by Holly Evans
Table of Contents
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Contents
Title
Copyright
1
2
3
4
5
6
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8
9
10
11
12
13
14
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Celestial Tears
Hidden Alchemy 2
By Holly Evans
Copyright Holly Evans (2017) ©. All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogue are purely from the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is fictionalised and coincidental.
Licensed material is being used for illustrative purposes only and any person depicted in the licensed material is a model.
Cover Design by Lou Harper © (2017)
1
The full moon cast a silver light over the city, deepening the shadows and adding sharp silver edges to the rooves. The sky was clear, with not a single cloud in sight. I hadn’t decided if that was a good thing or not as I made my way along the top of the narrow wall. The brick beneath my foot crumbled and almost sent me tumbling down into the darkness below. I caught myself and took a moment to calm my breathing and focus once more.
It was roughly 1am on Wednesday, and I was making my way around the hedgewitch gardens. Why? Because I was bored and in desperate need of an adventure. Logan had been sent off to track down two separate artifacts since the Seers Stone. I, on the other hand, had been locked away in the lab. I love being an alchemist, but adventure is in my blood. Being stuck in one place for a long period was getting to me.
A couple of nights prior, I’d free-climbed the National Theatre and spent three hours sitting on the roof with a hand-made trap to catch some wild magic. The magic was notoriously difficult to catch, which made it a suitable challenge to keep me occupied. It was usually only weavers who managed the feat, but I had to try. The magic had cavorted around me, occasionally dipping in to brush the very edges of the trap, but never entering its confines. In short, it had teased and tormented me. I hated being teased.
That led to my trying a different tack. Parties weren’t of any interest, I wasn’t in the mood. I wanted something more. After some thought, I’d decided that it was high time that I explored the hedgewitch gardens. The hedgewitches were very protective over their gardens, and there were rumours that they had all sorts of interesting plants in there. What better way to spend a few hours than seeing for myself?
It had taken me a good hour to find a way in. They had invested in a mix of tinker security, that’s to say very intelligent metal fences that tried to bite me, and their usual vicious plants. After two circuits of the hedgewitch area in the magical section of the city, I’d found a way to scramble up over what I thought was a life magician’s house, run along three rooves, and drop onto the tall stone wall at the very edge of the hedgewitch’s area.
There was a reasonable chance that there was nothing but boring herbs and such in there, but my curiosity had been piqued. Surely there had to be something of interest in there, for them to protect it so thoroughly? I continued walking along the old wall and looked at the layout of the walls before me. There were eight gardens in total: five thin, narrow gardens directly ahead of me and three wider gardens behind them. They were all joined by stone walls. Hedgewitches were a funny sort. From what I’d heard, they were highly territorial and competitive, but they enjoyed social politics and one-up-man-ship. That led to small clusters of them forming, which was certainly convenient for me.
Each garden was nothing but a pit of darkness that ended in a grand house covered in vines. I shrugged and continued forward. It seemed sensible to start with the one closest and work from there. Once I was a few feet along the wall that joined the first gardens, I crouched down and peered into the garden to my left. I’d considered bringing some form of light, but that would have meant someone could see the light, and then I’d be caught. I hadn’t dared try and make a night vision potion. The last time I did that, I hallucinated for twelve hours. My eyes had had plenty of time to adjust to the low light; I could just about make out the pockmarked details of the wall I was walking along. I couldn’t pick out anything in the gardens, though, and that suggested there was a layer of magic there preventing me from seeing. Well, now I just had to know what was in there.
I started by slowly reaching my hand into the darkness. The icy oil-slick feel of shadow magic wrapped around my hand and spread up my arm. Well, that explained the pitch blackness. I chewed my bottom lip, something I’d started doing thanks to Erin, and wondered how to pull some of the shadow back so I could see. I began by trying to feel out individual threads in the shadow. It was unlikely to work; magic breakers were a breed unto themselves. Still, I tried it anyway.
After what felt like an eternity of slowly running my fingertips over the surface of the shadow searching for threads, I managed to find one. The shadow magician that had made the veil must have been clumsy or lazy to have left a thread like that. I grabbed onto it and yanked.
Suddenly, I could see a strip of not only the garden before me, but the one next to it, too. A gap about a foot wide had been torn in the shadow veil, revealing the plants below. I grinned and leaned down to get a good look. The plants closest to the wall were woody, dark-leaved things with ragged flowers that drooped in great big teardrops. I didn’t recognise the plant and continued looking to see if there was something I could use.
I was ready to move onto the next garden when I spotted the wolfwort. The pale silver plant had spindly stems and full round white flowers that twisted through the night to follow the moon. The best time to pick it was during the half moon, what luck! It was very difficult to get a hold of the plant, as it was rare and only really grown by the hedgewitches, who preferred to keep it for themselves. I pulled on my gloves and scrambled down the wall, careful not to touch the thorns of the bushes at its base.
The wolfwort’s stems were covered in very fine hairs that buried themselves in the skin of whomever touched them. That resulted in extreme photophobia - the victim had to hide in a dark room for up to five days. Other symptoms were said to include a desire to reach the moon, which had, if the stories
were to be believed, led to people climbing spires and other things in their quest to touch the moon. I made my way down the stone path between the plant beds, my focus entirely on the wolfwort. I only had a small leather bag on my belt. I hadn’t been planning on helping myself to much. It had been more of an exploratory mission.
I was within arm’s reach of the plant when I saw the golden-green eyes staring at me from the darkness. The large cat was sitting, thrashing its tail as it watched me. Fuck, it was probably one of the hedgewitch’s familiars. I turned and ran for the wall. Wolfwort wasn’t worth being caught by one of them. I jumped and managed to grab onto a small handhold, which I used to pull myself up and begin the nine-foot climb up to the top of the wall.
“Thief!” a high-pitched female voice shouted behind me.
I pulled myself to the top of the wall and ran.
2
I didn’t get back to bed until just before sunrise. I spent a few hours running around the rooftops and such trying to escape a pack of familiars. The clowder of cats was determined and yowling for my blood. I didn’t even take anything! I hadn’t taken any of my usual alchemical defences with me, as it had been an idle exploratory trip. That, and I felt a bit bad about hurting the familiars; from what I understood, they were little better than slaves. It wasn’t that they wanted to hurt me, per se. I managed to lose them in the non-magical part of the city.
To say that I was exhausted when I crawled out of bed for work was an understatement. Fortunately, Erin had the good sense to add some of my tweaked and improved wake-up tablets to my coffee. I was wide awake and able to function, even if I did look like something a death magician would dig up.
I was beginning to wonder if I wanted to be an alchemist at all as I lost my grip on the third magical thread and was put back to square one again. For the fifth time that afternoon. Fein had me putting a complicated knot of magic used to bring about increased luck in business endeavours into a set of very fine gold earrings. I hated doing that type of fiddly alchemy. It wasn’t my forte at all. Some alchemists were masters at it and wove intricate tapestries of magic, and I wondered why on Earth Fein hadn’t hired one of them.
“Problem?” Tyn asked from the doorway.
He’d been stopping by regularly since our trip across Europe. I wasn’t sure if I’d go as far as to say we were friends. The Cait Sidhe was very closed. It was hard to tell exactly where I stood with him.
“I’m trying to pull these three threads into a stupid knot, and I only have two hands,” I said while looking for my coffee.
My cup was empty. Who’d drunk all my coffee? I glanced at the coffee pot. It must have been me. Erin was off in the city collecting supplies for me. I sighed. Perhaps more coffee wasn’t what I needed; there was a risk it’d make my hands shake.
“Show me,” Tyn said.
I raised an eyebrow at him.
“Can Cait Sidhe see the threads of magic?”
He smiled at me and gestured towards the delicate white bowl where the threads lay waiting for me.
“Let’s find out.”
I returned to the bowl and picked up the long copper tweezers, which I used to pick up the sage-green thread from the four-leafed clover. Tyn picked up another set. A deep crease had formed between his eyebrows as he focused intently. He slowly reached down and delicately picked up the blood-red thread from the magpie shifter blood.
“We need to twist these two around each other, and then form a triquetra shape with the final thread,” I said as I slowly moved my thread towards Tyn’s.
His mouth pursed and his ears flattened against his head as he focused. I had to give it to him, his hands were perfectly steady, and he moved with precision. In concert, we managed to twist the two threads together, then we just had to form that damn knot with the third. Tyn held the twisted pair, and I brought the third thread over. I bit my bottom lip as I tried to manoeuvre it into position. Slowly, we twisted and coaxed the threads into their positions and finally pulled the knot tight. I laughed and breathed a sigh of relief when we placed the completed knot in the bottom of the bowl.
Tyn gave me a small smirk, a very feline expression full of smugness and victory.
“I see you’re putting Tyn to good use,” Fein said.
I looked up to see him leaning against the closest table with a gentle smile on his face. He looked at his Cait Sidhe with open adoration. Tyn had taken my advice and told Fein he wanted to be more than friends, and they both seemed much happier for the change.
“She needed a feline touch,” Tyn said with a smile that made Fein soften and his eyes brighten.
“The earrings will be done in about ten minutes,” I said as I turned away.
I was glad to see them happy, but it was a little awkward, them having a moment right there next to me.
“Take the rest of the day off once you’re done, you look exhausted,” Fein said as he stroked the back of Tyn’s hand, his focus entirely on his Cait Sidhe. “I recommend that you stay in and enjoy Logan’s company during your time off. The hedgewitches will be trying to track you for the next one or two nights,” he added with a smirk.
I froze and put on an expression of absolute innocence before I turned to face him.
“Oh?”
Tyn rolled his eyes and leaned into Fein.
“Did you think news wouldn’t get back to us?” Tyn asked.
I’d hoped so. I’d certainly hoped that no one had figured out it was me, at least.
“We’ll discuss your work arrangements when you return on Monday,” Fein said.
Because that didn’t sound ominous.
“I look forward to it,” I said with all the cheer I could muster.
Returning to my work, I carefully placed the knot onto the centre of the gold earrings and tugged on the essence of the gold around it to form a small gap in the inherent make-up. The magic slipped inside and nestled there. The magic would slowly fade over time, but it would be at least a decade before they needed to be replaced. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know how many thousands Fein would be paid for them.
Tyn and Fein had vanished when I’d finished with the earrings. I’d been too focused to notice when or where they went. Once I’d tidied up my workspace and cleaned everything, I texted Erin to let her know about the time off. She walked into the lab just as I finished the text, her arms full with two bags bursting to the brim with alchemical ingredients.
“I thought you were just getting a couple of the essentials that we ran out of?” I asked as I took one bag from her.
“They were having a big sale,” she said with a grin.
We’d become pretty close since the Seers Stone trip. Things had been a bit weird the first week Logan lived with us, but everyone had settled into their places without any drama. Logan had been a sweetheart about Fein sending him off on treasure hunting trips while I was stuck in the lab. He didn’t rub my nose in it, and I know he’d pressed Fein about getting me out on those jobs a bit more. At the end of the day, Fein was a businessman, and I made him a lot of money as his pet alchemist.
“Logan should be back tonight or tomorrow,” Erin said, nudging me with her elbow.
I smiled and rummaged through the bag closest to me. I did miss him, he was a calming and happy presence in my life, but I missed adventuring, too. I wasn’t meant to stay in one place for too long.
3
Erin had struck gold with her finds in the alchemical sale. She proudly held up a pristine phoenix tail feather for me to inspect, and she had every right to be proud. It was in perfect condition, complete with over ten threads of beautiful magic.
“Do I want to know how much this set Fein back?” I asked with a grin.
She shrugged.
“Only ten thousand crowns,” she said nonchalantly.
That worked out at about three hundred pounds, which was a pittance for such a specimen.
“How on Earth did you pull that off?”
She grinned and continued to unpack her bag.
“I may have used a touch of nymph magic on the shopkeeper… I don’t have much, but there are moments when it’s useful,” she said innocently.
I laughed.
“I appreciate it, really,” I said.
A light blush crept across her cheeks as she put away the final jar of siren song.
“Do you have any plans for this afternoon?” she asked.
“Isn’t there an Elle Kyne marathon starting in about thirty minutes?”
She grinned at me. “Yes! And they’re airing the new double-length episode at ten tonight!”
I picked up my satchel and gestured to the door.
“Looks like we’re all set, then,” I said.
Erin made us a huge bowl of nachos and dip with a side of other unhealthy things we could pick at while we lounged on the sofa and watched our favourite action-adventure heroine save the day. I poured us each another glass of Moravian wine and relaxed after what had been a frustrating week. We had three days to ourselves, and I was very glad Logan would be around to help me fill my time. I was going stir crazy being stuck in one city.
We were halfway through the second episode of Elle Kyne when Wispy finally emerged, slowly, from his nest in my bedroom. He flickered and wobbled through the air for a moment before he shot over to his bowl of leaves and such that I’d set on the table. I leaned forward and ran my fingers over him, feeling his magic. He’d been sleeping a lot as of late. His familiar cool magic felt balanced and normal beneath my fingertips. I made a mental note to try and read up on wisps when I had a moment; maybe there was something I needed to do for him or give him. He rolled around the bottom of the bowl making sure he’d finished every last scrap of foliage. His appetite was plenty healthy enough.
Logan strolled into the living room a few minutes later. He kicked off his boots and hung his leather jacket next to mine before he flopped down on the sofa next to me. I reflexively curled into him and kissed the hollow of his throat and breathed in his familiar scent of sandalwood and amber.
