by Anton Strout
“You’re one up on me,” he said. “I haven’t tried animating much of anything, just because the few times I have, it’s been such a struggle to keep control, and I’m only dealing with a finite amount of time that I can keep it going before one of my concoctions run out. Besides, if it did actually work in any sustained way, I’m afraid of what might happen. Like if I left a construct active with something else ‘steering the ship,’ you know?”
I smiled, a wave of relief filling me just hearing I wasn’t alone in my own struggles with this. “I absolutely know.”
“Probably why I stick to alchemy,” he said with a grim smile, looking down at the broken table between us.
The curtain across the door leading into the store flew open, and Marshall stormed into the back room. His eyes went immediately to the two pieces of the caved-in table on the floor, and he shook his head.
“I thought I heard a crash, followed by an explosion,” he said, dropping to the ground by what remained of his gaming table. He scooped up tiny pieces of wall and figures from the pile there. “What the hell? Do you know how long it took me to build that dungeon?”
I gave a pained smile. “Sorry, Marsh.”
Rory came through the curtain next and saw Marshall kneeling there. She turned to Caleb and me, her face annoyed, and she started a slow, measured clap.
“That didn’t take long,” she said. “Good thing I had bet on chaos ensuing in under half an hour.”
“Things just . . . got out of control.”
Caleb laughed. “You can say that again. So much for my reverse engineering of the Kimiya. If I had used it on myself, maybe I would have exploded, too.”
“It’s progress,” I said.
“We’ll figure it out,” he said.
“Not just that,” I said. “I’ve still got the issue of how to make and control an army of stone men to deal with Kejetan.”
“We’ll figure that out, too,” he said, taking my hands in his, giving them a comforting squeeze. “Together.”
It felt terribly reassuring coming from him. I wanted to believe him and was slowly convincing myself of it when Marshall ahemed loudly next to us.
I turned to him. “I’m really sorry,” I said, snapping out of my moment of hopefulness, once more taking in the destruction Caleb and I had caused. “I’ll cover the damage.”
“I’ll hold you to it,” he said, looking up at me, upset. “That was our deal, remember? Not even twenty minutes old! The ink would still be wet!” His eyes fell back to the pile in front of him and ran his hand along the wood sticking out from beneath the maze and figures.
“I said I’ll cover it,” I repeated.
“That’s not the point,” he said, snapping. “This was my original gaming table. I’ve had it since I was seven. My precious.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, but when no answer came from Marshall, I turned to Caleb. “Maybe this isn’t the best place for this.”
I hesitated for a moment as I pondered an alternative, walking over to the coat over the chair, grabbing it, and handing it to him.
“Maybe we should go somewhere a little more practical,” I continued, looking down at Marshall still picking through the mess on the floor. “Can I help you clean up?” I asked.
“Just go,” Marshall muttered. I didn’t feel I could argue.
Caleb took his coat and slipped it on. Rory looked at the two of us in silence as I headed for the curtained door, grabbing my fellow alchemist by his hand and dragging him along behind me despite the reluctance I felt in him.
“Come on,” I said to him. “I think Marshall may need a little time to mourn.”
Thirteen
Alexandra
Outside of Rory and Marshall, I hadn’t really brought many people into the confines of my great-great-grandfather’s art studio and library, and certainly not since any of the building’s trashings.
It had always been my own sacred space, even now after suffering at the hands of the new and darker Stanis. It still brought me comfort, and after pissing off Rory and Marshall at Roll for Initiative, I definitely needed a hit of that. And while normally I would have felt strange taking someone there, I found escorting Caleb into the confines of the damaged Belarus Building surprisingly comforting as well.
We came up the fire escape as I had since I was a little girl, and I threw open what remained of the French doors leading in from the terrace. The right one twisted off its hinge and fell to the stone of the terrace, several of its glass panels shattering.
“Ta-da!” I said, weakly, going in before I could further embarrass myself.
“Where are we?” Caleb asked, coming in behind me, the crunch of his footfalls echoing in the open space. “It looks like you brought me to a condemned building. Is this a crack den?”
“Home, sweet home,” I said, ignoring him and stepping across the library through the debris of broken statues and puzzle boxes. “What’s left of it, anyway.”
I slowed and turned to Caleb as he stopped in his tracks, realizing where he was.
“This is it,” he said, marveling. “This is actually Alexander’s library and studio.”
“Give the man a kewpie doll,” I said.
Caleb looked around, whistling.
“You really should clean more,” he said, picking up the base of one of the broken statues. Part of whatever it had been still had the figure’s legs attached to it. He ran his hand around the edge of its pedestal. “I recognize this.”
“You do?” I asked. “For real? I couldn’t identify that statue by just its legs, and I’ve studied my great-great-grandfather’s work most of my life!”
“Not the statue as such,” he said. Caleb held the base up, tracing the octagonal shape of it. The winged Belarus sigil with our initial was carved onto the bottom of the piece. “This design is stamped all over the guild hall.”
“This is where my great-great-grandfather did the greater part of his art and architecture work,” I said, “and this is the library where he accumulated much of his arcane knowledge.”
Caleb was like a kid at Disney World, but all that stopped for a moment, his face becoming skeptical. “Why did you bring me here?” he asked.
“I would think you’d love to be here,” I said.
“Well, yes,” he said. “Of course. But it’s awfully trusting of you, don’t you think? I mean, I know me pretty well, and I certainly wouldn’t trust me around all this.”
“First of all, I think if push came to shove and you tried anything, I could probably take you,” I said, meeting his eyes, my face serious.
“Oh really?” he asked, a half smile creeping on to his face. “I don’t know. As a freelancer, I do pride myself on the quality of my work.”
“A fair point,” I said. “But you are standing in Belarus Central, so I think I might have the advantage here. Besides, if I’m to take your promise to help me seriously, you and I have to start trusting one another, so this is me putting my best foot forward. Don’t make me regret it.”
“I’ll try not to,” he said.
I wanted to trust the sincerity in his eyes, but I knew that might simply be a tool of his trade, the easily told lies of someone who most days worked simply for the highest bidder.
Caleb moved to one of the overturned bookcases, running his hand along it.
“I’d hate for you to get my blood on any of this stuff,” he said. “You know, you could have brought your bodyguard and Sir Nerdsalot.”
I move to one of the still-upright stools by one of the art tables, sitting on it and spinning around, my hands resting on the front of the seat.
“It just seemed like this might be a better place for you and me to talk privately,” I said. “I love Rory and Marshall, and they’re a huge help—even though they don’t have to help me at all. But they don’t really get what I’m going through all the time. Outside of fighting the good fight and prepping for whatever’s coming, Rory’s got her dance, and Marshall’s got his store. I’ve got
. . . Well, I’ve got this. The family’s true legacy. It’s a singular focus, you know.”
Caleb nodded. “Mastering any art is a commitment,” he said.
I found comfort in his understanding of it.
“I thought maybe if I brought you here,” I said, “we could get away from all that noise and maybe find ourselves in a place where we could each work with someone who’s just as like-minded. Until meeting you, I hadn’t really thought that there’d be others out there who dealt in the things Alexander practiced. As far as I knew, he had locked those secrets away as part of protecting not just his family but the rest of the world. When I began uncovering them, it just felt like my own family burden to bear. It’s just, I don’t know . . . nice to have someone to talk shop with . . . ? Does that come across as insane? Does that even sound normal?”
Caleb laughed. “As normal as that can sound, yes.” His focus shifted past me. “May I ask what that is?”
I spun on my stool to face the draped drop cloth rising up in the middle of the far end of the art studio.
“Come with me,” I said, taking his hand. He didn’t resist my hand in his, holding tight as we crossed the room. I guided him carefully through the mess on the floor until we were standing by the draped cloth.
“Voila!” I shouted, pulling it free like a magician revealing his latest and greatest of tricks. The mannequin form stood there with the giant set of giant bat wings I had been sculpting onto it, impressively spanning nearly eight feet across.
“Holy shit,” he said, running his hand along the interior side of the left one. “Are these stone?”
I laughed. “Hardly. If they were, given their size, I think they’d have snapped the dummy form in two and crashed through several stories of the building.”
Caleb put one hand to either side of the form, slipped his fingers under the wing’s lower edge, and lifted. “They’re light.”
“They should be,” I said. “It’s clay over chicken wire. They’re hollow, but they hold their shape.”
“You plan on going all Icarus?” he asked.
I laughed. “No,” I said. “But sculpting comes hard to me, and if I’m ever going to master it for the sake of Spellmasonry, I need the practice. This is a study in building a gargoyle, working off the human form and adding to it. Once I figure out the right sense of proportion, I’ll move the full statue carving over to stone.”
“Could you animate these?” he asked, letting his hands trace over the arcs and ridges of the wings themselves. “If you attached them to a harness or something?”
“It’s just a prototype,” I reiterated. “An experiment. With all this broken stuff around here and needing to step up my art game, I just wanted to model them first before ordering a freight elevator’s worth of solid stone to go full dimension.”
“I get that, but could you animate just these?” he asked again.
I thought a moment before answering.
“It’s possible,” I said. “I’ve used clay on parts of Bricksley for the hands and feet, and he seems to be operating just fine.”
“What is a ‘Bricksley’?” he asked.
“You’ll probably meet him,” I said with a smile. “In due time.” I ran my hands over the top of the wings up to the sharpened claws I had modeled onto the tips, which gave them an extra-creepy Gothic touch. “In theory, I suppose I could animate these full-scale like this. It’s a lot more clay than I’m used to exerting control over, but I think it could work. The minerals in clay are those of broken-down rock for the most part, so if I could enchant them . . . sure, why not?”
“These are truly fantastic,” he said, his hands pressing against the faux-leathery texture I had tried to replicate in my sculpting of them.
“Thank you,” I said, hoping that the dim light of the room hid my burning red face, but by the way Caleb was looking at me, it probably wasn’t.
“You’re blushing,” he said.
I sighed. “It’s one thing when my friends or family compliment my work, but it’s uniquely refreshing to hear a compliment from someone who actually does what I do.”
“I could never do something like this,” he said, running his hand along the edge of the wings up to the clawed tips. “I mix and fill vials. I’m no artist—more of a bartender, really.”
“Maybe not with stone or canvas,” I said, “but from what you know of alchemy alone, you are an artist.”
He smiled at me, then gave a deep bow. “Well, thank you.”
“My pleasure,” I said, meeting his smile with my own.
Our eyes locked in the dimly lit studio, the moment lingering longer than I found comfortable. His shifted his eyes away for a second, no doubt in reaction to my discomfort. When he looked back at me, it was his turn to look uncomfortable because I was still staring at him, delighting in the discomfort I was causing him.
He stepped toward me, but I didn’t move away, instead welcoming his advance as his hands slipped around my body, one to the base of my neck and the other to the small of my back. The strong press of his lips met mine. The scruff of his face rubbed hard against my cheek, and although the suddenness of it all caught me off my guard, I found myself wrapping my arms over his shoulders, welcoming all of it, meeting his passion.
My mind shut down all rational thought as I fell into the moment. Sharing more than just a mutual passion for the arcane felt more than right, and I would have gladly shared more given the reaction my body was having to him, but Caleb pushed away from me, showing a restraint I certainly wasn’t. My eyes opened, but his were still closed a moment longer before they opened and a slow, deliberate smile overtook his face.
“Sorry,” he said. “I needed to do that.”
“Needed to, huh?” I smiled. “Was it a chore?”
“Wanted to,” he corrected.
“That’s better,” I said, my smile widening, but I couldn’t help but notice a bit of reluctance in his eyes now. “Is that not a good thing?”
“Oh no,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong. It was very good. But I needed to do that because . . . I’m not sure if I’m ever going to get to do it again.”
My smile wavered. Was I that bad a kisser? It had been a while for me, sure, and I was definitely out of practice, but I wasn’t that bad, was I?
“We could give it another chance,” I suggested.
“That’s not it,” he said, looking down at the rubble around his feet. “Working with you this past week has been fantastic. And kissing you . . . Well, it’s just that I’m afraid after what I have to tell you, you won’t let me do it again.”
“Awesome,” I said, my heart already sinking. “That’s what I get for living in the moment. Out with it. What is it?”
“You remember back at Roll for Initiative when you were talking about Stanis?”
I nodded. “Yeah, and . . . ?”
He stepped back from me, and held his hands up in front of him. “You sound irritated already,” he said. “I don’t think going into this irritated is going to help.”
“You know what’s even more irritating?” I asked, the pit of my stomach twisting up on me. “Being told not to be irritated.”
“Fine, fine!” he rushed out, clasping his hands together as if in prayer. “It’s just that I’ve seen him—Stanis. Like, recently.”
I fell silent, making sure my jaw hadn’t dropped open. “I’m sorry—what?”
“Stanis,” he said. “Remember how Desmond Locke and I both told you I was a freelancer? Well, some of my projects outside the Libra Concordia are more freelance than others.”
I stepped toward him, my tone rising. “Meaning what, exactly?”
“Look, Lexi . . .”
“Nuh-uh,” I said. “Alexandra. ‘Lexi’ is reserved for my friends.”
He smiled. “We were pretty friendly a moment ago,” he said, trying to soften the situation, but I wasn’t about to let that happen.
“Funny how that’s gone away,” I said, suddenly furious. “What do you
know about Stanis?”
“Well, Alexandra,” he started, choosing his words carefully now. “That’s the thing. I didn’t know much about him. From my side of the freelance experience, there wasn’t too much to know. He was a job that came in.”
“Caleb,” I said, grabbing him by his shoulders. “What are you trying to tell me here?”
“As I said, he was one of my freelance jobs,” he said, unable to meet my eyes, looking down at his feet instead. “A lot of what I do isn’t pretty. I was hired to help break down his will and gain control of him.”
“Jesus, Caleb. Did you ever stop to consider what you might be doing or to whom?”
“The pay was good,” he said with no pride in his word. “Great, actually, and when it’s that high, you learn not to ask too many questions, all right? I did what they paid me for. I brought Stanis back in line with what my employer, Kejetan, wanted.” Caleb broke away from me and stepped back, slipping on one of the broken statues, his arms pinwheeling before he righted himself.
“If you’re working for Kejetan, then you’ve met Devon,” I said.
“He’s a charmer, that one,” he said.
“My brother wasn’t any more charming when he was alive, believe me,” I said.
“I’m proud to say I don’t see any family resemblance,” he said.
I fell silent for a minute, going over everything he had said, my mind sticking on one point.
“What do you mean when you said ‘brought in line’?” I asked, feeling sick.
Caleb paused before reluctantly answering. “When you’re trying to bind something into servitude, you need to break down its natural resistances,” he said. “Stone, being the strongest, is the most stubborn of materials when it comes to a golem. You need to hammer away at its natural strength, breaking what I thought was its base animal will, then replace it with another ruling will.”
