Evan stayed alert as the prisoners were brought down. It was a habit carried over from his previous life, and it took him a moment to remember that this wasn't Earth. Here, a noble surrendering was not a humiliation — it was a transaction. Pay the ransom, receive proper treatment. The convention protected everyone of the right class, and within that class warfare had its own kind of dignity. Evan's methods sat somewhat outside that arrangement, but he wasn't troubled by it. War was not a game, and any means that ended it faster was a means worth using. The
Art of War
had said as much, in a different world and a different language.
He looked at the surviving knights being escorted down. Several of them were sixth or seventh tier — individually they would have destroyed the infantry that was currently watching over them, and everyone present knew it. They followed the rules anyway. Evan turned this over in his mind and decided not to call it stupidity. The system worked because everyone inside it agreed to it. The soldiers who had burned in the valley hadn't been inside that system, which was why no one seemed particularly concerned about them. Evan had a feeling about that which he chose not to examine too closely, and moved on.
He walked over to where Mack had fallen. The mage's eyes were still open. Evan drew them closed, then noticed the ring on his hand. He slipped it off — a storage ring. He felt through the contents with his spiritual sense: gold coin, a modest collection of materials, a set of alchemical instruments. And then one item that stopped him.
A jade pendant. The same as the one he'd taken from Boniface's ring.
He turned it over. This was the second time he'd found one. He examined it properly for the first time — and discovered it was two pieces fitted together. He pried them apart. Engraved on the inner face was text. He scanned it quickly: an alchemical formula, encrypted in the manner common to practitioners who didn't want their work read casually. No time to study it now. He pressed the halves back together, the fit seamless, and put it inside his coat.
When he looked up, Becky was watching his hands. She glanced away the instant their eyes met, but not before he'd seen what she was looking at.
He looked at her hands. No ring. Of course — a Magic Apprentice wouldn't have one. He understood the expression now.
He tossed the storage ring to her. "Take it. I have one already."
She fumbled the catch, her face going red. "Mr. Wang, I didn't mean — I can't accept this."
"You're a mage. You need a ring. It makes things easier." He left it at that. Franklin added his voice from the side —
if the gentleman offers, accept
— and Becky, still flushed, thanked him and put it on.
Mack had died at Becky's hand, even if it had surprised everyone including Becky. The ring belonged to her. Evan had taken the jade pendant. That was sufficient.
The valley's fire had burned itself out gradually, leaving a blackened floor under a column of pale smoke. The soldiers went down to search the field. The smell was difficult. They worked efficiently.
Evan returned to his tent once the camp was established outside the valley. Raymond had sent scouts — the man had settled into his role well enough that Evan didn't need to think about it. He drew the sword-cane and ran through the new footwork for a while, then sat down and took out the jade pendant from Mack's ring. After a moment he retrieved the one from Boniface's ring as well, and compared the two side by side.
Identical in construction. Both two-piece. He separated the first one and read it again, carefully this time.
Philosopher's Stone
was written at the top, though what followed was heavily symbolic. He knew of the Philosopher's Stone — Lapis Philosophorum, the supreme achievement of the alchemical tradition, said to transmute base metals into gold and, if consumed, to grant immortality. Nicholas Andrew's memory contained the legend in outline, nothing more. No one Evan had yet encountered had claimed to know how it was actually made.
His breathing quickened slightly. He was an incomplete lich — a fact he lived with constantly, the absent soul vessel sitting at the back of everything he did. Immortality through other means was not an idle thought.
The text below the heading was written in the oblique language common to alchemical documentation. A diagram showed the furnace: the Triple Furnace, as it was called — a sand bath at the center, a shallow vessel like a bowl sitting above the fire chamber below, and above that a half-spherical vessel called the Philosopher's Egg, the three elements nested together. The accompanying text described placing equal parts of
Red Sea Foam
and
the Fat of Mercury's Wind
into the Egg, followed by further instructions about heat and timing, and incantations at specific stages.
Evan frowned at the ingredient names.
The Fat of Mercury's Wind
was probably mercury — he had a partial recollection of that connection from Nicholas Andrew's memory, though even Nicholas Andrew hadn't been certain.
Red Sea Foam
meant nothing to him at all. He committed both names to memory and moved on.
A mark on the pendant caught his eye. A symbol he recognized as the numeral one. First piece.
He opened the second pendant. Another formula, different in structure — he was fairly confident it was an alchemical equation of some kind, though he couldn't parse it directly. The notes referenced
Eternal Water
and
Virgin's Milk
, which he recognized as encoded names for two substances, though their actual identities escaped him. There were also markings that seemed to track time: five moon-cycles, seven sun-cycles — probably a schedule of heating and treatment, the material undergoing its changes over that duration. The mark on this one read four.
Fourth piece. Which meant there were at least four, and probably more.
He sat with the two pendants in his hands for a while. Then he put them both away. A complete formula for the Philosopher's Stone required pieces he didn't have, written in a symbolic language he couldn't yet read. He would need to learn alchemy properly if any of this was going to become useful. He filed it under
eventually
and closed the compartment.
His disguise had held well, he noted. Everyone he'd encountered had taken him for a wandering adventurer with some magical ability. He had not once displayed any death magic in view of others. He had not crossed paths with anyone from the Church. That was a reasonable start.
He became aware of something — a movement in the ambient water element nearby, a gentle drawing toward a single point. He stepped out of his tent and looked toward the small tent set apart from the others.
Becky was breaking through.
He watched the elemental current for a moment. She was crossing into the fourth level — the Mage stage, the first point of genuine attunement. From today she would be a true mage in practice, not just in training. The water element was moving to accommodate her, the way it did when someone made the crossing.
The knights among the prisoners felt it too, in the way that fighters trained in the power arts had a limited sensitivity to elemental shifts. The genuine Knight among them looked mildly puzzled. Baron Iden, who held a knightly title by virtue of his lineage rather than his ability, caught the edge of something without being able to identify it.
Franklin came out of his tent. He found Evan already outside and looked at the same small tent. "Something happening?"
"Becky crossed through. She's a mage now."
Franklin's expression opened. The Edmund family had invested considerable effort and money into finding a child with magical ability among all their people, and Becky was the result of that search — cultivated from a young age, attached to Franklin as both companion and asset. She had stayed loyal through the years when his position deteriorated, becoming in some ways more protector than attendant. Today she had become what they had always hoped she would be.
Raymond emerged a moment later and heard it from Evan directly, and his face showed the same relief. He was Franklin's man, and Franklin's strength was his own concern.
The three of them waited outside, talking of nothing in particular. After a while the tent flap moved and Becky came out. Franklin went to her with a broad smile.
"Becky. You're a mage now. I'll speak to my father — you shouldn't remain as my maidservant."
She looked alarmed. "My lord — you're letting me go?"
Evan shook his head quietly where no one could see.
Franklin laughed. "Of course not. But your rank ought to reflect what you are. You're a mage."