“You wanted to talk to me?” asked Sam.

  Beth nodded. She was sitting in Isabelle’s usual chair in the dining room, sprawled out in a way that was much more characteristic of her master than of herself. “I’m worried about Jack,” she said. “They won’t even tell me where he’s gone.”

  “You care about him, don’t you?” the supply administrator asked.

  Was it that obvious? But no; let him think that was all she cared about, let him not realise… “Yes,” she admitted.

  “That’s… it’s a mistake. To get too attached to someone who – if a test goes wrong, or even if certain tests go right – “

  The only thing that was wrong with this situation was the fact that Jack’s life was at risk. “Maybe. But… I can’t help it, can I?”

  “Why was he reassigned, anyway?”

  Beth shrugged. “Apparently they don’t expect me to produce enough alchemy worth testing without Isabelle, so it’s a waste of resources.”

  “They have a point, don’t they? I don’t know the inside of a cauldron from the outside, but you’re still training, right?”

  “Yeah.” Beth wished she could argue with him, but he had a point. And besides, this conversation had a very particular goal, and fighting over technicalities would not help her achieve it.

  “You and Isabelle… you were protecting him, weren’t you? You didn’t test anything lethal on him, like you were supposed to?”

  Beth blinked. That was a dangerous thing to admit to, she knew. If the Administration Department found out… but what she knew about Sam was even more dangerous. Besides, the girl whose part she was playing, the na?ve desperate girl who just wanted to see the boy she… cared about… kept safe, would want to be honest with him. Throw herself on his mercy. “We didn’t,” she admitted. “But now…”

  The quiver in her voice wasn’t faked. Beth wasn’t entirely sure that what she was doing was acting.

  “Now you can’t any more,” Sam said flatly.

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t know what you want me to do about it. I can’t work miracles.”

  “But you said you’d… you’d get us out.”

  “I said I’d talk to the higher-ups about it. Something like that is way above my pay grade. And even if we could… no offence, but they wouldn’t authorise it for you and the boy.”

  “They’d want Isabelle.” Of course an alchemist-in-training would be worthless to the government of Rasin compared to a fully qualified Master.

  He nodded, once, sharply. “Do you know where she is?”

  “No. She wouldn’t tell me.”

  “Not even a hint?”

  “Well, there was one thing…” Beth knew she was taking a risk. But it was the only card she had to play short of blackmail.

  “Oh?” Sam sounded too casual. She knew he must be eager for her little scrap of information.

  “I’ll only tell you if you help me.”

  “I told you, I can’t – “

  “I just want to see him.”

  She saw his expression shift. Calculating, trying to work out the risks of making that happen compared to what her information could be worth to his superiors.

  “Just – five minutes alone with Jack. That’s – that’s all I want.” All she needed, to get them both out of here, now she had the orbs.

  He sighed. “I can’t promise anything. But I – I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Thank you. Thank you so much. You won’t regret this, I promise.”

  Beth was pretty sure he would regret it if – when – they disappeared from right under his nose. If anyone in the Administration Department connected him to the disappearance… stars. Was she any better than Isabelle if she went through with a plan that could unknowingly put someone in that much danger?

  But it was that, or no plan at all. And that – didn’t bear contemplating.

  They exchanged pleasantries and then Sam departed, leaving Beth sitting alone. She let out a deep, shuddering breath and collapsed back into the depths of Isabelle’s chair.

  This was still the best she’d felt since Isabelle had left, though. Because now she was making real progress. Now she believed that it was possible for her and Jack to escape. The last couple of days had been… rough. She’d switched between lying on her bed in despair, pacing around the lab with her mind far too unsettled and haunted to actually do alchemy, and reading Isabelle’s papers over and over again in the vain hope that they’d give her something more to work with.

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  The contents of the papers hadn’t been as helpful as she’d first dared to hope. There was a thick envelope with instructions to be delivered to the President of the Alchemists’ Guild and not to be opened by anyone other than said President. There was a tattered notebook containing some of Isabelle’s alchemical research notes, which would be priceless as a learning resource once she’d escaped but was very little help in formulating an escape plan. There was a catalogue of the tools, ingredients and alchemical creations the lab contained, with notes on which ones to prioritise taking with her (hastily updated quite recently, presumably after Isabelle had taken a fair amount of them herself). And an equally hasty scribbled note which revealed that Isabelle’s contingency plans hadn’t accounted for this, and only suggested a few vague ideas.

  Ask Sam for help was the only one of those that had much promise. The others all required Beth getting out of the building, and if she did that and was caught then any further attempts could be prohibitively hard.

  She didn’t like the idea of relying so much on a known spy. But he had an incentive to help her now, and he had no reason to suspect her of anything more than having become too attached to her test subject. Whereas if he forced Beth’s hand, she could destroy his cover in an instant.

  Beth really hoped it didn’t come to that. She checked her pockets again for the orbs, which hadn’t left her person since they had been created. Two in her left trouser pocket that would take her and Jack to the Alchemists’ Guild, and two in her right trouser pocket that would take them to an alleyway in the middle of nowhere. One in her blouse pocket, keyed to herself, that would let Jack get to her if they were somehow separated.

  None keyed to Isabelle. The plan had been for her and Jack to each take one of those. But Beth didn’t know what Isabelle had done with the four orbs she’d keyed and not given to Beth. And she couldn’t help wondering: had not giving Beth those orbs been deliberate? A way of making sure Beth didn’t try to go after Isabelle?

  “I wouldn’t want to,” Beth said defiantly to the empty air.

  But if Isabelle didn’t come back? If she had no other way of finding out what happened to her master? She wasn’t so sure of that.

  Did Isabelle even intend to come back? Maybe this was just her way of escaping completely, of starting afresh without an apprentice to burden her and slow her down. Stars, Beth had been alone too long if she was thinking dark thoughts like that.

  She went into the lab. Might as well consult and cross-reference Isabelle’s lists. Even if she didn’t end up stealing anything, it would at least be useful to learn what Isabelle thought the most valuable. Well, other than what she’d taken for herself.

  It was hard enough just reading the lists, which Isabelle had made in tiny handwriting and with many scribblings-out and corrections. Though it got easier as she peered at the paper for longer. Soon she was able to piece together their meaning and check it against the reality of what the lab contained.

  That work kept her busy for a few hours, and then it was dinner time and she was able to pass some more time cooking. Beth would never be a great cook, despite its similarities with alchemy, but she was at least passable. She made herself three portions of soup, out of habit, because she wasn’t used to having no-one to feed but herself. It would keep for a few days, she supposed, and after that… stars only knew what would happen after that.

  She ate one of the soup portions, wanting to linger over it but knowing it would taste worse cold, and set the other two aside in a pan to be heated later. Then she cleaned the dishes, and after that went and cleaned the lab as well (it badly needed cleaning, after what attempts to brew Vuillard substance had done for it, and Beth hadn’t had the strength until today).

  By the time she’d finished that, it was too late to be worth starting anything else, so she washed herself and changed into her nightdress and collapsed into bed. At which point she finally ran out of meaningless useful things to occupy her mind, and had no escape left from the awfulness of everything.

  In some ways, she told herself, she was better off than she had been before they’d made the Vuillard substance. Because now she had the orbs, and the orbs meant escape was very much possible, despite how far away it had seemed before Isabelle presented her plan. So why did things feel so much worse now?

  Because the danger Jack was in was far more immediate. But he would be fine for a week or so, at least. Until it became clear that Isabelle didn’t intend to come back. That was still a definite time limit that they hadn’t had before, and it did make things seem scarier, but… it wasn’t the full story.

  It was because Isabelle was gone, Beth admitted to herself. And not only that, but part of her trust in Isabelle was gone too. It had been so easy to have faith in her master as a miracle-worker, and she had really worked a miracle in producing the orbs. But… however sincere her apology, however much she really cared about Beth and Jack, she’d still abandoned them to chase her starlit dream.

  And it was hard to think of someone the same way, once you knew that they wouldn’t hesitate to abandon you to pursue something they wanted more.

  It hurt more because of how much Beth had cared about Isabelle. Worshipped her, almost. Wanted to be her. And now she had to question how much of the Isabelle she’d known – she knew – had been an illusion.

  She spent most of the night wrestling with thoughts like this. She must have slept at some point, though, because she woke up the next morning at six after midnight. Too early, especially since however much sleep she had got didn’t feel like enough.

  She rolled over and clung to the duvet as if it were a person and hoped she’d drift back to sleep, but had no such luck. After half an hour or so she gave up and dragged herself through to the kitchen to eat some bread and jam.

  She needed to keep herself busy, but she couldn’t think of much else to do with herself. She resorted to paging through Isabelle’s research notes. But understanding them was far from easy. They were only brief jottings, scraps of ideas meant to remind Isabelle of whatever idea she’d had. Nearly impossible to work out what she’d been thinking if you weren’t Isabelle. It didn’t help that she mixed ideas for alchemical experiments with ideas for new recipes or notes to talk to someone about the leaking tap in the bathroom.

  She flicked to the more recent pages. Those she understood a little more of, but only because she’d learnt the ideas they contained the hard way. Isabelle was planning how to mitigate the risks of making Vuillard substance. Weighing up the risks of letting Beth into the lab while it was happening against the benefits that her help would provide. Her private analysis was… less favourable towards Beth’s abilities than what she’d said, but not that much so. She did seem to think that Beth’s presence would make the process easier. But also that it would be invaluable training for a young apprentice.

  Beth would rather have skipped the training to avoid the explosions. It hurt a little, that Isabelle hadn’t really given her the choice.

  She was in the dining room, sipping reheated soup and trying not to be too angry with Isabelle or herself, when Sam appeared. And with him was Jack.