Page 113 of Quicksilver

“You couldn't have if you'd tried,” Lorreth shot back, grinning.

I wasn’t paying attention to their bickering. Danyawaswrong; I certainly did care that I had destroyed something so precious. I stared at the wall, pondering the shards, trying to strategize a way to pull them from the stone, when I felt the faintest tapping at the edge of my senses. The whisper I’d sensed inside the quicksilver back at the forge was a loud roar in comparison to this, but...I swore I heard it.

I spun around and found Fisher. “This sword wasn't just tempered steel. There was quicksilver in the blade.”

He nodded, displaying the faintest hint of satisfaction. “There was. Not much. Trace amounts. But yes, that's why it answered you when you commanded it to stop.”

“So...back in Zilvaren? It was never the iron, or the copper, or the gold that reacted to me? It was...”

Kingfisher nodded. “It's always been quicksilver. It was bound to many different alloys and metals before, back when there were plenty of Alchemists and the pathways were still open between our worlds. It made weapons more powerful. Turned them into conduits that could channel vast quantities of magic.”

My mind spun. “That’s why metal was so hard to find, then. Madra took it all. She wanted to keep the quicksilver away fromthe people. She knew there might be people like me within the city, capable of controlling it.”

When Kingfisher said no more, Ren inhaled and spoke instead. “Our historical records show that most Alchemists could only command objects if the item in question was comprised of at least five percent quicksilver. And even then, it was typical that they could only transmute the quicksilver from its solid to its liquid state so that it could be forged. There are no records of objects being fragmented like this.” He gestured to what remained of Danya's sword.

“Okay. So that makes me...ananomaly?” I looked to Kingfisher. I wanted his input on this. Regardless of the cat-and-mouse game we were playing with each other's feelings, if Fisher actuallyhadany of those, I still wanted to know what he made of Ren's revelation. He wouldn't meet my eyes, though. He leaned back against the map table, resting his weight against its edge, his jaw clenching and unclenching as he stared at the ground.

“Thatmakes you the most powerful Alchemist ever recorded,” Lorreth supplied. “Capable of changing how we've been fighting this war in ways evenwecan't imagine. Most of us were infants when the paths between realms closed and the Alchemists became extinct. Some of us hadn't even been born yet. We have no idea what battlefields used to look like, with an Alchemist in camp, ready to forge new weapons that draw magic—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! I don't know how to forge weapons that candraw magic!I can't even figure out how to make a relic!” I'd broken out into a cold sweat. “I've made zero headway with it. Not back at the Winter Palace. Not at Cahlish. The trials I ran here this morning were a total waste of time, too. If you're under any illusions that I am somehow going to be pivotal to winning this war, thenpleaserethink that strategy.”

“Precisely. If she can't even figure out how to wipe her own a—”

“Danya, I swear on the seven gods, if you don't shut up, I will toss you out of here myself,” Ren muttered darkly.

Danya rocked back as if she'd been slapped. Her lips trembled, eyes filling with tears. “You can't be serious,” she whispered. “You?You're just going to blindly fall in line with all of this? We are the ones who stayed. Who've fought in the mud and watched friend after friend die. When this human was born,we'dalready been committed to this fight for centuries!”

“You're right,” Ren snapped. “We've been stuck here, in the middle of nowhere, in a forgotten corner of our land, defending a border that the high-born assholes up north couldn't give a fuck about. For centuries. If this line falls, the entire realm falls. We won't be fighting this war another hundred years from now.”

“We will if we have to—” Danya began.

“No, we won't. Because every day, our numbers decline, and Malcolm's horde grows larger. There’s no game left to hunt here. Belikon isn't sending supplies to the front anymore. We have no wood for our fires. No food to fuel the troops. No clothes to keep them warm. No weapons to fucking arm them. So yes, I'll support a plan where a human magically shows up and helps us turn the tide of this thing, because without her, we'll all be drowned soon enough. And I'm not talking about in another hundred years, or even fifty, or even ten. We have one year, Danya. Twelve months. If we don't figure this thing out, by this time next year, Malcolm will have won.”

“Put your head between your legs. Maybe that'll help.” Lorreth carved off a slice of the apple he was eating and used the edge of his dagger to pop it into his mouth. Behind him, the sky tilted, see-sawing, the edges of the war camp a blur. I braced my hands against my thighs and bent double, straining to breathe. My chest was so tight.

Ren's words rang in my ears. I wanted to unhear them, but they replayed over and over, provoking a fresh wave of panic to hit me with every repetition. A year. Just one. They'd done everything they could to tip the scales in their favor, and nothing had worked. Now, it was merely a waiting game. The clock would run out, they wouldn't be able to hold the front here, and a hundred thousand ravening vampires would sweep across Yvelia in a blood-red wave of death.

UnlessIcould figure out how to work some fucking metal.

Gods, sinners, martyrs, and ghosts.

We were all soridiculouslyfucked.

“You do get used to it, y'know,” Lorreth said conversationally. “That overwhelming sense of impending doom. Eventually, it becomes background noise. You don't even notice it at all.”

“Where's...Fisher?” I gasped. I'd stumbled out of the war room after Ren had left to go and talk to some returning scouts. Danya had stalked out of the tent and headed off toward the river, growling under her breath. Lorreth had emerged ten minutes later and had sat down on a tree stump ten feet away, as unfazed as ever. But Fisher hadnotcome out of the tent.

“He went back to Cahlish.” Lorreth sank his teeth into another slice of apple.

“What?”

“Said he was going to see Te Léna.”

Te Léna? The sweet healer had taken such excellent care of me after the vampire attack, but I hadn't thought much about her since. Only, this was the second time Fisher had gone to see her recently, and neither time he'd been injured.

Gods, what the hell was wrong with me? This realm was paused on the brink of total destruction, and I was angry and plenty afraid of what that might mean for me and everyone else in Yvelia...but I was alsojealous. And that? That made me feel pathetic. I swallowed the questions I wanted to ask Lorreth—Are they together, Te Léna and Fisher? Does he like her? Do they have history?—ashamed that I'd even think them. Instead, I asked a far more appropriate question.

“Where the fuck...can I get...adrink?”