24. Otherwise

All that Ifi needed to come to a decision was clarity, which took the form of a dull yellow potion stuffed in the back of one of her display cases. The wax seal came apart easily; she pried off the old cork and let the ugly odour of sulfur hit her. The herbs she had put in to mask the stench helped little, only making it taste like a laboratory fire. She swallowed quickly, washing it down with half a cup of horribly oversteeped tea, then leaned back in a kitchen chair and counted down heartbeats until the effects kicked in.

A brief spike of nausea smashed through her, going away as soon as it made her flinch. In its wake, the churn of her emotions stilled, solidifying into a heavy sediment that slowly settled in the bottom of her stomach, forming a layer of viscous, revolting sludge. Or, at least, that's how she imagined it; the potion wasn't, strictly speaking, a calming draught, nor was it meant to rid her of the capacity to feel. All it did was numb her thoughts to influence; none of that fear, none of that confusion, none of that want went really away, only transforming into a mute kind of a weight that would slip between her fingers if she tried as much as to grasp at it.

She fumbled to her feet, swaying slightly, the balance of the world playing tricks on her. The broken piece of Shard's shell—if that was what it really was—remained on the table; she would rather not be reminded. Distantly, she noted it should probably disturb her that even the below-spawn's name, and the whole string of associations it summoned, registered as not much more than a series of dull throbs: the sort of a pain one easily learns to live with. With an umbrella in hand she stormed into the drizzle outside, rushing to put as much distance between her life and herself before the potion expired.

Still, there was a kind of wicked poetry—even her blunted brain could recognize it—in the fact that this elixir was a by-product of her ridiculous desires, the very same ones that got her into this mess. It sat at the halfway point to that "mystickal elixir of dumb whoredom" she had cooked up out of a pornographic fantasy; the stupefying power of salts of sulfur mixed with dissociative toxins, but without the overpowering aphrodisiac distillates, nor the thought-destroying lunar vitriol. What exactly this poetry meant, what this halfway stoppage indicated—that was harder to grasp, and in any case she didn't exactly feel like she wanted to comprehend it. Truth be told, she didn't feel anything exactly, her thoughts dissolving and fraying into empty noise before they could fade into emotions. This, in turn, put her in the perfect state for quickly dismantling and packing one's life away.

Not so long ago, the idea that she could just remove herself from the Middle City seemed preposterous: she had so many obligations here, so many business dealings, so many contracts, commissions, agreements large and small that all worked to bind her into the trade bloodstream of the world of the guilds. But now, nothing seemed particularly real, and the moment the hawkish old lawyer of the Subtle Fellowship of Brewers heard the phrase "retained at the High Table" he replaced his frustrated frown with a focused smile. Who cared, after all, for some broken ties if it meant that a member of the guild was so elevated?

"They will keep me in a cage, you know," Ifi offered to him as he was dictating yet another release form to his scribe. "Or at least I hope so."

He hacked a laugh and asked if she was drunk; she tried to laugh back and didn't exactly manage. The signatures she put on the documents came in slanted and unsteady but, as the lawyer assured her, good enough for business. Then, thumping the pile of papers that used to be her life, he explained to her—slowly, as if to a cow—that it all would have to be cleared with the guild council, but that he didn't really expect any issues there. The Fellowship had a good couple of years; they would reimburse Ifi's clients, take in the care of her workshop, and ask for nothing more in return than her acquiting herself well in the service of the side branch of the Glassmakers.

"And besides," the lawyer added, accepting a cup of coffee from his hare-lipped secretary, "you don't even have apprentices. Finally a good thing came out of your… you know."

The alchemist knew, or at least she thought she knew; in the surface of her cup, she watched the thin layer of foam dissipate into the black drink beneath.

"The council meets in a week," he continued, "and then, you're clear to go."

There were more words that Ifi registered, and promptly disregarded. The lawyer said a few things about how he didn't really mind the new social order, and that she should stress that fact to her new employer when she has a chance. Then, he explained at length that it was nonetheless necessary that the Lower City unions not be allowed to operate on the level of the guilds, or else the disruptions to the industry would be too severe, and besides he was unconvinced that the new Master Glassmaker was going to actually go through with all those so-called reforms. Ifi nodded through it all, imagining each word and each thought as a little white flake of detritus slowly floating to the bottom of her coffee cup, and there joining with her feelings in that ever-thickening strata of things abandoned to drown. The cup remained full when she left, though it had turned cold by then.

She had expected to spend the rest of the day bouncing from one broken obligation to another, apologizing to her suppliers and offering refunds to her clients. But her guild was going to take care of it all, and she found herself with more time than she had any idea how to spend; the back-log of orders she had kept in a notepad in her laboratory abruptly and thoroughly stripped of its foreboding significance. So instead, she ambled towards Ciara's home, her unexpected visit greeted rather gracefully by the liveried servants. Ciara herself gladly tore herself away from the midday boredom, receiving the alchemist in a cozy, warm living room she had just finished redecorating. Her curiosity was boundless, and over a few glasses of wine, she dragged the whole story from Ifi, interrupting frequently, fervently, and with much fascination.

"What a story," she exclaimed after Ifi finished narrating the gala. "And what a dress you had! A hook up your…" she paused, affecting a scarlet blush. "Ifi, I would have never expected!"

"It's what matters to me in life," the alchemist replied, the sheer honesty met with an awkward, sidelong glance. "I really hope Eusi will keep me in a cage. Or give me to her wife, you know. I wonder if her wife still has a…"

"You really shouldn't speculate," Ciara interrupted, her smile growing thin and stretched. "It really must have been hard growing up like that, wasn't it?"

She offered the barb by the way of sympathy, and Ifi impaled herself on it in surprise at how dull the pain felt, especially compared to the rough pleasure of honesty.

"I hated it here," she admitted, wetting her lips in the wine glass. The aftertaste of sulfur lingered on her tongue, ruining the bouquet that she wouldn't be able to recognize anyway. "I just want an escape."

"Even from the below-spawn?" Ciara's eyebrow arched. "Didn't you say you were in love?"

The memory of being held against a porcelain body pushed its way into her mind; she thought of the heat of her flesh sinking into the cold shell and warming it by degrees as the possessive hands held her close and tight. The memory had an awful weight, and sank quickly all the way to the bottom.

"I am," she shrugged helplessly, "but she is currently being tortured to death by her kind. At least that's what I suspect. So there is nothing I can do. I really shouldn't be thinking too much about it."

Ciara's laugh was high-pitched and rather friendly, if really nervous. Or that, at least, was how it came across to Ifi. When a servant came in to refill Ifi's glass, Ciara shooed him away, mouthing a quick "she's had enough for the day", which was really not that accurate at all. The alchemist's glass was barely touched—she wasn't drunk at all.

"And besides, she's just an awful person," she added. "Left me alone at the party. Broke all those promises. She's getting what she deserves, for what she did to all the lowborn…"

Her voice trailed off as the profiled face of Ciara caught her attention. Her friend—which was to say accomplice, which was to say a former client—was looking aside, eyes trained on a curio of wrought bronze displayed prominently under her and Makarios' wedding portrait. The alchemist admired the sight shamelessly, in awe of the sharp lines of Ciara's nose, of the carefully styled hair held in place with gold pins, of the casual wealth emanating from every part of that woman's dress and stance. After marriage, Ciara made herself into the perfect display object, and Ifi could only dream that someday, someone would make her such, too. It was gently refreshing to entertain those dreams with the poisonous envy surrounding them subdued to little more than a mild, acrid note.

"It was never going to work," Ciara stumbled over the words, reluctant to look back at the alchemist.

Ifi was nineteen again, explaining to some lovesick man—her memories didn't allow for his name—what she would expect her lover to be like. His expression changed gradually, moving first through idle amusement, then concern, to finally arrive at a deep and abiding sympathy for that wanton girl carrying the terrible, unlivable burden of perversion.

The conversation came unglued after that, and soon enough Ifi found herself wandering the streets again. Generally, she had a pretty good idea where to head next, but even buoyed by her alchemy, she still suffered from enough of old reluctance to avoid the direct route. She stumbled through the familiar streets, floating on sound and motion, so wonderfully far away from herself. And somewhere, far below, Shard was being slowly killed, or was dead already. The shard of the shell, the invitation—there was doubt in Ifi's mind that it was some kind of a trap. What for, she couldn't be sure, what was more concerning was the idea that Shard, so close to death, was actually begging for Ifi's presence. Because if that was true, then it meant that the potion the alchemist took in the morning wouldn't be first. There were two or three more bottles she had stashed away, and then she would cook herself a few batches for the coming weeks. And maybe then, in Eusi's careful hand, she would allow herself a comedown, and everything else that was to come in its wake.

Little crawling motion disturbed the sediment at the bottom of her. Worms lived there, Ifi observed coldly, stopped at the intersection of uphill streets. She was too prompt to imagine it as dead, inert matter. Her feelings festered; they teemed with decay, and a single, unfortunate mistake would break the caked surface sealing them, and release it all in a single, noxious cloud. She picked up her pace; she still had plenty of time before the current dose ran out, but it was nonetheless prudent to make haste.

For the first time in years, the sigh of her father's knife-thin mansion came across without an attended gut-punch of anxiety. She knocked on the door, a rictus grin affixed to her face. Everything followed in a slight, distorted blur. There was Tilda and her overwhelming kindness, the spiraling staircase and the smell of tobacco announcing that she was close to her father's presence, and then, finally, the rustle of his morning newspaper as he looked up from it, the age-mottled face drawn back into an expression of old frustration.

"Are you sober?" he coughed out, angry for reasons that Ifi couldn't divine.

"I will be entering the service of Eusebia Koina," she blurted back at him.

The first reaction was the abrupt release of tension. The alchemist watched as her father first sagged, and then straightened in his char, the perpetual frown bolted onto his face struggling to twist itself into something less hostile. His hands shook as he folded the paper, smacking it against the edge of the desk, his mouth moving to some unspoken words, exhaling out small, dry sounds.

"I can't believe it," he wheezed, fingers smashing out an excited warble against the wood.

Effusive praise burst forth, frothing with reassurances—

"I've always known you were going to make it!"

—pride—

"I did raise you well after all!"

—and dogged satisfaction—

"And you kept bitching that I'm giving you bad advice! You just needed to stop wasting your talent, my girl!"

When was the last time she had seen him this happy? When was the last time she had seen him happy at all? Ifi couldn't remember. The twitching, elderly man showering her with self-satisfied compliments was undoubtedly her father, but the more she looked at him, the more she felt as if sitting in the presence of a stranger. The sounds he was making were words, heavy with meaning and deferred satisfaction, but they meant to him. Her eyes skipped over the leather-bound volumes of alchemical treatises she had once tried to memorize, now doomed to forever gather dust on a vicious merchant's bookshelf.

"Of course, a retainer, that's not sitting at the High Table yet," her father prattled on, "but it is a good first step. The next thing you should do, my dear daughter, is to…"

Ifi was twelve again, listening to him circle around her and sketch out her future. He built towers out of the books she was supposed to read, never once neglect to stress just how expensive and difficult to get those volumes were. Her clear aptitude for the Noble Art was going to elevate the Juno family name.

"You have to promise you won't stop there," his voice reached to her through the veil of memory, reeling her back into the present.

Usually, this would be the moment when her frustrations, when her sense of inferiority would catch up with her, rendering her too angry and too bitter to argue, or to think. There would be yet another shouting match, or yet another exchange of barbs. But it was all sinking now, vanishing into the depths and leaving her acutely, if lethargically aware of what the stakes really were.

"Just promise me, Ifigenia," he insisted, fingers banging against the desk, "you have already wasted too many opportunities."

"I need a moment," she said abruptly, her chair creaking sharpy as she pulled away and darted out of the room.

"Don't trip!" he laughed behind her, expanding with good humour.

On the first landing on the stairwell below, there was a small, round window in the wall, and through it, the High City could be seen—or rather just the monumental bases of its towers, rising above flat roofs of Lower Heights and shading the entire district like a grove of enormous trees. It was a sorry excuse of a view that suited her father very well; in fact, he had explicitly insisted on only having windows trained on this paltry vista, instead of opening on the slow slope of the Middle City, and vast expanse of the Lower City below. The entire arc of his life was an escape ever upwards and a refusal to ever look back. And now, as it was reaching its terminal phase, Ifi stood to inherit it all, continuing to play her pre-determined part in the slow-rolling drama of the City's history.

There was no alternative. No other path than the one already marked out in advance, and fenced off by the knowledge of how things are bound to be. Whatever happened between her and Shard could never work out, because Shard was a monster, and those never change. Whatever happened between her and Shard could never work out, because whatever desires Ifi had were a poor fit for her place in the world, which doesn't stop for anyone's grief. Whatever happened between her and Shard could never work out, because the best Ifi could hope for in life was to briefly bask in someone else's bliss, and maybe gather some scrapings afterwards. Whatever happened between her and Shard could never work out, which was a comfort, because otherwise there would be other ways.

Ifi was seven again, watching an alchemist work her art. In slack-jawed wonder, her eyes were trained on the handful of lead sprouting into a saturnine tree, its leaf-like tendrils swaying gently in the solution, by degrees turning golden. She badgered the alchemist with so many questions afterwards, demanding to know if the gold was real—it was—and if the lead was all gone–-after a fashion, it wasn't. That was her first, and the for the longest time only, love.

Finally, she had her clarity. She rushed back home as quickly as her feet would carry her, stumbling half-drunkenly into her laboratory, throwing all the lights on at once.

Alchemy welcomed her with familiar warm comfort, but now reinforced with the lightning-bright sense of purpose. Dull crystals cracked under her pestle, turning into iridescent powder; she dissolved it on high heat, dust vanishing into a perfectly clear solution. The desire of matter is to attain perfection. There could be no alchemy without this simple truth, rendered in rubricated script at the frontispiece of every treatise on the Noble Art, and learned by every apprentice long before they were allowed to enter a laboratory, let alone an alembic. If gold can be coaxed out of lead, it is only because somewhere buried with the nature of that gray metal lies the desire for it to be greater. This is why masters of alchemy would all teach that perfection is not a state to be chased, not a distant land to be reached, that it is not to be referred to in a future tense. Their lessons showed that it is already here, that it is within grasp, that one only needs to draw it out of its hiding, one only needs to unveil it.

Salts of sulfur went into the distillate; the idea she had sketched out in her head was theoretically sound, but there would be no real opportunity to test it. Furthermore, if it was to work, then it could not be tested, lest its effect be ruined. She ran the distillation again, and as the product gathered in the collection flask, she set out to write all the possible ways her plan could kill her on a piece of paper, marking every failure point with a little skull. Halfway through, she crumpled the paper in her hand and threw it away. It was either going to work, or it was not. Her elixir still blunted her fear, still took the edge off anxiety, but her thoughts were running quicker and quicker.

The gold was still lead, because lead contained within itself the aptitude to become gold. All things perfect contained within themselves the whole of the world, of which they were the crown. That was one way to explain the Noble Art, but over the years Ifi realized this core truth could also be stated differently. She didn't have to believe in the inherent perfection of matter, nor chart her passage from the base to the sublime. All that theory offered scant comfort, if one took it seriously. But the practice—her practice—carried a simpler lesson. Alchemy was a process of changing; of one thing transmuting into another.

Three heating charms crackled under the hot-plate; she put a steel pan on top, and dropped a handful of chipped venomstones onto the hot surface. To think that they used to be the toxin milked from the fangs of far-northern serpent-men, coagulated and bound into the form of dirty brown pebbles one could hardly tell apart from common gravel. The substance reheating them produced wasn't their venom, not exactly; the process of reduction and reconstitution changed it invariably, endowing with new properties, both deadly and medicinal. She scooped half of the goo-like substance into a new dish, and left the rest to cool on the pan, until it was solid enough to scrape off.

No, for Ifi the wonder of transmutation lay not in the potential of things to be better; it was enough to know—empirically, experientially, personally—that they could be different from what they were. Nothing was bound to the form first given to it. Maybe the masters of alchemy thought that just noting the possibility for alterity was not enough to sell their work as the Noble Art that seeks to elevate men closer to the divine. Or maybe it was not for masters of the art, in their warm libraries and well-stocked laboratories, to ponder the terrifying comfort of there always being other ways.

Ifi busied herself around the lab, observing her plan come together in the shape of a handful of clear, odorless liquid, bereft of both the iridescence of seer's bismuth, the stench of salts of sulfur, or the deceptive sweetness of reconstituted snakemen venom. It really looked like nothing; if she had more time, she would find some sort of a dye to put into it, some kind of a flavour to make this potion stand apart. Instead, she collected it into a small vial and sealed it with a piece of cork, turning to the venomstone crust left on the pan, and beginning the laborious process of turning it into the other part of her scheme. Somewhere midway through the process of powdering the crust, her morning elixir finally gave in, and she started crying. Thankfully, the final few reactions she had to run were rote; she could perform them adequately even when sinking into the depths of heartbreak, even when convinced of the fact of her impending death.

Breathtakingly spectacular, the saturnine tree was also forbiddingly expensive, taking reagents worth far more than the gold it could produce—if it produced anything. Just as often, the tree's branches would wilt, lead dissolving into a stinking sludge instead of transforming into a nobler metal. This was the risk inherent to the Noble Art, which distinguished it from mere craft, and the reason why Ifi would scoff at it. She had never felt the risk to be worth it, but watching her experiment finish, she had to quietly admit it, that she never understood it, either. Until today.

When she finished her work, she put on her best robe—which was no different from any other robe she had—along all the insignia of her station. She wiped her face clean of the laboratory grime, drew a new set of kohl eyebrows, and wrote down a short note, should it become necessary. The two flasks she suspended from her neck, like talismans held close to the heart.

Getting a golem carriage to drive her to the Temple of Our Deprived Mother turned out surprisingly easy once she shook enough glass at the steersman. It made for a pleasant ride, too, and surprisingly quick. Out of the window, she watched the Lower City in all of its ramshackle glory, but too drunk on her own fear and heartbreak—and maybe hope—to give it much thought. Whatever observations arose, they lingered at the edge of her thoughts, tiny little pinpricks of guilt and of revulsion at the sight of the City's sprawling foundations. The fact she drew attention didn't bother her at all—the worst thing that could come out of it was that Villis would learn of her decision, and in truth, she welcomed that idea.

The temple itself was a rotund brick stupa seated in the middle of a small square. The buildings ringing it all looked long-abandoned, boarded shut and collapsed under their weight. When Ifi looked over her shoulder to find the city lights above, they filtered reluctantly through the heavy haze carpeting the Lower City, the towers visible less as concrete structures and more as cyclopean pillars of glow, yellow, red, blue. They looked like a dream.

"Please wait until I return, or until morning," she instructed the steersman, encouraging her with a clinking pouch of glass pounds.

The woman tipped her hat and nodded, knowing better than to ask questions. Ifi dropped out of the carriage, feet sinking slightly into the rain-softened mud below. There were tracks in it, though the alchemist could not tell how fresh; enough of them to signify a small crowd, all leading towards the dark entrance into the temple. The old door hung bent its hinges, threatening to snap off at any moment.

With the first of her potions tightly in her hand, she approached. A young boy in a flat cap and surprisingly well-kept overalls stepped out from his hiding spot in the crook by the door; she stopped, glancing at him nervously.

"The temple's closed, ma'am, and…" he began, before his eyes settled on Ifi's badge of office. "Oh," he blurted, glancing at the towers above. He gave her one more look, this time almost surprised. "Good luck."

Before she could ask him anything, he was off, feet splashing in the mud, rushing to somewhere far away, and leaving her alone with the dark temple, and the strange kind of quiet that ruled those half-abandoned streets. She swallowed nervously, then uncorked her potion. It really smelled like nothing, and went down like water. If her intuitions were correct, she would have at most a few minutes before it started taking effect, and about an hour before it killed her.

The last fact made it all the more easier to step into the dark inside. She opened her mouth to cry out a challenge, but found her throat clenched with fear strong enough to make her sweat. Thankfully, the dark took notice on its own. Cold porcelain closed on her shoulders, razor-sharp claws easily parting the fabric of the robe and scraping against the skin. She knew what this kind of touch could do, all too well.

"Oh," a voice entirely unfamiliar and completely without mercy announced as the swarm of hands dragged her into the killing-room below, "this will be a feast."