Blade
For the crime of watching as he burned, Elias killed them all.
He had chef’s hands, which had butchered and carved for ten long years. Smooth from tallow soap, strong as they were thin: he strangled Jonsi politely behind the local tannery.
Gregor was strong and fought hard, but he was unarmed. Elias slit his throat in the park. Propped up his body beneath a tree, tilted his hat down over his face.
“It should never have happened,” Petyr said.
“It should never have happened,” Elias repeated.
Petyr held out his hands.
“Dignified? Please.”
“Why?” Elias whispered.
Petyr swallowed. “He refused to acknowledge that you were a man. A person like the rest of us, and I corrected him.”
Elias gritted his teeth. And what was that to the crime of abandonment? Of seeing wickedness and allowing it to flourish? Of hearing screams of a captive and turning your back? Elias wanted to shout a thousand words into this man’s face.
Instead, he gently took Petyr’s hands and slit his wrists.
Petyr leaned against his headboard and closed his eyes. “God is on your side.” He said breathlessly, “Better by your hand than by my own.”
Elias held Petyr until he stopped breathing. But still, he felt nothing.
The last man’s house was in a densely populated area. He couldn’t handle him the way he’d handled the others. But Petyr gave him courage.
He knocked.
Henry opened the door, yelled in terror, and tried to close it again, but Elias pushed inside and closed the door behind himself.
“Are you going to kill me?” Henry asked immediately.
Elias paused for a moment.
“I need information,” he whispered.
Henry backed away, looking around his house for a weapon. He snatched up a candlestick holder and held it between them.
“I don’t know where Victor is. I—I think he’s left town,” Henry stammered.
“He had a book,” Elias said, crossing his arms. “Do you know where he got it?”
“I’ve never seen that book in my life!” Henry shrieked, stumbling on a rug behind him as he continued to back away.
Elias sighed. He locked the door behind him and then turned to Henry, who was drenched in fear-sweat and began to walk toward him.
“I am from a small town,” Elias began. “Victor took me from a place where books are few. I have always been bright, but one cannot know what one has never been exposed to. I need you to help me. Where could one get a book such as that?”
Henry looked around wildly.
“Focus,” Elias whispered.
“I . . . I . . . We have a library at school with alchemical texts. Maybe he stole it from there?”
Elias wrapped a hand around the candleholder Henry was clutching and tore it from his grasp.
“I’ve met with a professor who knew him. He gave me Victor’s name but did not mention this crime. His face showed nothing but vague recognition,” Elias said quietly.
Henry curled up against the wall and slid to the floor.
“Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me,” he chanted.
Elias looked down at him.
“Brave enough to beg for your life but not brave enough to beg for mine?”
Elias put a hand on the crown of Henry’s head.
“I remember your face. From the moment our eyes met, you understood my terror.”
“I’m sorry!” Henry sobbed.
Elias scrunched his fingers in Henry’s hair and yanked his head back so their eyes met.
“The book,” he hissed.
Tears streamed down Henry’s face. “There are other alchemists in this city. Wealthy and established, maybe he stole it from one of them. T-there’s one on Lebzeltergasse, big black house.
Another out on Goethstra?e . . . I was to visit a man named Richard Sonne for an opportunity at an apprenticeship, but he’s a city over. ”
Elias let Henry’s hair go.
“Would Victor also be seeking apprenticeship?”
“I don’t know!” Henry wailed. “But he was better than I was; he’d probably have gotten better placement.”
“Will he linger there for a while?”
“Probably?! We have to do it for at least a year before we’re properly employable. If you’re trying to catch up to him, that’s probably the best place to start—P-please don’t kill me. I promise I just—”
“How do I get there?” Elias asked, impatient.
Henry wiped his face. “I can write the addresses if you let me get—”
Elias crouched low and grabbed Henry by the jaw, the way his mother used to do to him when he teased his sister Magda.
“I don’t read. Imagine the way and tell me where to walk.”
Henry looked shocked for a moment, so surprised that he stopped crying. But eventually he complied. Elias allowed Henry’s words to take the shape of two mental maps before he let the man go.
“Y-you can’t read?” he asked, then flinched at the force of Elias’s glare.
“Thank you for your help,” Elias said stiffly. He pulled Franz’s blade from his coat.
“WAIT, WAIT!” Henry shouted, leaning back against the wall. “I can help!”
Elias paused and prayed that giving this man time was not a mistake.
Henry swallowed. “There is a family hospital to the east that provides good care and takes people without money. If I tell you the way, will you remember?”
Elias nodded.
“It is very far on foot. Are you sure you’ll remember?”
Elias scowled, even though he knew Henry couldn’t see it through the bandages. “I live hours away and came back here myself. Found you myself. Not everyone has the means to learn, but I’m not simple. I will remember.”
Henry put up his hands, even though they shook.
“My life for this: the way to the hospital and . . . one n-night’s care beneath my roof. P-penance with my own hands, to right your body of some of this wickedness.”
Elias stared at him.
“Y-your bandages . . . they need . . . they need . . .” Henry fell silent. His bravery failing, finally.
Elias gritted his teeth and stood.
“Tell me the way.”
Henry’s shoulders dropped with relief. He explained how to travel to the faraway place, even describing what things on the way looked like so Elias could be sure he was heading in the right direction.
Elias sheathed his blade. He looked Henry up and down one last time.
“One day, I will return to this town and I will find you.”
“Oh god,” Henry moaned.
“You will not need to run when we meet again,” Elias promised, then turned to leave Henry’s house.
“What does that mean?” Henry called after him. “What are you about to do? What do you mean?”
Elias did not answer him.
“Thank you for this gift, Henry Clerval.”