“Who was their negotiator this time?”
“Shakespeare.”
Sam has never crossed paths with this Lumines alchemist, although she has heard his attribution more and more often over the years. “He must be very good at what he does, to convince Doherty to break our contract.”
“So I hear. It’s made them bold enough to encroach on our shipping even before the mayoral election.”
The last time an alchemist took the attribution of Shakespeare was more than a century ago, or so she remembers from her textbooks, a man who’d used his talents to create one of America’s wealthiest railroad dynasties. She wonders idly who this new Shakespeare might be.
Sam’s eyes linger for a moment on Will’s hand resting easily against the steering wheel, his fingers long and white. Most evenings, they circle each other under the shade of the Observatory’s oaks, pulling materials in and out of their tiles in the ground, transforming them into more and more complex things. Sam knows the transmutations so well that she can see the equations in her sleep:lead|black sulfur|arsenic|blood|iron|amethyst, and so on. She dreams of overlapping circles and courtyards lined with hydrangeas and black lilies. Sometimes she wakes with her hands moving in the air.
They always work well into the evenings, Will taking her wrist and guiding her hand down to the bricks in the ground.
Can you sense the structural difference between silver and gold?he asked, the first time. And Sam sensed it, all the while distracted by the cool touch of his skin on hers, the way his fingers slid along her wrist and made her tingle.
Yes,she replied faintly.
Call on your soul again,he instructed,and keep the structural difference in your mind. How many steps you need. It will hurt, so brace yourself.
She did so, then startled back at the shock of pain. But Will held her forcefully in place, pressing her hand to the ground even as she tried to escape.
We will stay here until you do it properly,he ordered her.
And so they’d stay, sometimes past midnight, until she could perform each new transmutation to his satisfaction. Only then would he release her, and she would stagger back to her apartment to collapse into bed.
Day by torturous day, she’d gritted her teeth and learned why her early,instinctive transmutations had worked, then practice how to do them more consciously. Sometimes Diamond would come to watch, overseeing a lesson from the edge of the Observatory, although she never uttered a word. The woman has grown thinner over the years, her silver hair fading into white, but the pierce of her gaze is still enough to send fear through Sam’s heart.
But mostly, she was with Will. She’d wake up thinking of him and go to bed thinking of him. She saw him so often that she dreamed of him.
He still seems to see her as a child, a ward thrust upon him without warning or consent. And yet sometimes, she thinks he notices the shift in her too. She catches him casting her the occasional look. Hears a curious undercurrent in his commands to her. Whenever this happens, Sam dwells on it for the rest of the day, her heart skipping, and deep in the night, when she’s alone in her bed at the estate, she pictures his searing glance and touches herself, imagining his fingers in her and his voice by her ear, until he brings her trembling over the edge.
Ari used to be the one who filled her mind, thoughts about where he was and what he was doing and who he might be doing it with and whether he was thinking about her. But after their day at the secret beach, he had disappeared from her life. For a long time, she wondered if she had said something wrong. Then she wondered if something terrible had happened to him, and haunted herself with the worst possibilities. And then, as the months turned into years, she came to the conclusion that perhaps he had simply forgotten about her. That, just like most other people throughout her life, he had left her behind.
It made the most sense. And it hollowed her heart out more than any other possibility. So instead, she closed herself around the wound, buried it. It was for the best. Wasn’t this inevitable? And with Ari nothing more than a distant memory now, she filled the hurting cavity with Will instead, letting the darkness of him spread inside her.
“Do we need intel on Shakespeare?” she asks now.
Will shakes his head. “I don’t want us giving Lumines the impression that we’re worried about him. No, tonight we’re clearing the air, keeping our relations tidy. Diamond doesn’t want to deal with a mess right before the conference at Oxford.”
The conference. Will is referring to an annual meeting of alchemy syndicates from around the world, a time of strengthening relations between allies and keeping tabs on enemies, of making deals for the next few years.Sam has never been invited to attend it before, but nevertheless, her soul pulls at the thought, hoping someday to go.
“But you’re still suspicious about this meeting,” Sam continues, “otherwise you wouldn’t have brought me.”
“I think they’re meeting with suppliers that they shouldn’t, yes. And if they intend to make any hostile moves, I expect us to be ready to retaliate. So keep your eyes open and do your diligence around the hotel. You are there to observe, not to be noticed.”
She turns sharply to him. “You don’t want me inside the meeting with you?” she says.
“I’d prefer they see you as little as possible, yes. No one needs to know who you are.”
Sam scowls, disappointed she won’t be in on the talk. “In other words, I’m your glorified sentry.”
“Mozart is displeased.” He doesn’t look at her. “You think I’m wasting your evening.”
“No. I just think you’re wasting my company. I could be valuable in the meeting with you.”
He sighs. “Let me decide what makes you valuable.”
“And how often have you underestimated my value, Mr. Taylor?”
