"G.o.d, I'm embarra.s.sed," I said, blowing my nose.

Denna touched my arm lightly. "I'm so sorry," she repeated for the third time.

The two of us sat on the curb outside the small shop. It was bad enough bursting into tears in front of Denna. I'd wanted to compose myself without the shopkeeper staring at me too.

"I just wanted it to fit properly," Denna said, her expression stricken. "I left a note. You were supposed to come to dinner so I could surprise you. You weren't even supposed to know it was gone."

"It's okay," I said.

"It's obviously not," Denna said, her eyes starting to brim with tears. "When you didn't show up, I didn't know what to do. I looked for you everywhere last night. I knocked on your door, but you didn't answer." She looked down at her feet. "I can never find you when I go looking."

"Denna," I said. "Everything's fine."

She shook her head vigorously, refusing to look at me as tears started to spill down her cheeks. "It's not fine. I should have known. You hold it like it's your baby. If anyone in my life had ever looked at me the way you look at that lute, I'd ..."

Denna's voice broke and she swallowed hard before words started pouring out of her again. "I knew it was the most important thing in your life. That's why I wanted to get you somewhere safe to keep it. I just didn't think it would be so ..." She swallowed again, clenching her hands into fists. Her body was so tense she was almost trembling. "G.o.d. I'm so stupid! I never think. I always do this. I ruin everything."

Denna's hair had fallen around her face so I couldn't see her expression. "What's wrong with me?" she said, her voice low and angry. "Why am I such an idiot? Why can't I do just one thing right in my whole life?"

"Denna." I had to interrupt her, as she was barely pausing to breathe. I laid my hand on her arm and she grew stiff and still. "Denna, there's no way you could have known," I interrupted. "You've been playing for how long? A month? Have you ever even owned an instrument?"

She shook her head, her face still hidden by her hair. "I had that lyre," she said softly. "But only for a few days before the fire." She looked up at last, her expression pure misery. Her eyes and nose were red. "This happens all the time. I try to do something good, but it gets all tangled up." She gave me a wretched look. "You don't know what it's like."

I laughed. It felt amazingly good to laugh again. It boiled up from deep in my belly and burst out of my throat like notes from a golden horn. That laugh alone was worth three hot meals and twenty hours of sleep.

"I know exactly what it's like," I said, feeling the bruises on my knees and the pull of half-healed scars along my back. I considered telling her how much of a mess I'd made of retrieving her ring. Then decided it probably wouldn't help her mood if I explained how Ambrose was trying to kill me. "Denna, I am the king of good ideas gone terribly wrong."

She smiled at that, sniffing and rubbing at her eyes with a sleeve. "We're a lovely couple of weepy idiots, aren't we?"

"We are," I said.

"I'm sorry," she said again, her smile fading. "I just wanted to do something nice for you. But I'm no good at these things."

I took hold of Denna's hand in both of mine and kissed it. "Denna," I said with perfect honesty, "this is the kindest thing anyone has ever done for me."

She snorted indelicately.

"Pure truth," I said. "You are my bright penny by the roadside. You are worth more than salt or the moon on a long night of walking. You are sweet wine in my mouth, a song in my throat, and laughter in my heart."

Denna's cheeks flushed, but I rolled on, unconcerned.

"You are too good for me," I said. "You are a luxury I cannot afford. Despite this, I insist you come with me today. I will buy you dinner and spend hours waxing rhapsodic over the vast landscape of wonder that is you."

I stood and pulled her to her feet. "I will play you music. I will sing you songs. For the rest of the afternoon, the rest of the world cannot touch us." I c.o.c.ked my head, making it a question.

Denna's mouth curved. "That sounds nice," she said. "I'd like to get away from the world for the s.p.a.ce of an afternoon."

Hours later I walked back to the University with a spring in my step. I whistled. I sang. My lute on my shoulder was light as a kiss. The sun was warm and soothing. The breeze was cool.

My luck was beginning to change.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE.

The Crucible WITH MY LUTE BACK in my hands, the rest of my life slid easily back into balance. My work in the Fishery was easier. My cla.s.ses breezed by. Elodin even seemed to make more sense.

It was with a light heart that I visited Simmon in the alchemy complex. He opened the door to my knocking and gestured me inside. "It worked," he said excitedly.

I eased the door shut, and he led me to a table where a series of bottles, tubes, and coal-gas burners were arranged. Sim smiled proudly and held up a short, shallow jar of the sort you use to store face paint or rouge.

"Can you show me?" I asked.

Sim lit a small coal-gas burner and the flame fanned against the bottom of a shallow iron pan. We stood quietly for a moment, listening to it hiss.

"I got new boots," Sim said conversationally, lifting up a foot so I could see.

"They're nice," I said automatically, then paused and looked closer. "Are those hobnails?" I asked incredulously.

He grinned viciously. I laughed.

The iron pan grew hot, and Sim unscrewed the jar, pressing the pad of his index finger into the translucent substance inside. Then, with a little flourish, he raised his hand and pressed the tip of his finger onto the surface of the hot iron pan.

I winced. Sim smiled smugly and stood there for the s.p.a.ce of a long breath before pulling his finger away.

"Incredible," I said. "You guys do some crazy things over here. A heat shield."

"No," Sim said seriously. "That's absolutely the wrong way to think about it. It's not a shield. It's not an insulator. It's like an extra layer of skin that burns away before your real skin gets hot."

"Like having water on your hands," I said.

Sim shook his head again. "No, water conducts heat. This doesn't."

"So it is is an insulator." an insulator."

"Okay," Sim said, exasperated. "You need to shut up and listen. This is alchemy. You know nothing about alchemy."

I made a placating gesture. "I know. I know."

"Say it, then. Say, 'I know nothing about alchemy.' "

I glowered at him.

"Alchemy isn't just chemistry with some extra bits," he said. "That means if you don't listen to me, you'll jump to your own conclusions and be dead wrong. Dead and and wrong." wrong."

I took a deep breath and let it out. "Okay. Tell me."

"You'll have to spread it on quickly," he said. "You'll only have about ten seconds to get it spread evenly onto your hands and lower arms." He made a gesture to his midforearm.

"It won't rub away, but you will lose a bit if you chafe at your hands too much. Don't touch your face at all. Don't rub your eyes. Don't pick your nose. Don't bite your fingernails. It's sort of poisonous."

"Sort of?" I asked.

He ignored me, holding out the finger he'd pressed onto the hot iron pan. "It's not like armor gloves. As soon as it's exposed to heat, it begins to burn away."

"Will there be any smell?" I asked. "Anything that will give it away?"

"No. It doesn't really burn burn technically. It simply breaks down." technically. It simply breaks down."

"What does it break down into?"

"Things," Simmon said testily. "It breaks down into complicated things you can't understand because you don't know anything about alchemy."

"Is it safe to breathe?" I amended.

"Yes. I wouldn't give it to you otherwise. This is an old formula. Tried and true. Now, because it doesn't transmit heat, your hands will go straight from feeling cool to being pressed up hard against something burning hot." He gave me a pointed look. "I advise you stop touching hot things before before it's all used up." it's all used up."

"How can I tell when it's about to be used up?"

"You can't," he said simply. "Which is why I advise using something other than your bare hands."

"Wonderful."

"If it mixes with alcohol it will turn acidic. Only mildly though. You'd have plenty of time to wash it off. If it mixes with a little water, like your sweat, that's fine. But if it mixes with a lot of water, say a hundred parts to one, it will turn flammable."

"And if I mix it with p.i.s.s it turns into delicious candy, right?" I laughed. "Did you make a bet with Wilem about how much of this I'd swallow? Nothing becomes flammable when you mix it with water."

Sim's eyes narrowed. He picked up an empty crucible. "Fine," he said. "Fill this up then."

Still smiling, I moved to the water canister in the corner of the room. It was identical to the ones in the Fishery. Pure water is important for artificing too, especially when you're mixing clays and quenching metals you don't want contaminated.

I splashed some water into the crucible and brought it back to Sim. He dipped the tip of his finger into it, swirled it around, and poured it into the hot iron pan.

Thick orange flame roared up, burning three feet high until it flickered and died. Sim set down the empty crucible with a slight click click and looked at me gravely. "Say it." and looked at me gravely. "Say it."

I looked down at my feet. "I know nothing about alchemy."

Sim nodded, seeming pleased. "Right," he said, turning back to the worktable. "Let's go over this again."

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO.

Blood and Ash LEAVES CRUNCHED UNDERFOOT AS I made my way through the forest to the north of the University. The pale moonlight filtering through the bare trees wasn't enough to see clearly, but I had made this trip several times in the last span and knew the way by heart. I smelled wood smoke long before I heard voices and glimpsed firelight through the trees.

It wasn't really a clearing, just a quiet s.p.a.ce hidden behind a rocky outcrop. A few pieces of fieldstone and the trunk of a fallen tree provided makeshift seats. I had dug the fire pit myself a few days ago. It was over a foot deep and six across, lined with stones. It dwarfed the small campfire currently burning there.

Everyone else was already there. Mola and Fela shared the log-bench. Wilem was hunkered down on a stone. Sim sat cross-legged on the ground, poking at the fire with a stick.

Wil looked up as I came out of the trees. In the flickering firelight his eyes looked dark and sunken. He and Sim had been watching over me for almost two whole span. "You're late," he said.

Sim looked up to see me, cheerful as always, but there were marks of exhaustion on his face too. "Is it finished?" he asked, excited.

I nodded. Unb.u.t.toning my cuff, I rolled up my shirtsleeve to reveal an iron disk slightly larger than a commonwealth penny. It was covered in fine sygaldry and inlaid with gold. My newly finished gram. It was strapped flat against the inside of my forearm with a pair of leather cords.

A cheer went up from the group.

"Interesting way to wear it," Mola said. "Fashionable in a sort of barbarian raider way."

"It works best in contact with skin," I explained. "And I need to keep it out of sight, since I'm not supposed to know how to make one."

"Practical and and stylish," Mola said. stylish," Mola said.

Simmon wandered over and peered at it, reaching out to touch it with a finger. "It seems so small-aaaahh!" Sim cried out as he jumped backward, wringing his hand. "Black d.a.m.n," he swore, embarra.s.sed. "I'm sorry. It startled me is all."

"Kist and crayle," I said, my own heart racing. "What's the matter?"

"Have you ever touched one of the Arcanum guilders?" he asked. "The ones they give you when you become a full arcanist?"

I nodded. "It sort of buzzed. Made my hand go numb, like it had fallen asleep."

Sim nodded toward my gram, shaking his hand. "It feels like that. Surprised me."

"I didn't know the guilders acted as grams too," I said. "Makes sense though."

"Have you tested it?" Wilem asked.

I shook my head. "It seemed a little strange for me to test it myself," I admitted.

"You want one of us to do it?" Simmon laughed. "You're right, that's perfectly normal."

"I also thought it would be convenient to have a physicker nearby." I nodded in Mola's direction. "Just in case."

"I didn't know I was going to be needed in my professional capacity tonight," Mola protested. "I didn't bring my kit."

"It shouldn't be necessary," I said as I brought a block of sympathy wax out of my cloak and brandished it. "Who wants to do the honors?"

There was a moment of silence, then Fela held out her hand. "I'll make the doll, but I'm not sticking it with a pin."