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Story: A Forbidden Alchemy

The halls were filling with students, all identical to the next in their deep Artisan blue. Theodore paid them no mind at all. “I insist,” he said. “As long as you stop calling me Theodore. Just Theo will do.”

“Theo, I really—”

“Come on,” he said, and he took my hand in his, just like that, and as though he’d magicked it, some of his light trickling onto me.

That’s how it was from that moment onward: Theo leading me through runnels of apprentices, me basking in his glow. Hot drawing rooms and mad headmasters and the promise of passions big enough to consume.

Big enough to kill you.

CHAPTER 10

THE TRENCH TRIBUNE

MURMURS OF STRIKE ACTION IN THE BRINK

Speculation has arisen from the Northern mining towns that a strike may be forthcoming after a third mine collapse across the continent in as many consecutive days, as well as a gas explosion in Kenton Hill, tolling hundreds dead. The information was offered by an anonymous Scribbler who allegedly wrote to the House of Lords, informing them of a number of unsanctioned meetings and even suspicions of a union for Crafter’s rights.

This coincides with other rumors of unknown origin spreading in the Northern and Eastern provinces, casting aspersions as to the legitimacy of Belavere’s siphoning ceremonies. Whispers suggest a possible link between such accusations and the rousing of a so-called union.

The Right Honorable Lord Tanner, however, assured this reporter that the racket is, in his words, “nonsensical.”

“The siphoning ceremony is a sacred religious ritual upheld for hundreds of years in our nation’s history. The idea that the siphoning of idium has been somehow corrupted is impossible, and quite frankly, an illusion of the desperate. Only Idia may bestow a man [or woman] with a faculty for magic, and idium cannot unlock what is not present.”

The Right Honorable Lord also offered his sincerest sorrows to those in mourning after the recent catastrophes. “Long live those souls lost to us. And long live Belavere.”

The wordsKenton Hillseemed to leap from the page. They racketed around my head all the way through my classes, where I performed averagely aside from Headmaster Dumley’s private lessons.

I was in the first dregs of my second year at the Artisan school. I now spoke without my Scurry dialect without much thinking.

I’d never heard from my father. He must have assumed I’d become an Artisan when I didn’t return home that day. I wondered if he’d tried to pay a Scribbler to send me a note, only for them to fail to find a Nina Harrow.

It had been Theo who had handed me the newsprint at breakfast.

I was headed to Aunt Francis’s house before curfew, clutching the newsprint in my hand. She lived only a short way from the school, just beyond the National House, where she worked in the treasury, making coins from nickel alongside a slew of other Smiths.

At this time of night, the streets were slower, filled with music. It floated out of windows and traveled on the breeze. Insects chirped along, the water trickled by in its troughs, the city of Belavere always in complete harmony with all its working parts. Whenever I ventured out on the weekends, I was reminded of why I’d so badly sought it in the first place. Such things weren’t always so clear from inside the school’s walls.

Aunt Francis opened the door to receive me herself. Her station as a Smith was not so high that she could afford servants, yet her terrace home was lovely. It was humbly decorated with fine furnishings she proclaimed were family heirlooms. Her being the last real remaining Leisel made Aunt Francis’s home an exhibition of artifacts that I did not feel comfortable sitting on or eating off.

She was not the sort of woman who embraced another or even smiled too widely. She never seemed particularly thrilled to see me, and yet there was evidence to the contrary. There was always a plate of cake waiting and a teapot steaming when I visited. She looked over my face and person before remembering to invite me over the threshold, as if searching for signs of harm. She always, always asked a thousand questions about my classes, about my interactions with others, about anycorrespondence I might have received from Lord Tanner. I never told her about the letter.

I walked across her trim carpeted floors to the kitchen when she bid me to come inside.

“You no longer run to get to the cake,” she said. “Thank the heavens.”

I smiled a little for her benefit. I did not tell her it was because I no longer feared a skipped meal, or that somewhere between twelve and thirteen, I’d departed childhood.

We sat. She looked at me squarely. I looked at my fingers.

“How are your classes?” she asked first, then sat up a little straighter, if it were possible. “Are you progressing well with Professor Dumley?”

“Yes.”

Earth Charming, I’d learned, was a matter of weight and scale. The more there was to be moved, the harder it became. Professor Dumley said the magic was a muscle that would grow stronger with practice. But I was making fine progress—more progress, I thought, than he could quite believe.

Overall, I feared I was only a novelty. If it weren’t for the fact that I was the only living person who could charm earth, I would probably be of no consequence at all.

But Iwasan earth Charmer, and the title lent itself to higher praise than I was worth.

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