Nine

Sophia didn’t hear anything until the door opened.

Looking back, she wasn’t surprised. True, Cathal was a large man and had no reason to walk quietly, but she’d always been able to shut out the world. It had been a source of Words in her youth, when she’d immersed herself in a book and let stew boil over, or stared out the window contemplating a new theory while seven-year-old Aaron spread blue dye liberally over his hands and clothing. She’d grown into the habit rather than out of it.

The last of her ingredients was just achieving coagulation. She could watch the faintly orange liquid in the beaker become solid, but she had to be standing by with the rest of the assembled mixture, now dark and murky in its golden chalice. The final step wouldn’t be a split-second matter, but a minute one way or another could flaw the whole experiment.

And so, when the door creaked open behind her, she didn’t take her eyes from her apparatus. “I’m fine, Alice. I’ll come and eat after this,” she said, her voice edged. She’d told Alice that morning of her likely schedule. Her friend usually had a better memory for such things, and more consideration when they were happening.

“What’s ‘this’?” Cathal asked, sounding far from calm himself. “And how much longer will you take at it?”

She did turn then—just her head and just long enough to see him standing in the doorway with his arms over his chest and glaring at her, the apparatus, or both.

A second later, she spun back to look at the beakers. The break in her concentration had done no harm, but the demand rankled—and she disliked how quickly she’d turned to see him. She hissed through her teeth. “Not an hour more, if it goes well. My attention will be vital to ensuring that it does.”

“Oh aye,” he said, a bit meeker now. “And what part of the process will that be?”

“The end of this experiment, I should hope,” she said. “Ash is the devil itself to distill, you might be interested to know, and all the worse when I’m working with dried leaves rather than fresh ones.”

“Don’t you need holly? Or yew?”

“I might, in time. Saturn is tricky. Best to restore the solar forces first, if I can, and then proceed from there as needed.” She dared a glance back over one shoulder. “Would you like me to draw up a plan for your perusal, my lord? I can, though it may well change dramatically. I’m very much in unknown waters here, as I believe I mentioned at the first.”

“No,” he said and cleared his throat. “Won’t be necessary. I just…” He glanced down at his hands. One was a fist with something in it. Cathal stuffed whatever it was into the pouch at his belt. “I wished to know. Not unreasonable, is it?”

“Wishes have very little to do with reason,” Sophia said sharply, turning back to the apparatus. Then, thinking better of herself, she added, “But it’s a compassionate thing to fear for your friend, and I’ve no objection to telling you. I’d have answered your questions at dinner just as well, if you’d asked them then.”

“I hadn’t thought to ask before,” he admitted.

“And now you have,” she said. Had she been able to face Cathal for any length of time, she’d have given him a quizzical look. “I won’t pry…” She of all people could understand the desire for knowledge, and he’d forgiven her own trespasses, or however the Christian prayer had it. “And perhaps I should have told you to begin with, but it’s not safe just to walk in without notice.”

“No?”

“I meditate before I start each phase of an experiment. If my mind’s impure or my concentration insufficient”—she gestured outward—“then the process may fail. All beginnings require clarity, particularly in a matter that’s spiritual in itself. Fergus’s cure, if it exists, will involve more than boiled herbs. I must make some contact with greater forces.”

“What sort of contact?”

Now Sophia could feel his gaze, startled and maybe a shade uneasy, on the back of her neck. He was a fine one to talk, considering his bloodline. She didn’t point that out, but merely shrugged. “Nothing as blatant as your saints claim. There exists a feeling, a state of mind… Connection is perhaps the simplest way to put it. If I can achieve that before I begin, my work is much more likely to succeed.”

Cathal was silent. She could hear his breathing, low and regular. Despite the task before her, not to mention her exasperation, her whole body prickled in response to the sound.

“There are also practical considerations,” she said, breaking the silence. “And those are more dangerous. I work with open flame here, you notice, and at times with volatile substances. I did, I believe, mention the occasional catastrophe. The timing is… There.”

The substance in the beaker shivered into its final form, turning from orange to the golden-red of the sunrise, clear enough to see through, yet as motionless as the glass surrounding it. Losing track of all else, Sophia seized the tongs, grasped the beaker, and pulled it off the flame. Only then did she let out her breath.

“We have a minute,” she said, conscious again of Cathal standing behind her. “It must cool slightly first…but only slightly.”

She set the beaker on the table, put down the tongs, and held her right hand an inch from the glass, feeling the heat pressing against her palm.

“What is that?” Cathal asked.

“Powdered topaz, originally. The most difficult of the ingredients, as you might imagine, for it’s most reluctant to give up its form. Indeed, only with the proper state of mind and the right alignment of the planets will any of the stages work on it. It took years before I had either the money or the confidence to handle it at all.” She smiled, remembering how proud she’d been that first successful time, and then realized she was rambling. “Yet its virtue is most potent, and it will heal most merely physical ailments, when its power is applicable.”

“Oh.” He sounded surprised by the flow of information, but also…amused or admiring. She couldn’t decide which—perhaps both. So many elements made up a human being, and perhaps there were even more in Cathal, blend as he was of human and not.

The heat had abated. She moved her hand to rest against the beaker and found that she could leave it there for the count of ten seconds. “It’s ready.”

Pouring the topaz into the rest of the mixture required steady, slow care, so she grasped the beaker with the tongs once more and took a long breath to keep her hands still. Smoothly she brought the glass vessel up over the golden goblet, and smoothly she turned it, letting the contents begin to pour out.

Bright touched dark. Sophia heard a sound like a low bell. Then a tongue of golden fire sprang up from the goblet, as wide as the cup itself and half again as high. The top of it wavered just below her hand holding the beaker. She could feel the heat, just as she had earlier, but now it was greater, and far from comfortable. She pressed her lips together and went on.

At the first appearance of the flame, she’d heard Cathal catch his breath. He was breathing again as Sophia kept still and tilted the beaker further toward the goblet, but his breaths were quicker. He might have stepped closer too, though he was holding still from all she could tell. She didn’t have the leisure to look at him.

The purified topaz kept flowing into the rest of the mixture. Sophia watched it but couldn’t see how it was blending because the flame obscured the surface of the goblet. It grew and changed, shifting from deep, almost brassy gold to a clearer, paler shade, like midday light in spring. The heat increased too—and then the flame stretched upward, licking at her skin.

It hurt. She yelped. Dignity had never been of much concern to her. She’d done most of her experiments alone, with none to impress and few to hear. She’d learned to hold herself still and cry out at the same time, and now her hands never moved, even as her voice ascended to a lark-like height and shaped a very unbirdlike “Yeow!”

Boots moved on stone.

She felt Cathal’s body, inches from her own, and in the same voice cried out, “No!”

For a mercy, that stopped him in his tracks. Sophia clenched her free hand in the folds of her skirt, breathed twice through her nose, and finally said in a low but steady voice, “I can’t move yet.”

“You’re hurt,” he said, though he made no further move toward her.

“I’ll heal. It’s almost done.”

Indeed it was. The beaker was almost empty, only a last few drops remaining. Sophia tilted the tongs once more and watched through blurry eyes as they fell in. Pain ran sharp and insistent from the side of her hand up through her arm; tears ran down her cheeks with it. She ran her tongue around her lips and tasted them, mingled with her own sweat.

And then it was done, the beaker empty. Slowly, wanting to be fast and therefore deliberately taking her time, she pulled her hand away, out of the flame. Slowly she set both beaker and tongs down on the table. With her other arm, she wiped her eyes on her sleeve and looked back at the goblet.

The flames were dying down, now barely dancing along the rim. Inside, the substance had turned to red-gold, translucent and almost glowing.

She breathed out a prayer in Hebrew: thanks and praise.

“I don’t know precisely what effect it will have,” she said, turning to Cathal. He was standing rigid, a soldier on parade or a knight at vigil, staring at her. “But I am convinced it will do something. There are bandages in that trunk in the corner and also salve, if you would be so kind.”

The base of her hand, from the tip of her little finger to the bracelet of tiny lines between palm and wrist, was bright red. Odds were it would blister, and it was a truly awkward place for a burn. Still, it could have been far worse, and she had succeeded. Sophia leaned against the table and let herself grin.

“That must hurt like the very devil,” said Cathal, coming back with the items she’d requested. He peered from her hand to her face and shook his head.

Sophia laughed, giddy in the aftermath of both injury and success. “It’s pain. It exists. Then it doesn’t. On this scale, I can exist alongside it; it doesn’t consume me. Surely you’ve felt the same.”

“Aye, I have,” he said, “but you’re… Nae, never mind. Hold out your hand, please.”

She did, but couldn’t resist asking, “A woman? A mortal?”

“And a civilian.”

“Such heavy weights for me to bear.”

The salve was cool and instantly soothing; she’d been making it for a long time. The sharp smell of barberry wafted to her nose, reminding Sophia of August days back home, the late-summer sun and the sounds of people passing outside the garden wall. She closed her eyes for a second, and then felt Cathal’s fingers stroking down her wrist past the end of the burn, far more vivid than memory, spreading warmth in their wake that was as pleasant as the flame had been painful.

Before she thought about what she was doing, she leaned toward him, her body alive to his presence and, as if of its own accord, seeking more warmth and contact. Cathal’s hand on her wrist went still in response, and she heard him make a sound low in his throat, not quite a hum but not yet a growl.

When he let go of her hand, she opened her eyes. Cathal hadn’t drawn back. He stood a few inches from her still, and she was staring at the hollow of his neck, where his collar parted to show pale skin. Sophia couldn’t make herself lift her eyes to his face. Her own cheeks were already starting to flame, both with embarrassment and with the desire that she could neither deny nor banish. She didn’t want to read rejection in his eyes, and God forbid she see kindness there.

When he took her hand again, this time to wrap it in bandages, Sophia made herself stand very still and think about formulas. That didn’t work entirely, but it kept her from doing anything else foolish, even if she was far too aware of every brush of his skin against hers. As he knotted the bandage, she tried to think of a single dignified thing to say—and couldn’t.

Then she realized that Cathal still held her hand, his fingers light around hers. He did step back as she watched, but only so that he could bow low over it, then brush his lips over her knuckles. It was only a second, but the feeling ran through Sophia like flame itself, taking the breath from her lungs.

“I don’t ask that you injure yourself in my service,” he said, “but you have my deepest gratitude, lady.”

The words were polite—more courtly, even, than she would have expected. His voice was rough, though, and his eyes blazed green into hers.

Don’t assume, Sophia told herself. If you’re wrong, you’re embarrassed—and if you’re right, you’re in far over your head.

She cleared her throat. “Be grateful once we’ve seen the results,” she said.