The Secret of the Rose and Glove (7 page)

Norret tried a number of combinations to no avail. Norret whispered a prayer to Abadar, Master of Keys, then looked to the wall of his room and noticed the lunar and solar patches on the faces of Anais and Arjan Devore, then back to the map of physiognomy on the face of the mithral maiden.

Norret moved the moon and sun to one position, then another, the horoscopes of Anais and Arjan. Nothing happened. Then his good eye came to rest on The Alchymical Wedding. Norret opened it, and after a moment’s calculation added a third date.

The drawer dropped open.

Norret used tongs to retrieve a cylindrical leaden casket, a final protection against divination. He placed it on the table, then put on the mask he wore when dealing with toxic fumes. There were none, and when he opened the casket, the ivory leather inside tested negative for contact poison.

He unrolled it, revealing a glove of fine kidskin. Then he realized it was something far finer: unicornskin, for the cuff was fringed with silken beard below the palm and snowy forelock at the top, and the back was set with nothing less than the Carbuncle itself, a ruby cabochon lobed like a heraldic rose or the base of a unicorn’s horn. Once he had taken off his mask in wonder, he noticed the whole was softly perfumed: Duchess Devore, the rose of mystery. It was the glove the elderly Arjan wore here, perfumed with his wife’s signature scent.

Norret unwound the bandage from his left hand. His scars now had more scars, but the wounds were mostly healed. He pulled the old duke’s glove over his hand. The duke had been a smaller man, but the glove expanded to fit. This was magic, and not just the natural magic of alchemy, but a product of wizardry or sorcery. The Carbuncle shone on the back of his hand, glowing softly with an inner light which grew brighter and began to pulse with the beat of his heart.

He remembered something from a tale Melzec told once after a battle, of a gloved assassin who had but to snap his fingers to have a flask of poison appear. Norret had thought this exceptionally silly, and said as much, since poison could be hidden in anything from rings to fan mounts with no magic required. Even so….

Norret snapped his fingers. A book appeared in his hand, and from the stains and scorches, Norret knew exactly what he was holding: the formulary of Anais or Arjan Devore.

He opened it and began to page through. This was Arjan’s, but with copious notes and annotations in a ladylike hand. This was the backup Anais left when she fled the Revolution.

It was a treasure for any alchemist, but especially for Norret. There were formulae for powders and tinctures, dust and unguents, alchemically infused bath bombs and clever methods of reducing potions so they could be used as patches and beauty marks. Yet most important of all, there were formulae for extracts, the prescriptions an alchemist mixed to take advantage of his own natural magic, far cheaper than potions and able to be prepared on the fly. As one might expect of an old man, Arjan D’Ivore’s formulary included healing balms of all different strengths and purposes, swabs to mend a deaf ear, drops to clear a clouded eye….

The tinctures of pimpernel and eyebright were already to hand, so Norret healed his eye first, almost throwing the patch away in delight, then on second thought, simply left it flipped up, still attached by a bit of spirit gum.

His ear was next, and with a brief popping sound, the volume of the music drifting down the hall doubled. It was the accursed armonica playing the Litranaise again, but for once, no sound could be more welcome.

Last came the healing balm. Norret composed it as ointment, smearing down his left side where the bomb went off almost a year ago. It sank in and soothed, then all at once began to itch terribly. Norret scratched and clawed at himself, then gazed in wonderment as sheets of dead skin fell away, leaving fresh pink flesh and the ability to feel once again.

Norret closed the formulary and would have kissed it, save that he would not even do that with his own given the number of powders and tinctures it had absorbed over the years. Instead, he removed the unicornskin glove and applied the last of the healing balm to his scarred hand. The formula worked as it was meant to, scarred skin flaking away like winter’s snow, and he then replaced the glove and set to perusing the rest of the formulary.

There were a dozen recipes he wished to try, and a dozen more he knew he would, but soon he found the information he both suspected and sought: the glove was the key he needed, but only half. The other half was still locked beneath Dabril’s snows.

Norret then glanced up and blessed old Rhodel. She may have been a slattern and dollymop, but she was a true daughter of Dabril. Rhodel had gathered the flowers from the Liberty Hostel’s gardens and dried them herself, blending her own sachets and potpourri, and as any child of Dabril would, she had kept the varieties separate for when she chose to blend more.

Norret fished through the jar until he found a bloom that was still intact, if dried, then said the word written in the formulary: “Anais.”

The duchess’s rose shrank away to nothing, vanishing from sight, but Norret knew it was still there.

He gathered up the formularies and stowed them in his pack along with The Alchymical Wedding, added the glowing bottles of will-o’-wisp ichor, kicked the scraps of lead under the bed, then took a few minutes to figure out how to release the catches to disassemble the changing maiden. It came apart, a marvel of engineering, able to be reconfigured to anything from an astrolabe to a spinning jenny according to the instructions in the formulary, even an armonica using a series of nested crystal bowls stored inside the skull, though Norret was more interested in configuring it as a portable alchemy lab. All the components stowed save the tabletop, which he wrapped with his grenadier’s blanket to give the appearance of a round shield.

Norret then flipped down his unnecessary eyepatch and picked up his unneeded crutch. Unnecessary and unneeded did not mean they were no longer useful, and even the scabbed bandage still served a purpose, disguising the duke’s glove and the Carbuncle.

Norret proceeded to the pump room, hurrying a bit at the end because his two good ears now heard the finale of Jubannich’s masque, and to operate the water clock, it was necessary to start at the beginning.

In what he had formerly thought of as the blessed silence between performances, Norret reset all the baths and fountains and even the heating ducts for the various floors, allowing the pressure in the spring to build until he heard the first haunting sounds of the glass armonica drifting down the stairs with the opening notes of the prelude.

It was more tedious than difficult: this valve turned here, that pipe diverted there, a bath drained, a fountain filled, and patience. He heard the sounds of the chateau shifting, the siren lowering and raising, the geyser shooting out of the reflecting pool, a dozen small bits of choreography that would have been observed by the masquers as they went about grounds while the inventor—perhaps Alysande Benedict herself—stayed here behind the scenes with perhaps her greatest invention, the steam-powered waterworks of the Devore residence.

At last it was done and Norret proceeded to the ballroom.

It was a while before he could get it to himself, as Joringel had taken it as a divine mission from Shelyn to repair the beautiful things that had been broken, and so was enlisting folk to help rehang the fallen chandelier, repair the floor, and possibly use the smashed casks and bottles in the winecellars as materials to mend the shattered doors. Norret was exactly the man that he’d been wanting to speak to, especially since the alchemist had been doing such a fine job repairing the fountains. No one had ever seen the geyser before!

Norret talked pleasantly about the chandelier, trying to figure out how to rehang it while time was wasting, as the window of opportunity was only so long. But then Flauric came in to announce that his famous cassoulet that had been simmering since Crystalhue was at last done!

Norret silently blessed Flauric. His cassoulet was even more effective than the Night of the Pale for clearing the ballroom. Norret told Joringel to run on ahead and save a seat for him; he would be along momentarily.

Norret entered the elevator car, the will-o’-wisp’s ichor now dried to an irridescent shimmer. He shut the door, then looked about until he found the ormolu flames in the shape of a hand. In the middle was a raised design in the shape of a rose. Norret unwound the bandage and placed the glove over the flaming hand, then with his free hand, pushed the control lever down.

The mechanism engaged and the elevator began its descent, at first into darkness lit only by the warm glow of the Carbuncle but then into brilliant illumination.

The alchemical laboratories Norret was used to were grubby affairs, at best back rooms of former apothecary shops with dusty stuffed crocodiles or house drakes dangling from the rafters. This was bright as day, with clean white marble and the cold light of a hundred ensorcelled flambeaux set in untarnished alchemical silver sconces never looted by the Revolution.

There were apothecary cabinets on the walls, drawers clearly and neatly labeled, cabinets full of tinctures and reagents, bottles of acid and jars of mineral salts, and specimens preserved in oil, wine, or the fluids of Osirian alchemy. In the middle of all this was a great table stacked with a veritable mountain of alchemical glassware: alembics, retorts, cucurbits, crucibles, pelicans, and even a philosophic egg in the center.

Some grand experiment had been left to run while the duchess had fled, but now the burners beneath the crucibles had gone out, the fluids in the pelicans had clouded or sedimented, and in the philosophic egg, rather than the snowy white of albification or the beauteous iridescence of the stage of the great work known as the peacock’s tail, all that was left was an ugly charred lump that looked like a black rock.

Norret looked again.

In all of the illustrations, the philosopher’s stone was shown as a gleaming golden nugget shining forth with radiance and power, with all the figures seeing it being awed by its majesty or capering about in attitudes of joy. Certainly that’s how the grand finale of Darl Jubannich’s masque The Alchymical Wedding had ended.

The reality was somewhat less and ever so much more. Just as silver tarnished, so did the stone.

Norret took his mineral hammer out of his pack, delicately cracking the philosophic egg until the charred black lump fell out the hole at the bottom.

He then began to tap at the stone itself until a piece cracked off. It was like a geode, but instead of being filled with jewels or mineral crystals, in the hollow all that could be seen was a bit of shimmering mercury. The mercury of the philosophers.

Norret’s breath stilled. This was a treasure beyond price. Not because it could be used to purify base lead into gold, or even iron into silver for that matter, but because it had a higher use, one Norret had not even thought to hope for. Yet it was still incomplete.

Norret blessed a third person that day, Anais Devore, the duchess of Dabril, for she had left her secret laboratory in a state of organization only a woman could. Even Citizen Cedrine would have approved. In the first drawer of the apothecary cabinet, alphabetically, was A for alicorn.

Inside was not a full horn, but a silver nutmeg grater, like a noblewoman would use to spice her food, or carry on her chatelaine as she had for her portrait. Inside were fragments of horn, ground down to little ivory nuts. Alicorn was unequaled for healing, and Norret would need nothing more than this.

That said, creating the potion still took hours, and there was only so long after being exposed to air before the philosophic mercury spoiled. Yet at last, it was done and the two were mixed. A golden oil formed in the flask, glowing with a soft radiance.

Norret stoppered it and gathered up his things, then stepped back into the elevator and ascended. It was night, so he was not troubled as he left the chateau, and while the gravedigger may have seen the will-o’-wisp glow from Norret’s bottles or the rosy light of the Carbuncle, he was too fearful or knew better than to trouble with such lights.

Orlin’s grave was undisturbed, but only for the moment. Norret took off his glove and put it in his pocket, then mixed tincture of tulip with lupin, creating a mutagenic tonic which gave him the strength and claws of a wolf. The ground was frozen, but at last his nails rasped on rotten wood.

Much has been written about the alchemical stage of putrefaction, but even winter’s cold and Dabril’s perfumes could only mask so much. Once the body was out of the coffin and resting on the snow, Norret shook off the wolfen mutagen and held the perfumed glove to his nose as he slit the winding sheet.

He did not want to look at the corruption, the worms, the decay, but he did. Then he unstoppered the flask and shook the liquid over the skeleton, starting with the worm-eaten husk that had once been his brother’s heart.

“Every alchemist must decide for himself what great end he strives for. I’ve already found mine.”

The wheel of the year ran in reverse, but only for this part. The heart healed, skin knit over bones, the bloom of mold melted away like frost on windowpanes, after a moment leaving nothing but the body of a child. A golden glow spread from Orlin’s healed heart, and he slowly opened his eyes and sat up, looking about himself, Then his gaze rose.

“Norret?” he asked. “Ye—ye got old….”

“Just twenty summers.” Norret smiled. “Hardly anything. But I’m back, and so are you.”

“I’s cold.”

“It’s winter is all.” Norret took his cloak and wrapped it around the boy, helping him to stand, then cut a bit of the winding sheet, wrapping and knotting it about Orlin’s feet. He tossed the rest down into the grave along with his eyepatch, then took his hated crutch and used it to shovel in dirt before tossing it in and kicking in the last soil with his boots.

Orlin watched him in shocked wonderment.

“Here,” said Norret. “Let me show you a trick. Something Powerdermaster Davin taught us to cover our tracks.” He took a snuffbox out of his bandolier and tossed a pinch of dust on the grave.