The Alchemist's Apprentice Read online

  It was almost a relief when a constant stream of secretaries and lesser staff started to make their way in and out of the chamber. Lord Anton told me to make coffee and tea for some of them, but not all. I guessed it was a way of showing the visitors just how they stood with him. The ones who didn’t get coffee certainly didn’t look pleased. I just hoped they wouldn’t take it out on me.

  “Anton,” Wesley Bolingbroke said. “I really must speak with you.”

  Lord Anton shifted, pushing the paperwork aside. “You must, must you?”

  “Yes,” Wesley said. He took one of the chairs and sat down, without being invited. “I’m your brother. And it is my duty to bring certain matters to your attention.”

  Lord Anton sighed, heavily. “We have had this discussion before, have we not? We have had it time and time again.”

  “You are dying,” Wesley said, sharply. “We are running out of time.”

  I blinked in shock. Lord Anton was bedridden - he certainly seemed to be bedridden, unlike his elderly mother - but dying? He didn’t look as if he were dying. I wished, not for the first time, that I knew more about the healing arts. It was rare for an aristocrat to be struck down by disease. Master Travis had pointed out that the aristocracy could afford the best healers. I felt cold as the truth dawned on me. The healers had already looked at him. They couldn’t have felt any doubt about his condition.

  “I have life in me yet,” Lord Anton grumbled. He shifted, uncomfortably. “And we have time.”

  “We do not.” Wesley spoke with quiet urgency. “Henri was ready. We all thought Henri could take the reins when you died. But now Henri is dead” - Lord Anton let out a shuddering gasp - “and you haven’t even started preparing Simon to succeed you.”

  Lord Anton glared. “Simon has yet to graduate.”

  “Simon is also the only prospective heir we have,” Wesley said. “Or do you want the Family Council to choose an heir themselves?”

  “Do they think I’m blind?” Lord Anton sat upright, furiously. “Do they think I have missed the signs that they’re preparing to call a gathering? Do they think ...?”

  “No,” Wesley said. “But they do think that you’re not doing your duty. No one blames you for mourning your son.”

  “They just blame me for not pushing my second son forward,” Lord Anton said. “And he isn’t my second son, is he?”

  Wesley stood and started to pace the room. “Anton ... Reginald is not part of the legitimate bloodline. We know this. Everyone knows it. Even if he was suitable, and you must have heard the stories about him, he would be unacceptable. You cannot make him part of the bloodline by fiat.”

  “He’s my son,” Lord Anton said.

  “And you should have pensioned his mother off and sent him to live in the country,” Wesley said, sharply. “You should not have raised him in the family mansion.”

  Lord Anton started forward. “Did you expect me to abandon him?”

  “I expected you to remember who and what you are before you make any decisions about his future,” Wesley snapped. “Do you realise that a dozen deals and agreements will come crashing down if Antonia’s children are not the heirs? You should have tied Simon’s blood to the wardstones by now.”

  “He’s still too young,” Lord Anton said. “I was thirty when I inherited and I still found it hard. Simon is barely seventeen.”

  “Then you should get started,” Wesley said. He sat on the edge of the bed. “There’s no other plausible candidate. I’m only a couple of years younger than you and childless. The council will start pressuring me to step aside in favour of Simon as soon as they realise just how much is at stake. And Reginald is a bastard. There are no other candidates from our bloodline. The council cannot be allowed a chance to consider other possibilities.”

  “I am tired,” Lord Anton said. “Leave me.”

  Wesley straightened. “We don’t have much time ...”

  “Leave me,” Lord Anton repeated. “You’ll have my decision in due course.”

  I watched Wesley go, my head reeling. I wasn’t sure I’d understood the entire argument, but I thought I was starting to understand what was at stake. Lord Anton was dying - and his successor had to be one of his legitimate children or the entire house might come crashing down. And Reginald couldn’t succeed his father. Simon might even kick Reginald out of the hall as soon as he took control of the wards. I hadn’t seen Simon and Reginald interact, but I found it hard to believe that Reginald had been kind to his younger half-brother. I’d resented my younger half-siblings. Reginald had far better reason to resent his half-siblings.

  And he’s still a monster , I reminded myself, sharply. Reginald had killed Master Travis and destroyed my life ... for what? He has to be stopped .

  “Girl,” Lord Anton said. “ Girl .”

  I blinked. “Yes, My Lord.”

  “Help me settle down, then rub my shoulders,” Lord Anton commanded. “The healers say I have to relax.”

  I gritted my teeth, then did as I was told. Lord Anton’s skin felt sweaty and unpleasant under my fingers, a faint smell of ... something wafting through the air. I wasn’t sure what, if anything, the healers had given him, but it was clearly trying - and failing - to purge the disease from his body. I felt a pang of sympathy that surprised me. Lord Anton was one of the most powerful men in the city, yet he’d been brought down by one of the few diseases that couldn’t be cured. He had to be furious at his bad luck. All the money in the world couldn’t save his life.

  “That feels good,” he said, as I rubbed his neck. “Lucinda chose well.”

  “Thank you, My Lord,” I managed. I had to fight to hide my disgust. It wasn’t going to be easy to get a shower before Lucinda put me back to work somewhere else. “I ...”

  “Your parents abandoned you, did they not?” Lord Anton sounded tired. “Do you think they made the right decision?”

  I tensed, suddenly aware that I was sailing into very dangerous waters. “I don’t think so,” I said, finally. My father had abandoned me, damn the man. “I would have liked to grow up with parents.”

  “And yet, your presence would have caused them problems,” Lord Anton said. “They told me to abandon him, you know. They said he’d cause me problems. I could make sure he’d have everything he wanted, apart from a father. But he was my son. How could I abandon him?”

  “I don’t know, My Lord,” I said. Reginald had been lucky. He’d had a father who’d actually acknowledged the boy. How had he grown up into such a bastard? “I never knew my parents.”

  “They did what they thought was right.” Lord Anton shook his head, as if he regretted ever starting the conversation. “You are dismissed. Tell Lucinda I said you could have the rest of the afternoon off.”

  I glanced at the clock. I’d been in the room for hours. He was trying to be kind, I supposed, but he didn’t know how to do it. There weren’t that many hours left in the day. He didn’t know anything about the realities of life in an orphanage either. Jill - and my fictional self - had been the lucky ones. My stepfather had taken a perverse delight in telling me a whole string of horror stories about life on the streets. There were worse places to live than Bolingbroke Hall.

  And Reginald was luckier still , I thought. He could have never known his wretched father .

  I pushed the thought aside. I’d think about it later. “Yes, My Lord.” I stepped back and dropped a deep curtsey. “Thank you.”

  Lord Anton smiled, wanly. “You’re welcome.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The next few days passed very slowly.

  Lucinda kept us busy, of course, as more and more family members filtered into Bolingbroke Hall. It was a nightmare, even for her, to keep track of social precedence; I had a feeling that Lady Antonia’s social secretary was on the edge of a nervous breakdown. The inner family - Lord Anton and his children - were secure, but everyone else had to be ready to change everything from their bedrooms to their seat at table at a moment’s notice
. It felt as if the entire hall was playing a demented game of musical chairs. I would have felt sorry for them if it wasn’t clear that they were just waiting for Lord Anton to die. I’d overheard enough conversations to be certain that two-thirds of the guests were already making deals about what would happen if Lord Anton died without an acknowledged successor.

  “It would be tricky if there wasn’t a successor,” Jill said, one morning. “If there isn’t someone in place, someone ready to take up the wards, the council would choose someone from a different branch of the family. It would make life difficult for Simon and his siblings.”

  And Reginald would be kicked out , I thought, wryly. That wouldn’t have been a bad thing, except it would make it harder to get my hands on the notebook. His father could die at any moment .

  “They’d have to move out,” I said. “Or would they just have to give up their rooms?”

  Jill shrugged. “It doesn’t matter to us,” she said. She took a bite of toast. “They’re not going to steal our bedroom.”

  I chuckled. The idea of Simon, Clarian and Cyanine Bolingbroke squeezing into our bedroom was thoroughly absurd. They’d be horrified when they learnt they had to share a bedroom, let alone a bath and shower. It would probably be considered cruel and unusual punishment. I tried not to think about the room I’d shared with my half-sisters for most of my life. My stepfather had seen to it that I’d always had the most uncomfortable bed in the house. I think he would have insisted I slept on the floor or in the muddy back garden if it wouldn’t have excited comment. My mother wouldn’t have been able to stop him.

  Lucinda appeared before we could finish our breakfast. “Lady Cyanine’s governess has taken unwell,” she said, tersely. “Rebecca, I want you to wait on her.”

  “Yes, Miss,” I said. I kept my face expressionless. Cyanine might recognise me too ... if I gave her half a chance. And who knew what would happen then? Reginald had a very good reason to keep quiet, at least until he had a chance to dispose of me, but there was nothing stopping Cyanine from going to her mother. “Now?”

  “Now,” Lucinda confirmed. “Jill can tidy up the breakfast.”

  I shot Jill an apologetic look, collected Cyanine’s breakfast tray and hurried up the stairs, feeling my heart begin to pound. If Cyanine recognised me - if Reginald forced his way into her room again - I was going to be in hot water. And yet, I still hadn’t managed to figure out a way to break into Reginald’s hidden chamber. I couldn’t flee the hall until I had the notebook in my hands. I wondered, grimly, if I could convince Cyanine to help me. But she was utterly terrified of her older half-brother.

  And who can blame her? I forced myself to calm down as I reached Cyanine’s suite. You’re scared of him too .

  The door opened at my touch. Cyanine was sitting on her bed, one hand clutching her left arm. I thought, for a horrible moment, that it was actually broken before I saw the bruise - and the blood trickling down from under her fingers. Reginald had been to see her already, I realised numbly. He’d done a great deal worse than merely bruise her this time.

  Cyanine looked up at me, helplessly. “Get out.”

  “I can’t, Young Mistress,” I said. I closed the door firmly, then pushed the bolt into place. It wouldn’t stop a strong man, let alone a magician, but it would give us a few moments of warning if anyone wanted to break into the room. “Let me help you.”

  “You can’t help me,” Cyanine said. Tears shone in her eyes. She was strikingly tall for her age, like most of the aristocratic children I’d seen at the ball, but she looked smaller. “I tried to tell father and he didn’t listen ...”

  I sat down next to her. “Show me the wound.”

  Cyanine gave me a sharp look - she would have been warned, of course, not to let anyone play with her blood - and then drew back her hand. I leaned forward, trying to remember what little I’d been taught. The bruise was worse than I’d thought, the skin broken in two or three places ... it looked, I thought, as if Reginald had deliberately cut Cyanine’s skin with his fingernails. She’d slathered salve on the wound, but it had only made matters worse. The wound hadn’t even begun to close.

  “It won’t stop bleeding,” she said, desperately. “I tried and tried and it won’t stop and ...”

  “You didn’t prepare the salve quite right,” I said. It was a guess, but it sounded right. She’d used too much base liquid, ensuring that the salve wasn’t strong enough to close the wound properly. Instead, it was actually agitating the skin. “You really need to know what you’re doing before you start brewing potions.”

  “I do know what I’m doing,” Cyanine protested. “My aunt taught me herself!”

  “And then you mixed the salve with your own blood,” I pointed out. “Do you have more ingredients?”

  “Yeah,” Cyanine said. Her eyes hardened, suddenly, as she looked at mine. “You’re her , aren’t you? The girl from the shop.”

  I swallowed, hard. “Yes,” I said. “I'm her.”

  Cyanine straightened. “What are you doing here ?”

  “The shop was destroyed,” I reminded her. “I had to find a new job somewhere .”

  Cyanine looked as if the very concept of getting a job was beyond her, but she said nothing as I finished wiping the wound clean and covered it with a makeshift bandage. I thought as fast as I could, trying to decide if it was worth the risk of trying to get her to help me. Cyanine could be very helpful indeed, if she could work up the nerve. I put the thought aside as I walked into her workroom and examined the small collection of ingredients on the table. It struck me, suddenly, that she really didn’t know what she was doing. She’d bought too little of some ingredients and too much of some others.

  “You have to measure everything precisely,” I said, as I poured base liquid into a measuring jug. It was really nothing more than boiled water, something anyone could produce, but Cyanine had bought five or six pints from a potions store. “And you have to know what you’re doing.”

  Cyanine inched closer until she was peering over my shoulder. “I do know what I’m doing.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You can make base liquid for yourself, if you want,” I said. The prices on the bottles were incredibly high, for something that was basically pure water. That certainly hadn't come from Master Travis’s apothecary. “You just need to boil water over a mundane stove. No magic. Whoever sold you this cheated you.”

  “Oh,” Cyanine said. She watched as I ladled a handful of ingredients into the water, then started to stir them together. “I just ... I just bought what I needed.”

  “I can see that,” I said, dryly. Cyanine’s workroom was a disaster in the making. Some of her supplies would last for weeks, but others were already decaying. She’d have to throw about half her collection out if she didn’t want to poison herself. “You need to invest in some preservation cabinets if you want to keep the ingredients safe to use.”

  “I will,” Cyanine said. “What do I do now?”

  “You follow the recipe as precisely as possible,” I said. The salve was actually a fairly forgiving recipe - it wouldn’t have gone so badly wrong if Cyanine hadn’t mixed it into an open wound - but being imprecise was a bad habit. Cyanine would blow herself up if she messed around with the more dangerous recipes. “And then” - the salve started to bubble - “you wait for it to cool down.”