told him that I have embodied the Doctrine of Ethos, that I have changed the mechanism which controls the universe. I will do what none has done since Asphodel. I will unlock the doors of the Impossible City, and I will bring magic back into the world.”
“You’re a construct, a—a thing,” objects one of the lesser alchemists, a man whose name he has never bothered to learn nor cared to know. “You can’t have achieved what better alchemists have lived and died failing to do.”
“Magic never left the world,” objects another. “Magic is a natural law, like gravity. It endures.”
It is the second, less-insulting alchemist who Reed choses to address. “Magic has been lessened. The age of miracles has been ground to a powder by the twinned stones of caution and rationality. We pulled back too far. We allowed belief to turn against us. This will change.”
The High Priest shakes his head. “Have sense, Reed. People aren’t ready.”
“People are sheep. They’ll do as they’re told, once they see that the world is not as they always assumed it was.” Reed smiles. “The Impossible City will open. The world will change.”
They glare at each other, these two men divided by an impossible ideological gulf, and the Congress holds its breath, frozen and enthralled.
The Impossible City. It wasn’t always called that. It was Olympus once, Avalon, the Isles of the Dead, the alchemical apex which waited at the peak of all human knowledge and potential. The city that is dreamed of but never claimed or controlled. The place whose streets were paved in gold, whose rivers ran with alkahest, whose trees flowered with panacea. Over time, it had drifted further and further from the known, from the true, until all roads were severed, and there was no way back. It was Asphodel Baker, again, who turned enough of the world’s attention toward that distant ideal to reopen a single narrow path. The improbable road, which could lead the questing home.
“The Impossible City is a myth,” says the High Priest finally.
“We shall see,” Reed replies. “Have I broken any compacts? Violated any laws? I seek to open the Impossible City for us all, in memory of Master Daniels, of Asphodel. The children I’ve created are built from my blood and bone, and hence my property. I walk in the light for this endeavor.”
The High Priest narrows his eyes. “If the City is achieved . . .”
“It will be shared, as my agreement with Master Daniels promised.” Reed lies. Reed always lies. But if he can keep the Congress at bay just a little longer, it will be too late for them to stop him. It may already be too late. What a wonderful thought, that it may already be too late. He may already rule the world.
There is nothing they can charge him with, nothing they can do; he has been too careful. Even the deaths of Master Daniels and his associates have been well concealed. When the session ends, he walks away a free man, glorying in the scope of his success.
Leigh is waiting for him outside the Congress doors. She looks like a schoolteacher standing in front of the principal’s desk, waiting to hear that her problem students will finally be well and truly punished.
He favors her with a smile. “The day has been going so well. I trust you’re not here to spoil it?”
“They’ve made contact.”
Reed knows from experience that Leigh won’t let whatever she’s talking about go until she’s satisfied, and that for her, satisfaction may mean that someone else starts bleeding. “Walk with me,” he says, and continues down the hall, away from the doors, away from prying ears.
They are less safe here than they would be in their own territory, but sometimes making nice with one’s peers is essential to keeping up the masquerade that one is still interested in their fellowship. One day, he’ll bring all this nonsense crashing down, and he’ll laugh, because this was never necessary. Only will, and the willingness to do what needed to be done.
When they are far enough away to trip no alarms, he removes a coin from his pocket and plays it between his fingers, eye flashing over pyramid flashing over eye. So long as it remains in motion, they will not be overheard. “Who’s made contact?”
“The last chicks from your failed rookery,” spits Leigh. “The Middleton boy and the Cheswich girl. They’re attending the same college, and they ran into each other as soon as they were both