Page 83 of A Forbidden Alchemy

Polly was in the post office at an early hour, sitting at her station. Her pieces of parchment lay haphazardly around her, their neat lines of ink appearing in rapid tandem.

But each piece stilled when she saw me, brazenly crossing the threshold alone.

“Nina,” she said, standing and rounding the desk at once. She looked over her shoulder as though the policemen who once manned this square might come storming out of the walls. “Do you have news?”

“I have to speak with you.”

She eyed the street-facing windows. “What of the Alchemist?” she asked beneath her breath. “Please, tell me you found him.” Her eyes were bloodshot, and her teeth had reddened a spot on her lip.

I grimaced. I knew I could only give her a half-truth, and that it might break her. But at least afterward, I would be done with these deceptions. Already I felt less and less constricted.

“No,” I told her. “Domelius Becker is dead.”

Her face fell, her eyes becoming two fathomless pits, a slow wakening terror rearing in their depths.

“Polly, listen—”

“Then it’s done,” she whispered. “We’re done for.”

I nodded slowly, then steeled myself for my next words. “I have to tell him, Pol,” I whispered. I looked over my shoulder as she did, the square beyond the windows empty. “I’m sorry. I’m doing it today—or tonight, if I must wait.”

“Nina, you can’t ,” she whispered, her voice catching with urgency. Her face had reanimated. She gripped my hands fiercely. “You’ll die , Nina. I’ll die.”

“I don’t believe that,” I said, shaking my head, but tears were running freely down the slope of my nose. “Patrick loves me.”

“He won’t. Not once he knows, Nina. Loyalty is everything to these people. You don’t know them as well as I do.”

“I was raised by these people,” came my retort, more biting than I had intended. “I grew up in a town full of them, remember?”

Polly looked like I’d knocked the wind out of her. She shook her head in dismay. “You truly believe that, don’t you?”

I leveled her with a stare, the most empathetic I could conjure. “I do. And I believe Otto loves you as well.”

She stiffened. Dropped my hands.

“Do you love him, too, Polly?” I asked. “Could you stand to see his home burned down to the ground by fire Charmers?”

She had begun to cry, tears cascading over the apples of her cheeks.

“No,” she said. “I don’t want that.”

“Then there is no other choice,” I said gently. “There are infantrymen coming this way. Patrick needs to know. I’m sure they can put up a fight.”

“But they can’t win ,” Polly said wanly. She shook her head at the tiles. I saw the toll of the past years finally colliding with her. “What use are guns against fire Charmers?”

I took her shoulders in my hands. “I’ll bury them under piles of dirt if it comes to that,” I said. “I’m telling him, Pol. I came to let you know, because… because I wouldn’t fault you if you chose to run.”

“Run?” she echoed. “Back to the House of Lords?”

“Yes. But if that’s what you choose, then you should leave today. Patrick is traveling to Baymouth. But he’ll return before long, and when he does, I’ll tell him they’re coming, Pol. And I won’t need to say who it was keeping Tanner informed. He’ll piece it together.”

Polly shook her head, swallowed a sob. “I don’t know what to do.”

“I hope you’ll stay,” I bid her. “Patrick will show us mercy. I know he will.”

Polly looked at me once more, shook her head in doubt. “I hope so.”

I hugged her tightly, briefly, then left her to her scribbles.

I walked into the square. Margarite’s Modern Ladies, Seamstress Extraordinaire, bore up on the right, its windows still guarded by those faceless sentries.

I exited the square through the brick arch and traveled down salt-dusted streets, counting grates, imagining the numbers that could be encased within.

The hills rose in the distance, mined to holy hell with all manner of metal explosive.

They won’t come close , I heard Patrick say.

Heard it all the way back to Colson & Sons.

With Theo gone, the Margarite crew was left to do nothing.

Scottie and Otto seemed to have been unsuccessful in tracking him down.

They lingered by the bar, turned about the pub restlessly, infuriated Tess Colson with every gathering minute.

“Surely,” she gritted out, “there is somethin’ in this parish that begs your attention. ”

Briggs puffed on a cigarette and paced in tightening circles. “?’Spose we could head down to the market, mind the queues for a bit.”

“I’ll come,” Otto offered, tipping off the end of his stool. “Better than sittin’ on me arse.”

Scottie stretched with a yawn, reclining on his chair. “Might stick around, Mrs. Colson, if you don’t—”

“Go home, Scottie,” she interjected. “Pay a visit to your wife and your kids, for fuck’s sake.”

Scottie seemed more than a little cowed by the notion. But he stood and hiked up his sagging trousers. He nodded politely to Mrs. Colson, and then to me as he passed me at the door. “Mornin’, miss,” he grumbled.

With the departure of Briggs and Otto as well, it left only Gunner, Donny, and Tess. All three of them at the bar. All three suddenly focusing their attentions on me, standing by the door.

I paused in the motion of shaking slush from my hems. “What?” I asked. None of them blinked or shifted their gaze. I narrowed my eyes, suspicion dawning. “What is it?”

Tess Colson broke first. She muttered something beneath her breath that sounded like “Here we fuckin’ go,” then poured an absurdly large portion of whiskey into a waiting glass. “Come here, girl,” she said. “Gunner, move over.”

Gunner rolled his eyes. “Already, she’s usurped us, Donny. Did you hear that?”

“I’m blind, not deaf.”

“Shut up, you two,” Tess snapped. And then to me, “Well, hurry up. We ain’t got all day.”

It may have just been the early hour, but she seemed wearier, older. Like the past fortnight had aged her terribly. She took a generous gulp of the whiskey she’d poured, then left the rest to me. I eyed it as I approached and took a tentative seat between Gunner and Donny.

Gunner leaned in, his eyes two slits of glinting humor. “Patty said he’d let the cat out.” It was difficult to tell, but I thought he might be grinning beneath the matting of his beard.

I squirmed uncomfortably in my seat, well aware that Patrick was nowhere near.

“It seems my son ,” Tess said as though the word was tentative, “has chosen fit to tell you all the family secrets. Without runnin’ the idea by the rest o’ us, mind you.”She took another tired sip of her whiskey and sighed. “Far be it from him to seek anyone’s approval.”

I swallowed thickly. It seemed safest to say nothing. At least until I could gauge their reaction to this news. Did they know Patrick had found me absconding down the eastern tunnel? How much had he told them?

“Quite a shock, was it?” Donny asked lightly. “Left you speechless, apparently.”

Tess planted both elbows on the bar top and leaned in close to peer up into my face.

“You should know, had Pat asked me my thoughts, I would have told him not to say a damn word,” she said.

“I’d have told him that, given your past, you’ll likely find yourself a ship one day and he’ll never see you again.

I’d have told him that most romances between young men and pretty girls fizzle out, and that he’d be better to wait.

To test your loyalty before givin’ over all his confidence.

But”—and here, she leaned away, breaking her spell over me—“here we are. And what’s done can’t be undone, can it? ”

I blinked in quick succession, a rope of guilt cinching my insides. My mouth had gone dry. “If you mean to ask me if I can be trusted,” I said carefully. “Then the answer is yes.”

“That’s the thing,” Gunner said lowly. “What you say don’t matter. It’s what you do . Whether you take the information and run off with it.”

“I’m staying,” I said, far more boldly than I felt. “I’m not boarding some ship.”

“Right you are,” Tess Colson said gravely. “Because if you ever tried, darlin’, we’d bring you back, dead or alive.” She downed the last of her whiskey. “That’s the thing about knowin’ too much. It’s dangerous.”

The threat caused ire to prickle on my tongue. “I’d say threatening a Charmer of earth is rather dangerous, is it not?”

Movement from my left. Donny rising from his chair. From his waistcoat he drew a silver revolver, and I stumbled clumsily off my stool. Donny pointed the barrel away, out wide to the wall, and there was an earsplitting blast.

I jumped and covered my ears, my heart in my throat, blood pounding, and watched in astonishment as a bullet hovered an inch from the wall at which it had been aimed.

Then, it turned of its own accord, followed the length of the room.

It skirted the piano, the bay windows, swooped over Isaiah’s head as he slept.

It passed the door to the stairwell, the grandfather clock and gathered speed. It flew straight at me.

I closed my eyes before it could bury itself in my forehead, split my brain down its middle.

But there was no rupture. No pain. I opened my eyes again to see that bullet hanging again in the air, an inch from my nose.

“So’s threatenin’ a Smith of silver,” said Donny. “Even a blind one.”

A gust of air left me. The bullet clattered to the ground.

“Lord almighty, Donny,” Gunner groaned. “Patty will fuckin’ kill you for that.”

I turned slowly to stare at the youngest Colson brother, who had resumed his seat. He shrugged. “It’s important we all know where we stand, I think.”

“Apologize to her, Don,” Tess said gravely. “That was beyond the pale.”

“I wasn’t actually gonna shoot her,” he argued, scowling. “I like her.”

“Donny.”

“Fine. Apologies, Miss. It was right rude of me. I’d never really shoot you. Unless, of course, you ran your mouth all over yonder about my brother. Which is precisely why I thought it was a good idea to demonstrate—”

“I understand,” I said, my voice thin. “If I betray your confidence, you’ll kill me.”

“Don’t gotta be so harsh with her,” Gunner said, shaking his head at his mother. “We owe her a lot of lives.”

“We do,” Tess Colson agreed. She stared at me intently.

“And it leads me to thinkin’ perhaps there’s hope in all this.

” She leaned across the bar top and took my hands in hers.

“He believes he loves you. So much so, that it worries me,” she said.

“Keeps me up at night. Because love makes men blind—”

“Oy!” Donny interjected.

“—and many a woman would see it as an opportunity to pull the wool over their eyes. I’m prayin’ every night that you ain’t one of them, Nina Harrow. Do you hear me?”

I nodded slowly, feeling as though I watched the scene play out from a distance, spools of guilt and dread twining together. “I love him,” I said. It should’ve felt good to say, but it didn’t.

Tess stretched the moment, discerning, calculating, and I waited with bated breath.

Then she smiled. “Welcome to the family, then.”

Gunner held up his pint to me and downed his drink. “We’re a wretched lot,” he joked. “Try not to hold it against us.” He stood and headed for the street.

I breathed in for what felt like the first time since stepping out of the cold. Then spun. “Wait!” I called to Gunner, just as his hand reached the doorknob. He looked back at me.

“If Patrick gave one brother idium, surely he gave some to the other?”

A grin and a wink in response.

“What is your medium?” I asked him.

“Copper,” he said, tapping his one shining tooth. “How d’you think we made those bloody pipes and drums in the coal works?”

And then he disappeared out into the street, whistling a miner’s song.

I spent the rest of the day in my room, wringing my hands, watching the trolley and wagons and horse carts from the window, following the cap of every man who passed in case it was Patrick, feeling as though the pin of a grenade had been pulled free and time was sprinting toward an impending explosion.

By nightfall, my fingernails were bitten all the way down, and I could hear that freight train bearing down upon me.