The morning after the fire, I attended a full facility tour of the Goldenscale Labs. Marta had returned home to prepare for our journey to Valencia we were to embark upon come nightfall. On one end I was relieved that I’d have her with me, that I wouldn’t be alone through the trials to come. On another end, I was bloody terrified to get her wrapped up in a war. She was still a six-year, by rights she should be at school—not worrying about larger than life conflicts.
I hadn’t expected Councilman Goldenscale to actually show up to the tour. Instead, I was greeted by a wide-eyed researcher attending her ninth-year residency. Together we walked the grounds and she happily explained each of the various projects developing in the labs.
Most were entirely benign. New quills that don’t need to be dipped. Books that magically hold themselves open. Study robes with ties that don’t loosen throughout the day. The place looked more like a university gift shop than a complex ruled by an evil elder dragon.
At least, until I asked: “About how much income does the Goldenscale Estate bring in every year?”
“Oh, it’s been steadily growing every year!” cried the intern. “We’re up twenty-two percent from last year, a steadily rising trend over the last decade or so.”
“Yes,” I sighed. “But what about a gross amount? Remember, I’m here on behalf of the Citadel, not petty interest.”
“Last year’s income was somewhere around fifty-million in gold.”
My jaw could have hit the floor. “Selling baubles? That can’t be.”
“Goldenscale lifestyle accessories are very successful Mister Lafey.”
“Okay—but is there anything else going here, something that pushes the boundaries of sorcerous understanding or the magical sciences? Something like, I don’t know, the artificial creation of lycanthropes?”
“Of course! I was instructed to leave our biggest project for last—”
“Time is of the essence. Please, let’s look at that now.”
“My manager told me—”
I snapped my fingers in her face, a growl escaping from the back of my throat. “Show me. Now.”
The intern swallowed, nodded, and turned to lead me through a dark corridor. “Goldenscale Labs is always innovating…”
In the sub-levels of the lab there was a much larger operation—one that made the revenue make more sense. Just as Malcolm had said, Goldenscale was collecting willing specimens that agreed to undergo chemical and sorcerous rituals to become werewolves. What surprised me was the sheer size of the operation. The laboratory was sprawling, the size of waterfront warehouse. Rows upon rows of brass and glass capsules held deformed people, growing to resemble wolven-hybrids.
The place stank of sewage and soiled meat. My eyes traced a line from metal pipes attached to the capsule, rising the rafters and connecting to a hub on a giant adamantine tank on the eastern edge of the facility.
“That’s where their nutrition paste is processed,” the intern said.
I swallowed ash. “All these people…”
“Alive and well,” chirped the intern. “Fed regularly through the tubes. They’re still undergoing the procedures, but your superiors with the Citadel will be thrilled to know that our success rate is nearly ninety-eight percent!”
I placed a hand on one of the capsules, withdrawing it immediately. The glass was ice cold to point of burning.
“How many specimens,” the world dripped off my tongue, it was a terrible way to refer to a living being, “have been placed into the field?”
“None yet—the good Councilman Goldenscale is still finalizing contracts with potential clients. The plan is to deploy the specimens as private guards or special operations agents for Phrygia.”
“They’re still… people?”
“Yes, of course. They will be paid well for their service and their families have been receiving stipends while they’re undergoing transformation.”
“How long does such a transformation take?”
“Nine months, on average. We’re working to accelerate the process.”
“Okay…”
When the intern had finished her speech and was leading me out the door, I asked the last question lingering in my heart: “I noticed the tanks were absurdly cold.”
“Yes. The specimens must remain at sub-zero temperatures in order for the transformation to succeed.”
I nodded and scratched my chin. “I imagine frostcaps are an important component to this machinery…”
“Yes, very astute! You paid attention in Alchemical Compounds 340!”
“One of my favorites from my underclassman days.” I bloody hated alchemy. And I still hated what Goldenscale was doing, even more now that I had bore witness to the horror firsthand. I imagined myself burning the place to the ground, laughing like madman all the while….
“So,” Bastilion said on my couch as I entered my apartment. “Find out anything useful?”
I slumped into the chair beside him and rubbed at my temples, too tired to wonder why he had broken into my private quarters. “An inkling, that’s all.”
The instructor whistled. “That’s more than we were expecting! Tell me?”
“You know about the lycanthrope project.”
“Aye,” his face darkened. “Nasty business. But legitimate.”
“The test subjects need to be suspended in a cold environment while they mature. The tanks are cooled with Wystran Frostcaps.”
“Ah, I see.”
“Maybe keep an eye on Goldenscale ships leaving port in the morning?”
Bastilion leapt to his feet, rolling something in his hands. “I’ll ensure to tell Pascal Doon what you’ve found. Good work. Now, hold out your hands.”
Confused, I did as he bid. He dropped a something heavy and cool into my outstretched palms. I looked down to see the silver pendant, which would allow me to call reinforcements when I again encountered Haslow.
“This was still lying on your side table, Lafey. Put it around your neck.”
“I will, professor.”
“Now, Lafey. While I’m watching.”
I scoffed and did so. The added weight of the implement vanished once I clasped the necklace around my neck. The instructor nodded and left through the front door, locking it behind him with a key I did not give to him.
Perriander Lafey stood at the precipice between worlds. One foot stood on a balcony overlooking golden fields of rolling grass and fertile wheat. The other in utter dark, cold and dank. He could not breathe—as if caught in amber. Each eye enjoyed a different vista. The left, on the side of his face, unmarred by Worldfire, was warmed by the glow of gentle sunlight. The right, mottled and sunken was drowned in sunlight’s absence.
“The Golden City…” a man he’d never seen before said, leaning on the balcony’s railing. “At long last—I’ve returned. And the good I’ll do now that I’m finally here…”
The man clutched a silver cage-ring, as long as his middle finger, then slipped it on. Perriander felt the wave of sorcery ripple forth from the man, as if he were a stone cast into the pond making up the ether.
“Valencia is under my protection…” the man said, his green eyes alight with youthful vigor. Some might call it naivety.
In the distance rumbled a baleful roar that quaked the ground. The man seemed not to notice the disturbance. Only Perriander heard—his right side existed in the deep below. A tomb, in truth, buried beneath leagues of rock and soil.
Perriander’s blood ceased flowing when he discovered the dark soul toiling in the quagmire, suspended and locked in place just as he was. I’ve known your pain—if only for a moment. That dark soul wanted one thing, and one thing only; and it would balk at no crime to achieve it.
Freedom.
That was all. Truly, it simply desired the will to choose. To kill, or not to kill. To feast or to starve. To flee the world when it too crumbles, just as the dark soul’s home once had. The things we do for freedom… Perriander couldn’t help thinking of his poor, old friend, so far gone down a dark path. He thought of the Wystrans, united clans of nomadic striders and sedentary settlers alike, marching under a singular banner to face down the greatest of the Great Cities for the slim chance of sovereignty.
He thought of the wretched things men do for freedom… the things they’ll continue to do until the end of time.
I gasped awake just as the sun began to sink below the horizon. I glanced at my pocket-watch, sighing in relief as I realized I wasn’t quite late. By the time I had settled everything in my dorm where it would live unbothered until my uncertain return and locked the door (which was apparently a moot action) behind, I was late. But only slightly.
Marta had already left. I was supposed to meet her so we could walk together. The note she pinned to her door told me she had a personal matter to attend to, and that she would meet me at the portal hub.
I tore out of the building and hurried down the boulevard running in the middle of the street, dodging grumpy carriage drivers that turned to holler and shake their fists at me. My thoughts roiled in my head. Childish worries about Marta, if her ‘personal matter’ was truly an act of avoidance. Understandable stress that I was deeply involved in a situation I did not understand, and probably never would. Unavoidable dread that I would soon be required to steal away lives that did not deserve stealing.
All of it—at once. So I ran until I couldn’t breathe, then I kept running so my suffocating brain would turn its efforts towards survival instead of distilling concentrated anxiety cocktails.
I nearly collapsed as I reached the closed gates to the inner-Citadel, two black-robes still perched in the towers, watching silently as I fell to my knees, gasping for air. I thought that I was too late—that they had left me behind so someone better suited for apprehending a power-crazed, rogue sorcerer could do the job I needed to finish to repair the shambles of my life.
Would Marta still love me if I failed? Even if she did, there was no way she could stoop so low as to marry a man expelled from the Citadel. She’d be just as fucked as I was.
And there it was, in the wake of stress-induced sprint, I realized my stake in all this. I’d been such a fool not to see it, perhaps I didn’t want to see it. Over the years, I danced with the idea of transferring to another major, to learning something fundamentally less useful than siege magic but something I could be proud of, something that would inspire instead of destroy.
I had filled the form the day before I began my ninth-year residency beneath Mister Hamator at the Department of Internal Statistics. I was going to change over to miracle work—I was going to walk back five years and begin an entirely new major from scratch. One that I had no innate inclination towards.
But Marta had been in front of me in line. It was the first time I’d heard her voice, questioning the gray clerk in the beige room about the legitimacy of her full-ride scholarship. “I thought I was to become a Thaumaturge,” she had said, painting the scene with color. I remember staring at the back of her head, her dark, flowing hair seeming to me like a waterfall in a desert.
“It seems your initial placement has been overridden, Señorita de la Rosa,” the clerk had said, “this letter comes from the headmaster’s office directly. He’s known to deliver these by hand… congratulations are in order!”
I remember the way her tresses swayed as she turned to leave, a glitter of determination in her round eyes. In an instant I was enraptured by her plump, sincere face, her features sculpted and filling her smooth skin where beauty (rather, my definition of it) dictated it should. She was gorgeous, that was undeniable, but it was her eyes and that determination that sent me over the edge, that demanded I know as much about this woman as I possibly could in that fleeting moment.
“Excuse me,” I said as she started past me, just as the impatient clerk called for me to approach the desk. “I couldn’t help but overhear… which school are you enrolled in.”
She looked down at her feet, still processing the implications of her new major. “The School Siege Magic—I guess that means…”
“The sorcery of war,” I grimaced, I’d had difficulties with that since the very beginning. “An exclusive program. Highly regarded and very important. Also very difficult to think about. I’m starting my ninth-year… if you ever need someone to talk to.”
She smirked, knowing all too well the hidden desire behind my words. The difference, I told myself then, is that my desire was simply to see a vigorous life unfold before her. And it’d be very good, if she decided that I should do some of that unfolding with her.
My life-story flashing before my eyes was brought to a premature end when I heard an older man and a young woman talking behind me. I swung about and swooned as I saw Bastilion and Marta sauntering down the block. Checking my watch confirmed that my evening jog had indeed transmuted me from slightly late to rather early.
“Perry—are you alright? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.” Marta said as the instructor unlocked the gate.
“Ghost of a distant memory…” I said, failing to wink as I vainly attempted to cease my dry-heaving. “And a future that might not come to pass”
“Very cryptic.”
“Always, my dear.”
“Do you have everything you need this time, Lafey?” asked Bastilion over his shoulder.
I took Marta’s hand in mine, reveling in the warmth of her smile. Radiant as sunrise, resplendent as a starry sky, I kissed the back of her palm, never looking away from her dark, round eyes. So sincere, full of conviction.
“This time,” I said, smiling back at the woman I held so dear. “I have everything. I assure you that, professor.”