Snippet – The Alchemist’s Secret (The Zero Enigma)
Prologue
“Louise! Louise! Louise!”
Louise Herdsman could hear the noise, the air vibrating with the sound of men shouting her name, as she stood in the antechamber and centred herself. It was the night – the night – when she would learn, beyond a shadow of a doubt, if her quest for reform had found footing, or if the forces of reaction and the aristocracy had managed to undermine her candidacy to the point she sank like a stone in water and never recovered. She had chosen her battleground carefully, and called on all her allies and ingenuity to wage a political campaign that appealed to the voters, yet she was all too aware her enemies were both powerful and numerous. She had calculated that she’d have so many enemies that they would get in each other’s way, that they’d dissipate the hostile vote amongst their chosen candidates, but she could easily be wrong. The Great Houses hadn’t taken her seriously, when she’d first started to make a name for herself. If they’d changed their mind, if they’d united against her, she could still lose.
The game is rigged, she reminded herself, again. But that doesn’t mean I can’t win.
She took a long breath, looking down at herself. Her blonde hair was loosely tied back, symbolising her commitment to the cause, and her merchant’s dress hung neatly around her, conveying the impression of femininity without doing more than hinting at her curves. She’d chosen her outfit carefully, picking a green dress with a splash of colour rather than the drabness worn by dockside woman or peacock outfits favoured by aristocratic girls. The pendant hanging around her neck was cheap and yet it was a reminder her father was a success in his field, and that his success might easily be passed down to his daughter. Her lips quirked in dark amusement. The dockyard workers were a rough and ready crowd, decent enough – in their own way – and yet crude and rude, even by the standards of the rest of the city. Their nose for bullshit rivalled her father’s. If she pretended to be something she wasn’t, they’d sniff it out and turn their backs on her. And that would be the end.
Her magic sparkled around her, a hint of defensive charms intended to ward off subtle threats. Her opponents were unlikely to risk assassinating her, she thought, but there were plenty of other ways they could discredit her, without turning her into a martyr. Louise had done well at Jude’s – she’d been near the top of the class, and would have been right at the top if the grades were calculated fairly – but she was painfully aware the Great Houses kept some secrets to themselves. A babbling charm, to make her sound like an idiot; a delirium charm, to make her look like a drunken idiot … or worse, far worse. Louise had tested her defences repeatedly, over the last few weeks, but there was still a quiet nagging doubt. Her enemies might be luring her into overconfidence, while they waited to drop the hammer.
She took a breath, feeling butterflies in her stomach. She had never liked public speaking, even though she had turned out to be good at it. She knew better than to think she was a genius – half of her success had come because she put the people’s grievances into words – and that the slightest mistake could lead to a fall, a fall so far she would never recover. Reform would go on, she promised herself, as she took a second breath. The noise outside was growing louder, but it would start to fade soon. She had to cast the spell while the spellwork was primed, ready to go. There would be no second chance.
Reform will go on, she told herself, again. With or without me, it will go on.
Louise stepped forward and through the curtain, into a blinding world of light and sound. The Dockyard Guildhall was immense, packed to bursting with dockyard workers and a handful of their families, so many people that the guildhall staff had had to turn away a number of obvious outsiders. Some had been curious, but others had clearly been bent on causing trouble … her lips twitched, just for a second, as she forced herself to walk towards the podium. She had chosen the guild for several reasons, including the simple fact that – normally – very few voters could be bothered to turn out for the vote. If her enemies had realised how many workers would attend now, they would have found another way to slip ringers and trouble-causers into the building. But they hadn’t and they were paying for it now.
Her eyes swept across the crowd, drinking in their adoration. They really were rough and ready men – and a handful of women – quaffing down alcohol as if it were going out of fashion and banging their tankards on the table. She spotted her main rival, the guild representative to Magus Court, and kept her face blank though a lifetime of experience hiding her thoughts from her betters, or at least those who had the advantage of being born into the aristocracy. The man hadn’t learnt his lesson, she thought gleefully. He was a lowborn aristo, a client of a far higher patron, and yet he was dressed as a parody of a dockyard worker, complete with a little cloth cap he clearly didn’t know how to wear. He’d definitely not been spending any time in the drinking halls, she reflected, unable to keep a faint smile from crossing her lips. The songwriters had written a whole ditty about clients trying to impress the voters by pretending to be one of them, aping their styles and wearing their caps … if he’d been drinking with the voters, he would have heard the song and realised they were singing about him. Him, and everyone like him …
But if self-awareness was part of his nature, she told herself, he’d know better.
She kept walking, the crowd pressing in around her. A hand touched her rear … she channelled a kinetic spell into her fist, then punched the groper out without even looking at him. A drunken fool, or a ringer … it didn’t matter. The crowd roared with laughter, cheering loudly. They respected strength and the willingness to fight, not anything that could be taken as weakness. Perhaps it had been a test. If she’d ignored the touch, or screamed for someone to save her, it would have come across poorly. Her reputation would never recover.
Her legs seemed to move of their own accord, as if she were in a dream, as she climbed up the steps and onto the podium. The singer, who had been making up in enthusiasm what he lacked in talent, nodded politely to her and stood back. The guildmaster stepped forward, nodded curtly to her – no soppy aristocratic bows at the guildhall – and turned to face the crowd. Louise could see the sheen on his face, the grim awareness his career was in deep trouble no matter what he did. If he made no attempt to ruin her speech, or come up with an excuse to cancel the election, his patrons would discard him, but if he tried so openly he’d lose his postion within a day. Louise’s supporters had already made it clear they wanted a fair election, without any dirty tricks … at least from him. If the guildmaster put the interests of his patrons ahead of his guild, in front of an entire crowd, he’d be voted out of office so fast his head would spin.
“Good men and women,” the guildmaster said. There were some chuckles, and snide cat-calling from the shadows. The guildmaster, having more self-awareness than the representative, flushed angrily. He knew he was being mocked, even though he somehow managed to keep his tone level. “I present to you the candidate for office, the honourable Louise Herdsman.”
Louise stepped forward, keeping her face under control. If calling her the honourable anything was the best he could do, when it came to sabotaging her campaign, the election was already in the bag. Perhaps it was … she told herself not to get overconfident as she spoke to the crowd, reminding them of their hand lives, and how little provision there was for women and children when the husband and father died, and all the other little indignities they had to swallow. She told them there was hope, that she could be elected to change their lives, and then told them her plan. They were too ruthlessly practical to believe vague promises, no matter how tantalising. They had been burned too many times before, by get-rich-quick schemes that only left then poorer, or promises of reform that had been ruthlessly squashed before they got off the ground. Louise could understand why, because she had studied all of the political movements and why they’d failed. The system could only be beaten by turning its own laws against it.
A thrill ran through her as she finished her speech and clasped her hands behind her back, waiting to see if there would be a rebuttal. Her rival was entitled to make a countervailing speech, if he wished, and perversely he might actually win a few votes if he stepped up in front of a hostile crowd and faced them down. Did he have the nerve? He knew he was unpopular now, he knew he’d only held his seat because so few bothered to vote, but … the crowd jeered and booed as her rival shrugged and put on an ‘I don’t care’ expression. Louise wondered what he was thinking, if he still thought the fix was in or if he was planning a hasty departure before his patrons caught up with him, then shrugged herself. It didn’t matter. The rival – she couldn’t even remember his name – was nothing more than a pawn of the system, a glove puppet moved by a distant hand. It was the system she had to beat, and to beat it she had to join it …
The crowd jostled as lines formed outside the voting booths. Louise risked a glance at the guildmaster and saw the sweat on his face … the fix wasn’t in then, or not enough to make the results certain. There were hundreds of spells around the booths to make it difficult for anyone to cheat, or so she had been assured, but there was no way to be sure, no matter how many times she and the other reform-minded magicians tested the charms. She had wondered, despite herself, if the whole guild was nothing more than a sham. It was the only guild in all of Shallot that practiced secret voting, ensuring anyone who voted the wrong way would never be called to account for it, a concession that puzzled her even as she took full advantage of it. Perhaps it was a decoy, a trick to convince the voters the election was actually fair. Or … she felt sweat pricking down her own back as the lines moved through the booth. Either she won, and walked into Magus Court, or she fell back into the shadows.
There will be another chance, she told herself. It might not be her who rose to challenge the establishment, but someone would. If the Ancients willed it wasn’t her, she would strive to ensure the successful challenger won and reformed the system and … Time is on our side.
The guildmaster looked pale as the staff brought him the results, swallowing hard. Louise knew she’d won, even before the guildmaster forced himself to step up to the podium and announce the results. She wondered if he had the nerve to try to lie, to try to insist the other guy would keep his seat, but … she glanced back and realised her rival had vanished, darting out of the hall when no one was looking. Had he fled to his patrons, to assure them of his total loyalty and usefulness, or had he headed straight to the coachhouse and taken the first available coach out of town? It hardly mattered, she reminded herself. All that mattered was that she’d won.
“The winner is Louise Herdsman,” the guildmaster said. He dropped Louise a deep sardonic bow. She was almost certainly the only other person in the hall who knew the deep bow was a subtle insult, one that could not be called out. Akin’s etiquette lessons had been surprisingly useful, for all she’d thought them a waste of time a few short months ago. “Congratulations, Speaker for the Docks.”
Louise allowed herself a smile as the party broke out, more alcohol and food being passed out as the band started to play. She moved through the crowd, shaking hands and accepting congratulations while trying to duck as many promises as possible. The election had been easy, but the real fight had yet to begin. The guilds might be on her side – she knew many guildsmen agreed with her stance, and her first plan for outright reform – yet the system itself was very definitely not. They might not have taken her seriously – Akin was probably the only senior aristo who knew her, or at least was prepared to admit he did, and understand her commitment to reform – but now they’d have no choice. She had become a threat to the system and that meant it would try to discredit, or remove, or kill her …
She smiled. Let it try.
Chapter One: Akin
The day after Cat and Isabella left, I found myself trapped in my office, buried in paperwork.
It felt wrong, really it did, to think of it as my office. It had been my father’s domain, the centre of his family’s power, and my sister and I had never been allowed to enter, unless we were in real trouble. I’d been granted access when I reached the age of majority, as my father’s heir, and yet I had felt like an intruder every time I stepped through the door. The office had been renovated, after the attempted coup, and yet I still felt as if I didn’t belong. But then, I was almost painfully young. My father should have lived longer and I should have inherited, if at all, in my forties. Instead, I was barely nineteen.
I glowered at the paperwork, wondering how my father had coped. There were so many things that couldn’t be trusted to anyone else, certainly not with my father dead, my mother in mourning, and my sister in de facto exile. A sizable number of my relatives had tried to overthrow my father, out of horror at my impending marriage to Cat, and while most of them were dead or gone I had no way to know how many others had been biding their time, waiting to see who won before declaring myself. It was one thing to accept pledges of allegiance from men old enough to be my father, men who had every reason to resent a teenager being elevated above them, but quite another to accept pledges from people who smiled even as they sharpened the knife for my back. House Rubén was a big family and not everyone had been in the city, when all hell broke loose. How many were plotting against me, even now? I didn’t know.
Father knew everything, I reflected. My father had been shown the ropes by his grandfather, who had lived long enough to make sure he was ready to take the helm, and he’d been granted access to the secret files … I was making it up as I went along, bluffing with bluffs that might – or might not – have been nothing more than absurd flights of fancy. The vast collection of secrets father had used to keep people in line had been destroyed, or lost somewhere in the family archives, and the mere act of looking for it would tip people off that I didn’t have it. Father knew everything and I know nothing.
I raised my head and peered out the window. It was a beautiful summer day, the bright blue sky seeming to merge into the slightly darker blue waters to the south, but I was trapped inside. It was hard not to feel a twinge of resentment for my cousins – they were out there having their seasons, or simply enjoying themselves on the beach, or even slumming in Water Shallot – while I was trapped inside, reading paperwork that was so densely written I wasn’t sure if the writers were trying to prove themselves to me or hide important details in mountains of nonsense. Father had taught me to read everything, before I signed it, but there was just so much. I was tempted to recall Isabella, no matter what the family would say, and ask for her help. There weren’t many others I could trust to have the best interests of the family at heart.
But everyone has the family interests at heart, I told myself. They just think those interests are better served by having someone a little more mature in charge.
I gritted my teeth as I finished reading the document, signed my name, and then looked at the portrait hanging on the far wall. My father had been a cold and hard man, not given to displaying his feelings on his sleeve, but he had loved us. All of us. The portrait was seven years out of date, painted when Isabella and I had been twelve, before we’d gone to Jude’s and … and she’d betrayed us, and been sent into exile. Father should have commissioned an new portrait, a more resent one, but custom would have decreed Isabella had to be excluded. Instead, he’d kept the one that showed all four of us … my heart twisted, painfully. Perhaps it would be wise to call Isabella back, to share the postion with her. People would talk, but who cared? Isabella had grown up a lot, during her years in exile, and I was proud to call her my sister.
There was a sharp knock on the door. I leaned back in my chair and took a long breath, then cast the opening spell. Penny stepped into the room, showing none of the nervousness I would have expected from someone whose first visit to the office had been after she’d been caught bullying the firsties and severally punished by me. I had no idea what father had said to her – his cold anger was more terrifying than my mother’s shouting – but it would have been harsh and cold. Any hope she’d had of her family head reversing the punishment had died before it could be expressed, not least because it had been his heir who’d issued it. She had grown up a lot, at least, in the last year. And she had nowhere else to go.
I sighed, inwardly. I was already thinking like my father. And it was killing me.
Penny smiled at me, her angelic face hiding what I knew to be a calculating – and sometimes cruel – mind. I pitied her future husband, if she ever married. She might have been disgraced, but she was still a Rubén, still quite close to the family head. It was astonishing what someone would overlook, when the potential gains were so high. Isabella had committed de facto treason and people were still asking for her hand in marriage …
“A courier arrived, from House Lamplighter,” Penny said, cheerfully. “She requests the pleasure of your company, as soon as possible.”
I raised my eyebrows. House Lamplighter was the weakest of the Great Houses, so weak it was politically insignificant … which made it, to all intents and purposes, neutral ground. Lady Lamplighter, a young woman a year older than myself, had taken full advantage of her house’s neutrality, turning her family manor into a salon where deadly enemies could meet and talk like friends, or balls could be held – and everyone invited – without putting a family manor at risk. She even had ties to the various political parties the Great Houses pretended not to care about, including the organisations that shunned the patron-client relationships that underpinned much of the city. And she was a good friend, insofar as I was allowed to have friends. It helped she had made it clear she wanted nothing from me,
“That’s odd,” I said. A regular invite would not have come with a courier. “I take it the message is urgent?”
“Yeah.” Penny winked at me. “Do you want me to come with you? You know … just in case.”
I scowled to hide my flush. Cat and I had been betrothed in the aftermath of the House War … we were lucky, in all honesty, that we actually knew each other. And liked each other. Our relationship had grown closer over the years, through supervised outings and less-supervised forging sessions, and there was no doubt in my mind that I would marry her. But others in my family disagreed. A Rubén, marrying an Aguirre? Unthinkable. I had no doubt, either, that some of them would stop at nothing to stir up trouble, or throw a honey trap my way. My father’s advice on the subject had been cold and hard, and practical. But even he hadn’t been betrothed until he’d been much older than myself.
“I’ll be fine,” I said, curtly. Penny’s company was better than it had been, last year, but I could only handle her in small doses. “I’ll walk over there. I need the exercise.”
Penny looked suitably shocked as we left the office, sealing the wards behind us, and walked down to the entrance hall. The damage from the coup was still being repaired, the staff putting the finishing touches on repair work that was half-hidden under the mourning banners … I hated myself for thinking it, but my father’s death meant we couldn’t hold any more balls or calibrations until the next season, ten months away. It was something of a relief. I had never liked formal balls, or dinners, and it would be worse, now I was the family patriarch. Hopefully, Cat and I would be married before I had to start holding them again and we could share the burden. Or moan to each other about how tedious they were.
I pulled my cloak over my suit, made a show of checking my appearance in the mirror, then walked out and down the path to the gates. They opened at my approach, a reminder the family wards had accepted me as their new master … a reminder, too, that my father was dead. The armsman outside the gate hastily jumped to attention, hiding a broadsheet he’d been reading with practiced speed, and saluted. I returned the salute, pretending not to notice the newspaper. We were the most powerful family in the city and we didn’t need to keep a man on guard, not when we had more subtle defences on the inner side of the wall. But we had to keep up appearances. If our rivals saw us looking weak, they’d start plotting against us.
The air was warm and welcoming, the blue sky relaxing me as I walked past manor after manor, each surrounded by deeply-rooted family wards. A handful of aristocrats passed me on the streets, men bowing politely and women dropping curtseys … I pretended not to see the children running past, or the servants trying to stay out of sight. The latter was an important part of aristocratic etiquette, I’d been told; the polite thing to do was to pretend the servants simply didn’t exist, even though everyone knew they did. But then, it was surprisingly easy to pretend otherwise. The servants were rarely seen in the manor unless they were called.
I felt myself calm down, just a little, as I neared the edge of High Shallot. The manors here were smaller, although smaller was a relative term when dealing with aristocratic mansions, and a handful even belonged to wealthy merchants, who had worked their way up the social ladder through a combination of profit-seeking and careful patronage. They were still shunned by the Grande Dames, who resented anyone who entered their territory without being able to trace their bloodline back hundreds of years, but their children would be low-ranking aristocrats and their grandchildren would be equals … sort of. I smiled as a trio of teenage girls walked past me, wearing trousers … six months ago, any young woman who wore trousers would be subject to the most astringent criticism, but now everyone who wanted to make a statement wore them. Isabella had done that, wearing trousers when attending a ball and daring the old ladies to make a fuss. I wasn’t sure if she’d been thinking of sheer practicality, or if it was a subtle revenge scheme, but it hardly mattered. The Grande Dames had spent so much time preparing for Isabella’s return to High Society that they could hardly turn on a wheel and dismiss her contributions to fashion, or penalise anyone else who followed in her footsteps. The looks on their faces had made it all worthwhile. They had looked ready to faint …
The thought made me smile as I reached House Lamplighter and stepped through the permanently open gates. The garden had looked unkempt for a long time – Lady Lamplighter’s father had fritted away the family fortune, rather than keeping his property in good condition – but she’d made a virtue out of a vice, by crafting her garden into a strange combination of plants and trees that provided all sorts of quiet meeting places for couples who preferred not to be watched as they courted. A handful of youngsters swanned about outside the ballroom windows, pretending to be languid in a manner a little too intense to be convincing. I doubted they had anything else to do with their time. They were too highly-born to work in trade, at least not unless they were allowed to enter at a very senior level, and too low-ranking on the family tree to be entrusted with any real responsibilities. My father had called them lazy morons – when he’d been in a good mood – and yet, I couldn’t help feeling a twinge of envy. They could sit around all day, making a show of doing nothing. I could not.
I walked into the ballroom and up the stairs to the first floor, the wards crawling oddly around me. The ground floor was open to all, a strange combination of ballroom and dining room and private shop, and the first floor was for the guests – men and women of distinction who could be relied upon to liven up parties, in exchange for bread and board – but the upper levels were private, carefully warded to give Lady Lamplighter and her remaining family a little privacy. The lower levels were neatly decorated with artworks from all over the city – all put on display for free, to showcase various artists to aristos who might patronise them in both senses of the word – but the higher levels were surprisingly bare. House Lamplighter might be crawling its way back up, yet it was still dangerously poor. I didn’t envy Lady Lamplighter. In her place, I might have thought about leaving the family behind instead of accepting an inheritance that would be more of a burden than a blessing.
Lucy Lamplighter herself greeted me as I reached the second floor, dropping a polite curtsy. I bowed in return, offering her more honour than she – technically – deserved. The Grande Dames would have had a fit, if they’d seen me. I didn’t care. I’d spent the last few weeks wrestling with my family’s affairs and I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Lucy’s job had been a great deal harder. I didn’t know how she’d done it, but she had. I almost wished I could hire her to take my place. That would really shock the Grande Dames.
“Akin,” Lucy said. Her voice was slightly accented, a reminder she’d been to Grayling’s Academy for Young Ladies rather than Jude’s. There were all sorts of rumours about that school, and the young girls who went there to be turned into ladies, but none seemed anything more than the sort of absurd nonsense languid young men made up to pass the time. Lucy was surprisingly normal, compared to some of the characters I’d met at Jude’s. “Thank you for coming.”
I studied her, thoughtfully. Lucy’s skin was tanned, her dark hair fanning out around darker eyes and spilling over a red dress that was a strange mixture of aristocratic and commoner influences. It made her look strikingly exotic and my eyes lingered a little longer than they should, before I forced myself to look away. Her dress was a deliberate message, I suspected. Her betrothed was a commoner, something that would have shocked High Society if it hadn’t long since given up being shocked by her. I was mildly surprised she’d kept the betrothal – her father had apparently arranged it without asking her, let alone securing her consent – but I could hardly blame her for accepting it. My betrothal had turned into a love match too.
“I thought it was urgent,” I said, as she turned to lead me into her office. Or one of them. My father had had three offices; one for meetings, one for meetings with important people, and one where he actually worked. There were times when I wondered if he had a fourth office, one hidden from everyone else … it wasn’t impossible. The mansion was so large, with so many wings, that an entire floor could be concealed, if one controlled the wards. “And I needed a break.”
Lucy shot me a sympathetic look, full of understanding. I knew she understood. It was unlikely she’d had as much paperwork to handle as me, but her family finances had been in ruins and the slightest mistake could have ruined her. Would have, probably. I almost envied her. My family was just biding its time, waiting for me to mess up, while hers had let her get on with it. But then, they’d known they were in deep trouble …
“Akin,” a quiet voice said. I blinked as I saw Alana sitting in the office. “Nice to see you again.”
I kept my surprise concealed. Alana – Cat’s sister – and I were hardly friends, but we had worked together as Head Boy and Girl and would have to at least tolerate each other in the future, when we became in-laws. She was tall, her skin barely a shade lighter than the night, with long dark hair hanging down to the small of her back. She was the most competitive person I knew, which put her up against some very tough competition. Even Cousin Francis hadn’t been as ambitious as her …
“I suppose you’re wondering why I called you here,” Lucy said, after Alana and I exchanged respects. “I have been asked to set up a meeting, at very short notice, with an old friend of yours.”
My eyes narrowed. I didn’t have many friends, and those I had could contact me directly. It wasn’t as if I would turn them away, even now. My armsmen had standing orders to let any of my friends in whenever they arrived, and allow them to wait in the sitting room for me. Why would they go to the trouble of asking Lucy to arrange a meeting …
… And then I knew.
“Louise,” I said. “Right?”
“Yes,” Lucy said. “She’s on her way now.”
Alana snorted. “And you think we should listen to her?”
“Yes,” Lucy told her. “I really think you should.”
