The Apprentice's Path: The Alchemist #1 Read online

  The Apprentice’s Path

  The Alchemist #1

  Stacey Keystone

  Ellauri Press

  Contents

  Books by Stacey Keystone:

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Part II

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Epilogue

  Books by Stacey Keystone:

  Alchemist series:

  1. THE APPRENTICE'S PATH

  Copyright © 2020 Stacey Keystone

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher is an infringement of the copyright law.

  Published by Ellauri Press 2020

  Part I

  1

  The crisp, starched shirt felt stiff, and the collar itchy. Ironing it had been a chore this morning, with the flicker of a candle as the only source of light. I had to spray the shirt with potato starch and cover it with a cloth to protect its not so pristine white color. The charcoal fire I lit in the iron burnt too hot at first, and the sharp pain in my wrist was but a reminder of that.

  The audible crackling of wood was strong in the fireplace, filling the office with a red light noticeable in the middle of the day due to the dark shadow of the cloudy sky. I could taste the faint particles of smoke in the air, and feel the dusty, thick air. Nobody had aired the office in a while, probably to avoid losing heat. Or maybe they couldn't open the windows; some buildings are more akin to jails than houses.

  The interviewer, a middle-aged woman dressed old-fashionably in a blazer with shoulder pads over her button-up shirt, wasn't very impressed with the efforts I made. Such things are expected, and nothing to be praised for when looking for a job.

  "So, Miss Bedwen," she looked at me over my CV, which she had picked from the pile in front of her. The pile was big, as many students were looking for internships. "I see you won the Floyd scholarship, and your grades are great, which is quite impressive, but you don't seem to have much practical experience."

  "Depends on what you consider practical. I have quite a lot of experience in the repair of mining equipment."

  "Practical experience in designing alchemical devices. We are a design firm, not a repair shop." She seemed to say it with contempt. White-collar hate towards blue-collar work, I guess.

  "If you don't count the many alchemical competitions I took part in, including the Floyd Trust Competition." I redesigned a piece of machinery that kept breaking down so it would last longer, "as practical experience, that is. Or do you only consider working a desk job as alchemy experience?" Yes, maybe I was too confrontational, but it's not like this bitch wasn't aware of why I didn't have a job in an alchemical firm on my resume in the first place.

  "And that is fairly impressive, Miss Bedwen. But in our firm, we like team players able to collaborate and follow the leadership…"

  Be yes-men who don't show any initiative, that is.

  "… and you seem to have an affinity for solo work."

  That is, I am a dark arall. This has probably been the combination of most of the clichés I've heard so far. "We like team players", "We prioritize a friendly workplace over achievement" (that's a lie, nobody's that stupid), "Experience in collaboration and teamwork is paramount to us", etc. I've heard most of them. Despite the end of the Inquisition fifty years ago, and the equalizing of rights of all magical and non-magical people, it is still quite difficult for dark arall folk to find a job. We are very competitive, aggressive, and vindictive. Employers avoid hiring people who are too assertive, and dark arall tend to be very independent-minded.

  "Despite appearances," it's illegal to discriminate against people for their magical status. I wanted to remind her of that, without becoming an affirmative action hire. That would destroy my carefully crafted reputation as a capable alchemist, and I would become the butt of all jokes. "I work well with others. Our team won an inter-university alchemical competition," for which I did most of the work myself, but let's not mention that, "and we were even featured in Alchemist's Review."

  I breathed deeply, trying to calm myself. The dusty air tingled my nose, and the itch to sneeze was almost unbearable. This would not work. I stopped the breathing exercise. It was absolutely pointless. This whole meeting was absolutely pointless.

  The interviewer lady — I think she introduced herself, but I didn't pay much attention. No point in trying to remember now, since I wasn't going to get a job, anyway. She stared at me, trying to see if the fuse was about to blow. I would never give her that satisfaction.

  "I hope you have seen my capabilities, and a fair decision will be made, following all the articles of the Labor Law," especially the anti-discrimination article, "and make a fair decision. I will await your call; it seems our time is over. I will escort myself out."

  No point in wasting any more time on this.

  I left the dreary old building behind me, without stopping to put on the coat before exiting. As I fumbled to put on a heavy coat, wrap a thick woolen scarf around my neck, and put on my oilskin fedora (very sensible, protects from the rain), and a pair of woolen gloves. One of the gloves fell down.

  "Fuck."

  It didn't fall into a pool, and the floor was icy. I adjusted all my clothes and put on the glove. The boulevard was empty. The trees were an amalgamation of green, yellow and reddish colors with brown hues. The usually annoyingly chirpy birds had fallen quiet, preparing to migrate, and flies and mosquitoes were busily reproducing to be reborn next year. I love autumn here in Ashford.

  The trains go from the sleepy summer schedules to the usual, busier ones. The city, which empties every summer, fills up with students again. Drinking and fights return to the pubs and the night streets around the student area. Police lose the pounds they gain during the summer by having to patrol during the cold, dark nights under the rotten eggs smell of gas lamps. Criminals come back, from whatever they were doing in the summer, to scamming naïve freshers, pick-pocketing in the busy crowds, and robbing drunkards on the streets. Meat markets will soon be full of freshly killed livestock, fattened up during the summer, and students will eat a year's worth of meat in a few barbecues, to then go back to eating plates of potatoes and oatmeal. This is also the time when the scholarship loans get paid, so all debts get paid off, and everybody is the most generous.

  And despite all this, I was in a terrible mood. This int
erview was not the first, nor the second. It was the forty-first, the last one, in the smallest, most insignificant company in this small city. And even they wouldn't hire me. I couldn't really do much about it; I had already done everything I could, and that wasn't enough.

  I was in my fourth year of studies in Alchemy. Experience was going to be critical for me to get a job after I finished, and I could not get any. I also hoped to get a paid job, because otherwise I would have to resort to becoming a bouncer or a waitress. Wasting my time for three shillings an hour is not the best use of my time, considering that a proper alchemist earns at least three crowns — ten times that. The Floyd scholarship paid for tuition and the dorm — but I would have to work that back. So, if I could find a job that would not just pay for the food, but also allow me some savings — that would be nice.

  So I needed a job that would provide me with some experience in practical alchemy, and some money. Maybe I could go work at the coach station? After I helped them fix a car, they were keen on hiring me. On the other hand, I escaped Crow Hill to avoid working at my father's machine and repair shop, because I wanted to do new things. I wanted to go out, and maybe have a beer, so I headed to the dorms to change.

  I arrived at the dorms and changed into more comfortable attire (but kept the fedora; it's my favorite). Also made a salami sandwich to avoid paying for pub food (universally terrible, and sometimes provoked food poisoning). Munching the sandwich, a few crowns in my pocket, I left all the valuables in the safe and headed out. It was time to blow off some steam.

  The pub I went to was one of the decent ones. Families dined there during the day, although you wouldn't see anybody respectable this late in the afternoon. The floor was still clean, without the sticky gloss it would acquire by the end of the night. The beer here was decent, cool and not watered down. It was also more expensive than in other places. I usually didn’t mind if my beer tasted like piss, but I came to see Joe tonight, and he hung out in fancier places (at the beginning of the night, at least; by the end of the evening, he would not mind what he drank). I elbowed my way to the bar, making my way through sweaty and smelly men. Some of them got annoyed at first, but when they saw me, they went back to minding their own business.

  At the bar, I ordered a pint, and after the barman poured me one, ahead of everybody else, I paid the half-shilling it cost. I took a sip of the overflowing glass and looked around. Joe should be somewhere here. After I went around the tables, stepping on some toes and maneuvering between the tables, he saw me first, probably because of the field of annoyed stares that surrounded me.

  "Hey, Dan! Come here." He was sitting alone. This was rare for him, as he tended to be surrounded by friends, and many women. He probably waited for me, as he knew this was my last interview.

  I sat down in front of him, after taking the chair from a guy who headed towards the bar. His friends tried to stop me, but I looked at them and they shut up. The chair was still warm. It was nice.

  "So, how did it go?" — Joe asked. He was used to my lack of manners.

  "It was awful. The same cowardly excuses I always get."

  Somebody from the next table heckled me obscenely. There weren't that many women in the bar, so I guess he was desperate. I gave them the finger. After some hooting, they didn't take it further. I was more a man than a woman to them, anyway.

  "You show remarkable restraint," Joe commented. "If somebody made such lurid comments about me, I would be furious."

  "Would that be just because of the comment, or because they'd be implying you're gay? Men get incredibly insecure when their sexual orientation gets questioned. In my case, I don't like it, but not enough to beat them. It hasn't been easy maintaining a clean police record."

  Joe seemed surprised at the last comment. For a dark arall to have a clean police record was quite rare, as my peers tended to get into fights. It's not that I never fought, to be clear; the trick was never getting caught, and not destroying any property. Choosing people who wouldn't go to the police if beaten by a woman was very important in not getting caught.

  "Are you saying you have a clean record? Wow, I never thought that would be possible. That opens some interesting possibilities."

  "What do you mean?" The only reason I cared about the police record was my father's desire not to get any attention. Although his marriage to mother and his long residency in Kalmar allowed him to gain citizenship, he still didn't like to get on the authorities' radar. A bit absurd for one of the most prominent men in our town, but it was probably because of his Yllamese origins. He tended to be very skeptical of law enforcement, which is why he studied the law (and made me read it).

  "Well, I saw this advert recently. I didn't think about you, because it said you'd need to have a clean record, but…" he paused, as if unsure he should continue.

  "What, what did you see?"

  "Well, I saw that the army was offering alchemy jobs for students. They're doing a collaboration with the University. It's a pilot project, the first time they're doing it."

  "Where did you see that? When did it appear?" Joe had this uncanny ability for learning about everything, before everybody.

  "It appeared on the student board a week or so ago."

  "Ah." The student board! The corkboard in the Main Hall was so full of adverts, pasted one on top of each other, that reading anything from it was almost impossible. People posted everything there: love confessions, poems, offers of puppies and kittens (how did they keep them in dorms, when they were banned?), and adverts for all kinds of things. Nothing serious ever got posted there, so I tended to ignore it. I would have to check it out.

  "Thanks for the tip. I'll check it out. How are you, by the way?"

  I took another sip of beer. Was my life going to get better?

  When I went to the Main Hall to check the announcement board, it was the mess it usually was. It took me a while to find it, and I had to remove a ton of stupid love messages, advertisements, and pictures of male genitals. Finally, I found it. It was small, written on a typewriter.

  Looking for fourth- and fifth-year alchemists for training in repair and logistics. Must have clean record. Bring CV, grades and records to office G22 in Old Alchemy building.

  The advert was small. I'd be surprised if they got many applicants, but that may mean I will get a shot.

  In the G22 office, I met a smiling secretary who collected the documents, made me fill a form, and promised to call me in a week. We'll see.

  2

  After I brought the documents to that office, I got nothing for an entire week. Lectures had already started, so I just focused on managing my schedule, with all the labs, seminars, and lectures we had. This year, maybe to give some jobs to the people in the Interpersonal and Intercultural Relations Department, or maybe to annoy us, they changed credit requirements and demanded we get a course in the IAIRD by making it mandatory.

  That was bad news. The IAIRD was the place where almost all the empaths were. It's not like dark arall hate light arall, anymore, after the Reformation; we just dislike and avoid each other. Their magic is much finer than ours, more related to the living, whereas dark magic works better on inanimate objects. Hence the modern euphemism Practical Magic. Light mages can get echoes of other people's feelings (though thankfully not their thoughts), and they can manipulate living organisms. The only practical uses of their magic that weren't ethically questionable were their plant and animal breeding program (although there were still huge debates over whether it was OK to modify spiders so they wove their nets to death), and Healing. Healing requires a very strong soul, to not go crazy with all the pain and suffering they feel the patients go through. Healers were actually the only tolerable light arall, with their dark humor and cynicism. But the only thing more risible than a dark arall empath was a dark arall Healer, so I had to choose something else.

  Since empathy is not my thing, and I wasn't interested enough in ancient cultures (who cares what a bunch of primitives did? Modern technolo
gy is so much more interesting!) nor foreign languages (my father forced me to learn classic Yllamese, my ancestor's language; there were no alchemy books written in classic Yllamese — none at all!), I decided to take a course called Kalmar Republic's Law. Knowing the law is useful — especially if you want to break it.

  Monday morning, the classroom was busy and noisy. I had come exactly on time, but it seems that was a mistake. The lecture hall was packed. I found just one spot — in the middle of a row, with a rucksack on it. Most people would not bother everybody in the row just to sit, but I wasn't that nice. So I maneuvered across the feet, bags, and tables on the row. When I reached that spot, I lifted an eyebrow. The girl sitting by the rucksack glanced at me, and silently removed the bag. That's right — nobody leaves me standing! I sat down and took out a notebook and a refillable ink pen. Great invention — don't have to carry an inkstand with me.

  The class went with the usual conversations before the professor entered, confidently walking in, right on time. He was dressed in a suit, a very formal attire for a light arall, as they usually like to dress rather informally. He looked kind of familiar — which was strange, considering I had never seen him before.