Page 91 of A Sorceress Comes to Call
“It’s all right,” she said instead. “It’s over now. Thank you.”
After Alice had left, she lay in bed, curled on her side, listening to her heart thudding in her chest, like the hooves of a running horse.
“I have good news and bad news,” said Hester, when they had gathered together in the library the next morning.
“Please, god, give me some good news,” said Richard. He had dark circles under his eyes that hadn’t been there a week ago. Hester wanted to smooth them away. Unfortunately her news wasn’t likely to do that.
“Imogene and I have gone through all the texts we can find, and we finally determined how they… err… type the individuals.” She glanced at Imogene and added, “Imogene was right, I was wrong.”
“Damn straight.”
“So now we actually understand who is water, who is wine, who is salt.”
“And who’s a dozen other things,” Imogene put in. “The alchemists recognize a vast number of elements, including fire, air, quicksilver, iron, stone, wood, sulfur, gold, lead, and tin. Fortunately for our purposes, there’s some overlap. In theory, someone who was quicksilver could perform the wine part, and someone who was stone could perform the salt part.”
“There’s a chart of cross-potencies,” said Hester. “It looks like utter balderdash, mind you, but here we are. It looks like we just got lucky getting two of three right.”
Richard rubbed his forehead. “I don’t pretend to understand, but I haven’t understood any of this so far. So we can find someone to do the wine part, then?”
Hester and Imogene exchanged a look. “That’s the bad news. Apparently nobody bothered to write down how you tell which is which.”
Richard put his head in his hands and moaned.
“We’re working on it.”
“Something attacked one of the storage sheds last night,” he said, straightening.
“Attacked?” Hester saw Cordelia sit up, suddenly alert. “How do you attack a shed?”
“As far as I can tell, they broke down the door with some kind of dull instrument. A mallet, say. Or hooves.”
Cordelia’s face blanched to the color of wet bone. “Was anything damaged?” she whispered.
“The contents were smashed. Jars broken, sacks slashed open. It was mostly gardening equipment, but it was thoroughly trampled.” Richard’s lips pressed together in a grim line.
“Falada,” said Cordelia.
“Falada.”
They sat in dead silence for a few moments. Willard shook his head. “Is there any way to find where he goes to ground during the day?”
“I’ve got the head gamekeeper looking. He knows these woods better than anyone. I’m hoping that perhaps it sleeps during the day—although why an undying headless horse has to sleep, I’ll be damned if I know.”
“We’ll keep looking,” Hester promised.
“I’ll start sorting books looking for anything about alchemy,” Cordelia offered.
“Please do.” Richard sighed. “I have too many responsibilities today, but I’ll join you when I can.”
They put their heads down to work. Willard brought sandwiches, and Hester scoured books that seemed to be written half in some other language, trying to make sense of any of it. “Arsenic is the most transformational of all metals, excepting only Quicksilver, and thus is it called the Swan, for just as the Cygnet becomes the Swan, so does Arsenic transform itself between the crystalline and the metallic”… holy mother of God, what does this have to do with anything?
She leaned her head back against the back of the chair and closed her eyes, wishing that the past two months had never happened. Back when my largest concern was running out of the proper color of embroidery floss. How lucky I was, and didn’t even realize it.
“I found something,” said Imogene. “Sort of.”
“That’s good!” She opened her eyes.
“It requires access to a birth chart, aqua regia, a magnetic field, and about two ounces of platinum. Also it takes thirty days.”
