Threads Unbroken, Stave I

 ~The Royal Alchemists' Guild, London~

Victoria Thorne did not want to be here. She hated being here.

The phrase "familiarity breeds contempt", as old and tired as it was, continued to ring true even in the modern day. Places and names and faces that you see too much of lose their mystique very quickly and soon any and all respect or wonder you had for them dies away. And if you were Victoria Thorne, who had lived far longer than any person in the world had any right to live, you could become so familiar with a place that, in the end, contempt was all you had.

She was far too familiar with the council chamber in which the Royal Guild of Alchemists convened. Not that it made a good showing for itself besides - three hundred years of time had deteriorated the room beyond the wit of any duster, cleaning solution or stonemason to rescue. The marble stonework of the high, arched roof had lost its lustre and was worn in many places. A line of scuff marks crossed the dulled, cracked floor to the central podium, smearing out the faces of many once-worthy historical alchemists of Britain. And the high desks that surrounded the central podium, once a dark mahogany, had long lost their lustre.

What annoyed Victoria the most, however, was not the room itself. Her contempt came from the fact that, every time she came here, she had to deal with the five faces looking down upon her from over the lip of the desks. Each one belonged to a member of the High Council of Alchemists, the ostensible leaders of the Royal Guild - aside from herself. Blue-blooded to a man, woman and intermediate, and practically raised in the halls of the five great universities - Oxford, Cambridge, Dublin, Edinburgh and Cardiff.

They were also bunch of officious, bureaucratic idiots. As they were once again proving.

 "You understand, Miss Thorne, that we would not have called you here if we did not feel that this was a matter of urgent discussion." 

This speaker was a Mr. Harrington of Cambridge, who had earned his spot by his expertise in decoding old alchemical manuscripts. He was clean-shaven, neatly-dressed and short-haired, a man so well-groomed you would have thought set squares and protractors were involved. He was looking down at Victoria over the top of his golden pince-nez glasses as he spoke, and although he spoke pleasantly, the expression on his face - arched eyebrows and flared nostrils, as though he'd just smelt something unpleasant - suggested otherwise.

Victoria cast a look of half-defiance, half-annoyance back at him. She knew him of old - a man so neat, fastidious and punctual you would have thought some sort of mania gripped him - and there were days where she wished she didn't. She only ever saw that expression when she was speaking to him, and half-suspected he kept it in reserve just for her. Perhaps due to his natural distaste for the Oxford-raised - some things never changed.

"As you have stated multiple times," she retorted, struggling to keep her voice level. As if she was going to let some jumped-up translator look down at her that way.

"These reports that have come back to us are troubling in the extreme," came the thick, sleepy voice of the Cardiff representative, a rotund and balding man whose name escaped Victoria at the moment. "Not only do we learn that the Magpies were engaged in experiments involving the creation of homunculi and chimerae, but that two of the end results of those experiments are still alive, as is one who participated in. That this was not discovered until now is, quite frankly, a matter of major concern."

"With all due respect, sir," Victoria cut in, turning round to face the oaf, "these facts had not been known to us until very recently. Until now, we had no reason to suspect that anything of the kind was being performed by the Magpie syndicate."

"Bit dinnae ye think that points tae some failure in th' original investigation?" barked Mr. McLeod, the Edinburgh representative. "How come weren't thae facts brought tae light in th' foremaist steid?"

This McLeod barked not because he was annoyed, but because he was, in fact, a dog - a Scottish terrier, predictably. True to breed, his face seemed to be stuck in a permanent look of stern disapproval, and that look was trained on Victoria like a sniper scope. But the headmistress fixed him back with a stare that could have bored holes through concrete, even though she knew it wouldn't even make him flinch.

"No former member that was ever questioned," she replied, "made mention of the existence of Lord Heaven and Lady Hell, never mind experiments. What evidence was there to act on, Mr. McLeod?"

McLeod's face did not move, but one ear twitched in a clear sign of disapproval. But some relief was to be found in the next speaker - the Oxford representative, Miss Sampson. This woman might have been what Mr. Harrington would have been in some cliché'd mirror universe, her hair an explosive frizz of ginger and her dress looking like a modern art project trying to masquerade as sensible clothing. As Victoria finished her rebuttal to the dog, Sampson nodded her head eagerly in assent,

"She speaks truth, gentlemen," she said. "Let's be logical about this, shall we? What right-minded individual would ever openly speak of creating homuncuili, even under questioning? And the existence of the other two Head Magpies was, indeed, a well-kept secret that itself was only recently uncovered."

"Be that as it may," said Mr. Harrington - and Victoria did not notice the disdainful look he shot at her fellow graduate - "these are issues that have had months of time to be resolved. But instead, you seem determined to stymie the natural course of things and to overcomplicate what is a very clear-cut case. By rights, the first homunculus should have been disposed of-"

"His name is Christopher," snapped Victoria, her voice gaining an edge. McLeod winced, and Sampson bit her lip in nervous tension.

"It's name is hardly relevant, Miss Thorne." Harrington did not react in the slightest to the interruption, his expression never changing, and Victoria had never wanted to slap anyone harder in that moment. At least she could rely on the damn dog to be reasonable. This man lived in a self-constructed world where there was a Right Way and a Wrong Way to do things - and, as was always the case, everyone else's Way was the Wrong Way and his was the Right Way, all the time. A charging rhino couldn't stubbornly plough through logic and reason like Mr. Harrington could.

"The fact remains," Harrington continued, smoothly, "that you did not dispose of it once its origin was discovered. Given the circumstances, I am prepared to let that go. But what I cannot abide is the fact that, once you discovered the perpetrator of its incubation, instead of bringing them back to Mantra for trial, you deliberately advised them to remain in the other world."

"According tae th' reports, at least," put in McLeod.

"With all due- no, with absolutely no respect," said Victoria, "I cannot believe what I am hearing. You're talking as if I'm deliberately plotting to undermine this council! As I have made clear multiple times, the situation is far more complex and evolving than you're trying to make it out to be, Harrington! Miss Jennings was under duress from the Magpies - who are the actual criminals in this scenario, might I remind you - and Christopher is clearly no mindless flesh automaton! The focus of our investigation should now be the case of Claudandus-"

"Which may not even be still alive, by your admission," said the Cardiff speaker. "So you admit to acting on a baseless hunch from a testimony given by a criminal?"

"Listen to yourselves, gentlemen!" Sampson's voice was sharp with outrage as she leaned forward in her chair. "When has her intuition ever let us down?! Have you forgotten the case of the Silver Serpent, where her hunches led her to the beasts' lair? Or how her suspicions lead to the arrest of the entire De La Garde family and it's patriarch, Count Magnus, for practicing Hollow Magic? Or does the fact that she's an Oxford woman," she added, glaring at Harrington, "whose achieved more in her life than any of your Cambridge lot ever did invalidate all that?!"

It pleased Victoria to see Harrington turn pink and his eyes bulge. That was how you knew you'd gotten to him. The best way - and the easiest by far - to make his face flush like that was to call any aspect of his beloved institution into question. It was akin to insulting a thirteen year-old's preference in video games consoles - and would garner much the same reaction.

"Madam," he snapped, "this is not about schools or skill level! This is about wherever we can trust the findings of someone who has placed her trust in an obvious fugitive and put an artificial creation in her charge! To say nothing of associating with the Kobbers, a dangerously unpredictable group of vigilantes who-"

A sudden noise, like fingers running over the lips of empty bottles, filled the air. Everyone turned to see whom - or what - was making it.

The figure sitting in the Dublin speaker's chair never seemed to move aside from an inclining of their head in the direction of Victoria. Beneath the unnaturally smooth material of the grey cowl that covered their form, a faint silver light shone, as if a moonbeam had gotten caught in a sack and was trying to find a way out. The light seemed to flicker and wane in time to the glassy, rhythmic droning that rose and fell in pitch, and then dropped into silence. And as it fell into silence, the figure fell still as a statue.

McLeod cleared his throat - an odd sound from a canine. "Whit th' Most Hallowed 'n' Unquestioned Lady o' Silence means," he translated, "is that we shuid nae be considering th' Kobbers in this maiter. Thair part in th' trial adds tae th' complication, 'n' we dinnae need ony further complications at this time."

"Their assistance has proven invaluable," Victoria countered. "Without them, I would not even have come close to discovering the existence of Project Claudandus nor-"

Another chime-like ringing as the Unquestioned Lady of Silence made a gesture in her direction with one hand.

"Th' Lady is surprised ye wantit th' a hawn," translated McLeod. "Surely yer ain deductive skills wid hae sufficed? Efter a', ye did guide tae recover th' personal journal o' Miss Jennings fae th' site in London. Wis that nae enough tae gang oan?"

"We aren't questioning her skill or her ability," cut in Harrington, once again wrestling control of the situation back to where it belonged. "We're questioning her actions that, on the whole, have considerably and unnecessarily delayed the business of quashing the last of the Magpie business from the old world. In fact, given her conduct over the past year, I would go so far as to say that we are questioning something altogether different. Something very serious indeed."

Victoria felt the eyes of everyone upon her. Even the Lady's, and that was most disturbing since she didn't even know if it... she... whatever it was had eyes at all. You never could tell with fae.

"And what are you questioning?" she hardly dared to ask

"Your judgement," was Harrington's blunt, hammer-like answer.

"WHAT?!" Sampson didn't so much shriek the words as squawk them, her hen's nest of hair shaking violently with the exclamation. McLeod shrank back with a whine, Harrington jumped in his chair and even Victoria winced. As much as she agreed with the general sentiment, she dearly wished that the other woman had a volume control on her neck, if only for the sake of everyone else's hearing.

"Quite agreed." The Cardiff speaker, who had not spoken for a while, did so with a slow and buttery drawl. "Perhaps, in fairness, this was to be expected. After all, a life so unnaturally prolonged-"

"I cannot believe this!" Sampson lifted from her chair, red in the face. "After everything she's done for this country! After all she's lived through! Why, the very-!"

"Miss Sampson, sit down." 

Harrington was using the voice he liked to use when he didn't want to listen to anyone. It was sharp, it was commanding, and try as you like you couldn't go against it. It was a solid wall that you had walked into, and all you could do was sit there and blink and wonder which direction you meant to go. Silent, but seething, Sampson sat down again, although Victoria could see her shaking with fury.

Harrington, seeming satisfied that he was back in his natural habitat of controlling the situation, turned to Victoria.

"Miss Thorne," he said, "please understand. Under the circumstances, and considering your... condition, we have done our best to support you."

Victoria glared, and remembered the agony of the Elixir of Life seeping through her skin and down into her flesh and bones, the horrible heat of the Philosopher's Stone in her hand, her own screaming as she felt her very being become stretched, the months of lying in bed swathed in wet bandages, people in heavy robes poking and prodding at her as if afraid flies would burst out of her, and not one of them ever asked "how are you?" or "can I get you anything?" because this was an experiment and not a young girl in agony from having her life forcibly extended beyond its natural span.

"We have given you," the absolute bastard went on, "as many allowances as needed for you to do your duty."

Victoria said nothing as she struggled in some foggy alleyway that reeked of excrement and offal, the wet glitter of bloodstained steel mere inches from her face, terror spiking through her heart as the woman leered over her with eyes bulging and teeth clear of her gums, all while more blades issued forth from the flesh of her arms like pikes, and in the background the cowards wearing Kingsguard armour screamed and shouted and not one of them stepped in to pry Jackie the Ripper away from her.

"And we have tried to ensure," added the insufferably smug little spoon-fed prick who had never known what struggle was in his life, "that your career as been as successful and fruitful as possible, and has served as an inspiration to others."

Victoria stared in horror at the gangster whom she'd sworn to bring in, lying on the floor with his throat cut and eyes as glassy and dead as marbles, as the man she thought she loved screamed that the system could never, ever work because the wheels were too greased with blood and money and cruelty and greed and stupidity, the only thing anyone could do was cut the tumours out by force, and nobody else was there to say no, you can't, there is a line and you've just crossed it and I'm not going to cross it with you, never.

"But it is becoming clear to this council," continued Harrington, "that you are beginning to falter in the duties that are expected of you as the Head of the Royal Guild of Alchemists. Wherever age or lack of confidence or other external factors is not the point. The point is, if you can no longer perform as the Head of the Guild, then we may have no choice to look for new leadership. Leadership that is capable of doing what is necessary for crown and country, instead of being an obstruction."

The Cardiff man grunted in assent. McLeod nodded, although hesitantly. The Unquestioned Lady of Silence slightly inclined her head in what might have been agreement.

There was a long, long silence. Longer than any silence should be. No sound except maybe the shuffle of behinds in seats. In the midst of it, Victoria, face stony and unmoving, put her hands behind her back and rocked on her heels, looking up to the ceiling. Inevitably, her eyes landed on what was daubed upon there. 

Long ago, some artist gripped with the fever of inspiration had sought to depict, in painstaking realism, the Confrontation at the beginning of Creation. The Confrontation between the great serpent-dragon Nagari and his hated foe, the Maiden of Everything Else, who had sung of the beauty of things other than life and death. The dragon encircled the globe, his crooked and gnawed tail lashing at the stars, while his mouth dripped the venom that brought decay, destruction and famine. But the Maiden danced on atop the North Pole, smiling and radiant, uncaring of the impotent rage of the beast who could no more slay her than entropy could slay love or joy or hope.

It had probably been a grand and inspiring fresco some time ago. But it was now slowly turning into a jigsaw as chunks fell away from a ceiling neglected by budget cuts and indifference. The Maiden was missing half her face, her hair faded from summer gold to elderly white, and Nagari had no teeth anymore, looking almost comical with his mouth wide open and his eyes glaring down.

Great symbols, now reduced to relics. The irony was not lost on her.

She looked from one to the other. The Cardiff man, looking terminally half-awake. Sampson, half-horrified and half-outraged. McLeod, who snorted. Harrington, whom she directed the most cold and steely of her glares.

"I see," she said, at last. "That's how it is."

"Now, Miss Thorne," said the Cardiff speaker, "nobody's saying that you haven't given many years of good service to-"

But Victoria had found her stride, and a sickly-sweet smile came over her face as she clapped her hands together.

"Council members," she began, "I understand. You look at me and you see a relic. You see something that can't survive in the modern day. Somebody who's outlived their useful shelf life." She couldn't believe she'd said those words with a straight face, considering what she was dealing with, but there they were, out in the open, and everyone's attention was fixed on her like cats watching a mouse dance. 

"And maybe I have," she went on. "I've lived far longer than any of you - present company excepted." She bowed to the Lady of Silence. "And perhaps that age is catching up to me, as you say. If this council has unanimously decided, in so many words, that I am incapable of leadership, then why, I'll retire this very moment! No need to encumber the Guild with somebody who's going senile after three hundred and fifty years!"

A small, weasel-like smile from Harrington. "Well put, Miss Thorne. I'm glad that you're considering the reality of your-"

"But before you do," Victoria interrupted, "perhaps you should consider what that life actually means. Because to you, it might mean that I'm not useful to you anymore. But to me, it means I've seen a lot. Far more than anyone ever should, and far more terrible things that anyone needs to. Things that would make the man on the street scream." 

She looked around the room, and saw to her satisfaction that even the sleepy Cardiff speaker was alert and fixated on her as if hypnotised. She ploughed on, knowing that to stop now would be to give the floor back to Harrington, and she'd be damned if she'd give him the chance.

"I've seen the Decadence. I've seen the Stalingrad Incident. I've seen the Battle of the Makadikadi. In short, I've seen what comes when people stop caring about right and wrong. And I refuse to ever, ever stop caring. Because when we break down, everything breaks down. I care about law and justice, even if such things are so much smoke and mirrors. I care about Christopher, who came into my care and whom I raised as my own student. I care that Miss Jennings, who was taken advantage of by actual criminals, has justice done by her."

Harrington coughed. "That's all very well, Miss-"

But then she looked at him, and she knew what sort of a look she was giving him, because the colour drained from his face and his mouth hung open mid-sentence. When she spoke again, her voice was cold and knife-like in its sharpness.

"And I care, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that such horrors never repeat themselves. And because I've lived so long, I know where such horrors start. They start at the top. With people like you, Richard Harrington."

"Miss Thorne, that's hardly-" Harrington began.

"They start when the people in charge decide they don't care. About anyone or anything else. Only about themselves. All they want is to get their own way, only their way, all the time. Because the world should be made for them and damn whoever else thinks otherwise. The little ones are stepping stones to be trodden on or fodder for the machine."

"Steady on, lass-" McLeod tried.

"And the one thing I don't particularly care about is who or what has made that decision. Because when that happens... well, crowns are just funny hats, when you think about it. Countries are just turf, at the end of the day. Loyalty to any state or monarch is a shield for the coward, a sword for the tyrant. And there hasn't been a shield or sword that has stopped me so far."

"I don't think there's-" the Cardiff speaker tried.

Harrington had shrunk in his seat as if trying not to be noticed by the teacher. He suddenly looked a lot less sure of himself, a lot less confident of his grasp of the scenario and of his control of the world. Victoria Thorne's eyes were like tiny stars burning in a distant galaxy, and just as some people would look upon said stars and see them as reminders of how small and inconsequential they are, so too did Harrington gaze upon those eyes and understand just how tiny he was in comparison.

And all the while, she kept speaking, her voice quiet and icy.

"Did you ever hear, Richard Harrington, of what happened to the Lost Prime Minister, Dylan Greene? The man who openly and loudly declared his intent to abolish the multi-party system, defy the crown and install himself as sole leader? The man would have lead Britain into war with five different countries, had he not suddenly announced his immediate retirement and took up lodgings in Whinfell? Did you ever ask yourself why that was?"

"Well, no, but-"

"Good."

The voice was like a gunshot. Harrington, the Cardiff man, Sampson and McLeod all jumped together. Even the Lady of Silence turned their head to her. But she had a point to make, and would be damned if anything between fae and fire giant would stop her.

"Three hundred and fifty years," she half-whispered. "That's far too long for anyone. But it's long enough to recognize what evil looks like and where it comes from. So I'm going to continue to trust my judgment, and that I can at least make better judgement calls than the likes of you, Richard Harrington. And, sir," she finished, fixing Harrington with her steeliest glare yet, "that isn't difficult." 

Sampson's face was alight with admiring joy. The Cardiff man looked as if he'd woken from a bad dream. McLeod had his ears laid back. The Lady of Silence tilted her head curiously.

Harrington looked like he was about to say something. Or, at the least, he was going to continue his very convincing impression of a goldfish going for a long while, with his wide eyes and flapping mouth. But whichever one it was, we shall never know. Because at that moment, the doors to the chamber burst open and a woman, gray of hair and dressed in something that would not have looked out of place at a renaissance fair, half-stumbled and half ran in, panting and gasping.

"Master Harrington!" she shrieked. "Master Harrington! It's all over the news! Oh, it's awful!"

"What is it, Janice?!" Harrington, half annoyed and half relieved, grasped at the chance to look at or talk to anyone else. "We're in the middle of a very important-"

"An explosion, Master Harrington!" Janice wrang her hands in her own sleeves, face red and eyes frantic. "In Portobello Road! There's Gold Fire everywhere and dozens of houses fallen down! And-"

But Victoria wasn't listening. Victoria was remembering who she'd brought back to Mantra with her, who she'd allowed to accompany her to London while she attended this absolute train-wreck of a meeting. Who would have been in Portobello at that very moment. And while the other council members sat and stared in dumbfounded confusion, cold terror rose in her stomach as she breathed that person's name in a near-whisper.

"Christopher."

--------

Christopher Baker, when he opened his eyes, didn't know where he was. He could only see smoke and fire, and the panicked cries of the people were a very, very long way off.

Then he saw his own father, Samuel Baker, lying in the middle of the street, covered in soot and blood. And that didn't make sense, because he'd only been standing at a stall commenting on a gold watch he'd found a moment ago. He wasn't moving, and for a moment the sight didn't register with Christopher.

What did register was the man in the purple robes. And the gold dagger he was drawing as he knelt over the body.

~TO BE CONTINUED~