England
Victor thumbed the words he’d copied from Fitz about Bradley King. Gold, Lead, and Lives. Come with a gift. “Lives” was alarming, but he felt confident about his choices.
Bradley King lived in a stately house: large gardens, big fountain, staff walking the grounds, the whole lot. His home made Mr. Sauer’s mansion look quaint. Thankfully, unlike Alain and Willem, he lived in London city proper so Victor didn’t have to go deep into the wilderness.
When Victor reached the door, he was unable to enter until he showed the facsimile of his diploma. Mr. King’s staff brought him on a pleasant walk through the front gardens and into a small tearoom near the entrance door.
Victor waited anxiously for nearly an hour before they came to retrieve him and bring him to Mr. King himself.
He was told that Mr. King wasn’t fond of surprise visitors and had been otherwise occupied before Victor arrived.
This might even be the “King” Fitz mentioned during his meeting at Sauer’s house.
This didn’t matter to Victor. He was certain the likelihood of Mr. King being somehow worse than what he’d already experienced was low. Save if he chose to kill him, of course.
They led him to a place called the Gift Room and abandoned him outside its large cherrywood door.
Victor sighed and knocked.
“Come in.”
Victor pushed inside, alarmed at how heavy the door was. It slammed behind him rudely. Victor whirled around but he didn’t see anyone and didn’t immediately get reprimanded, which was a relief.
The Gift Room was like a private museum. There were dozens of domed pedestals along each wall and in perfect rows across the room like a giant chessboard. Under each dome was a labeled gift that, presumably, Bradley King had received.
“Well, then, what have you brought?” A door to the left closed with a click, and Bradley King strode quickly across the room.
Like Willem, he was younger than Victor had imagined. Strong jaw, thick mustache, navy-blue suit, well-muscled. He reminded Victor immediately of Alain. But what Victor hadn’t expected was this: Bradley was Black.
“What have you brought, fledgling?” Bradley King demanded.
Victor bowed immediately, because it somehow felt appropriate standing among all this opulence, and Bradley scoffed.
“None of that; now what have you brought?”
“I . . . Uh. I wasn’t told much about you beside your specialties, so I brought three things.”
Victor held out an orb with a cork in it and filled with plants. Bradley snatched it from his hand and held it up to the light. His eyebrows furrowed with scrutiny.
“For the alchemist of gold, lead, and lives: a world in a bottle.”
“A self-sustaining terrarium,” Bradley said, grinning. “Clever. What’s next?”
Victor held out a small glass flask. “Blood of a man with half-life, recently burned by lightning.”
Bradley took this from him gently. “I’m assuming this blood is yours?” He raised an eyebrow at whatever Victor’s face was doing. “Alain called ahead.”*
“You know him?” Victor blurted before he could stop himself.
Bradley pursed his lips. “I rather wish I didn’t, but we’re brothers of a kind. Blood and Lives. Sometimes we have to work together. Send each other little gifts and all.”
Bradley’s accent was curious for a man so wealthy. He sounded northern born.
“You said three.”
Victor handed over the cloak Willem had given him. “Protection for a man undeserving.”
Bradley took the cloak from his hands and gave it a big sniff.
“UGH, Willem! You can keep this. It’s worthless.
The wife won’t want it stinking up the whole place.
Actually, leave it on the floor by the door, I don’t want that stench following me round the house.
More rooms to have to air out. You can take it when you leave. Come on.”
Bradley put the terrarium on one of the few empty pedestals but tucked the flask of Victor’s blood in his jacket pocket. Then he whirled around and strode fast through the door Victor had entered and into the hallway. Victor raced after him.
“First thing, I can’t help you much. If you weren’t a boy and under the Archivist’s protection, I’d beat you myself—”
Victor looked at Bradley’s bulging arms and momentarily lost the ability to hear what the other man was saying.
“—can open the doors for you where I can. Brogan doesn’t take visitors unannounced; he doesn’t like kids and he doesn’t have a phone. So I’ll send a man to warn him of your coming. See someone else first.”
Bradley spoke down to him like Victor worked for him or something and it rubbed Victor to irritation.
“I’m not a boy,” Victor murmured. He was tired of people saying that.
Faster than Victor thought possible, Bradley King spun around. His hand, thick and strong, found Victor’s neck, and he slammed him against the wall, lifting him a few inches off the ground. Victor scrabbled on his toes to keep from being strangled. It was humiliating.
“You. Are a boy,” Bradley repeated, dark.
A maid passing in the hallway scurried by, ogling over her shoulder in shock.
“Just because you had your fancy learning and figured out how to do the things only a man does doesn’t mean you’re fully blooded. Or one of us,” Bradley said, looking down his nose at Victor. “Everywhere you walk is ground on which you’re outstaying your welcome.”
He let Victor slide down a bit so he could stand on his heels but did not release him. Victor cowered in Bradley’s shadow, flinching at the heat of his breath.
“Learn to be humble, and grateful,” Bradley said, shaking him at every pause.
“People are opening their homes to you at a moment’s notice, risking their reputation to offer you a kindness.
You are seventeen. If you had been born rough, perhaps you would know the price of work and what it means to have family, to bow before destiny in supplication.
You could be a man at that age then. But you are a gentleman.
And for men who do not have to grovel for bread, seventeen is a child. ”
Bradley let go of him then and backed up a bit. “Don’t speak out of turn in my house again.”
He gave Victor one more long look, then started to walk. Victor peeled himself from the wall, took a deep breath to steady himself, and followed.
Bradley led him out the house and to a nearby building separated by the distance of a field. They walked in silence: Victor cowed and uncomfortable, Bradley still notably furious from the set of his shoulders.
Bradley produced a ring of keys from his jacket and opened the door, pushing Victor inside.
Expecting another gory display, Victor flinched before Bradley turned the lights on. But he was surprised to find that the lab of the Alchemist of Lives was much more like the one they had at school.
The walls were lined with shelves filled with oddities.
Mostly types of rock and vats of soil, labeled with the year, location, and two numbers.
He had a large steel table, a comparably sized wood table, and a patient table.
Unlike Alain’s it was clean, covered in a white sheet, and had gloves at the ready.
The restraints were lined in fur and not designed to hurt the patient.
It even smelled nice in here, like rain on stone with disinfectant.
Bradley grunted at Victor’s expression.
“I assume you’ve seen Alain’s workshop? A mess.” He grumbled. “He held a dinner party in there once that I severely regret attending.”
Victor was still shaken, but he had to ask. “Do you all know each other?”
Bradley was pouring Victor’s blood out onto a cast-iron pan. He lit a fire beneath it and began stirring.
“Not always. There are about four hundred of us round the world, one hundred fifty apprentices, and about two thousand trusted afficionados. These come in the form of men like Fitz and Jaan Sauer. People who serve some sort of purpose but do not actually practice nor have any desire to.” Bradley looked over his shoulder at Victor, who was still standing by the entrance.
“We network, largely to seek rare items or ingredients,” Bradley continued. “There are also the parties.”
Victor walked around the room, looking at everything a bit closer while Bradley worked. Alain had impressed him at first, but after meeting Bradley, Victor wasn’t exactly sure if he wanted what Alain had anymore. This was much better and he felt more comfortable here.
Bradley took Victor’s blood, reduced to a thick syrup, and pulled out a fresh jar of soil. He poured the steaming fluid into the dirt and stirred it quickly, topping it with a cork.
“The only way to store blood for my work is in earth,” Bradley murmured. “Though that might not be useful information for you. Have you decided on your specialty yet? They won’t let you work with me and Alain, you know. Too tempting.”
That was exactly what Alain had said.
Victor shrugged. “I’m a son of a doctor. I always intended to be a doctor of some kind.”
Bradley snorted. “Willem turned you down, then.”
Victor nodded, face reddening.
“He would. He’s a good man, too good for you.”
“I’m trying to be better,” Victor said, and he meant it.
Bradley looked him up and down. “You might pivot to religious work. Dig into pleading to God for forgiveness.”
Victor grimaced.
Then, without warning, a pain erupted in his chest. Victor leaned over gasping, clutching the table.
Bradley watched him curiously. Not moving to help him or even ask if he was all right.
Victor crashed to his knees, holding his heart and panting. It felt how it did when Willem had worked on him but to a lesser extent. With a jolt of terror, he wondered if Willem hadn’t widened the path enough and he was about to be torn apart.
Then Victor felt a rush of something, emotions that weren’t his: fury and deep satisfaction, followed by the slightest bit of pain and self-loathing.
Victor didn’t feel his emotions like this.
He felt his anger at the top of his head; this was an anger of the gut.
His loathing usually choked him in his throat, but this loathing centered around his heart.
His satisfaction normally dug its claws into his loins, but this made him feel it behind his teeth.
“Oh, it’s starting, then,” Bradley commented, leaning over to peer at Victor.
Victor panted and looked up at Bradley, wordless. His own terror, the emotions that belonged to him, were losing the fight against these other feelings. He felt almost like he was about to black out.
Bradley sighed. “Curse my tender heart,” he muttered, then crossed the room. Victor leaned his head against the stone beneath him and let his eyes roll back, drooling with overstimulation. His nervous system buzzed with unearned adrenaline.
He heard Bradley’s shoes before he saw them. Oxblood brogues that stopped before him. Bradley dug his fingers into Victor’s hair and yanked until they were eye to eye. Then he opened Victor’s mouth and shoved something inside.
“Don’t swallow.”
Whatever Bradley had given him was heavy and metallic, cold on his tongue.
But as soon as it fell into his mouth, his emotions stopped warring with each other.
Instead, his own fear centered itself in his head, and the rest of what he was feeling remained in his body from the neck down, and severely muted at that. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better.
Bradley didn’t let go of his hair. Instead, he looked hard into Victor’s eyes, turning his head around with the firm clinical grasp of a scientist.
“I’ve heard after a while you’ll begin hearing him,” Bradley said. “Last man who did something like this was a hundred years ago.”
“What happened to him?” Victor said clumsily around the thing in his mouth.
Bradley arched an eyebrow at him.
“Please.”
Bradley huffed, irritated. “When he was near to madness, the man who he’d cursed found him and beat him the rest of the way to death.”
That was somehow less terrible to learn than what Victor had been expecting. Bradley let go of his hair and stood.
“I’ll send a man to Brogan. Who are you seeing before him?”
“Ayan McClean.”
“It’s pronounced ‘Mick-lain.’ ” Bradley yanked Victor from the floor with a firm grip on his biceps. “You owe me for the talisman. You lose it and your grip on yourself will be less. You can send payment in any denomination to the King Estate once you’ve gauged its value.”
“What is it?” Victor asked. He’d found a better place to store it between his teeth and his cheek that didn’t hamper his speech nearly as much.
“Gold imbued with the souls of two dead men separated by a vein of quartz. Peaceful deaths. Consider it a stabilizer. I made it after Alain let me know you were coming.”
“You . . . made this for me?” The talisman felt heavier in his mouth.
Bradley chewed his lip for a moment, looking Victor up and down from his spit-stained face to his brand-new clothes with an expression Victor couldn’t name.
“My son . . . is seventeen,” he said eventually. Bradley paused like he was going to say something more but instead shook his head.
“You can go. Take Willem’s filthy cloak with you. I’m sure one of the staff has it waiting for you at the entrance.”
Then he turned his back on Victor in clear dismissal. Victor bowed once more, this time out of genuine respect, then took his leave.