099 Everyone Gets What They Deserve

After two days of continuous spring rain, the temperature dropped all at once. The fine drizzle turned into thin flakes of snow, and in the dim, overcast light the originally white flakes seemed tinged with a pale gray. On such a day, wholly unsuited for travel, Maple Garden nonetheless received a visitor — a visitor of no small standing.

“Master Mu, what on earth brings you here?” The Obrion couple stared in shock at the tall, upright figure of Mu standing in the hall, as straight as a pine, and for a moment it seemed they wondered whether their eyes had betrayed them. Even when the butler had first informed them that Mu would be paying a call, they had reacted the same way; even now, seeing him with their own eyes, doubt still filled them.

To be fair, their uncertainty was understandable. Mu’s reputation was towering, his eccentricities many, his privileges immense. It is said that a higher rank can crush a person, and if one were to measure it plainly, Mu’s standing in the city of Sevantis was many levels above even Amos, the commander of a legion, enough to overwhelm him half a dozen times over.

Still, this couple were seasoned people, no strangers to worldly dealings. Once their initial astonishment passed, they regained their composure, offered him a seat with due respect, inquired after his health with due respect, and then, politely cautious, inquired after his purpose.

Mu’s strange temperament was famous all over the city, so he wasted no time. “I have come to ask you both about a matter. It concerns Theresa Brenton-Borge.”

Amos and Betty exchanged a glance. In the end Betty spoke first. “If Master Mu has questions, we shall withhold nothing. If she has done anything unseemly, we beg you to bear with her youth and forgive her in that regard.”

The truth was they feared Theresa might have caused some trouble through carelessness while serving at the old manor and thus drawn this “great master” to them.

Mu ignored their anxious thought and came straight to the point. “I have heard she was born here at Maple Garden and lived with her mother in this house for more than a year. Looking at the way you have treated Theresa these past two years, I can only assume your bond with her mother was very close.”

“Lena was our dearest friend — friend in life and in death,” Amos answered, his voice steady and ringing. His face was grave, his whole form taut as a drawn bow.

Mu gave a slight smile. “You needn’t worry. I have come this time only as an envoy, merely to confirm a few things. If it turns out otherwise, it will be no more than a matter for regret. But if it is as expected, it is a true cause for great joy. So you need not be so guarded.”

They caught the hint instantly. The two, so accustomed to reading each other through long marriage, did not even need to look at one another; with silent understanding they shifted into a readiness of mind.

“Is your visit related to the origins of Lena and her daughter?” Betty asked bluntly.

Mu inclined his head. “Have you ever seen Theresa’s father?”

“We met him once,” Amos replied. He seemed about to add something, but paused. Mindful that Mu might know the man, he held his tongue.

Mu did not press. He raised both hands and let them drift outward. A silver-gray powder drifted through the air, first wandering erratically, then gradually gathering along an unseen path. In the air, several life-like images took shape — each so accurate that, had they not been suspended in the air and reduced to half their true size, one might have thought actual people had suddenly appeared before them.

“Among these, is one of them Theresa’s father?”

Amos and Betty almost simultaneously pointed to one figure. He was about thirty, with golden hair and green eyes, clad in military armor. In the image he seemed to stand upon a battlefield, his sword thrust forward, gaze sharp and lethal, all the ferocity of a tiger about him. One glance at him was enough to make you imagine a bite from that same tiger.

“Andrew…” Mu watched as the other figures faded away and only that one remained. He murmured in a hush, “So it truly is him… no wonder.”

A flash of excitement lit Amos’s eyes. He leaned forward slightly, then asked with respectful care, “Master Mu, what became of Andrew these last ten years that he could abandon Lena and her daughter for so long? And two years ago, shortly after Theresa was brought to Sevantis City, Lena’s… body was taken from Dimaka. Does that have to do with Andrew?”

“The second matter, I do not know,” Mu said. His mood seemed remarkably light today, and his tone was disconcertingly gentle — gentle enough to make the room feel colder.

“As for the first matter, I know where he has been in those ten or so years, but I may not say. Still, I can tell you this: he was tied up with weighty affairs, unable to attend to anything else, and only four years ago did he regain his freedom.”

Mu’s words at once dissolved a question that had lingered in the Obrions’ minds for over a decade. Both of them relaxed a little without realizing it.

Seeing his advantage, Mu asked them to tell him more about Lena and her daughter. The couple held nothing back and explained everything they knew.

☆☆☆

While Maple Garden had received Mu, Theresa was deep in her alchemical work on Innis’s territory, burying herself in it. The recent affair with Nansi had shaken her enough that she had driven herself to throw her whole heart into alchemy, hoping to forget everything before. Though this was in part an act of escape, it had an effective result: she had reached a state of complete absorption, her whole being occupied by the experiment itself to the point that even basic needs — hunger, thirst, even sleep — were simply forgotten.

It was again mealtime, right on schedule. The small golden wolf curled safely at her feet rose and padded to the door, pushed open the half-latched panel with its paws, and ran out. Before long it returned dragging a small food container, nimbly set about closing the door with its little paws, then fumbled up the lid and revealed a compact nutrient ration inside.

At almost the same instant as the lid opened, a streak of cyan-blue flashed beside the box like lightning. Blue Eagle pecked the tightly wrapped, bread-like ration with its beak, flew to the figure so intent upon her work, and deftly inserted the “loaf” into Theresa’s mouth. Theresa, who had been fed this way for two days, was already accustomed to it; she ate and swallowed in a set rhythm, as if she were a machine running a programmed sequence. So it went on: chew, swallow, chew, swallow. After a few precise feedings from Blue Eagle, Theresa had, by all rights, completed another meal.

With her belly now full, her mind was still not on food, nor on fullness. Her whole concentration was fixed on the alchemical procedure. She didn’t notice that the two little creatures, after finishing their task, had darted about her room in delighted chaos and then returned to her side, carefully extracting two fingernail-sized demon-orbs from her waist pouch and sharing them one each with neat precision. Even after they were done, they tucked the remaining things back into the pouch in a tidy fashion, like children cleaning up a crime scene.

The golden wolf and the blue eagle then settled at her feet as before, silently drawing energy from the demon-orbs. All seemed calm. Then suddenly Blue Eagle sprang up from the floor as if possessed, careening about the room in wild, irrational arcs, slamming into the walls with heavy, booming thuds. Its collisions came faster and with greater force, the sounds building from a dull rhythm into a staccato storm of “thud, thud, boom.”

The golden wolf, watching from one side, stood open-mouthed as if shocked, no idea how to react.

Fortunately, the room was sturdy. Apart from the deep, muffled sounds, there was no damage at all — not even a speck of dust loosened from the walls. And Theresa? Her concentration remained startlingly total; amidst the noise she did not so much as flinch, all her focus fixed on her experiment.

No one could tell how long the blue eagle raged on. At last it quieted, floating motionless in the air. Along its once blue-black wings, bands of prismatic light slowly bloomed, spreading across its body in ripples. In moments the colors braided together into a seven-hued net that fully enclosed it, and it drifted there in still suspension.

Later, it was only a sharp hunger that dragged Theresa back from her trance. After transferring her tincture into a crystal flask for preservation, ending the unknown number of cycles her experiment had run, the fatigue that had been gathering for days rose all at once. Her whole body turned soft and weak, and for a moment she could not even stand.

“Tap-tap, tap-tap…” A light, soft footstep approached. Theresa felt something touch her hand. She looked down and saw the little gold one pushing in another food box. Inside was fresh food, still warm.

She had no strength to stand. Instead she sank to the floor and sat there, her weakened hands clutching the food. She ate in a desperate rush. Once her stomach was filled, strength returned to her limbs. Then the small concerns she had ignored in recent days began to surface in her mind — among them the feeding by the two little ones, and Blue Eagle’s strange changes. She lifted her gaze and saw that in the air the rainbow-net still floated; inside it, Blue Eagle lay curled and asleep, calm and peaceful.

“You two little gluttons,” Theresa said, peering down at them, “you see? Now look what happens if you overeat.”

She poked the golden wolf’s head with a little annoyance, scolding it in mild irritation. It was precisely because of Blue Eagle’s odd behavior that no one was there to feed her anymore, and that had forced her out of the unbroken flow of alchemy earlier than she would have wished.

The golden wolf dropped its head and behaved with touching docility, as if fully aware it had erred and was silently reflecting. The little thing looked comically precious.

After checking Blue Eagle’s condition and finding it normal, Theresa turned her attention back to her work, then counted what lay on her table. She discovered with genuine delight that her progress in these past days had been extraordinary: she had produced eleven potions in all — an average of three a day.

From one a day to three a day — such progress was truly cause for celebration.

Theresa closed her eyes and slowly savored the smooth certainty of her recent alchemy. Her mind felt startlingly clear. (To be continued.)