Sam #2
“How did your mother figure it out?” Sam asks.
“She and my father ran countless tests on batches of sand until they perfected it, and then she built an assembly line for it. An entire new specialization of alchemy—philosophers—was born from their studies.”
“Philosophers?”
“Alchemists who specialize in the process of creating sand. It is a hard field, more brutal on the soul than any other alchemy, as it requires the splintering of tens of thousands of soul fragments into batches of product. It is difficult to find and train philosophers who can withstand that. Even then, they die young.” He smiles thinly. “So they get paid more.”
“Are you the only syndicate who makes it?” she asks.
“Of course not, although ours is well-known as the purest and most expensive. Once the news got out about sand’s creation, there was a sudden and immediate race to reverse engineer our product.
Some, like Lumines, sought to make larger quantities than us, to flood the market with cheaper sand in order to cut into our market share.
Others tried, with mixed success, to make variations—sand tailored to enhance very specific properties of a person.
Philosophers became so valuable that, after many were killed in our jostling for power, the syndicates agreed not to harm them.
They are like neutral nations during a war, meant to be protected from any of our usual conflicts. ”
“Why?” Sam asks. “Why protect your enemy?”
Will raises an eyebrow at her innocence. “Well, we had suddenly ushered in a new age of alchemy. And what is power in this new age, Miss Lang?”
Sam shakes her head, even though she knows the answer, has known it her whole life.
“Money,” Will says.
Of course it is. And for a moment, Sam feels as if she has become a child again, staring into a beauty so terrible she can hardly bear it.
“If we kept killing one another’s philosophers in retaliation, we would all collapse financially. Because of our shared interest in wealth, we keep the peace—if tenuously.”
Sam’s throat feels tight. “Sand makes that much money?” she whispers.
“More than you’ve ever dreamed possible.”
Sam feels as if everything in her world that she’s known and understood until this point has suddenly tilted. Through Will’s eyes, the world is a different place.
Work hard, her mother always tells her. But all her life, Sam has watched her mother work hard and then struggle and struggle to make enough money to carry them from one month to the next.
Yet here, Will is showing her the shortcut.
Success is not about working hard, although work is certainly required.
It is about bending the rules of the game.
And they are going to teach her how to do it.
“Tell me,” Will says, returning her gaze with his piercing one. “What do you think sand will do to you?”
“I don’t know,” she admits, and for a thrilling instant, she dares to imagine what it would enhance in her.
If she can prove herself worthy, they will allow her into this exclusive world.
She imagines a perfected version of herself.
Someone more beautiful, perhaps, who could make others notice her and make her mother laugh and make the world turn in her direction. Someone capable of doing anything.
The estate stretches on and on, Will explaining as they go.
The complex lower on the hill is furnished with dozens of apartments for assistants and guards and the multitude of people who come and go during the day.
Another complex, reserved for visitors unaffiliated with Grand Central, is operated like a hotel.
A third building is living quarters for the staff, a fourth for business dealings.
Then there is Diamond’s personal home. Another that belongs to Will.
The grounds are lushly manicured, the gardens filled with a rotation of flowers, lines of roses and clusters of orange poppies and fat bushes of lavender.
Sam notices shaded patio tables in courtyards between the buildings, all supplied with bottles of cold water and juices, vases filled with fresh flowers.
They walk under a terrace covered in grapevines.
Two rectangular pools overlook the horizon.
It is a level of luxury so extreme that Sam finds it almost as hard to fathom as alchemy.
She feels like she is walking inside a dream.
As a child, she’d tried to envision the largest house in the world that she could buy for herself and her mother—but when you have never witnessed true wealth before, you don’t know what to imagine.
Now she knows what is possible. Now she understands why money runs the world. She follows Will, lost in the maze of gardens and buildings; every time they uncover a new area of the estate, it leads to more secrets, rooms upon rooms upon rooms. A Fabergé egg that never ends.
At last, they arrive at a large property nestled on the other side of the hill, its main entrance shaded by two rows of cypress.
“This is the Observatory,” Will says. “The alchemists’ college.”
When Will pushes the front doors open, a cool wind greets them.
The college is large and square, four long buildings surrounding a central quad, the interiors lined with pale ash wood floors and doors spaced widely apart.
A tower looms in one corner. Each building’s quad-facing wall is made of glass panels divided by a black steel grid, and beyond it, Sam sees a massive courtyard paved with cobblestone, bordered by flowers and a trickling fountain and shaded under two enormous oaks.
Will heads toward the courtyard now. When they reach the glass, he pushes against it, and she sees that its central panels are a door.
Now that they are standing in the courtyard, Sam realizes that it isn’t paved with cobblestone at all, but a mosaic of assorted materials—squares of copper and silver and gold and lead, graphite and asphalt and concrete and platinum, a dozen different types of wood.
She kneels for a moment and runs her fingers over the various materials, admiring the gleam of the tiles under the dappled light streaming through the leaves.
Will watches her. “There are hundreds of different panels that make up the floor of this courtyard,” he explains, gesturing at the tiles with his drink. “They are laid out roughly in accordance with the alchemical and chemical periodic tables, as you’ll soon notice.”
“This is where you train?” she asks, her attention still on the tiles.
“Where all our alchemists train,” he answers.
Footsteps against the tiles make her look up again.
This time, she realizes that she and Will aren’t alone.
Several students her age have emerged from the building at the other end of the space to gather around the courtyard, their eyes fixed on her.
She freezes. They are all in uniform—blazers, skirts, trousers, gleaming leather loafers. An image of austere perfection.
Behind them comes a bespectacled older woman with dark skin and closely cropped black curls.
Her eyes are trained on Sam. No one says a word.
The silence in the courtyard is so thick that Sam can hear the sigh of wind through trees, can hear herself breathe.
It’s a strange feeling, being so noticed, and she wants to shrink away into nothing.
Sam glances up at Will. He just stands there with his hands in his pockets, unbothered. “Well?” he says to her. “Get on your feet.”
You’re here because we want to know if you’re worth teaching.
Sam rises. Will nods at her drink.
“Hold out your glass,” he says.
As she does, he reaches into his inner coat pocket and produces a small glass vial containing a shimmering powder the color of pearl.
Sand.
Her eyes dart up to his. He just nods.
“Remember this,” he says. “Sand will enhance everything about who you are. Your strengths, yes, but also your weaknesses. Your vices. The dark corners of you. Pay attention to how your body reacts. Do you consent?”
“Yes,” she whispers.
Will pours the contents carefully into her drink. The sand swirls, silver curling through the water, dissolving rapidly until the water simply looks like someone has added a shine to it.
He lifts his glass at her. “Drink all of it.”
Sam hesitates. She stares at her drink as if Will has dissolved diamonds in it. She’s never taken a drug before.
“Well?” Will says.
Sam meets his eyes, then looks at the other students around the courtyard. Then she takes a deep breath, lifts her drink to her lips, and gulps it down.
It is slightly sweet, with the faintest aftertaste of metal.
Sam drains it. When she’s finished, Will takes the glass from her and hands it, along with his own glass, to the older woman.
Sam waits, anticipating and dreading some reaction in her body, maybe a surge of heat or cold, a pain in her stomach. She feels nothing.
Then … something. It’s hard to describe.
The world around her seems to sharpen, turn more brilliant.
The leaves in the trees suddenly appear more luminous, the tiles beneath her boots more pronounced, their edges exquisitely defined.
The light in the air seems to shimmer. She can see everything so well, can discern details in the walls that she shouldn’t be able to notice.
Her body feels light, and—if she’s being honest—wonderful.
An indescribable strength courses quietly in her veins.