Chapter 26
Mystery
Eventually, Lilianne gets tired of staring at the guest-room ceiling.
Her shoulder doesn’t even ache anymore, she’s not hungry, and she feels, impossibly, like she had a full night’s sleep, like she could challenge the universe to an arm-wrestling contest and stand a chance of actually winning.
She sits up, giving the room around her a critical look.
This place can’t exist. The physical space doesn’t support it, and the light coming through the windows is oddly wrong, like it’s being folded at right angles before it’s allowed to flow into the room, compact and thick as honey.
But whether it exists or not, it’s a pretty nice room, and definitely beats the gloomy confines of the apartment she shares—shared—with David and the others.
Did he really mean it when he said one of them would be moving out by the end of the month?
She doesn’t want to leave. She’s barely gotten unpacked, and the thought of moving again is exhausting.
It shouldn’t be, not when the alternative is incarnates and eti?inen and all the horrors she’s seen since last night.
She’s not giving up on alchemy, but surely there’s a way she can practice under more-controlled conditions?
The safety of her room has never tried to rip her arm off, and self-transmutation doesn’t require access to human flesh that belongs to someone else.
She can find a way to do this. To study, to learn, and to know, all without taking the kind of risks she now understands she doesn’t want to take.
This is where many of the self-taught alchemists she’s known would choose to abandon their studies, retreating at the first sign of a trial, and if she’s being honest, she wouldn’t mind doing that herself.
But that option has never been open to her, not really.
Her parents being what they are means that she’s been tangled with the alchemical world since she was born, unable to walk away without leaving her home and her family and everything she’s ever cared about behind.
Alchemy, for her, has only ever been a single part of the whole.
She just wants to fit properly within the world she was born into. She wants to be a part of something greater than herself. Is it really so unreasonable for her to wish for more than she’s been given, especially when everyone around her has been given that “more” without even looking for it?
Lilianne crosses to the dresser Smita indicated, opening the top drawer and beginning to dig gently through its contents.
They’re a remarkable mixture of styles and sizes, everything from striped shirts intended for pre-teens to ruffled lace blouses that wouldn’t look out of place at a retirement home.
There’s underwear as well, equally diverse in style and size.
After some searching, she comes up with a butter-soft sweatshirt in a watered-wine shade of burgundy, and stretch jeans that manage to flatter her narrow hips while still extending the full length of her legs.
It’s not the most fashion-forward thing she’s ever managed to put together, but for cast-offs found in someone else’s spare bedroom, she thinks it’s pretty good. There’s a brush on the dresser, and she uses it to perform quick repairs on her hair.
“My kingdom for an eyeliner,” she mutters, studying her reflection in the mirror over the dresser.
There are still dark smudges around her eyes, but they’re less decorative than they are signs that she needs to go home and take a proper shower.
She scrubs idly at one of them with the heel of her hand, then puts the brush down and turns toward the door.
She half-expects it to be locked, keeping her prisoner inside this room, and is pleasantly surprised when the knob turns under her hand and the door swings easily inward, revealing a long, sun-soaked hallway.
No point in waiting around forever for things to get worse than they already are. She steps cautiously out of the room. No alarms go off. Shutters don’t slam down to cover the windows, and she starts to think she might actually be a guest here, not just an unwanted complication.
Still moving carefully, she starts down the hall. She hasn’t gone far before she hears the sound of cheery video-game music wisping from one of the nearby rooms. It’s the only sign of life in an otherwise quiet house, and she turns toward it, lured by the sound like a sailor by the song of a siren.
When she finds the room the music is coming from, it’s almost like stepping back into the house where she grew up, only with a less-polished floor: her mother would never have allowed the hardwood to get this dented and dingy.
Everything else fits, however, from the canvas couch to the bookshelves with their eclectic assortment of titles.
There’s a large television, and a teenage girl with white hair is playing Slime Rancher from her seat on the couch, hands clenched so tightly around the controller that it seems like the plastic should crack and buckle beneath them.
Lilianne stops in the doorway, clearing her throat.
The girl barely glances at her as she continues sending her avatar careening across the screen, sucking down chickens with a vacuum gun.
“Hello,” she says. “You’re the alchemist Smita found in the sewer, right?
All the adults are off getting ready for their field trip to Terror Town.
I think Roger’s in his office, and Dodger is wherever Dodger is. You probably don’t want to bother her.”
“I am,” says Lilianne. “My name’s Lily. I’m sorry to interrupt. I didn’t know you were here. What’s your name?”
“Not interested in talking to alchemists, thanks,” says the girl. “You can go. I don’t really have anything to say to you.”
Lilianne blinks. “Sorry to bother you.” This must be one of the teenagers Smita mentioned.
She was right: babysitting would not be a swift route to sanity, even if it might seem like a low-effort way to convince the Doctrine that she’s not here intending to do any harm.
Assuming the Doctrine would allow her to babysit.
Thus far, she hasn’t seen anything to indicate that she’d be offered that sort of trust.
“I’m not bothered. Did I say I was bothered?” The girl pauses her game with the press of a button, then finally turns to look at Lilianne. “I’m just trying to be honest. I don’t want to lead you on, or make you think that we’re going to have a productive conversation.”
“And I appreciate it. Do you know where Smita is?”
“I think she and Erin went out back, which probably means you shouldn’t follow them.
Erin doesn’t like it when things upset Smita, and she normally reacts to things she doesn’t like by getting annoyingly violent toward them.
Stay in the house. Or leave via the front door.
If they really cared about you not getting away, they’d have left more than just me to stop you. ”
“Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Are you going to stop me?”
The girl snorts as she shakes her head. “Do I look like I could stop you if you wanted to leave? You’re fourteen inches taller and thirty-seven pounds heavier than I am.”
“That’s … precise,” says Lilianne. The girl’s easy accounting isn’t even insulting, just impressive: Lilianne can’t be certain that she’s accurate, but the way she rattled off the figures makes it sound like she must be, like she couldn’t be so precise if she didn’t know what she was talking about. “Smita told me about you.”
“How’s that?”
“She said there were designer cuckoos in the house who’d been built to hold the Doctrine, and that I needed to be careful if I didn’t want to get slapped with babysitting duty,” she says, still standing in the doorway. “Were you supposed to embody Math?”
“I was,” the girl confirms. “How did you know?”
Because you should get a job as one of those carnival workers who guesses people’s weight for them. “I just had a feeling.”
“Huh.” The girl turns on the couch, not putting down the controller, to properly focus on Lilianne. “Pretty specific feeling.”
“You’re a pretty specific person.” Lilianne ventures a smile.
“Love the hair. How does your stylist get that green undertone in there? I can’t find a decent aesthetician in this city.
Lots of people who think ‘fashion colors’ means they can get as sloppy as they want, but no one who has actual artistry. ”
“You should talk to Erin,” says the girl.
“I really, really shouldn’t,” mutters Lilianne.
“She’s the only one of us who actually sees a stylist,” continues the girl.
“Something about maintaining her roots. Her hair color wasn’t a part of her original blueprint, so it’s not as consistent as it could be.
So her roots grow in dark and even get streaks of gray sometimes.
My hair’s all the way unnaturally natural.
The alchemists built me this way, and so this is how I am.
I can’t even dye it. When I try, the dye just runs right off, like my hair is hydrophobic.
” She makes a sour face. “I don’t like it, but I didn’t exactly get a vote when they were putting me together. ”
“That must be frustrating as all hell,” says Lilianne.
“Dodger says it’s because we’re the Math kids.
It’s our job to draw attention, and by drawing attention, to draw fire.
If we go down, the Language side of the Doctrine can still fix things.
If they go down, we’re fu—stuck. We’re stuck without them.
Or she is, anyway. I guess I’d be lost without Tim, because he’s my stupid brother and I love him more than anything else, but I can’t change the world just because he tells me to.
I would if I could. I would have done it a thousand times over by now. ”
“Why can’t you?”