Thyon stared at him several beats too long. “What is the meaning of this?” he asked at last, and his voice was ice and danger. “A dare? Did you lose a bet? Is it a joke?”
“What?” Startled, Lazlo shook his head. His face went hot and his hands went cold. “No,” he said, seeing Thyon’s incredulity now for what it was. It wasn’t Lazlo’s premise he was reacting to. It was his presence. In an instant, Lazlo’s perception shifted and he understood what he’d just done. He—Strange the dreamer, junior librarian—had marched into the Chrysopoesium, brandishing a book of fairy tales, and presumed to share his insights on the deepest mystery of alchemy. As though he might solve the problem that had eluded centuries of alchemists—including Nero himself.
His own audacity, now that he saw it, took his breath away. How could he have thought this was a good idea?
“Tell me the truth,” commanded Thyon. “Who was it? Master Luzinay? He sent you here to mock me, didn’t he?”
Lazlo shook his head to deny the accusation, but he could tell that Thyon wasn’t even seeing him. He was too lost in his own fury and misery. If he was seeing anything, it was the mocking faces of the other alchemists, or the cool calculations of the queen herself, ordering up miracles like breakfast. Or maybe—probably—he was seeing the scorn on his father’s face last night, and feeling it in the rawness of his flesh and the ache of his every movement. There was, in him, such a simmer of emotions, like chemicals thrown together in an alembic: fear like a sulfur fog, bitterness as sharp as salt, and damned fickle mercury for failure and desperation.
“I would never mock you,” Lazlo insisted.
Thyon grabbed up the book, flipping it closed to study the title and cover. “Miracles for Breakfast,” he intoned, leafing through it. There were pictures of mermaids, witches. “This isn’t mockery?”
“I swear it isn’t. I may be wrong, my lord. I . . . I probably am.” Lazlo saw how it looked, and he wanted to tell what he knew to be true, how folklore was sprinkled with truths, but even that sounded absurd to him now—crumbs on wizards’ beards and all that nonsense. “I’m sorry. It was presumptuous to come here and I beg your pardon, but I swear to you I meant no disrespect. I only wanted to help you.”
Thyon snapped the book shut. “To help me. You, help me.” He actually laughed. It was a cold, hard sound, like ice shattering. It went on too long, and with every new bite of laughter, Lazlo felt himself grow smaller. “Enlighten me, Strange,” said Thyon. “In what version of the world could you possibly help me?”
In what version of the world? Was there more than one? Was there a version where Lazlo grew up with a name and a family, and Thyon was put on the cart for the abbey? Lazlo couldn’t see it. For all his grand imagination, he couldn’t conjure an image of a monk shaving that golden head. “Of course you’re right,” he stammered. “I only thought . . . you shouldn’t have to bear it all alone.”
It was . . . the wrong thing to say.
“Bear what all alone?” asked Thyon, query sharp in his eyes.
Lazlo saw his mistake. He froze, much as he had in the tombwalk, hiding uselessly in the shadows. There was no hiding here, though, and because there was no guile in him, everything he felt showed on his face. Shock. Outrage.
Pity.
And finally Thyon understood what had brought this junior librarian to his door in the earliest hours of dawn. If Lazlo had waited—weeks or even days—Thyon might not have made the connection so instantly. But his back was on fire with pain, and Lazlo’s glance strayed there as though he knew it. Poor Thyon, whose father beat him. In an instant he knew that Lazlo had seen him at his weakest, and the simmer of emotions were joined by one more.
It was shame. And it ignited all the others.
“I’m sorry,” Lazlo said, hardly knowing what he was sorry for—that Thyon had been beaten, or that he had chanced to see it.
“Don’t you dare pity me, you nothing,” Thyon snarled with such venom in his voice that Lazlo flinched back as if stung.
What followed was a terrible, sickening blur of spite and outrage. A red and twisted face. Bared teeth and clenched fists and glass shattering. It all got twisted up in nightmares in the days that followed, and embellished by Lazlo’s horror and regret. He stumbled out the door, and maybe a hand gave him a shove, and maybe it didn’t. Maybe he just tripped and sprawled down the short flight of steps, biting into his tongue so his mouth filled with blood. And he was swallowing blood, trying to look normal as he made his way, limping, back to the main palace.
He’d reached the steps before he realized he’d left the book behind. No more miracles for breakfast. No breakfast at all, not today with his bitten tongue swelling in his mouth. And he hadn’t eaten dinner the night before, or slept, but he was so far from hungry or tired, and he had some time to collect himself before his shift began, so he did. He bathed his face in cool water, and winced and rinsed his mouth out, spitting red into the basin. His tongue was grisly, the throb and sting seeming to fill his head. He didn’t speak a word all day and no one even noticed. He feared Thyon would have him fired, and he was braced for it, but it didn’t happen. Nothing happened. No one found out what he’d done that morning. No one missed the book, either, except for him, and he missed it very much.
Three weeks later, he heard the news. The queen was coming to the Great Library. It was the first time she’d visited since the dedication of the Chrysopoesium, which, it would appear, had been a wise investment.
Thyon Nero had made gold.
6
Paper, Ink, and Years Coincidence?
For hundreds of years, alchemists had been trying to distill azoth. Three weeks after Lazlo’s visit to the Chrysopoesium, Thyon Nero did it. Lazlo had his suspicions, but they were only suspicions—until, that is, he opened the door to his room and found Thyon in it.
Lazlo’s pulse stammered. His books were spilled onto the floor, their pages creased beneath them like the broken wings of birds. Thyon held one in his hands. It was Lazlo’s finest, its binding nearly worthy of the Pavilion of Thought. He’d even illuminated the spine with flakes of leftover gold leaf it took him three years to save. The Unseen City, it read, in the calligraphy he’d learned at the abbey.
It hit the floor with a slap, and Lazlo felt it in his hearts. He wanted to stoop and pick it up, but he just stood there on his own threshold and stared at the intruder, so composed, so elegant, and as out of place in the dingy little room as a sunbeam in a cellar.
“Does anyone know that you came to the Chrysopoesium?” Thyon asked.
Slowly, Lazlo shook his head.
“And the book. Does anybody else know about it?”
And there it was. There was no coincidence. Lazlo had been right. Spirit was the key to azoth. It was almost funny—not just that the truth had been found in a fairy tale, but that the great secret ingredient should prove so common a thing as a bodily fluid. Every alchemist who had ever lived and died in search of it had had the answer all the time, running through his very veins.
If the truth were to be known, anyone with a pot and a fire would try to make gold, drawing spirit from their veins, or stealing it from others. It wouldn’t be so precious then, and nor would the golden godson be so special. With that, he understood what was at stake. Thyon meant to keep the secret of azoth at all costs.
And Lazlo was a cost.
He considered lying, but could think of no lie that might protect him. Hesitant, he shook his head again, and he thought he had never been so aware of anything as he was aware of Thyon’s hand on the hilt of his sword.