Darkness Within

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FOUR

Tessa had no clue what she was supposed to be looking for. She had found nothing, as far as she could tell. Nothing apart from a boring list of what everyone was working on. Most of these projects were useless, as far as she could tell, little variants of already completed substances. There were seven different Alchemists who were working on making wine turn a bright blue. It was, in perfect honesty, ridiculous. Nobody needed a blue wine – and she could hardly see why people would even want it.

Some of the other things people were researching were hardly any better, though they were a little bit more creative. One Alchemist was looking for a poison that would kill ants but not flies, which seemed like madness to Tessa. Surely you might as well kill both while you were at it? Another was trying to recycle the ink that was used on paper or parchment, so it could be re-used. Tessa had actually gone to this guy to find out if he was serious, and met a mad, aging Alchemist who had torn a whole book to shreds when his experiment failed.

She sighed. It was clear to her, at least, that there was little to go on. Over half the present Alchemists were doing fieldwork; she’d even double-checked what they were doing to be sure they were excludable. The rest were all doing their projects. Except for her.

Maybe you’re thinking about this the wrong way, she told herself. It wasn’t that she hadn’t thought about it before. Some of the elder members of the Guild may be meeting in the evenings and doing group work – such a thing wasn’t completely unheard of, though it was rare – but even so there was no way to track such meetings.

She put her notes to the side, and looked at the book. The Master had been happy enough at first, but the last couple of days had been noticeably displeased at her lack of progress. She’d been stuck on the same page for three days now. Tessa knew she needed something to show him, even if it were only a theory.

“If only I knew what was going on in the first place,” she muttered. The only way she was going to learn anything if she stumbled upon it by accident.

By accident. As if—Wait. That was it. She jumped up, almost screaming in joy, before remembering where, and more importantly who, she was. That’s it! The whole thing is an accident!

Of course it was. How hadn’t she thought of it before? Two – or even more – of the substances these people were working on had somehow mixed, and the subsequent effects were what they were abusing of. She was certain that was it. The question now was how long had they been working on it, and how would they hide it?

She needed to think. What would she do if she were planning to do something illegal in a group. No, Tessa, not doing it is NOT an option. It was hard to put herself in that sort of situation – she had no friends amongst the Alchemists, save a few not-too-unfriendly faces at times.

The first thing would be not to get caught. In that case she would make sure she worked alone. All the time. No work conferences or meetings. She looked at her list – she knew she would have to work by elimination and hope she had a small enough list that she could work out who was the culprit from whoever was left.

It took her the rest of the afternoon to shorten her list until she had a reasonable number of people to check out. Seven of the Alchemists currently residing in the Tower were possible culprits, assuming she hadn’t missed any.

Seven.

It was a small number. But, as everyone knew, it was also an unlucky number. Seven was the number of gods who had betrayed Yodin before the end of the Creation, and seven was also the number of people who followed each god. Or so the tales went. She was never that interested in the stories, to be honest, her mind full of more practical things even from a young age. Nor was she into religion.