Darkness Within

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER THREE

Tessa awoke to a dark room full of the scent of burning plastic and smoke. It wasn’t unusual for her – the gods knew how many times her experiments had failed and she’d retired to her bed tired and disappointed. Last night had been no different.

She crawled out of bed, dragging her flimsy covers with her as she went to the window to look upon the city. If there was one thing she loved the most about her rooms, it was the view; a hundred feet into the air, it seemed to her as if she commanded the whole city. It was, she knew, one of the benefits of being part of the Guild.

A bird flew past her window in a blur of blue and green, a stark contrast to the grey skies above and the murky brown of the sprawling city below. She knew where the bird came from, of course. It was one of the experiments of a younger, more eager Alchemist whose attempts to impress never went unnoticed. The bird was a combination of an owl and a falcon, combining the two creatures’ skills in a previously unknown way. How it had got its colour was a mystery to everyone.

“I wonder what the Master will want from me today,” she mused out loud. Her voice rang softly in her ears like a bell, and she smiled.

Half an hour later, she knew. By then she had gotten dressed and ready, somehow managing in a handful of minutes what took most women hours. It helped that her hair rarely went out of shape during the night, and all she had to do was fix it into the style she preferred. Normally she would have done something elaborate that was designed to impress, but the failure of the night before still nagged her. Instead she decided to simply hang it up and let her red curls spill onto her shoulders in an unregulated mess.

And now, as she stood in front of the Master, she twirled one of those curls around her finger, the only outward sign of anxiety she would allow. The Master held his position for a very good reason: he was intimidating. It wasn’t just the aura he emanated, or the looks he gave people; it was his skill at Alchemy, his ability to literally meld one thing to another almost with his will alone, that truly scared most in the Tower. No one alive was his equal.

“Tessa.” It was a statement, not a salute. The Master had undoubtedly heard of her failure of the night before – the fire she had caused wouldn’t have passed unnoticed, and the smell lingered still – and now it was time to face the consequences.

“Master,” Tessa replied. She bowed her head, a sign of deference to his authority, or was it submission? She didn’t like the thought that she was scared of this man. She was an Alchemist, she told herself. She wasn’t scared of anybody.

“I heard of last night’s… disturbance.” The Master’s nose, long and thing, wrinkled, as did the corners of his mouth. “What were you doing?”

As if you don’t know, Tessa almost said aloud, but one look into the Master’s clear blue eyes was enough to silence her. “I was attempting to make a new plastic, more durable and cheaper.”

“Ah, your charity work,” the Master said.

Tessa was well aware of what most in the Tower thought of her work. The arrangement was that anyone was allowed to pursue personal projects, as long as they made a profit for the Guild. It wasn’t so much a rule as it was an understanding, but the fact that Tessa’s previous work – a formula for shaping diamonds – had been highly remunerative didn’t stop the muttering about her newest project.

It was, in theory, something that would make the Guild rich. The plastics currently available, while solid, tended to decompose after a while into a fine dust, or simply break through common wear and tear. Her idea was to make something that would last years, so that people wouldn’t have to waste money buying the plastic every week. The result would be a surge in a demand, she told people, and higher prices. What the others thought was that the invention would render itself useless in a handful of years, when everyone had the plastic they needed.