“I can. But it won’t work on me. It never does. If there were another philtresmith then I could use theirs. Of course, they’d have their own Nigredo to deal with then. Unless I made them some of my Elixir… Do you see the problem?”
I nod, falling silent. He bends his head and begins to toy with his gloves again, his shoulders hunched over, and I want to go to him, hold him. But I know he won’t allow it, so I stay still, allowing the silence to build a wall between us until I can’t bear it any more.
“Why?” I ask. “Why does it happen? The curse.”
He looks up, slowly, as though he’s forgotten I’m here. Then he smiles humourlessly. “Alchemy, Errin. What is the principle of alchemy? What’s the ultimate function of it? What do the textbooks on it say?”
“To transmute. To turn base metals to other substances,” I say. “But you’re a person.”
“And human veins flow with blood full of iron…” he says slowly, and my mouth falls open in horror. “Each time an alchemist performs their alchemy part of them changes, and there’s no telling which part it will be. Fingernails, earlobes, lungs, heart…” He trails off.
I open my mouth to ask if he’s changed anywhere else but he cuts me off with a vigorous shake of the head. “Just my hand. So far. It’ll get worse, I’ve no doubt. If I keep doing it.”
“Then you have to stop.” Something passes over his face, something fleeting and indecipherable. “It’s not worth it,” I say. “You could die. What if next time it’s not your hand, but your heart, or your lungs?”
He looks at me. “It saved your life. It could save countless others.”
“But you’d have to die for it.” He looks away. “Wait. Do all alchemists have a curse? Does that mean the Sleeping Prince does? Every time he makes a golem, does that happen to him?”
Silas shakes his head. “If only.”
“Why doesn’t it?”
“You know Aurek and Aurelia were the first alchemists? They were born with it; they had the moon hair and the Godseye, but no one knew what it meant. When they were eight, Aurek had a nosebleed, and bled on to a set of iron ball bearings he’d been playing with. They turned to solid gold. With the king’s consent, experiments were done, and they discovered that Aurek’s blood turned base metals to gold if it touched them, and also, horribly, brought clay to life if it touched that. Aurelia’s blood seemed to do nothing at first, until one of the more zealous scientists tried adding her blood to water and drank it. He noticed immediately that his bruises vanished, his gout calmed. More blood was taken, and everyone who drank of it was healed of anything that ailed them.”
I wince, disgusted by it, but not surprised.
“I told you Aurek sired many children and they were raised at the palace? Well, they tried to use the children’s blood to make gold, hoping they’d inherited the gift, but nothing happened. It didn’t work. They tried with smaller and larger amounts of blood, but iron stayed iron, and water remained water. They almost killed one of the children, draining her within an inch of her life. That’s why Aurelia brought them away when Tallith fell, to stop people trying to use them.”
“Oh Gods,” I murmur, sickened by the image of it.
“People tried to use Aurek’s blood too. While he slept. They’d prick him and steal his blood, but the poison that put him to sleep seemed to have stopped his powers. So Aurelia hid his body, and brought the children away. She thought that alchemy would die with her, and resolved to live quietly until it did. But then the children discovered they could activate their blood to make it alchemical. Some of them were trying to make a potion to wake their father, and one of them accidentally cut her finger and a drop of blood fell in the bowl. The legend says it bubbled and smoked, and when it cleared there was a lump of gold in the bottom of the pan. They’d found a way to be alchemists, like their father. But there was a cost.”
“Nigredo.”
Silas shakes his head. “The aurumsmith’s curse is called Citrinitas. Like the Nigredo, it affects them physically. But they turn to gold. That’s the price. They could make as much gold as they liked,