Blue and Gold (3 page)

Ask me what I’m
proudest of; no problem. None of it.

Well, hell.
There’s a fundamental flaw in the logic of the
Dialogues
that nobody’s
figured out yet, but they will, one day, and then my reputation will be
landfill. Ichor tonans was, admittedly, a stroke of genius, but what’s it good
for? Blowing things up. I believe they’re allowed to use it in the mines, and
for blasting roads through the mountains, but even so. You can’t really glory
in the invention of something when getting caught with a thimbleful of it
carries the death penalty.
Aspis
I wrote for money, and they still owe
me most of it;
Fulvia
is derivative, and I didn’t write the sonnets for
publication. A lot of bastards got rich from the Vesani wheel, but I didn’t. I
take no pride whatsoever in my criminal past. I was moderately pleased with
The Madonna with Open Hands
(her head is actually too big for her body, but
nobody’s ever commented) but that was confiscated when I was arrested the first
time, and some toad bought it cheap off the bailiffs, and it hasn’t been seen
since.

*

Saloninus to Phocas
, greetings.

All right,
then, and thanks. But not in daylight. You think you’re scared of the Watch
catching me. Try being me.

Send
scuttlehats, in a closed carriage, one hour after sunset.
I
’ll be here.

Thanks again.
You’re a true friend.

*

I left Astyages
’ place as soon as he’d
sent the letter.
I
was nervous,
but buzzing with energy. Getting the scuttlehats off my back for a while was
the nudge I needed to snap me out of my horror-induced lethargy and get me
moving again. I still didn’t know how I was going to get out of town, but I
knew from experience that when I’m fizzing, I come up with stuff that never
ceases to amaze me. Meanwhile, until inspiration struck, I could usefully fill
up the time with various necessary chores.

First, I needed
premises. Nothing grand; just an enclosed private space with a hearth and a
chimney, at least one window, affordable, discreet landlord. With
uncharacteristic foresight, I’d investigated a few possibilities a few weeks
earlier. The first was already let, but the man who owned the next on my list
(disused storage out back of a tannery; perfect) duly took the two angels
Astyages had given me as three months’ rent in advance, handed me the key and
forgot he’d ever met me (I got the impression he’d had plenty of practice).

Next, I needed
materials and equipment. With the three angels I’d stolen from the wooden pot
on Astyages’ desk (you remember, I sat down on it when he was trying to keep a
steady hand) I was able to buy basic glassware and most of what I’d need in the
way of ingredients. That was a risk, needless to say. Even in Paraprosdocia,
there are only half a dozen places selling that sort of thing, and I’d been
expecting all of them to be watched. In fact, I’d tried my level best to think
of how I’d get in and buy what I needed without being immediately arrested and
my mind just went blank, so I pulled the risk out of my head like someone
drawing a bad tooth, and went anyway. I was terrified all the time I was there,
and the storekeeper must’ve picked up on that. He gave me a very odd look when
he thought I wasn’t looking, but that didn’t stop him from taking two of
Astyages’ hard-earned angels. He packed the stuff up for me in a wooden box,
stuffed with straw and with a bit of straw rope for a handle. Too heavy and
fragile to run with, so I walked as fast as I could back to the tannery. Didn’t
see anyone following me.

One angel and five
bits left. I spent four bits on bread and cheese (which is all you need; all
other forms of food are self-indulgence). Through the obscure alchemy of trade,
the angel transformed into a few basic pieces of hardware, including a
short-handled axe, about the only thing even vaguely resembling a useful weapon
that a man can legally buy in this benighted town. Transmuting gold into base
metal. Ha.

I was left with
four bits. Armed with four bits, a man can go to the central beef warehouse,
where they make up the durable provisions for the military, and buy himself a
two-foot cube of government surplus ice. By the time I got it back to the
tannery, my hands were past aching and into the numb stage.

You need a calm
head and a steady hand to make ichor tonans safely. Once I’d thawed out my
frozen fingers over the fire, I found I was shaking like a leaf, and my mind
was full of guilt, terror, apprehension and doubt. On the other hand, ice
melts, and I didn’t have any money left to buy more. It’s a miracle I managed
to get the job done without setting off a blast that’d have meant they had to
redraw all the maps.

It’s a lie,
propagated and spread by me, that the slightest little jar will set the stuff
off. It needs a good, sharp bump. There’s been times when I’ve walked around
for days at a time with a little bottle of the stuff in my coat pocket, though
I confess, I died inside every time I got jostled in the street. I left it on
the windowsill, went out again, went and sat in that little park just south of
the artillery platform, where nobody ever goes. I sat on a low wall and thought
about—

*

In your mind,
picture me mixing the
blue distillate with the green reagent. I gave it a little stir, for luck, with
a glass rod, and put it on one side. It was fizzing, which I hadn’t been
expecting. I weighed out two scruples of vis zephyris, two of sal petris, one
of ossa terrae, loaded the mix in an alembic over a low heat. I felt like my
mother, fixing dinner out of leftovers. The blue-and-green mix was still
frothing, and I thought; I know what’ll sort that out. So I put in two drachms
of sal draconis, figuring that the vis alba in the sal would precipitate the
fors levis in the blue, which I assumed was what was getting it all worked up.
The precipitate would stay behind in the filter when I drained it, so it’d be
safe, I thought.

I was in two minds
whether to add the solids to the liquid or the other way round. In the end, I
got the biggest block of ice we had in store, put the mix on top and slopped in
the solids, after first cooling them off on the ice-block. No explosion; so
that was all right. Also, the colour had changed, to a sort of brackish purple.
I didn’t know if that had any significance, but I assumed it was a good omen. You
know; purple, the colour of royalty and authority. Can’t be bad, surely.

Soon as it was
cool, I filtered it through charcoal and then again through paper; left behind
a load of shiny bits, like iron filings. Good, I thought, that’ll be the fors
levis. I decanted the stuff into a tall glass beaker, put it on the bench and
looked at it.

The elixir of
eternal youth. Well.

Point is, how
would you know if it’d worked?

If it hadn’t
worked, of course, I’d know straight away, in the ten seconds or so it’d take me
to die; though, from what I’d gathered from the literature, the failure of my
experiment would be pretty low down on my mental agenda during that period.
Fors levis eats the brain. I wondered if I’d done the right thing, putting in
the sal drac; but the frothing must’ve meant that the lux stellae in the blue
was reacting with the cor tene-brae in the green, in which case they’d get
together and make lead, and the whole thing’d have been a waste of time. The
sal drac was to draw off the malign humour in the cor, which had no useful work
to do anyway, and leave behind the benign humour to transmute the malign in the
lux. All very simple and straightforward, in theory.

But if it worked;
the elixir of eternal youth, to prevent aging. Fine. You drink it, you look in
the mirror. You look just the same as you did five minutes ago. It’d take ten
years before you could say for sure if it’d really made any difference. Oh,
fine, feed some to a rat, see if it lives longer than other rats. But what does
that prove? Here’s a potion that delays aging in rats. Not much call for that
in these parts. She’d suggested trying it out on a baby; you’d know within
months, if the baby stopped growing. She wouldn’t have had a problem with that.
As far as she was concerned, ethics is an excuse for a deficiency in vision and
outlook.

There it was on
the bench, just sitting. Well, I asked myself, what’re you waiting for?

And then she came
in.

I maintain that if
our society were properly ordered, and women were allowed to participate directly
in the sciences, she’d have been a first-rate alchemist. She never had any
trouble following my notes, even though she’d never been taught, she’d just
picked it up from books as she went along. Being Phocas’ sister, of course, it
was only to be expected she’d share the family obsession. But Phocas, in spite
of three years at the university, still couldn’t grasp the fundamentals of the
migration of impulses. Eudoxia could do migration equations when she was
fourteen. In fact, I have reason to believe she did Phocas’ vacation homework
for him, though of course neither of them would ever admit it.

She’d seen the
stuff on the bench. “What’s that?” she said.

“Nothing.”

She gave me that
look. “What?”

I told her what
was in it. Took her about five seconds to put the pieces together. I could tell
she was impressed. Her eyes were wide, and her face shone with that glow of
excitement and greed. “Will it work?”

“How should I
know?”

She bent over the
beaker and sniffed it, pulled back and made a face. “It went volatile.”

“Yes, but I put in
some sal drac to calm it down.”‘

Frown, as she
worked it out in her head. “Filtered?”

“I’m not stupid.”

“Little grey bits
like filings?”

I pointed to the
pad of sodden paper. She inspected it, then nodded briskly. “So?”

I shrugged.
“What’s the hurry?” I said. “If it works, I’ll have forever. If it doesn’t—”

“You’ll make some
more,” she said quickly, as if she hadn’t intended to say anything. “For me.”

I didn’t reply.
She scowled at me. “No,” I said.

“What?”

“No,” I repeated.
“You want to try it, you know the recipe.”

“What the hell—”

“Oh come
on,”
I said, as if she was being stupid. “Let me draw your attention to the precise
wording of the marriage ceremony. Till death do us part.” I smiled at her. “Be
realistic.”

She gave me a look
that was designed to take all the skin off my face. “You’re pathetic,” she
said.

I’m many things,
but not that. “All due respect,” I said, “but immortality is one thing. Being
married to you forever and ever, on the other hand—”

“You bastard.”

“That’s unfair,” I
said. “I’m not divorcing you. We’ll live out the rest of your natural life
together, and then I’ll be free. That’s the deal you signed up for.”

“You’d let me
die.”

“Everybody dies,”
I said. “Mortality is the constant that defines our existence.”

“Fuck you.”

“Besides,” I said,
“it probably doesn’t work. If it was that easy, someone’d have done it
centuries ago. And it could be poisonous.”

“If it is,” she
said pleasantly, “you’ll die, and I’ll know not to drink it.”

“Could be it’s one
of those poisons that takes hours to work. Or days. Weeks, even. It’d be
criminally irresponsible of me to let you drink it.”

“My brother—”

“Your brother,” I
replied, “values me a damn sight more than he does you. As you should know by
now,” I pointed out. “Twice a week you go whimpering to him about me, and
what’s he done?”

“You going to give
him some?”

I smiled. “If it
works,” I said, “I may eventually publish. But not till I’ve given it a really
thorough trial. Say, two hundred years. Earlier than that, it’d be bad
science.”

“Are you going to
give my brother some or aren’t you?”

“No,” I replied.
“He’s funding me to turn lead into gold, which we all know is impossible. This
is just a sideline of my own. He doesn’t own the research. This,” I went on,
smiling beautifully, “is just for me. Because I’m worth it.”

I hadn’t noticed
her slide her hand round the base of the beaker. Before I could move, she’d
lifted it to her mouth. She’d swallowed twice before I was on my feet.

I shouldn’t have
put in the sal draconis, I realise that now. Radix vitae would’ve leached out
the malignity from the effervescence, and you can eat that stuff till you burst
and be perfectly safe.

*

When the man
turned up to light the
lanterns in the park, I went back to the tannery and picked up the ichor
tonans. On my way I’d fished an empty acquavit bottle out of the trash, and
washed it out in a public fountain. I decanted the ichor, slowly, corked the
bottle and stuffed it in my pocket, the way the drunks do. That, and the fact
I’d slept in my clothes and not shaved for two days, really made me look the
part. Drunks and beggars are invisible. The perfect disguise.

I wandered the
streets for five hours, really getting into the part. My uncle always said I
could’ve been an actor, and I think he was right. What you’ve got to get right,
and what most people pretending to be down-and-outs always neglect, is the
walk, the length of stride, the dragging of the side of the boot. You’ve got to
walk like you’re always leaving, never arriving. A kind man actually stopped me
and gave me three bits.

I reached the
Eastgate just after the watch changed. I saw the relief sentry climb up into
the watchtower; he’d be there for at least a minute, signing on in the book.
That gave me forty-five seconds, more than enough time. I hauled myself up the
stairs onto the rampart (nobody was watching, but I couldn’t help staying in
character; a slight wobble, as you’d expect from a drunk climbing a steep
staircase), looked down to make sure the coast was clear, took the bottle from
my pocket, dropped it over the wall, and ran like hell.