Grave
Victor was aware he was soundly drunk, but he was having a marvelous time. He had never had so much opportunity to talk to his classmates this way.
Henry—as always—was funny in a blunt sort of way, the way Victor remembered him, and he was surprised at how much he’d missed that.
Jonsi had harsh, strong opinions and had known Petyr the longest, so he was the least likely to be swayed by his presence.
Gregor at his core still very much didn’t seem to like or trust Victor, but he seemed to be playing nice at least for the evening.
“And did you know that the brain can be touched with fingers and implements, producing the most fascinating of side effects? Vision, speech, even: You can manually create emotions like laughter or sadness,”* Victor was saying. He leaned hard into Henry, who had an arm slung round his shoulders.
“Touching a brain? Disgusting. You like disgusting things, little man,” Henry slurred.
“Not so!” Victor objected. “It’s not disgusting, it’s fascinating. I do think as well that we could perhaps keep a brain in suspension if we feed it everything it needs. It doesn’t age like flesh does, exposed to the elements. . . .”
“A floating brain?” Gregor scoffed. “I bet it withers immediately. I bet you can’t. . . . You can’t.”
“You’ve had enough of this,” Petyr said with a laugh, pushing Gregor’s glass out of reach.
“Why do you have so little confidence, Gregor?” Jonsi said. “The wunderkind can do anything, why not this?”
Gregor rolled his eyes. “The wunderkind.” He said unkindly, “How many years of this are we meant to take?”
“Technically there’re only a few months left,” Petyr said with a shrug.
Gregor threw out his arms. “And has he once done more than any of us can do? No. He hasn’t.”
“I can,” Victor said, sitting up straight. “I can do things. . . .”
“You’re just a spoiled daddy’s boy, too much money to know what to do with,” Gregor slurred.
Victor went cold. Henry and Jonsi laughed. Petyr raised an eyebrow, smirking at Gregor, but quickly shifted his face when he saw Victor was watching him.
“He didn’t mean anything by it,” Petyr corrected.
“So what if I did?” Gregor poked a finger in Victor’s face. “What are you going to do about it, Wunderkind. Get your daddy to come rearrange my face?”
“Shove off, Gregor. You’re making him red.” Henry elbowed Victor in the side. Victor snatched himself away and could feel his heartbeat in his cheeks.
“I didn’t get where I am from money. I got here from working hard. Just like you, Gregor,” Victor said slowly.
His irritation made him feel crisp; the room around him sharpened in resolution. Petyr shrugged and took a long swallow of his drink.
“Most of us are here to become very valuable to very rich men. Alchemists make good money, more and more of it as we age,” Petyr pointed out. “It is a privilege to be able to dream of a world beyond this where work can be your pleasure.”
“This isn’t a game for me,” Victor said, pushing away from the table. “I thought you brought me here because you understood.”
Petyr crossed his arms and leaned back to look at him. “I brought you here because you interested me for a moment. Nothing more.”
The superiority in Petyr’s gaze made a hole open in Victor’s chest. The way Petyr sat in his chair like a lord. More sober and steady than any of them, even though he’d matched them all drink for drink.
“Is there anything I could ever have done to make you all take me seriously?” Victor asked quietly.
Henry shrugged beside him. “Confident men don’t usually seek approval from others, but you’re what, sixteen, seventeen now? Are you even a man?”
Victor closed his eyes and tried to shove the prickling back down his throat. “If I am not yet a man but I am standing beside you in every way that matters, how much more of one will I be, given enough time to match you?”
And it was the core of their issue with each other. Henry was a man who hated being bested, and Victor had bested him time and again.
Jonsi whistled low, impressed. “He’s got you there, Henry.”
Henry chuckled, then leaned his chin on his hands, blue eyes twinkling. “What a marvel, even in his fury,” he whispered. “I’d like to see what man you become, Victor Frankenstein.”
“I wouldn’t,” Gregor scoffed.
Petyr was still staring at him, steady and open. “Show us, then. One of your accomplishments, built from your own sweat.”
“Why should I? It would never matter.” Victor was done here. He could not cry in public. He looked up at the bartender and began calculating what he owed in drinks so he could leave this place without any debts to these people.
Petyr leaned forward. “It would matter to you,” he said. “An opportunity to show the fruits of your talents instead of drowning us all in your contemplation of theory. You can prove Henry wrong, silence his boasting. You can reduce Gregor to hot wind. Jonsi . . . has behaved himself.”
“And you?” Victor asked.
Petyr tilted his head and smiled. “Money. Perhaps Gregor is right, you do seem to have more of it than you know what to do with. I . . . am a farmer’s son. I walked into this city with the clothes on my back, and I’m set to walk out of it with much the same.”
Victor hadn’t known that. He looked at Petyr harder, beyond his flash and poise. At the wear on the collar of his jacket, the split seams on his sleeves mended with careful hand. The undershirt ever so slightly out of fashion but bleached and starched crisp.
“I have a bit of savings, though,” Petyr continued. “I’m willing to place it on a bet, if you’re bold enough to take it.”
Gregor reached out a hand and clasped Petyr’s shoulder.
“No, my friend, let me. Do not waste what you—” He paused, uncomfortable with letting Victor witness their closeness.
Gregor tilted his chin up. “Thirty marks. Me to you if you succeed at a true reanimation, three hundred to us if you fail.”
“What?!” Victor exclaimed. “Absolutely not; that’s ridiculous.”
“Four years you’ve forced us to listen to what you could do,” Gregor said, and he sounded much more sober than he had moments ago. “What’s the matter now? Do you believe in yourself less than we do?”
Victor looked around the table and his stomach sank.
He finally understood that he’d been had this entire time.
His wine-soaked brain tried to replay the events of the night, his own boasting, and wild claims. It would be embarrassing to back out now, much less with Henry’s taunting of his manhood so fresh in Victor’s ears.
Three hundred marks was close to what he got every two months from home. It was a large sum but not an unachievable one. Petyr clearly needed it, despite pretending he didn’t.
It wasn’t unreasonable to believe that they could be resources for each other after their apprenticeships. Petyr’s focus was energy, and what if Victor’s medical machines needed a stronger power source than his employer could provide?
Victor looked at each member of the group: none of them was without value and each of them had potential.
Even Gregor could soften as he aged, become a friend and a better man.
Victor knew it was a weakness, but he was incapable of looking at anyone and not seeing the ability for kinship.
If only he knew the right words to say to earn it.
Victor closed his eyes. “Fine. Thirty marks to me and three hundred* to you if I fail.”
“And what is the charge?” Jonsi asked, leaning forward.
Victor stood and took out his wallet.
“I am going to give the gift of life. Bring a man back from its shores and invent a thing that outlasts all of us,” he said.
He placed a few bills on the table, enough to cover everyone’s drinks.
“If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen.”
“Wait, this is too much—” Henry picked up the money to count it, bewildered.
Victor turned back around. “The bet will be settled the week after graduation. I’ll send invitations. Until then, I would prefer it if none of you spoke to me again unless it’s absolutely necessary. I . . . I am unsure if I could bear it.”
He clenched his hands into fists to stop them from shaking, then he bowed—polite—and fled the room.