In a tiny two-room police station – one shabby office, one shabbier jail-cell – towards evening, a tentative interrogation was taking place. The constable, a one-legged chap, who had been sent home from the Iqbalan front-line three weeks into the conflict, after having been shot in the thigh, and now somewhat large and doughy from his largely sedentary job, had certainly dealt with some trouble-makers during his short career in law-enforcement. But rarely were they so good humoured about it. The young woman before him was jovial and vivacious, whip-thin and wild. Her hair was dark and matted, her sheet-white skin extensively bruised, scratched, grazed, and slightly pink in places from sunburn. If he had to guess, he would have said that she had been raised by wolves.
Out of kindness for her emaciated state, he had placed a bowl of thick broth in front of her as soon as she was placed in his cell, and had donated his own supper of a cheese sandwich. She certainly ate them with enthusiasm, and thanked him in heavily-accented, broken dialect. Drachman. He sighed.
"Do you know why I have taken you in?" he asked, peering at her across the table, once the interrogation had begun in earnest.
She nodded.
"I am looking for work. I have been in the mountains three, maybe four years. I train two years with master in martial arts, not on purpose. Then two years, or maybe three, with master in alchemy," she laughed at her own misfortune, "I live in the mountains, sleep in the mountains, find my food and water in the mountains."
"Very well," the constable replied, cautious now that her martial arts training had been brought into the equation, "So how did you end up in Dublith?"
She laughed again, until tears leaked from the corners of her eyes, and slapped her hand down on the thick wooden table, causing a fine crack to appear down the grain.
"I get lost! I am walking through the woods, heading home at the end of my training. I wish to go home, surprise Mama for my twentieth birthday. I go the wrong way. Much climbing, up and then down the mountains, and five days later, I am here. Amestris. What bad luck, I think. How shall I go home now? I know nobody in Amestris. How shall I find food? Fortunately, after two further days walking, I find this little town. I walk around, asking people if they have some work that I can do for a little food and shelter. In a tavern, an old man gives me a suggestion that is lewd and unacceptable to me. I hit him. Quite hard. Through a window."
She was laughing again, smacking her fist into her other palm to demonstrate. The constable pictured his own face where her hand was, and thought carefully before responding.
"You have caused thirty crowns worth of damage to property, as well as the doctors' fees for that old man. How do you propose to pay these?"
She shrugged.
"I can make whole the window. Not much that I can do about the man's face. Human transmutation too advanced for a student such as I."
"I see. Well, you'll have to stay here, as an indentured worker until the man is reimbursed. He is a butcher. You know how to cut meat?"
"Yes. I kill many animal in the mountains, and cut them up to eat. But I am not interested in butchery. I will leave, I think."
The man took a deep breath to control his temper, not wishing to anger the volatile woman in turn.
"If you won't pay for your crimes, I'm afraid I'll have to deport you back to Drachma. You are here illegally, you know."
She laughed again, uproariously.
"Ha! Deport me! You ass! You deport me, I walk over the border again. You deport me again, I come back again. I am in Amestris now, and I leave when I wish."
With that, she stood, stretched her arms over her head and yawned.
"I will stay here tonight," she stated, "It is warmer in this cell than outdoors. Tomorrow, I fix stupid window, and go on my way."
The constable raised his hands in resignation. His training had not included dealing with difficult alchemists. He tried once more to reason with her.
"My dear young lady, please understand, there are laws in this country. You can't just bludgeon a man through a window and then walk out of town. And what of national boundaries?"
At this, she turned stoney.
"Your 'dear young lady' I certainly am not! The man deserved the blow he took for this insult towards me. I will give not one hour of my labour towards fixing his face. I hope it will teach him some manners towards women. I do not recognise your border. I stay."
She strode from the office into the tiny jail cell, pulling the door shut behind her, and laid herself out on the low wooden bench that served as a bed. In the morning, she was indeed gone, the bars over the little square window had apparently melted into a puddle of iron, the window of the tavern on the high-street had been repaired, albeit in a somewhat slap-dash, disfigured fashion, and the butcher was forced to explain to his wife and son why his eye was blackened and his nose broken.
The woman took herself south, via freight trains and flagged-down vehicles. This led, as all roads were known to do, to Central City. She was not the only Drachman there, and found shelter with a large family, who occupied one floor of a cramped three-storey house in one of the outer slums. They were poor and taciturn, but kind to their own people. Other than that, she didn't think much of the city; it was far too large to be walked across easily, crowded with people and vehicles, and for the most part, quite astonishingly filthy. But she was intrigued by the huge college of the State Alchemists, and wandered in there one day to see what they were teaching. Theory. Dry lists of principles and equations and formulae. She departed from the lecture theatre in despair, and headed for the library.
She was not illiterate, having been taught to read by her mother, and enjoyed certain books, especially cookery books and adventure novels. But these texts were far over her head. Why, she wondered, must they make alchemy sound so complex, and at the same time, so dull?
She gave up on the library, and completed her tour with a walk around the parade ground. There she watched alchemists in blue army uniform weaponising their talents, unleashing fire and electricity and sonic waves and devastating punches on motionless straw targets. They laughed and congratulated one another when a straw man was destroyed, mocked when one was missed or left somewhat intact. Her eyes narrowed. They were men, for the most part; young and enthusiastic. Not untalented, certainly. But what did they understand alchemy to be, that they could use it so?
Disgusted, she stalked away from the college precinct. The city was not for her, not at all.
Next, she rode the rails to the west. Many hundreds of miles, stopping to marvel at the valley where technology seemed to be progressing by gargantuan leaps, and men claimed that they could build entirely new men out of gears and pistons and metal skin. She drank beer in hot, smokey cellars with young radicals who bayed for the return of the Republic, while in Ausburg. She felt akin to these ardent young men and women, and she took several of them, one at a time, to bed, and almost set up house with one particularly charming red-headed girl who wore a red bandana, and smoked cigars, and raised her beer glass to toast "Death to the Fuhrer!".
Considering that her adventure was nearing its end, she felt jaded by the road, and the complicit drudgery of Amestrian life under the new dictator. She made her way back north again, looking for real work, real purpose. Once again, she found herself in Dublith, the farthest north the rails would go before Fort Briggs. She wandered down the high-street, the only one that was paved, and observed that the tavern window was still warped and criss-crossed with a spiderweb of tiny fractures, from her hasty repair almost a year previously. She spotted the police constable – now fatter and redder and sweatier in the summer heat – and gave him a cheery wave. He looked embarrassed to see her again, and waved awkwardly before ducking inside the tavern.
She made for the butcher's shop, as they were shutting up for the day. It smelled of blood and caustic soda, which was used to clean and disinfect the floors. She called out to a huge, imposing man who was mopping the front step.
"Hey! Where is the old butcher?"
The man looked her up and down, distrustfully. Drachmans south of the border were generally trouble, in his experience, and quick to pass through.
"I am the woman who hit him in the face," she explained, "and knocked him through the tavern window. Has his face now healed?"
"He is dead," the man growled, "I was his apprentice. I am now the butcher."
She was surprised.
"Did he die from his injuries?"
He lifted his mop and bucket, and headed back inside the shop, throwing over his shoulder;
"No."
She sprinted up to the step, and stuck one foot in the door as he pulled it closed.
"How did the butcher die?" she demanded. The man ignored her.
She struggled with him, to haul the door open again. He was stronger, and the door was the first to give way, its hinges snapping away from the frame. The man sighed, and propped the door against the wall, then walked away into his shop, allowing his unwanted guest to step through.
"I do not wish to trouble you," she said, by way of apology, "I just want to be certain that I did not kill your master."
"He fell out of a high window one night. He was drunk. He was always drunk. But he was an excellent butcher."
She nodded.
"I'm sorry."
He shrugged, unmoved.
"I inherited his business. I too am an excellent butcher."
She looked around the prosperous little shop, taking in the scrubbed floor and surfaces, the neat row of bright, sharp knives, the chalked list of prices above the counter. Her eyes moved back to the man – huge, dark-haired and dark-eyed, utterly ignoring her as he negotiated the door back into its frame. She guessed that he could chop an entire cow in half with one blow.
"Would you like to sleep with me?" she asked.
He turned around slowly, and looked at her with curiosity.
"You don't have a wife, do you?" she continued, as the thought suddenly occurred to her.
Leaving the door to fall back onto the floor, he walked slowly towards her.
"No," he said at last, "I do not have a wife. Business first, then family."
She nodded, agreeing.
"You have the business now."
He reached out a huge hand and, with unexpectedly gentle fingers, tilted her face up, then lowered his own to kiss her, experimentally. His lips were also gentle, questioning. She pressed back harder, to encourage him. There was almost no flesh over her bones. The poor woman wanted feeding.
"Would you like some supper?" he offered. She raised herself up on tiptoes to keep her face close to his.
"No. This first, then food."
He took her hand, and led her upstairs to a small, neat bedroom. All the furniture was made of the same local hardwood, and the bed was covered in a colourful wool blanket that might have been generations old. He lit an oil lamp, and parted the sheets to remove an earthenware hot water bottle. The strange woman was naked by the time he turned back around. Even starved, she was muscular, and her skin was so white it seemed to glow. She folded herself into him, and stroked her hands over his massive arms and shoulders, helped him to undress, and then laughed delightedly as he lifted her up off her feet to lay her on the bed.
Afterwards, he had fallen asleep immediately. She crept downstairs to light a fire, and ransacked the kitchen for ingredients to fix them a large supper of smoked gammon, roast potatoes and buttery carrots. As she was laying the table, he ambled downstairs in a sort of daze. It had evidently been a while since he had had a meal cooked for him, and the sight was welcome.
They sat down together to eat, a jug of beer on the tables between them and two rugged mugs.
"What is your name?" she asked, watching as her companion necked a mug of beer and shovelled his food down with relish.
"Sigurd. To my friends, Sig" he answered.
"I am called Izumi," she said, unprompted, "I have no friends in Amestris, but if I did, they would call me Izumi."
"You have one friend in Amestris," the man said, pointing a thumb at his chest, "Do you know how to cut meat?"
She smiled, and relaxed. It had taken almost seven years of battling and learning and wandering and seeking, but she had found her home.