Gift
Alain closed the door behind them and removed his gloves. He left Elias standing at the front of his house among girlish finery. He opened the door to a room that made Elias’s hair stand on end and tossed the gloves carelessly inside.
“Will you permit me to see you? Entirely?” he said, rubbing his palms together to brush off the talc the gloves had left behind.
Elias’s heart was pounding so loud he was sure Alain could hear it. But the French alchemist just looked serious, waiting for Elias to comply.
Elias removed his jacket, folded it, and placed it gently on the wicker chair. Alain’s eyes took in his harness of daggers hungrily and shined brighter, but he said nothing.
Elias shed his leather and began unbuttoning his shirt. This was just like any other doctor’s appointment, he decided. He had been to many. Spent over a week lying naked in De Lacey’s house. He could do this.
Elias stood bare, silk carpet beneath his feet, and waited for Alain to do something.
After a moment of silence, the alchemist walked in a wide circle around him. Not touching or saying anything, just staring curiously.
He paused when he got to Elias’s back, then muttered something incredulous in French, spit on the floor in obvious disgust. Elias felt a wave of shame and curled his arms around himself.
Alain’s hand landed on the back of Elias’s neck, warm and solid, and he hushed gently, “Not you. Never that reaction for you.”
But Elias curled smaller, held himself tighter, closed his eyes. He felt a brush of hair at the top of his spine, Alain bowing to press his forehead there in supplication.
“Our bodies are just the place where our minds live,” he said.
Elias’s skin felt hungry and he wanted to tear it off. The smell of flowers on this man cut the reek of blood, and he wished he could roll around in it. So long he had not been touched with intention.
But Alain pulled back and sat down, crossing his legs.
“So. Do you have questions for me?”
Elias took a deep breath and willed his heart to calm. He reached for his clothes and began to dress himself.
“Do you know where Victor is going?” he asked.
Alain shrugged. “If you found me, you must know already. He did not specify order, though I’m sure some routes are easier than others.”
Elias snorted. “Victor is intelligent, not wise. I would not find shock at him choosing an inconvenient route.”
Elias swung his harness back over his shoulders but left his jacket lying where he’d tossed it and kept his feet bare.
“Do you know why he did this?”
Alain raised an eyebrow, then waved a hand sharply.
“I do not. You could ask him, when you meet.”
Elias gritted his teeth. He did not want to spend months in confusion and despair. “I had hoped to know sooner than that.”
Alain gazed at him curiously then.
“I can do something for you, but I must have payment.”
Right. Alchemist. It must be a job, then, not a title like a king, lord, or wizard.
Elias reached over and removed the blue book from his jacket.
“Do you take payment in knowledge or coin?” Elias asked.
Alain grinned.
“For some of your hair, I can tell you what he did to you. For some of your tears, I can draw you a picture of the circles on your back so you do not have to bare yourself to the unworthy. . . .” Alain paused, but Elias was sure he was not done.
“For some of your blood, I can give you a tool to better defend yourself. For a lot of your blood—”
Elias knew he could not die. He could not die if this man killed him for his insolence.
“For a kiss, what would you give me? For benediction?” Elias interrupted.
Alain paused, startled. Then he looked away, eyes glued to the floor.
“I have paid dearly in pain already, Mr. Cloutier,” Elias continued quietly. “I cannot pay more.”
“The merchant decides his prices,” Alain replied after a while, voice rough and heavy. “The patron acquiesces.” Rehearsed, like it was something he had repeated often before.
Elias crossed the room. Stood between the spread of Alain’s knees. He put a brave hand on Alain’s jaw, then felt the point of one of his own knives graze the soft stretch beneath his chin. He hadn’t even heard the French alchemist remove it.
Slowly, Elias dropped to the ground, a hairline cut on his throat opening and healing again and again against the jut of the knife as he went. Until he was looking up the length of his own blade, following Alain’s arm. Staring into his face beneath the shadow of his hair.
“This house that stinks of death also smells like flowers,” Elias whispered. “There is a ghost in your decoration.”
Alain’s eyes grew wet. Elias leaned closer, though his blood was beginning to drench his shirt.
“For being seen and known, what would you give me, widower? For sweetness freely given, as it once was?”
Alain swallowed. He drew the knife away from Elias’s neck and let his hand fall limp to his thigh.
“Seigneur, pardonne-moi car je suis faible,” he muttered.
Elias gently took his knife from Alain’s hand and placed it back in its sheath. Then he brushed his lips against the hills of Alain’s knuckles. The French alchemist sat unmoving as Elias turned his hand and pressed a thumb against the inside of his wrist, tender, solemn, giving, holy.
“In my father’s house, when he came in from the cold from the woods or in the fields, my youngest sister would warm his hands thus,” Elias began.
He held Alain’s palm against his cheek. “It is not so large a thing as pain, but perhaps the sentiment will carry.
My oldest sister knits mittens for him. Traps rabbits and weaves their fur into the wool so they keep blood-hot for many hours.
My middle sister rubs his joints with tallow, mixed with herbs I gather from the grasses.
“My father is nearly sixty and can work longer than most other men. His hands are softer than even mine because by the grace of God he was allowed to keep his loved ones by his side and we work to make sure we are all cared for in a thousand ways. I am not a father, but I know the wealth of daughters. I am not a husband, but I can imagine the joy of a wife.”
Elias politely ignored Alain’s tears.
“I do not have tallow or gloves. I don’t even have the luxury of time. I am just a man with knives. But I do see you, Alain, and I do understand that you are hurt and you are lonesome, and I grieve with you. I am sorry that something happened to your family.”
Alain took a moment to compose himself, wiping his face with his hands.
“Your heart is so open. Your father must be a good man.”
“The wind rattles the shutters in the house where my heart lives; the door was torn from the frame,” Elias replied. “But yes, my father is a good man.”
He sat back on his heels and waited.
“If I had known you were like this, Victor would not have left this place living,” Alain promised.
Elias just waited.
Alain sighed and looked at the ceiling. “Would you like me to give you a way to speak to him?”
Elias furrowed his brow in confusion, but he said nothing.
“There are threads between you,” Alain explained.
“Your physical health is just one. Your heart is another, and your mind is the final thread. Your health is a matter much more complicated than the heart, but I can—with sacrifice—pluck that thread so it plays a note so sweet that you can feel the echo of his heart shout back.”
“This would require more payment?” Elias asked dubiously.
Alain shook his head. “Not your sacrifice, mine.”
He stood, took Elias’s hand. He led him to the place Elias did not want to go.
It was worse than Elias had imagined. Walls caked with blood, floor slick with it. The head of a ram on the table, draining sloppily into a bucket beneath. Gloves on the floor where Alain had tossed them.
The French alchemist tore the fouled sheets from his table, then wiped it clean with spirits so strong they burned Elias’s nose.
“I am sorry for the mess,” Alain said.
There was no way Elias would ever believe this room spent any time cleaner than this.
But he dutifully lay down on the sterilized leather.
Alain opened his shirt and vest, then wiped his own chest with spirits.
He selected a syringe from a container filled with the same liquid.
A needle so fine it looked almost like a hair.
Elias sighed; this would not be the first time he was lied to about pain at a doctor’s office. Then, like all things Alain did, swift and surprising, the French alchemist plunged the needle into his own chest with a small shout. Elias sat up in alarm.
Alain screamed as he pulled the plunger back, the needle filling with a blood so dark it looked nearly black. He coughed, then sank to his knees and coughed again hard before removing the needle and covering the hole quickly with gauze.
He said a few quick words in a language Elias had never heard, then settled back, breathing hard in relief. His forehead had broken out in a wild sweat and his skin was ashen, clammy.
He coughed again and pressed a palm over his heart, waiting for something internal to happen. Then he stood.
Elias watched in silent horror as Alain sprayed the blood into a small tube.
Then Alain leaned over it, hand still over his chest, then took a breath.
After a moment, tears leaked out of his eyes and dropped upon the viscera.
Alain moved his hand from his heart to the place Elias had kissed as Alain cried.
Then he wiped his face and strode across the room to find another jar of some kind of dust, which he added to the watery mixture. Another dark vial of liquid. He squeezed a few drops of blood from Elias’s shirt collar into it as well.
He mixed it with a metal rod, then dipped a paintbrush inside.
“Open your shirt,” he commanded.
Elias did. Too frightened by what he was watching to even argue.
Alain leaned over him and began drawing circles on the center of his chest. They reminded Elias of the symbols on his back but different, less jagged, more graceful.
“If you practice you may be able to control it. Close your eyes and imagine a vibrating string, then imagine closing your fist over it until the vibrations stop. When you want it to start again, imagine plucking it.”
Elias watched him paint. “Will this wash off when I bathe?” he asked, a completely reasonable question.
Alain smiled. “Of course it will. The physical bits anyway; it’s just blood, mud, and tears in the end. But the part that matters will stay.”
When Alain finished drawing, he placed his palm over the center of Elias’s chest. At first nothing happened. Then.
There was a tightness in his neck, pleasure running down to his stomach. Elias frowned. It felt like . . . haughty satisfaction?
Elias immediately closed his eyes, imagined the string, and shut this down.
“What have you done to me?” he demanded.
Alain stepped back and put the mixture on his table.
“I gave of my heart’s blood directly from its chambers, tears of grief cried once every ten years, dust from a rock not made on this earth, and the combined cursed blood from you and your tethered to give you a channel to force this man to feel your pain,” he said simply.
“Wherever you are. Wherever he is. If you open the path and feel something stronger than whatever he is feeling, you will overwhelm him.”
Elias just stared at Alain, speechless.
“The only thing you’re feeling is cautious or curious, maybe disgust. So Victor’s feelings came through first,” Alain said, brushing his hands against his trousers.
“But when you are ready, play the note of your hearts and burn him from the inside out. Rock him with the wave of your loss and the heat of your anger. Rouse him from sleep, crush him with guilt. Drive him mad if you wish.”
Elias pressed a hand to the circle on his chest. He didn’t know how to feel about this.
The French alchemist looked at him through lowered lids. “You did not need to practice after all. It comes easily to you, little butcher. Perhaps you are more like us than you think. You smell of blood like me, at any rate, but that’s probably because of your violence.”
Elias frowned, embarrassed.
Alain opened the door and guided him back into the living room.
“I need to rest and recover. If you must—stay. Eat what you find in my kitchens, walk through my garden, take a shirt from the line outside to replace your own. But I must lie down.”
Elias wanted to leave. Or he wanted to be beside this man, for the first time in weeks to sleep in a bed warm as the one he shared with Magda and Gida. He wanted to scrub his chest of this grimy paste, settle somewhere private and dream alone.
Alain made his choice for him. He brushed a hand over Elias’s head in obvious fondness, then walked past him into another room and shut the door.
Elias heard the click of a lock.
So he drank crisp, clean water from Alain’s stores and filled his canister. Smelled the sweetness of peaches grown from his hot, enchanted soil. Put on a shirt too big by half, then covered it with his jacket. Counted his knives, counted his money, hid his book.
Then he walked out of the French alchemist’s house and into the sun.