Chapter 7 A Whole Alchemist
A WHOLE ALCHEMIST
Lady Guinevere squatted behind her large oak desk in her office at the back of her potion shop.
Sybil could just see the gold frizz of her hair above the desk as she rummaged through it.
Various clinks and clangs caused the large raven resting on a perch at one end of the desk to bristle, and finally Lady Guinevere popped up, small, basket in hand.
She fastened it and pushed it across the desk toward Sybil.
“For your travels,” she said. “A little something for everything.”
The man occupying the wall beside the door behind Sybil snorted. He was dressed head to toe in the same stark black as his hair and the scruff ranging across his jaw.
“Sure you didn’t miss something?” he drawled, a hint of a Scottish brogue around the edges of his speech.
“Hm. It’s possible. But I’ve been quite thorough.”
Another snort, but Lady Guinevere did not seem to notice.
Or she chose to ignore it, offering Sybil a bright smile. “Are you ready for your journey?”
Beyond the lady’s shoulder and out the window, a traveling coach lay waiting for Sybil at the corner of the street. It was large yet discreet in the early morning fog. In front of the coach, Temple paced, hands clasped behind him.
“I suppose.” Sybil sighed. “No avoiding it.”
“You can make the best of it, though.” She nodded at the basket on the desk. “There’re potions for travel sickness and sleep. And a few others that might be necessary.”
Sybil took the basket and held it before her. “Thank you. I should have liked to stay here longer. Learn more about the plants.”
“I’d prefer my roof not burn down.”
“We did not intend… Things got a bit out of control. I am terribly sorry.”
“Sometimes it’s like that. There are elements in this world that cannot be near one another. Too explosive together. Plants that when mixed destroy instead of heal. Hm. Why was he here? Visiting you?”
“He… he’s the one who pulled me from Stone’s dungeon.”
“Apollo Chester? Fascinating. The notorious villain has chosen a new path.”
“Not likely. I’ve no idea why he did it. He’s Stone’s apprentice. If Stone finds out, Chester will lose that position.”
“A selfless act. I didn’t think him capable of it. People are surprising. Always changing, ever… treading new paths of the self, discovering rusty, forgotten valves of the heart.”
“That’s an optimistic view.”
Lady Guinevere laughed, and the bird chortled, hopping down to nudge at her hands folded atop the desk. “Some days are like that.” She stroked the raven’s wing.
The woman was fascinating herself, bold and beautiful and… “Aren’t you scared? Of breaking so many rules?”
Her cheeks hollowed for a moment during which her brilliant blue eyes grew distant before puffing out with a smile.
“No. Though since your brother misused a batch of love potion so publicly, I have gained the attention of the local constables and the queen and parliament and—” She sighed. “It has been quite a mess.”
“You were exonerated in the courts.”
“But I have had to double my guards. Transcendent men fear me more than they fear the unavoidable eventuality of their own deaths. I take some pride in that. There have been… How many attempts to kill me, Bran?” She looked past Sybil to the man standing guard at the door.
“Three,” he grumbled.
“He’s more irritated than I am about it all. Frankly, business has never been better.”
Sybil wrapped her hands more tightly about the handle of the basket. “You could run a secret shop. You don’t have to put yourself in harm’s way so publicly.”
“I am not good at hiding.”
Bran snorted.
“Hush, you.” Lady Guinevere shot the man a look, one eyebrow flying high. To Sybil, she said, “Excuse him. He’s become much less respectful in the last several months. Has all sorts of opinions outside of how to keep me safe.”
“How… unfortunate?”
“Precisely. You’d better go. Your brother is not known for his patience.”
Sybil nodded then, using a deep breath to steady her, left the shop. A thick fog shrouded Finsbury Square, and Temple stopped pacing to wrap Sybil in a crushing hug.
“I wish I could come with you,” he said into her hair.
“You cannot. You have much to keep you in London. Diana, the babe, the queen.” She chuckled and wiggled out of his embrace. “I’ll be fine.”
“But you’re irritated with me.”
“Of course I am.”
He scowled. She scowled back. They hugged again.
“Write,” she said, “when you have a path forward with Stone.”
He nodded and helped her into the coach. “Your chaperone and companion is Miss Clarissa Barker. Highly recommended by the queen.” He peered inside. “I think she’s sleeping.”
A lump of brown skirts occupied one corner of the coach. A wide-brimmed bonnet obscured most of her face, and a lumpy satchel rested between her skirts and the far side of the coach. She snored.
Lovely.
He squeezed her hand. “I love you. I’ll write.”
“I love you, too. Despite all this.” She squeezed his hand back, then sat as he closed the door. Her eyes felt hot and tingly, and she pressed them closed as the coach rolled forward. She would not cry in front of a woman favored by Queen Victoria! She. Would. Not.
Distraction. She needed it. She wiped the back of her hand against her welling eyes then reached into her nearby traveling satchel. What she wanted was pressed against one side, and she slipped it out, opened it up.
Stone’s notebook was no clearer to her after additional readings. She’d not had much time to spend on it, though. It had only been two days since her abduction.
Two days. It seemed like an age. But now she’d have an unlimited number of quiet hours to figure out the device sketched on every page.
Hopefully Miss Clarissa Barker was not chatty.
But even if she was, it would be no longer than a week until they arrived at Foggy Hill House.
After that, they’d have space to spread out.
She could avoid the woman if she wished to.
Or, perhaps Sybil would be lucky, and the woman would be clever and kind and interesting, and they’d get along wonderfully well, and Miss Barker would prove a friend and confidante during Sybil’s incarceration.
She sighed. A lovely dream, that. Sybil already missed her sisters, her entire messy family.
With her heart hurting a little, she studied the first sketch. There seemed to be two main devices explored here. A circular one and a long one. Both were comprised of empty tubes and bulbous chambers at intervals along the tubes, but—
A snore broke her concentration. It was loud and startling. Hopefully the poor dear was still breathing?
Another snore.
Sybil snapped the notebook shut. Miss Barker was not endearing herself.
Another snore and Sybil bounced on her seat.
“Miss Barker,” she said, “could you please wake up?” It was time they introduced themselves, after all.
But the woman still huddled, sleeping.
Sybil said louder, “Miss Barker!”
But the other woman didn’t even flinch.
Sybil took a calming breath. Everything seemed to crash down on her at once.
“Here I am trapped in a coach with a stranger, rolling away from my family and friends and my… my…” Her dreams and ambitions, but she couldn’t say that.
Another frustration. “My hobbies! And the Master of the Alchemist Guild himself wants to trap me like a fox in a cage for his own use, and I almost burned down my friend’s shop, and who knows how long I’ll be relegated to some crumbling, forgotten countryside estate.
And all I want is to focus on this damned device, but my traveling companion—who I was not given the luxury of choosing—snores like a… like a wild boar!”
The snoring sounded more like a snort that time.
“Oh.” Sybil’s hand flew up to her mouth. “I do apologize, Miss Barker. I do not mean to offend. Only, I think I’m crumbling, and I would like to meet you, but you do keep sleeping, and—”
Another snort.
And the last time Sybil heard a snort of that sort…
No. It couldn’t be. She was mad. Imagining things. Had to be.
She leaned closer to the sleeping woman.
Her edges were glowing. The gown the bonnet, the graying brown hair bundled at the neck—they threw off sparks like tiny fireworks as their edges faded.
A glamour.
That meant either the woman usually wore a glamour, and it was fading as they moved farther away from the man who cast it, or… it wasn’t Miss Barker at all.
Stone had found her.
Or…
That snort.
Sybil settled back into the squabs, curling her hands into her skirts. “Miss Barker, your glamour is fading.”
Silence, then the slight rustle of fabric as the brown fading skirts moved, then, “Damn.”
Oh Hestia, she’d been right.
The chaperone sat upright, scowling at her—his—limbs.
“Damn Morington. He promised the glamour would last for several hours more. But then he had to make it late last night with only moonlight, and moonlight makes for flimsier illusions. Well, now you know, I guess. I’d hoped to make it out of London at least before you found out. ”
“Chester.”
“I insist you call me Apollo. I cannot handle an entire holiday being addressed as Chester. Will ruin it, actually.”
He looked absurd. The glamour had dissolved from his face and body, but he still seemed to wear the garb of a lady. She could just see the top edge of his cravat poking out of the fake gown’s high neck.
“You rotten liar! Where is Miss Barker?”
“She’s fine. She’s been paid a large sum of money to take a holiday in Bath for an undetermined period of time.
I’m going to owe Morington for the rest of my life, I’m afraid.
He helped me with this disguise, too. For a hefty price.
Though I might be able to talk him down a few hundred pounds by threatening to tell his wife about everything. ”
“What do you want with me? Do you mean to take me back to Stone?”
“God no. I’m taking you right where Temple wants you. Yorkshire. Foggy Hill House. I’ve stowed away for purely personal reasons, princess.”
“I will not be seduced.”