“Like alchemy,” I confirmed.
She sank into the green armchair to the left of the window and closed her eyes, mouthing the words of the riddle silently. Then her eyes popped open. “He was in love. With a woman. A beautiful woman, who was frail. And yet…he calls her his sun, which is odd, because—”
“In alchemy, the sun is a masculine figure.”
“Exactly. The fiery spirit. The divine spark of man. Nobility and incorruptibility. It’s associated with kingly imagery. Although… it’s also associated with gold—the most perfect of all metals. The very goal of inorganic transfiguration. The stated goal of the Alchemary itself—by its founder.”
“Lord Calyx,” I said.
Yoslyn sat straighter. “You still think he left the bracelet. And that he wrote the riddle.”
I nodded.
“You think that Lord Calyx was so in love with this woman that he associated her with the very state of human perfection that alchemy seeks to achieve.”
I nodded again. “Metaphorically, at least.”
Yoslyn leaned back in the chair, brows scrunched together. “But Lord Calyx was famously unwedded. He established the very archetype of the scholar-bachelor. He wrote that ‘alchemy cannot be perfected if alchemists are distracted by material comforts or intimate companionships.’ ”
“Actually…” I spun toward my desk and snatched an open text, which I handed to her. “I found the origin of that theory, and the quote is attributed not to Lord Calyx but to Iris. The first Bluehelm.”
“Calyx’s protégé.” Yoslyn scanned the text. “I remember that she ran the original Seminary, teaching while he pursued the creation of the Philosopher’s Stone.” She looked up. “Though I’ll admit I did not remember her originating this theory. But…surely, even if the words were hers, they were inspired by her mentor. Lord Calyx was practically a recluse, especially by the end, and—”
“But what about the beginning?” I sat at my desk chair, putting us at eye level, and I found myself entirely unable to hide my excitement. Not even to avoid biasing her conclusions. “By the time he wrote this riddle, his love—whoever she was—was clearly dead. He calls her the sun, despite the masculine imagery, because he found her powerful. Incorruptible and unassailable. Beautiful. Fiery and likely passionate. The golden ideal.”
Yoslyn frowned. “You’re making a lot of assumptions.”
“That’s what you’re meant to do with a riddle. Extrapolation and interpretation are the only way to solve it.”
“Indeed, but even if you’re right. If Lord Calyx—before he was the original scholar-bachelor who famously failed in his mandate from the crown—was in love with a fiery, golden ideal of a woman, who was she? There’s no mention of a courtship in any of the histories of his life and work. He isn’t even associated with a woman, in any text I’ve ever studied, except for Iris. His protégé. About whom we know virtually nothing, except that she can’t have been his tragic lost love because she outlived him and famously went on to run the Alchemary for who knows how long.”
“That isalmostaccurate,” I conceded, and Yoslyn’s brow arched at me. “He is associated with one other woman, in the histories.”
“No, he—”
I snatched the text from her, my movement sharper than I’d intended, and I flipped carefully through the pages to a place I’d marked with a scrap of my own rough parchment. On the right-hand page was a very old, very sparsely detailed sketch of five people, their faces just nose- and mouth-shaped smudges, their sizes indicating distance and position to form a familiar ceremonial tableau.
“The royal wedding,” Yoslyn said.
“Yes. This is the officiant.” I tapped the vaguely male figure in the center, who was turned away from the reader. “The emperor.” I tapped Emperor Eldon, standing to the officiant’s left, facing him. “And Lord Calyx.” To his emperor’s left, where he had been drawn slightly smaller to indicate that he stood back a distance from the royal couple. “And—” I tapped the maid standing on the far right, next to the bride, at the same distance as Calyx.
“You think he was in love with the queen’s witness?”
“No, I think the queen’s witness was Iris.”
“How do you—?”
“There’s a portrait of Iris in a book about Alchemary history in the research library. It’s much more detailed than this, but she’s wearing a hooded robe with this same distinctive shape, which is also shown in the stained glass wedding image. History has largely forgotten who she was, but in her day, people would have recognized that hooded cape as the uniform of an alchemist. In the stained glass version, you can see that Lord Calyx has one, too, but his hood is folded back. When this was drawn, people would likely have recognized her.”
“Even so,” Yoslyn said, “Iris could not have been Calyx’s golden woman.”
“But Iris is not the only woman in this image.”
Yoslyn squinted at the drawing, as if she might have missed a hidden sixth figure. “Yes, she is. Other than”—her gaze snapped up to meet mine—“Queen Avalona.No…” She shook her head slowly. “Avalona was—”
“Noble and unassailable. Incorruptible, by all accounts. Beautiful and frail. The golden ideal. We don’t know what her personality was like, but she clearly captured the emperor’s undying devotion, so my assumption leans toward ‘fiery and passionate.’ And she certainly suffered a tragic, early death.”
“You think that Lord Calyx, the father of alchemy, was in love with the queen? With the wife of his best friend and sovereign?”
