Page 65 of Inkpot Gods

“Yes,” says Erin. “It wasn’t just incarnate forces that alchemists couldn’t handle: before Asphodel, they couldn’t create constructs capable of mastering alchemy in their own right. She made the first self-aware constructs, and she didn’t start with Reed. Those constructs are also considered cuckoos. They’re your cousins, in a way, and they manage their own affairs for the most part. When Reed destroyed the American Congress, dozens of constructs were released from their masters. They’re still out there, living ordinary lives with bones made of carved ivory or organs made from purified metals. No one will ever know, unless they get autopsied by particularly open-minded doctors. Asphodel figured out the first steps. James Reed did the rest.”

“What did Reed do? What did Asphodel do? And what does any of this have to do with that lab?” asks Artemis. “I say we just pry open the door, drop down a bunch of explosives, and blow the thing back to hell.”

“Two problems with that,” says Judy. “First, it’s under a fairly large area of residential Berkeley. If we blow it up, a lot of innocent people are going to die when the street collapses inward. It’s going to be messy and horrible, and it won’t make us any better than the alchemists.”

“And secondly?”

“Secondly, they built the damn thing from Roman concrete infused with the blood of the divine. The blood of my people. It’s self-healing. Blow it up, kill a bunch of people, and then have to deal with the apparent local mass psychosis when it puts itself back together and they can’t handle that much proximity to the alchemical world.” Judy shakes her head. “Unless you have a mechanism for breaking down the base components of the lab, physical demolition isn’t the answer.”

“It was just a suggestion,” says Artemis sullenly.

“As to what this all has to do with the lab, we know they were making cuckoos there.” Erin gestures toward Kelpie. “Proof positive that they were up and running and doing what they came here to do.”

“It wasn’t just me,” says Kelpie uncomfortably. “I was just the only survivor.”

Artemis puts a hand on her arm, and she leans into the Lunar, clearly seeking comfort.

“What Asphodel did to change things was exist,” says Erin. “There was something about her that was … strange. She wasn’t an incarnate anything, but her blood had a vitality in it that didn’t make sense according to the ways we usually measure such things. By using her own blood as part of the quickening process, she was able to create constructs who could think. Who could harness the forces of reality and bend them to their own will. Those constructs were a large part of why the Congress continued to reject her even after she began making breakthroughs in the application of then-modern science to alchemy. What did it matter if she could use electrical current rather than lightning to power her workings if you were worried about those same workings deciding that they needed to rise up and destroy you? But Asphodel never managed to embody anything beyond humanity.”

“It sounds like that was more than enough,” says Smita. “We’re moving into breaking-the-laws-of-god-and-man territory here.”

“Oh, we’ve been there since day one,” says Erin. “After Asphodel died, James Reed inherited all her property—including her body, which the official record says he broke down into its smallest components, and used to manifest his own works. Every incarnate force to have been caught in the canopic jar of a cuckoo’s heart did so because it was following the legacy of Asphodel Baker.”

“Didn’t we know this already?” asks Dodger. “I already said Asphodel was my biological mother, when I was trying to be all cool and terrifying for the new girl. I know I did. I was there.”

Erin sighs, beleaguered, and Lilianne feels suddenly sympathetic toward her. It must be hell, trapped with the living Doctrine and forced to play the straight man to their apparent determination to take absolutely nothing seriously if they don’t absolutely have to. “You’re not putting the pieces together,” Erin says, and turns to look at Lilianne and Smita. “Kelpie was asking why the lab’s defense systems would still be active, why it would send etiäinen after you when, assuming you’ve both told us the truth, you didn’t do anything more hostile than take a shower and drip on some floors.”

“Yes, why?” asks Smita.

“I’ve already told you,” says Erin. “They were making cuckoos. That means the lab here in Berkeley contained a certain quantity of Asphodel Baker’s remains. She was the mother of monsters. Not all her children are estranged, and the ones who aren’t will keep their mother safe.”

Silence falls over the kitchen, heavy and awkward. Roger is the first to break it, lifting his mug and scowling as he finds it empty. “And now the doors are open,” he says. “The seal on the lab’s been broken.”

“The door wasn’t locked,” says Smita. “It was technically open this whole time.”

“Not if the alchemists closed the doors intentionally when they fled. On a sympathetic level, that would have sealed the whole place off, and kept whatever was walking around inside contained. But now the seal is broken. Whatever’s in there can potentially get out.”

“That means we have to go back in,” says Artemis. The others turn to look at her. She’s looking down at the kitchen table, shoulders tight. “If the etiäinen are active, and the security systems are still functional, that means Asphodel’s remains are still down there. They weren’t removed when the alchemists left. We can’t let those get into someone else’s hands.”

“Someone else?” asks Lilianne, blankly.

Artemis shoots her a venomous look. “You. Some untrained, independent alchemist who doesn’t have anyone to stop them from doing something deeply, deeply dangerous with one of the most powerful alchemical ingredients ever to have been discovered.”

“And as long as it’s down there, the other alchemists have good reason to come back to Berkeley,” says Roger grimly. “You know what that means.”

“It means I need to make more coffee,” says Dodger.

“It means we’re going back down there.”

“Same difference,” she says, and moves toward the coffee machine.

Smita shoots Lilianne an apologetic look. “I’m very sorry about all this, but it looks like you’re going to be coming with us on a field trip. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Would it matter if I did?”

“No,” says Smita. “But I’m sure we can find you something clean to wear. Come on, I’ll show you to the guest room.”

Everyone else waits until Smita leads Lilianne back out of the kitchen to the stairs. Then they all begin talking at the same time, voices overlapping until they press each other flat, like sheets of vellum stacked up on an academic’s desk. They get louder and louder, their collective objections piling so high that it seems impossible for them to get any higher.