Chapter 43
The very moment we emerged from the woods onto the beach at the south end of Alchemary Island, I wondered why I had not, in fact, been there before.
Whereas the northern and eastern sides culminated in steep cliffs like the one the Dormitory was perched upon and the one spanned by the bridge into Saltstrand, the island sloped gently to the south, specialized soil giving way to a smooth-pebble beach and a single long dock.
“What is this for?” I asked as we traversed the wooden planks above gentle waves washing toward us, glittering in the afternoon sun. A cool breeze lifted the ends of my hair and the hem of my frock, raising gooseflesh on my arms and legs. “I thought supplies came over the bridge from Saltstrand?”
“Most do,” Desmond said. “But some come via ship and are carried up the trail through the woods, to the Refectory.”
“Or the infirmary?” I said, thinking of the path at the rear of the Conservatory.
“Mmm,” he said, and I noted his lack of a true answer.
I’d grown accustomed to the salty scent of ocean air that blew through my bedchamber daily, and I’d grown to love that view. But this one was just as stunning, if different. From the dock, I could see the sea at eye level.
Somehow, that made me feel even smaller.
Desmond sat at the end of the dock and let his legs dangle so that spray from the waves lightly splattered his shoes.
He patted the spot beside him, and I gathered my skirt and sat.
Under normal circumstances, the moment would have felt peaceful.
But the current churning in my mind was much more turbulent than the midafternoon waves gently washing over the pebble beach.
He cleared his throat, an obvious preamble to a discussion that necessitated complete privacy. “There are some things you don’t know about alchemy.”
I huffed, running one hand over the loose braid stretching back and down from high on my temple. “Desmond, I’m still a student. Despite my purported skill, I suspect there are quite a few things I don’t yet know about alchemy.”
He nodded but betrayed no amusement as he shifted away from the sun to face me, folding one leg beneath himself on the wooden planks.
“But I’m not referring to the theory or the craft of alchemy.
I’m talking about the practice of it. The organizational structure.
The…hierarchy. You don’t yet understand where the real power and influence lies, in the alchemy community.
Nor can you possibly understand the scale of it. ”
A thread of unease wound around my spine.
“I know that the Alchemary is the oldest, most prominent and influential alchemy institution in the world, and that the Bluehelm is in charge of it. So wouldn’t that place her at the top of the hierarchy?”
“It would, in theory,” Desmond acknowledged. “But not comfortably or safely so, given the growing influence of the Alkahest Institute as our academic rival and the fact that the Crown has its own private alchemist.”
“Pryce’s father.”
“Yes.” He looked as if he’d just swallowed a bitter clod of dirt.
“So, you’re saying there are…what? Threats to the Alchemary?”
“Yes. And I’m saying that the Alchemary, in return, poses its own reciprocal threats. As does the Toolkeepers’ Rebellion.”
“My father would never—”
“And that because those reciprocal threats have been escalating for years. For generations”—Desmond continued as I squinted into the sun shining over his head—“much of the true power of the Alchemary has retreated into the shadows, where it has been allowed to grow—and to advance—unseen. Largely unchecked.”
Unease stewed in my gut like laundry bubbling over the fire. “Meaning what?”
“Meaning that there is very little that the elite practitioners of our craft are not capable of. And even less they are not willing to do.”
“In pursuit of the greater good of mankind?” I prompted, as if speaking the words might somehow make them true, despite my understanding that he would not have needed complete privacy in order to tell me how virtuous the alchemical elite had become.
“In pursuit of great power.”
Desmond let me sit with the words. With the implication.
I turned toward the north for a glimpse of the beautiful campus I’d come to love, trying to picture it in this new light.
Or rather, cast beneath this new shadow.
To my surprise, despite their height, not one of the grand buildings was visible beyond the forest, from our position.
I felt isolated and protected by the woods and the peaceful churn of ocean waves.
And yet, the rest of Alchemary Island had not truly disappeared.
“These elite have veered from the true goal of alchemy,” I murmured.
“Some have truly diverged,” he acknowledged.
“Others believe that accumulating power is the only way to protect and enforce the true goal: bettering the world through resisting entropy. Yet regardless of their original intent, people who gain power are rarely wiling to relinquish it. Or to limit its reach.”
Chills washed over me, unrelated to the cool breeze. “Who are these people? Professors?”
“Only a few. Most of the Alchemary researchers are among the elite, though, as well as the Alchemary board. And a few distinguished alchemists in private practice.”
There were very few distinguished private practitioners, as far as I knew. Most notably, the royal alchemist.
“They call themselves scriveners,” Desmond added.
“Scriveners? Why?” The word meant simply those who write.
“The title refers to their mastery of grade-five elixirs.”
“There is no grade five,” I said, but I knew before the words had even left my mouth that I was wrong about that. “Very well, what is a grade-five elixir?”
Because it was very clearly something entirely apart from the first four grades.
It would have to be, if the majority of the alchemy community wasn’t allowed to even know it existed.
Desmond twisted to look up the length of the dock and peer into the shadowy depths of the woods, as if to assure himself that we were truly alone.
Finally, he turned back to me, a new, quiet sort of tension drawn in the stiff line of his shoulders.
Echoing in the depth of his voice. “Grade-five elixirs require only one ingredient.”
“Beyn,” I guessed, and he nodded. “But how is that possible?”
“The most elite practitioners of alchemy have developed a technique for imbuing the writing of a formula—the symbols, specifically—with the intent of the ingredients. With the will of the alchemists themselves.”
“They only have to write the formula?”
“And paint the symbols with their beyn.” Desmond hesitated.
“There are other…details. Complications of the process. But yes, in reductive terms, they write, instead of laboring over a lab table and refining tangible ingredients. The art is called scrivening, the practitioners scriveners. And they’re only capable of doing this because they have done the true scientific labor of alchemy thousands of times over.
They have become so adept at it that they can now mentally perform the same art. ”
“They have achieved a higher state of alchemy,” I whispered. “An elevated form. In a way, the very goal of alchemy itself.”
“Indeed.” Yet there was something tense and distant in Desmond’s voice.
“But with ‘complications’…”
He gave me a tight smile. “Yes.”
“How does this craft afford the scriveners power? What do they do with their alchemy?” I asked.
Desmond exhaled slowly. Heavily. “There is very little they cannot do. Scriveners have developed advances in medicine, entertainment, and cosmetic application beyond imagination, though they do not make those advances known to the masses for fear of exposure. But the most prominent use is the production of alchemy-based weapons.”
“Weapons?” Horror flowed across my flesh like a slow dunk into a cold pond. Weapons were the very agent of chaos and disorder. Of violence and oppression. The antithesis of the goal of alchemy.
“Weapons,” Desmond repeated. “Ostensibly—and often legitimately—to protect both the craft of alchemy and the Alchemary itself.”
“From what?”
“From the threat of control by outside forces. To protect the autonomy of the institution. And the right for alchemy to exist, as an art.”
“To protect the Alchemary from the Toolkeepers?” I guessed.
Desmond nodded. “Yes. But not exclusively.”
“What kind of weapons?” I’d never seen an overt threat to the Alchemary, at least that I could remember. There had been no soldiers attacking the gates. No navy assaulting our shores.
Another sigh. “Scrivenings can stun, paralyze, burn, and shock. They can blind, deafen, and even kill. But that is not the worst of it.”
My heart pounded painfully. “How could killing not be the worst?”
“Killing one person usually has a limited scope of impact. But influencing one person—or, ideally, a handful of strategically positioned people—can have limitless impact.”
“You’re talking about large-scale manipulation. Not of one person’s emotion, but of many people’s behavior.”
“In any number of ways, on every possible level,” he confirmed. “Through mechanisms that may never be acknowledged or discovered. All with a few strokes of brush or a quill, dipped in a specialized beyn.”
Every muscle in my body seemed to seize at once, freezing my breath in my lungs until I cracked them open with sheer willpower. The scope was almost inconceivable. The benefits…The consequences…And…
I sat straight, stuck with a sudden cold and paralyzing fear, at odds with the soothing pulse of ocean waves. “Can scrivening cause memory loss?”
“Yes.” Desmond shifted, and the boards beneath him creaked.
“And I’ve given that hours of consideration, over the past three months.
But I haven’t come up with anyone who would benefit from visiting such a calamity upon you, considering how much the scriveners—how much everyone—stood to gain from your work. ”
But his eyes had that look again. He was leaving something out.