A Forbidden Alchemy (The Artisan Trilogy)

by Stacey McEwan

Ma wouldn’t be at home. Hadn’t been home in several years now. But whiskey was a magic all its own. Nothing to do but nod.

Ma used to say that my mind was big and it made the outside small. “Girls like us,” she’d say. “We’re made for bigger places, you hear me?” I’d heard her.

picked up the hands laying limply by my sides, and I felt cool glass press against either palm. His blue eyes, now afraid, were still astonishing. You’ve got a mind of your own, he reminded me. Don’t let those fuckers take it.

Then he leaned down, pressed his lips briefly against my cheek, then walked through those double doors the way a man walks to the gallows. He turned to look back at me once, mouth quirking upward awkwardly and then falling. He looked brimming with things to say but pressed his lips tightly closed. All the weight of Belavere Trench held in the mouth of a miner’s boy. Thus, Patrick Colson was gone, and I believed I would never see him again.

But there was that teeming ocean in my mind, swelling and crashing in color and sound and a constant desire to seek, and I pulled the cork out. I wasn’t going home.

first, there was nothing. A small tingling in my chest, maybe. A clenching of my stomach. Then, there was everything. I felt dust particles touch my cheeks as they fell. Light rays that separated into singular photons and pierced the air, pierced my skin. I felt every mechanism of my body at once, in perfect harmony. And the color.

ran a finger down his list of names without further regard, clearly ignorant that the person before him had just been irrevocably morphed by something holy.

the evenings, I would lay awake in that small characterless room, unable to sleep. I’d summon dust from the candelabra, from the narrow windowsill, from the floorboards beneath my bed, and watch it dance in my hand. In the pocket of an old skirt hanging in the armoire was a vial that pretended to be idium but wasn’t.

Only Alchemists can siphon both idium and bluff.”

Decrese in them too?

I’d never heard from my father. He must have assumed I’d become an Artisan when I didn’t return home that day. I wondered if he’d tried to pay a Scribbler to send me a note, only for them to fail to find a Nina Harrow.

wondered how they decided who that should be. By what criteria were we judged? What lord had ever ventured east to Scurry, for instance, to scout these paragons of moral virtue?

thought of Patrick Colson’s face, of his gentle hands and tormented eyes. There was rarely a day where I didn’t. I’d taken to drawing his face obsessively, scared I would forget it. I remembered him slipping those vials into my pocket, kissing my cheek, whispering in my ear that I had a mind of my own.

their demands, which included salary increases and a referendum

“Please,” I said. I was twelve. I was thirteen and fourteen and fifteen. I’d only wanted to paint and dance and see what else life could be. “Please. Come with me.”

And I saw clearly the world divided in two: him on one side and me lost in the middle.

wanted and wanted and wanted but had learned to ignore it. Hiding was safe. I was made of both parts that were logical, careful, and parts that clamored to be something loud and brilliant, and even after all this time, I hadn’t learned to reconcile them. The two sides parried in my mind in an endless loop. No one can be trusted.

seemed Patrick was a stern parting water wherever he went. No one stepped into his path.

All of it reminded Patrick of that courtyard girl—the one whose hand he’d held in Belavere City. The one whose cheek he’d kissed. The one he’d thought of every day since.

“Well, you dropped your skirt in front of me once, Nina Harrow. By all means, do it again.” I whacked him, my hand glancing the back of his head. “You disappoint me,” he said happily. “That deserved a closed fist, at the very least. One of these days, I’ll teach you to hit me properly.” “Keep talkin’ and it’ll surely come to me.” “Ah, there’s that Scurry mouth.” He tied off the rope with a flourish. “Like cornering a feral cat.”

“You’re too beautiful to be real,” he said suddenly, softly. With my ear pressed to his chest, I could feel the words, too. “There’s your compliment.” His fingers traced a very careful line then, slowly up my spine and back down, and in their wake, they left a trail of fire.

swallowed. “I was scared to forget you.” The sound of his heart beating made me think of caves under leagues of sea. “I never had a hope in the world of forgetting you, Scurry girl.”