Chapter 9 Zaria
ZARIA
ZARIA’S FATHER HAD NEVER BEEN WARM.
Itzal Mendoza was the type of man who taught you how to be clever, how to navigate situations, and how to survive.
He hadn’t wasted much time on love and affection, though Zaria hadn’t particularly minded.
She was desperate to be clever in a world where women were told they didn’t need to be.
She yearned to take what she wanted from people who didn’t want to give her anything.
And of course, above all else, she wanted to survive.
Perhaps it was that Itzal had spent too much time grieving her mother.
After immigrating from Spain to England, he’d met Aurora Clarke, a middle-class woman who fell for his handsome face and smooth accent.
But Itzal’s heart was broken when Aurora left him for a Welshman, turning up only once nine months later to deliver a child.
If she’d known her mother at all, Zaria might have been hurt that the woman hadn’t wanted her.
Of course, Itzal hadn’t wanted her, either—he’d told her as much.
He had loved Aurora and gotten Zaria instead.
A poor consolation prize. But during the years that Cecile was around, Zaria hadn’t felt quite so alone.
She had been something of a mother figure, though she was only about a decade older than Zaria.
Cecile had taught her more than just alchemology—she’d taught her how to be a woman in a man’s field.
How constantly being underestimated was a series of chances to prove yourself.
With Cecile at her side, Zaria had nearly stopped resenting her father.
For a while.
Now that they were both gone, she remembered what it was to be angry.
So really it didn’t matter that Itzal might not have loved Zaria, just like it didn’t matter that her mother had abandoned both of them the moment she had the chance.
Thanks to Cecile, Zaria was equipped nonetheless with the tools she needed.
What she hadn’t committed to memory, she could learn on her own.
She hadn’t needed Itzal’s help then, and she didn’t need it now.
What she did need, though, was a primateria source.
Tonight she was looking through her father’s work for the first time in years, brushing dust from the pages.
Helping Kane steal from the Exhibition was surely the equivalent of taking on several new commissions, a fact that had only occurred to Zaria once he’d left.
Had she made a vow she couldn’t keep? She had no soulsteel.
No free time. No energy. And yet what other choice did she have?
“What’s this?” Jules asked as he entered the room, squinting at the myriad notes spread across Zaria’s desk.
Some of them were her own, scrawled onto paper that had been folded and unfolded more times than she could count, but most had been written by Itzal.
Those covered the yellowing sheets of a poorly bound book—the only book he hadn’t set aflame—meticulously sketched and carefully preserved.
There were drawings of gears and levers, cogs and gauges, recipes for various potions, and mathematical equations.
In the margins were jotted notes and brief descriptions, some circled, others stroked out with aggressive dark lines.
“I’m trying to see if my father left anything about his search for the primateria source,” Zaria said, not lifting her gaze from the page she was skimming.
She’d been sitting here for hours already, her back beginning to ache from leaning over the worktable, but once she was determined to do something, the devil himself couldn’t pull her away.
“I thought he burned all his research on that. You’ve looked before,” Jules reminded her, as if she didn’t know.
“I’m looking again. Maybe I missed something.”
Jules peered over her shoulder as she ran a finger down the rough parchment.
A cloud of awkwardness hung in the air between them following their argument the previous night.
He hadn’t been pleased when she told him about the deal she’d made with Kane, calling him a number of names that would have been scandalous in polite company.
Zaria couldn’t exactly blame him. Kane was, after all, working for the man who ensured the pawnshop rarely made a shilling that didn’t go to his crew.
Though he still didn’t know the whole truth, Jules eventually admitted the payment was too good to pass on.
The problem, he rightfully pointed out, was whether Zaria would be able to give Kane everything he requested.
Each time she created magic lately, it seemed to take more from her.
Earlier today Jules had found her passed out on the floor of her workshop, unable to recall whether she’d fainted or simply fallen asleep.
So here she was, scouring Itzal Mendoza’s yellow-edged notes.
The endeavor was proving futile, but if Zaria was going to work for Kane, she needed to get her hands on a primateria source.
It was becoming more difficult to ignore the impact creating magic was having on her body.
She knew little about Kane, but it was obvious he wasn’t the patient type.
Without speaking, Jules sat down beside her, pulling a stack of notes over to his side of the table.
Zaria shot him a tight but appreciative smile.
For a while, they simply sat in companionable silence, the shuffling of papers the only sound in the room.
Zaria was determined not to miss a single page.
She scanned a messily scrawled ledger, her stomach hollowing.
Each time he took a commission, Itzal noted a brief description of what the person had purchased, their last known address, and the amount of money received.
The commissions were impossibly close in date, the prices higher than anything Zaria ever managed to get.
She worked too slowly. She could be a poor negotiator, given that oftentimes she was too blunt, too impatient.
“I don’t understand what any of this means,” Jules sighed, shoving a handful of onyx hair off his brow. His face was skeletal in the dim light. “I’m not convinced I would know if I did find something important.”
Zaria shared his frustration. Even with her experience, her father’s scribbles were hard to decipher. “You don’t need to help me.”
He ignored that. “Are we sure these magic sources even exist? I mean, they could just be a legend.”
“Of course we’re not sure. But Hohenheim was the original alchemologist. If anyone could create such a thing, it was him.”
“Create them from what, though?”
Zaria shrugged, squinting at a cramped bit of handwriting instead of looking at Jules. “His own life force, supposedly. It was his greatest work—a complicated series of chemical processes. I’d understand it better if I could find one.”
“If they do exist, though, they could be anywhere in the world. This is mad, Zaria.”
Christ. He was right. She was in danger of adopting her father’s lifelong obsession, and it was a futile quest. The list of names, of prices and places, seemed suddenly to mock her.
Seized by sudden fury, Zaria swept the stack of parchment aside, watching blindly as the sheets pirouetted to the floor.
It does not matter what you dream, Itzal had told her once. It matters only what you accomplish.
“And what difference did it make, Papa?” she murmured to herself, hands tightening into fists. “You died nonetheless.”
Jules stared at her. “What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
What was wrong with her? Zaria stooped shakily to pick up the notes, and Jules bent down to help her.
She couldn’t resist examining them, running her fingers over the familiar script.
Remembering the scritch-scritch of Itzal’s pen in the dead of night, long after he’d said he was going to sleep.
Line after line flashed before Zaria’s eyes.
Some written sideways, some covered after the fact by sketches.
She arranged the papers into a pile, then paused, heart slamming against her ribs.
Because there, in the margin of the sheet she was holding now, was handwriting she recognized. Handwriting that was indubitably not Itzal Mendoza’s. It was too slanted, too narrow, too neat.
Source: disguised?
“Look at this.” She shoved the piece of parchment under Jules’s nose.
He recoiled in surprise, brows drawing together as he tried to focus on the tiny script. “What am I meant to be seeing?”
Zaria pointed at the words. “This isn’t my father’s writing. It’s Cecile’s.”
“You think ‘source’ could be referring to a primateria source?”
“What else? She would have been working with my father around the time he was looking for it. I never imagined him involving her, but…”
Itzal and Cecile had worked well together, but their relationship had been fraught, hence its short duration.
Itzal had a tendency to believe he always knew best, and he certainly wouldn’t have wanted to risk someone else finding the source before he did.
Zaria could recall the tension in the house the night Cecile had left.
Her departure had been abrupt; she’d wrapped Zaria in a quick but tight one-armed hug, shot Itzal a glare, and slammed the door behind her.
Even years later, Itzal had refused to explain what they were arguing about.
Jules thumbed his collar to loosen it. His interactions with Cecile had rarely gone deeper than basic pleasantries, but he knew she’d been important to Zaria. “Do you have a way to get in touch with her? If we can find that source, it won’t matter what Ward’s errand boy wants you to create.”
Zaria rotated the sheet of paper, as if looking at the writing from another angle might yield more information.
“Why do you think I’ve been combing through all this stuff?
Problem is, I haven’t a clue where Cecile might be.
I haven’t seen her since the day she left, and she didn’t tell us where she was going. ”
“I thought you two were close.”