the hall that Lilianne moves, twisting in her seat and holding out an arm like she thinks she could stop him. He’s bigger than her in every respect, taller and broader, with biceps as big around as her thighs. There’s no way she can force him to do anything.

But she doesn’t have to force him. He stops and looks at her with easy curiosity, waiting to see what she’s going to say.

“David, please,” she begins. She falters there, not sure how she’s supposed to continue. “I didn’t … I haven’t done anything wrong. Please. Just take me home.”

“Do you know why I hate alchemists?” he asks, philosophically.