Aether Spark

by Nicholas Petrarch

  “I took an apprenticeship,” Chance interjected.

  “Oh?” Ringgold said, surprised. “And when were you going to tell me this?”

  “I haven’t started yet. I’ll begin on the first of the month.”

  Ringgold leaned against the seawall, contemplating the new development.

  “Well, that’s not a bad move,” he said. “You’ll get some experience under your belt; that should impress the Board. Show them you’re willing to work hard. It’s not unheard of for an apprentice to terminate an agreement early if he has a chance at an academy placement.”

  “I’m apprenticed to an alchemist,” Chance clarified. “A free-merchant here in the Basin.” He slumped his shoulders as he anticipated Ringgold’s response, taking another swig from his bottle and staring hard at the ground.

  “What?” Ringgold’s bottle nearly slipped from his hands. “Why?”

  “My father was friends with a man who owns his own lab. I saw him a few weeks back and he remembered me. He agreed to take me on.”

  “You’re kidding me, right?”

  Chance saw the hope in Ringgold’s eyes, hoping he wasn’t serious—that this was an attempt to make light of the situation. A jest for old times’ sake.

  Chance took another swig of his liquor.

  “Chance, that’s insanity! You were one of the brightest—you had promise! You have promise!”

  “I know.”

  “So, why pursue a dead craft? They’re a bunch of misers pushing snake oil and sugar water. This isn’t just botching your academy placement—you’ll ruin any chance of ever having a good opinion in society.”

  “I know.”

  “And you what, don’t care?”

  “Lay off it,” Chance warned. “At least I’ll be doing something with my time, rather than sitting around waiting on a bunch of rusty cogs to tell me just how little they think of me.”

  “You mean squandering your time.” Ringgold’s voice rose steadily. “Honestly, Chance, you fall in with that lot and you risk falling out of society entirely.”

  “And how does that differ from where I am now?” Chance snapped. “They turned me away, Ringgold. I didn’t make the cut. You know as well as I do what that means for my future.”

  “Oh, don’t act like you’re a martyr,” Ringgold scoffed. “If blame rests anywhere it’s on you for that. You’re the one who turned your back on everyone before they ever turned on you. While we were working, do you remember where you were? You were destroying yourself.”

  “I said lay off it.”

  “No,” Ringgold insisted. “I won’t. It’s one thing for you to give up on placement, but what about this?” Ringgold’s hand shot forward and seized a small copper tin from Chance’s breast pocket. Chance scrambled to recover it.

  “Give that back!”

  “No,” Ringgold said, shaking it in front of him. “You’ve got a habit, Chance. And working with an alchemist is going to help you with that how? Oh, I guess you won’t have to go through so many hoops to get your hands on it. Odds are you’ll be mixing your own.”

  “I said lay off it!”

  Chance threw his bottle at Ringgold’s head, who ducked just in time. It shot over his shoulder and smashed upon the rocks behind him. He only had a second to react before Chance was on him, wrapping his arm around Ringgold’s neck and pulling him down in a headlock.

  Ringgold dropped his bottle and the tin as he grappled with Chance’s middle. Planting his feet, he pushed hard and ran Chance backwards against the seawall.

  Chance’s knee came up and caught Ringgold in the chest, knocking the wind out of him. Before he could recover, Chance twisted his body and threw Ringgold to the ground.

  He rolled in the rocky sand and onto his back, putting his feet up defensively as Chance pounced on him again. With a kick, Ringgold lifted Chance off the ground and tossed him roughly to the side. Chance rolled across the loose rock. It cut into his back and arm, but he didn’t care. He scrambled to his feet and squared off again.

  “Chance, stop this,” Ringgold warned.

  He didn’t listen. Chance rushed him again, but Ringgold was ready. Weaving his hand through Chance’s left arm, he sidestepped deftly and kneed him hard in the side—throwing him off balance. Chance hit the ground face first, and Ringgold dropped on top of him, pressing a knee into his back. He snatched Chance’s flailing arm and twisted it behind him.

  Chance was pinned.

  He struggled under Ringgold’s weight, trying to turn himself over, but all he managed to do was swallow sand. Ringgold’s grip was like iron fetters. Each twist sent pain through Chance’s arm. Despite himself, tears welled up in his eyes. Not because of the pain, but because it burned him to be on the losing side once again.

  He couldn’t deny it, Ringgold had always been the better fighter.

  Reluctantly, Chance’s struggling ceased. Ringgold released him and stepped back as Chance lifted himself to his knees and brushed off the sand from his clothes.

  “You see? Some things never change,” Chance wheezed, picking loose rocks from his arm. “You’ll never quit being my watchdog.”

  “And you,” Ringgold said, shaking his head and breathing heavily. “You’ll always be an ass.” A smile crept across his face as he offered a hand and lifted Chance to his feet.

  “Only as much as you.”

  “Perhaps,” Ringgold admitted. “I do keep you around. That says something about me.”

  The two collected themselves, Chance catching his breath while Ringgold straightened his clothes. He walked to where he had dropped the tin and picked it up reluctantly. His face turned up in disgust as he held it in his open palm, but he offered it back to Chance.

  “I suppose I couldn’t convince you at least to try working for the city? Alchemy’s a dead craft full of backwards thinkers. Anything useful that came from it is used by the city’s chemists now. That’s where the future lies. You’d have a more respectable place in society as a chemist.”

  “My place is outside of society,” Chance insisted. “I won’t live my life with a group of cogs looking over my shoulder and telling me what to do. I won’t.”

  “I thought not.” Ringgold sighed, looking at the broken bottles on the rocks. “Perhaps we should continue this celebration elsewhere?”

  “Fine by me.”

  The two of them walked back up the beach and into the city. When they were free of sand and their feet tromped on paved streets, Ringgold turned to Chance with a serious look.

  “Just because we can’t muck around like we used to doesn’t mean we aren’t friends,” Ringgold assured him.

  “I know,” Chance said.

  “Let’s make a promise then, shall we?” Ringgold suggested. “No matter where we end up, we’ll be there to look out for one another. Agreed?”

  He offered his hand to Chance.

  “Agreed,” Chance promised, spitting into his own hand and clasping Ringgold’s firmly.

  Ringgold cringed, as he always did when Chance pulled that one on him. He shook his head and wiped the spittle off on Chance’s shoulder. The two of them laughed and made their way up the city street.

  Part I

  Chapter One

  Mishaps

  Who considered the boy who stood alone upon the edge of something great? Who sees the potential of a thing before it manifests itself?

  — Excerpt from Mechanarcissism

  C hance bent low over his worktable, struggling to see in the dim light. A single electric bulb burned overhead, illuminating—if only somewhat—his makeshift laboratory. He called it his laboratory, though it was little more than a poorly furnished work shed.

  Vials and cases of every size and shape were gathered around him haphazardly, but he ignored them as he focused through his leather-bound goggles on a single beaker. It was secured on a thin iron stand set over a double-boiler where a small, controlled fire burned.

  With one hand he worked a miniature, stitched-canvas bellows to ke
ep the fire burning hot and evenly. In his other, he held a ceramic saucer containing a murky gas much like the fog that rolled in from the bay in the early morning hours. He balanced the saucer above the wide brim of the beaker as he consulted the recipe he’d jotted down earlier.

  His brow furrowed in deep concentration. Alchemy was a precise science, and the margin of error was unforgiving.

  Breathing out slowly, Chance focused on his hands and counted down from ten. When he reached one they were still as stones suspended over the beaker. He tipped the dish slightly and watched the heavy gas drift down the molded channel and spill into the beaker.

  He began counting up.

  One. Two. Three.

  The gas rested stubbornly upon the surface of the liquid.

  Six. Seven. Eight.

  Chance lifted a piece of paper from the tabletop on which a tiny pile of ground powder lay and dusted it over the beaker with quick, deliberate taps of his forefinger.

  Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen.

  The gas sank below the surface as the powder fell through it. Chance’s body remained tense as he watched the mixing with unbroken attention.

  And then his lips curled into their first smile in days. The murky contents in the beaker were clearing. He pulled the saucer away and set it aside among the other dirty and disregarded instruments.

  After three days of painfully calculated preparation, the mixture was finished. He lifted the beaker and swirled its contents judiciously as he watched the change spread evenly throughout.

  It wasn’t anything particularly awe inspiring or daring—just a curative salve, meant to treat the wealth of infections common among citizens living in the Basin. However, expenses had to be met and demand was high. He couldn’t afford to scoff at any job that helped offset the costs of maintaining his laboratory. It wasn’t exactly lead to gold, but it paid the bills.

  Leaning back in his chair, he pulled his goggles down around his neck and wiped his brow with a portion of sleeve. He could feel the indents left around his eyes from the goggles and he scrunched his face to try and relieve them.

  Sitting up, he became aware of how greatly his back ached, and how dry his mouth was. He’d been at it a while. Sorting through the mess before him, he retrieved his pocket watch and checked the time.

  Seven thirty-eight. He’d lost another day.

  Not that he had any other pressing demands. Ashworth, his mentor, was accustomed to leaving him to his own pursuits these days. He called on him only when there was a particularly difficult task or urgent order to fill. It was one of the benefits Chance enjoyed most about become a full partner. He’d taken well to the freedom afforded him.

  He was just beginning to tidy up when Chance noticed a slight change in the contents of the beaker. The transparent liquid was putting off a faint light, and Chance felt his insides tense.

  “The reaction’s speeding up,” he said aloud. “Why is the reaction speeding up?”

  His mind raced through his procedure. The components were clean. Heat was sustained. Catalysts had been added in the right sequence. The retardant—

  That was it, he realized. He hadn’t added enough salt copperas to restrict the reaction. His hands sprang for a small wooden box on the corner of the desk and flipped open the lid.

  Empty.

  Chance leapt from his stool, knocking it to the ground as he scrambled to his shelves. One by one he shuffled through each of the drawers, searching for more of the retardant. From behind, the compound produced a gargled hiss.

  “No!” he cried. “Don’t do this to me. Please, don’t do this to me.”

  He was pleading with nothing, anything, everything he could, but every shelf and drawer turned up empty. Turning around, he watched helplessly as the glowing liquid squelched and dulled into nothing more than a sickly grey paste.

  Throwing his hands up in the air, Chance fell back against the shelves and slumped down into a dejected heap on the floor. Three days wasted. His hands wrung his hair, tugging until his scalp hurt, and he bit his lip until he tasted blood.

  Perhaps he’d been foolish to work with such large quantities. He didn’t want to calculate the cost of the spoiled components—not yet—but he could only anticipate how far this botched mixing would set him back.

  How could he have let himself run so low on salt copperas? Granted, the task of restocking the laboratory’s components fell upon Ashworth’s new apprentice, Rhett, but Chance should have known to double-check his stores. He had, after all, spent six years in those same shoes. He couldn’t count the number of times during his apprenticeship when he’d left Ashworth fumbling over empty vials.

  It was the unwritten way of the apprentice.

  The thought of Ashworth made Chance’s stomach turn over. He’d borrowed some of the more expensive components for this mixture from Ashworth’s personal stores. Now he had nothing with which to replace them. Why had he been so self-assured?

  He wasn’t looking forward to explaining to Ashworth why his calcinated hartshorn now resembled a putrid foot grease.

  After giving himself a moment to wallow, Chance rose to his feet and paced the room. He would have to replace the spent components out of his own savings. That was easier said than done. What he possessed scarcely covered his costs of living, much less the cost of maintaining his laboratory.

  Pausing before his cloudy mirror, Chance gave himself a once over. He looked terrible. His hair was shaggy and unkempt, his shirt untucked and hanging out the bottom of his faded vest. His face and clothes were dusted with a fine layer of soot and powders of sundry colors.

  He stared at himself, disgusted by his pale, emaciated complexion. No, the years working in the laboratory had not been kind to him.

  Splashing some water from the wash bin on his face, he wiped it dry with a rag. “I’ll get to it tomorrow,” he said decidedly, tossing the rag to the side.

  He was about to leave when the mixture made a series of faint popping sounds. He only had a second to glance at it before the beaker shattered, sending fragments of glass in all directions and knocking some of his instruments onto the floor. They hit the ground with the crackle of more breaking glass.

  Chance unclenched himself from the ball he’d tucked himself into. Glass covered the floor and speckles of grey paste dotted nearly every surface. He surveyed the mess with a look of utter exasperation.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he sighed.

  Chapter Two

  A Familiar Story

  If there’s one thing you can rely on, it’s unreliability.

  — Alchemical Proverb

  A fter he’d cleaned up the mess, Chance stepped out into the enclosed walkway which connected his laboratory and Ashworth’s home. He was in a sour mood, but he took a moment to collect himself before he went in, breathing deep and savoring the fresh air.

  He gazed through the aged glass panes up into the sky. The sun was approaching the horizon, its buttery tint staining everything its light touched.

  The alchemist’s hour, Chance thought. When all the world turns to gold.

  From the walkway, he spotted Rhett digging in a few potting jars set up in the corner by the retaining wall. He was a quiet, optimistic little fellow, always trailing along in Chance and Ashworth’s shadows and ducking his head whenever he was noticed.

  At times the boy grated on Chance’s nerves. But, he was generally an eager, curious boy. Those were important virtues in an alchemist. Confidence was something he could acquire over time.

  “Rhett,” Chance called out, pushing on one of the panes in the walkway wall. It stuck, and Chance had to give it a firm thump with his palm to get it to swing open.

  Rhett perked up, craning his head around.

  “Go on and call it a day. You’ve been at it long enough.”

  “But Ashworth said to tend the garden,” Rhett said, pointing with his spade at the half dozen plants still unpotted. Each had a fresh batch of weeds clinging to the small clumps of soil at their base
.

  “If you’d gotten to it when he told you to this morning you wouldn’t be out here this late,” Chance said. Rhett’s head sank deeper into his shoulders. “You can finish it up tomorrow. Come in and have something to eat.”

  “Just...” Rhett hesitated, his hands still in the pots. “One minute! I can get it done!” He turned back and frantically tore the weeds from the clumps that remained.

  Chance shook his head and continued into the house.

  It was a precarious building, built from brick recycled from a fire years before and added onto so many times that each room seemed to grow out of the others with no thought to any prior style or material. It made for an exceptional space, in a dizzying sort of way.

  Chance often wondered if he might wake one morning to find himself buried underneath its rubble—a thought which inspired his habit of sleeping on the couch in his laboratory most nights, rather than in his own bed.

  Inside, Chance was greeted by a series of enthusiastic barks as their hound tore down the hall and threw the full weight of her body up against his legs. The force of her greeting nearly knocked him to the ground.

  “Yeah, I see you,” he said rubbing her head roughly as he tried to push her away. But she pivoted around his hand and pressed him up against the door again. “Wretched mutt! Why is she even inside?” Chance asked, struggling to free himself.

  “As I recall, you were the one who brought her home in the first place.”

  Ashworth sat at the kitchen table reading the evening paper, a cup of broth beside him. He was an older fellow, more gentlemanly in his demeanor than most in their part of the city. Though he looked frail, his voice possessed a calming air which gave each of his words a deliberate, singular quality.

  “She followed me home,” Chance protested. “It’s completely different.”

  “Mmhmm,” Ashworth grinned. “And it was Rhett who fed her, I suppose.”

  Chance took a stick from beside the door and threw it against the opposite wall. The hound leapt after it, pushing it along the wall before trapping it against the doorpost.