Page 176 of The Iron Flower

CHEMISTRIE

I receive a rune-hawk missive from the Fourth Division Base the next evening.

“What does it say?” Tierney asks from where she sits on the floor of my lodging’s conservatory. Delicate thread shears are suspended in her hand, my almost solidly blue Ironflower tunic splayed out over her lap. My Ironflower dress from the Yule Dance is in a crumpled pile beside her.

Rain batters the night-darkened windows around us, thunder resonating through the lodging house’s walls as lightning flashes through the sky. I break the wax dragon seal with my thumbnail, unfold the parchment and read.

Astonished, I draw in a hard breath. “My brothers,” I tell Tierney. “They’re being released.”

Tierney’s mouth turns up in a calculating smile. Her eyes dart to the Ironflower dress on her lap. “You made good use of this dress, then, didn’t you?”

The missive is written by one of Lukas’s subordinates in a formal hand—a lieutenant named Thierren. I feel a pang of disquiet, uncomfortably aware of the conflict raging between Lukas and me, which is glaringly apparent in his use of someone else to write this note.

I read on.

“The apprentice that Rafe punched,” I tell Tierney as I read, “he’s dropped the charges against both of my brothers.” I meet her gaze as a full realization of Lukas’s hand in this washes over me. “In return, the apprentice is being promoted from apprentice to the position of second lieutenant under Lukas Grey’s command.”

“Well, that’s done then,” Tierney says, her voice resolute. “The rest is up to us.”

* * *

Tierney and I empty our sacks of Ironflower threads out on to the apothecary worktable, the pile of tangled string wreathed in a soft, sapphire glow in the dim lab.

“You’ve locked the doors and windows?” I ask.

Tierney absently nods as she writes down notes with a look of intense concentration, papers filled with her mathematical calculations strewn about the table. Shadows cling to the walls around us, the evening’s dark digging in, the apothecary workroom chilly and deserted.

A scuffed, leather-bound Apothecary text is open before Tierney. Her pen makes a rapidscritch scritchas she finishes jotting down the boiling points of the components of our complicated fabrication.

Satisfied with her list, Tierney gets up and expeditiously begins setting up the glass reflux apparatus. She nods to me, and I place a funnel in the opening of a distillation flask and pour in the River Maple ash I’ve prepared. Tierney holds her palm over the opening and flows water from her palm into the container’s bulbous interior, filling it. The wood ash swirls around the water in a messy spiral before settling. Then we push the balls of glowing Ironflower thread into the container’s opening.

Tierney presses a long, glass condenser into the distillation flask’s crystalline mouth and stabilizes the tube with metal clamps. Then she wraps her hand around the condenser and flows water through it.

I slide a large oil lamp beneath the container’s base, then look to Tierney. “Light it,” she says.

I strike a flint and ignite the flame.

Tierney holds her palm out toward the mixture and brings it to a rapid yet smooth and rolling boil. Wavering sapphire lines of Ironflower essence leach out of the threads and into the water, curling through it in an intricate dance. Soon, the water takes on a faintly blue glow.

Tierney and I wait as the blue glow intensifies and grows incandescent, washing us in its sapphire light.

“It’s ready,” Tierney says once the threads and wood ash have settled into a black mass at the base of the glass container. She raises her hands to the flask and creates a cooling cloud that swirls around it.

After a few moments, I disassemble the reflux apparatus and filter out the ash and threads. Tierney readies the distillation glassware, and I carefully pour the glowing blue liquid into a new distillation retort. With practiced grace, Tierney waves her hand over the receiving flask and creates another cooling cloud to hover around it.

I set a flame under the retort, then place my hands around the warming flask, coaxing my earth lines to life. Slim, black branches flow through me, winding toward my hands. “Ready,” I tell her.

She lays her own hands on top of mine, and I feel my power flowing out of me in a controlled force, branches twining toward the flask, fire sizzling through them.

Steam shoots through the distillery, the glass rattling as we pull our hands away. For a slim second, I fear the glass will crack or perhaps explode. Tierney pushes one hand towards the flask and the rattling stops, the steam coalescing into a smooth stream.

Liquid starts to accumulate in the bottom of the receiving flask—a vivid, phosphorescent blue, deep as twilight.

I breathe in the steam’s Ironflower scent. “I can smell the essence purifying.” An image of blue Ironflowers unfurls in the back of my mind.

Tierney smiles at me. “It’s working, then.”

I give her a returning look brimming with dark resolve.

---