Sin Eater's Daughter 2 - The Sleeping Prince (21 page)

Every finger on his left hand is black. His thumb is still palest pink, as is the whole of his right hand, but his left palm is the same colour as an abyss.

I can’t take my eyes from it, from the
wrongness
of it.

He makes a soft sound in his throat and I see him looking at me, as I stare at his hand. I try to find words – any words – to ask what it is, but they’ve all gone. Instead my mouth is open, my brow furrowed in something like horror.

He sees it and something snaps shut in his own expression. He drops his gaze and turns back to his work, opening the vial and carefully tilting it, until a single drop of the potion sits on the tip of his left thumb. Then he puts the vial down on its iron base.

He lifts the small knife and cuts into the flesh of his left thumb at exactly the place where the drop of Elixir sits. For a fleeting instant the blood that oozes from it is red, before it pales to bright, pearlescent white when it touches the Elixir. He tips his thumb and the white drop falls into the vial, settling as a delicate ivory sheen on top of the pale liquid.

I look back at his thumb in time to see it turn black. I watch the skin change; I watch the darkness spread across the remaining unmarked skin on his hand. It feathers down on to his wrist, stopping in time to become a horrifying mimic of the glove he’s removed, and my stomach turns

He walks over to me, the vial of Elixir in his healthy hand, but it’s the other one I fix upon. He places it, bare, blackened, behind my head, the coldness of the cursed skin a shock against mine, and lifts my head, pouring the contents of the vial into my mouth, every drop. It tastes faintly of metal and I look up at him, both repulsed and full of pity.

His eyes when he looks back at me seem ages-old and fathomless. “Swallow,” he says, and I do.

He lowers my head and moves away, returning with a second vial, and when he brings that to my lips I smell poppy.

I drink that one down without hesitating, suddenly wanting oblivion.

The last thing I remember is him scooping me up again. His gloves are back on, tattered and burned, covering the damaged flesh beneath.

I dream, but once again I know I’m dreaming, for beyond it I can feel aches in my body; somewhere in my lower back it feels as though the bones are grinding together. Knowing it’s not real doesn’t feel important though, the knowledge slipping away from me as soon as I’ve realized it. I find myself standing at the edge of a room, high-ceilinged, with large glass windows and a flagstone floor. It’s nowhere I’ve been before, of that I’m certain; it’s a place of privilege and opulence. But the most remarkable thing about the room is the man made of silver, on a throne carved from gold.

The man is the Sleeping Prince.

I wait for terror to grip me, to shake me and tell me to run, but it doesn’t. I can’t make out his features properly, other than his golden eyes; they are indistinct, shifting. He looks up and seems to see me. He smiles softly, his expression approving. I’m wearing a long, red dress – a gown, really – velvet and soft to the touch, like the skin of a peach when my fingers rub it. He holds out a hand towards me and I go to him, still unafraid. He takes my face in his hands, tucking my hair behind my ears.

“You’re here,” he says, and his voice is like sunshine, like honey, it’s warm and rich and moreish. “I’m so very glad.”

Where Silas’s voice is spikes and edges, every word a warning, this man’s voice is smooth, velvety and beckoning. He has golden eyes, like Silas, and the same white-blonde hair, though his is long, and shining. He has the same high cheekbones, the same unnatural pallor. He even has the same playful lilt to his lips.

“I thought you were Silas,” I say. “All this time, I thought you were him.”

“Who’s Silas?”

“My friend. He’s… He saved me.”

“Did he? How?”

“Your monsters broke my back.”

“Ah, that was you. I had no idea. How terrible of them. I’ll punish them for it.”

“He made the Elixir. It mended my spine.”

“How interesting,” the Sleeping Prince says. “So the philtresmith is male? How very interesting. Tell me, sweetling. Are you still in Tremayne? You and your friend.”

“We’re hiding. From you.”

“You can’t hide from me, my love.”

He lowers his lips to my brow, kissing my forehead, I can feel them curving against my skin as he smiles and it sends a jolt of warmth through my body.

He leans back, looking at me with hungry eyes, and mine begin to close in anticipation of his kiss.

Instead he thrusts his hand into my chest, tearing the dress, shattering my ribcage until my heart is in his fist, still beating. I begin to lose consciousness as he brings it to his smiling mouth, licking it experimentally.

“Needs more salt.” He smiles.

I scream as I wake, hands rising to my chest, clawing at it, convinced it’s gaping and open.

Then I roll over and heave, my stomach cramping as I retch, though nothing comes up. I lean back against the pillow when it’s passed, enjoying the stiff, scratchy feeling of cool fabric on my too-warm skin, waiting for my heart to slow.

A soft, gloved hand rests on my forehead and I open my eyes to see Silas standing over me.

“Salt,” I say in a strained voice. Already the dream is fading, though it leaves a nasty flavour behind. And as it does I remember the golem; the crack of my spine. The alchemy.

I sit up.

I can sit up.

Elation floods me and I glance briefly at him before I test my feet, wriggling my toes. I laugh without meaning to as I move my knees, tilt my hips, wave my hands. The bandage has been removed from my right hand and the skin on my knuckles is as good as new. It worked. I’m as I was.

“I’m healed. You did it. You healed me.”

He looks at me, his face empty of any expression. “I did.”

Then the rest of the night comes back to me and in my mind’s eye I see again the blackness spreading across his hand, the skin consumed by it, and I shudder.

Immediately he draws away. “I’ll leave you to rest.”

“No, please. I’m sorry,” I say.

He cuts across me, his eyes flashing, his lip curling. “I don’t want to
upset
you.” His expression is withering, his voice like a knife.

“You’re not. I just…” I try to push the image away, softening my tone. “Silas—”

“Don’t. I don’t want your pity either.”

“No. No, of course not.” I swallow, composing myself. “At least tell me if it hurts?”

He exhales slowly, taking two steps back across the room to slump into a wooden chair. “It doesn’t hurt,” he says eventually; the words full of broken glass scratching inside my chest.

His head is bowed, and I watch him as he picks at the tattered gloves, catching occasional glimpses of the darkened skin beneath. “What is it?”

He doesn’t speak for a long time, staring down at his hands, and I wait, wiggling my toes subtly, feeling both elated and guilty by turn. “It’s not contagious, if that’s your worry.”

“It isn’t,” I say, my voice rising, and I take a breath before I speak again, carefully. “Silas, please. I’m an apothecary. I’ve seen … illness before.”

“It’s not an illness.”

“Then what—”

“It’s a curse,” he snaps, looking at me. “It’s the curse of the philtresmith. All alchemists have a curse. That’s mine. The name for it is Nigredo.”

“Is it… Will it go away? Will it heal?” I try to keep my voice even, shoving down the feeling that someone is walking over my grave.

“If I had some Elixir, yes. Then it would go back to being normal skin again.”

“Can’t you make more?” I ask.

“I can. But it won’t work on me. It never does. If there were another philtresmith then I could use theirs. Of course, they’d have their own Nigredo to deal with then. Unless I made them some of my Elixir… Do you see the problem?”

I nod, falling silent. He bends his head and begins to toy with his gloves again, his shoulders hunched over, and I want to go to him, hold him. But I know he won’t allow it, so I stay still, allowing the silence to build a wall between us until I can’t bear it any more.

“Why?” I ask. “Why does it happen? The curse.”

He looks up, slowly, as though he’s forgotten I’m here. Then he smiles humourlessly. “Alchemy, Errin. What is the principle of alchemy? What’s the ultimate function of it? What do the textbooks on it say?”

“To transmute. To turn base metals to other substances,” I say. “But you’re a person.”

“And human veins flow with blood full of iron…” he says slowly, and my mouth falls open in horror. “Each time an alchemist performs their alchemy part of them changes, and there’s no telling which part it will be. Fingernails, earlobes, lungs, heart…” He trails off.

I open my mouth to ask if he’s changed anywhere else but he cuts me off with a vigorous shake of the head. “Just my hand. So far. It’ll get worse, I’ve no doubt. If I keep doing it.”

“Then you have to stop.” Something passes over his face, something fleeting and indecipherable. “It’s not worth it,” I say. “You could die. What if next time it’s not your hand, but your heart, or your lungs?”

He looks at me. “It saved your life. It could save countless others.”

“But you’d have to die for it.” He looks away. “Wait. Do all alchemists have a curse? Does that mean the Sleeping Prince does? Every time he makes a golem, does that happen to him?”

Silas shakes his head. “If only.”

“Why doesn’t it?”

“You know Aurek and Aurelia were the first alchemists? They were born with it; they had the moon hair and the Godseye, but no one knew what it meant. When they were eight, Aurek had a nosebleed, and bled on to a set of iron ball bearings he’d been playing with. They turned to solid gold. With the king’s consent, experiments were done, and they discovered that Aurek’s blood turned base metals to gold if it touched them, and also, horribly, brought clay to life if it touched that. Aurelia’s blood seemed to do nothing at first, until one of the more zealous scientists tried adding her blood to water and drank it. He noticed immediately that his bruises vanished, his gout calmed. More blood was taken, and everyone who drank of it was healed of anything that ailed them.”

I wince, disgusted by it, but not surprised.

“I told you Aurek sired many children and they were raised at the palace? Well, they tried to use the children’s blood to make gold, hoping they’d inherited the gift, but nothing happened. It didn’t work. They tried with smaller and larger amounts of blood, but iron stayed iron, and water remained water. They almost killed one of the children, draining her within an inch of her life. That’s why Aurelia brought them away when Tallith fell, to stop people trying to use them.”

“Oh Gods,” I murmur, sickened by the image of it.

“People tried to use Aurek’s blood too. While he slept. They’d prick him and steal his blood, but the poison that put him to sleep seemed to have stopped his powers. So Aurelia hid his body, and brought the children away. She thought that alchemy would die with her, and resolved to live quietly until it did. But then the children discovered they could activate their blood to make it alchemical. Some of them were trying to make a potion to wake their father, and one of them accidentally cut her finger and a drop of blood fell in the bowl. The legend says it bubbled and smoked, and when it cleared there was a lump of gold in the bottom of the pan. They’d found a way to be alchemists, like their father. But there was a cost.”

“Nigredo.”

Silas shakes his head. “The aurumsmith’s curse is called Citrinitas. Like the Nigredo, it affects them physically. But they turn to gold. That’s the price. They could make as much gold as they liked, and each time they did, part of them would turn to gold too.” He pauses, his head tilting. “I always think they have it worse. At least if the Nigredo stops my heart, no one is going to carve it from my chest to sell.”

My hands rise to cover my mouth.

“Aurelia was furious,” he says, sinking back into the tale. “She tried to prevent them from making it, but when they demanded the right to choose, she gave in, saying when they turned nineteen they could decide for themselves. She banned all other forms of experimentation though, frightened of what it might lead to. And who could blame her, after what she’d seen in Tallith? The Sisters uphold that rule. Hence our inability to make our own poisons. We can make the Opus Magnum, but nothing else. We never learned.”

I mouth the words,
Opus Magnum
, as he continues.

“Aurelia eventually married, and had children of her own, and she offered them the same choice as their cousins.” He looks down at his hands. “Aurelia didn’t know what, if anything, the curse would be for them, but it soon became apparent it was different to the Citrinitas. We don’t know why it happens, something in the blood differing from Aurek’s and Aurelia’s, some impurity. All modern alchemy starts with the same base potion, whether making the Elixir or gold. It’s the blood that makes the difference.”

“Oh, Silas,” I breathe, my head spinning. “So the potion you use to make the Elixir was supposed to be the cure to wake the Sleeping Prince?”

“Originally. You know the saying ‘like cures like’?” he asks, and I nod; it’s a common apothecary edict. What causes can cure, if the dose is right. “They did what you tried to do with the Elixir. They deconstructed the remains of the poison from the vial found in the rat catcher’s rooms. They isolated all of the ingredients: salt, quicksilver, sulphur and so on, and were experimenting with reversing the potion. They thought it would wake him, and if he woke he could restore Tallith.”

“And they wanted that?”

“Originally, it was their goal. Raise the Sleeping Prince, and then reclaim and rebuild Tallith. Stop hiding and go home.”

Before I can ask him anything else the curtain is thrown open and the dark-skinned woman stands there. Her name comes back to me then – Nia, the salt merchant’s daughter. We used to buy our salt for the apothecary from her; she used to deliver it.

She doesn’t look at me, looking instead at Silas. “Your mother is here.”

He nods. “Thank you, Nia. Tell her I’ll be along soon.”

Nia raises her eyebrows but says nothing, whipping back out of the room, the curtain swinging in her wake.

“I know her,” I say. “I thought she liked me.”

“She’s funny about outsiders. Interesting, given that she’s not an alchemist, but married in.”

“Her husband is one?”

“Her wife.”

I try to imagine a female alchemist, with the silver hair and an amber gaze. It’s how Aurelia must have looked. “So this is the Conclave.”

“Welcome.”

“I lived above it all my life.”

He nods. “You did. Which reminds me, I heard about your mother. We’ll get her back. We’ll get her here, safe and sound. I mean to keep my promise to you. I always did.”

I feel horribly guilty then, for everything; for blackmailing him, and not trusting him. And for asking him to allow my mother in here without knowing what she is. He deserves to know. “You have to let me explain,” I say. “I lied to you. About my mother.” He looks at me blankly. “She isn’t just grieving. The scratches on her arms, I think the Scarlet Varulv attacked her. Changed her.”

“The what?”

“The Scarlet—”

“I know what it is,” he interrupts gently. “It’s impossible; it’s a story, Errin.”

“Yes, well, we thought that about the Sleeping Prince, but that turned out to be a mistake.”

“The Scarlet Varulv really is just a tale, I know that much.”

“No. You don’t know what she’s been like. It was she who chipped my tooth.” My tongue pushes my lip aside to remind him of it. “You’ve seen her eyes, how red they are. And her hands like claws. Silas, when the moon is full she tries to hurt me. Something happened in the woods, and I think – no, I know – it was that. It’s the only explanation.”

He sighs. “Errin, I saw your mother, remember. I sat with her, twice. I promise you, she’s not a storybook monster; she’s sad and lost. And I know it’s been hard for you in Almwyk—”

“Don’t patronize me,” I snap at him.

“I’m not. Truly. I know it must have been hard for you to deal with her behaviour on top of everything else, and naturally you’d look for explanations for it, especially when she didn’t respond to your treatments.”

“Forget it.” I swing my legs off the bed and he holds up his hands.

“Wait. I’m sorry. I’ll listen to you, please.” When I don’t make any further movements, he continues. “Look, we’ll get her released and bring her here and then we’ll see, all right? We’ll get her out before the next full moon and then we’ll see what we can do. If the Elixir helps, so be it. I’ll make it for her.”

I look down at his gloved hands as the full weight of what he’s offering – what I’d asked for – hits me. His life for my mother’s.

“I can’t let you.” I speak so quietly I don’t know if he hears me.

“I made myself a promise once,” he says suddenly, looking at me. “When I was growing up, I saw my father crippling himself to save lives. Every time there was a knock at our door, I was terrified that it was someone begging for help. Well, two years ago, he got a call for help, and as always he went to make the Elixir. The Nigredo stopped his heart.”

My hands rise to my face, covering my mouth, which is gaping open behind them.

He looks down. “It didn’t kill him straight away. I made the Elixir to try to heal him. It … it was my first time. It didn’t work; we were too late. The Elixir can cure anything, but it can’t restart a dead heart. After that … the knocks came for me. And I found that like him, I couldn’t say no. How could I when my refusal would mean certain death, or at the very least, a lot of suffering? So I made a decision. No marriage. No children. No relationships. I swore my loyalty to the Sisters. That way I’d never put my wife in my mother’s position; she’d never have to watch me kill myself to save others. And there would be no children to worry I was going to die every time I made the Elixir. Or to have to take my place when I did.”