Chapter 7: The Second Circle
The semester break began five days before Riza's birthday. The final exams took place the week prior to that, and they almost killed Roy. He had tried his best to keep up with his course work throughout the term, but the gruelling schedule of classes, drills, work and time poring over Riza's back left little time for extra study. Though the lectures ended two weeks before finals, Roy was still hard pressed for time. In the end, though, he came through it with his academic average more-or-less intact, and won the privilege of taking furlough during that fortnight.
Unlike the previous break, when he had travelled back to Hamner just in time to have his sensei die in his arms, this time Roy had nowhere to go. In any case, he could not leave. He needed his duty rations, since two people were living off of them. And he wanted to spend time in the library at the National University, researching the composer on whose work Hawkeye-sensei had based at least a portion of his code
The downside to staying was that Maes was not. The Hughes family, it seemed, were wintering in a small town outside of South City so as to be near Eli. The lascivious glassgrinder was tied down with military contracts for field goggles and rifle sights. Where once he had travelled the countryside bringing the gift of good eyesight to rural areas that would not otherwise have had access to an optician, he was now occupied in making war a safer and more accurate business. Roy admired that: better weapons meant less loss of life for the Amestrian military.
Maes departed by train on the evening after the last exam. Roy saw him to the station, for though he was not taking a proper furlough he was allowed to come and go as he pleased for the duration of the holiday, provided that he was present for reveille and the morning inspection of the lines. The farewell was brief and falsely jocund: Maes was apprehensive about seeing his family, for his eldest brother Benjamin was once again unwell. Ben had delivered Maes into the world, cutting him from the womb of his mother, and Roy knew that Maes held himself at least partly responsible for the demons that plagued his brother. Ben had long ago developed a habit of drinking to forget his agonies, and it had caught up with him around the time that Maes and Ira had enlisted. From Riza, who was oddly enough a close friend of Ben's, Roy knew that the woodsman had tried to forego alcohol and had worsened because of it. Whatever Maes faced in South City, Roy was afraid it might not be pleasant.
With his friend gone, Roy had nothing to distract him from the task at hand. On the first day of his holiday, he slept for almost six uninterrupted hours – longer than he had since before his sensei's death. Then he gathered his notebook full of botched attempts at untangling Latin phrasing, and removed to the University, where he found a quiet corner in the all-but-deserted library and set to work, leaving only just in time to make it back to the Academy for supper. From there he went to work, and then to Riza, returning to bed at four. He woke for oh-six-thirty reveille, attended inspection, and then went back to bed for a few hours before making his way back to the University again. In this way, three days passed.
And what productive days they were! Further reading on the composer bore little fruit, but further reading on his requiem itself proved invaluable. The verse was not original: it had been largely taken from a thirteenth-century traditional piece. This discovery was exciting, for the lines on Riza's back that Roy had not been able to find in Mozart's requiem were to be found in the older text, and a scant few lines of Mozart were not from the older version. By comparing these, Roy was able to come up with a simple recursive algorithm. Working with that, he discovered that a basic polyalphabetic substitution yielded a set of instructions for a geometric calculation that, while interesting, seemed to have even less to do with flame alchemy than did the words of the requiem. A month ago, he might have been discouraged and disheartened by this discovery. Now, he knew better. His sensei had poured a phenomenal amount of effort into this code: it was obvious that there was a second circle of encryption. He had only to solve it.
On Riza's birthday, Roy went to see her after the tavern closed, as always. She was waiting for him, ready to disrobe. As soon as he entered the room Roy could see that his smile disarmed her. She always seemed shocked when he smiled. He supposed that was because Hawkeye-sensei had hardly ever shown such signs of happiness.
"Happy birthday!" he said, hoping that an explanation would help to put her at ease.
Riza was startled. "You remembered!" she exclaimed.
"Of course I did! You're a teenager now: congratulations!"
The words fell flat in the dingy little berth. Riza did not look happy, and Roy suddenly understood why. Here she was, thirteen years old and already a woman in practice if not in body. Her parents were dead, her childhood home repossessed for want of a few hundred sens to pay the taxman. She lived alone in a tenement room in the very worst quarter of the city. Her nights were spent half-naked under the scrutinizing eye of an aspiring alchemist. Her days she passed in a dreary factory, slaving away to produce useless gewgaws that would be bought by privileged girls much her own age, but far less burdened. Riza had been betrayed and assaulted by her own father, and because of that she could not trust even her loving grandsire. This birthday was not an occasion for joy: it was an ugly reminder of what her life might have been... what her life should have been.
Perhaps Riza sensed his the wave of pessimism, or perhaps she was trying to shake off one of her own, for she forced a small smile. "At least this year will be better than last year," she ventured hopefully.
Roy chuckled a little nervously. "I suppose that's true," he allowed. "You've accomplished so much this year, though. You left home, and moved to Central, you've learned how to live on your own, and you got a job. You're earning money now – and don't forget about your diploma. I haven't got a school diploma."
Aside from the last point, none of those things were on the list of accomplishments that a thirteen-year-old should have to make, but the fact was that Riza had done it, and she should be proud of it.
Riza nodded. "I did do all that, didn't I?" she said softly.
"I'm impressed," Roy confirmed. He held out the package he had brought with him. "This is for you."
Riza favoured him with a tiny smile, and then opened it. She looked up at Roy and shook her head reproachfully. "You shouldn't do things like this," she said sternly.
"Don't be silly! It's your birthday."
"It's a waste of money," Riza declared quietly.
"I saved my tips from work," Roy told her, a little defensive. "Besides, I thought you would like something new to read."
Riza fingered the spines of the books. Roy had found her two of the gothic romances that she had loved to read with Doctor Bella, the kind physician who had cared for them when they were children. "They're beautiful," said Riza. "Thank you, Mr. Mustang."
"You're most welcome," he said. Then he held out the other package. "Maes got these in the mail a few weeks back. From Gareth and Benjamin."
There was a pair of dainty kid gloves lined with swansdown: durable and warm, and pretty. Roy was so glad that Maes' second-eldest brother, who was a journeyman glover, had sent them. Riza needed gloves badly, though not quite badly enough to justify spending money on them. These were better-crafted than any she could find in Central. From Benjamin, who was Riza's especial friend, there was a little coral necklace and a pair of dainty coral earrings.
"I haven't got pierced ears," Riza mused, more to herself than to Roy. But she held the necklace up to her white throat and studied her reflection in the broken shard of mirror that leaned on the top of her clothes-press.
"You look beautiful," Roy ventured. "A-and you can always get your ears pierced."
"Maybe someday," Riza told him practically. "When I'm older." She set down the jewellery and the books on the table, and tucked her new gloves into the pocket of her coat. Tears shone in her carmine eyes. "I d-didn't think I'd have a birthday this year," she confessed. "There wasn't one last year."
She meant that her father had been too ill and self-absorbed to bother celebrating it, Roy thought angrily. He had respected his sensei, almost worshipped him, and had loved him in place of the father that he could not remember. All of that had been shaken to the core by the revelation of Riza's marred back. That the man he had trusted, and revered, and thought of as a genius and a wonderworker could so exploit his only child sickened Roy. It had taken a great deal of discipline to even bear to look at Riza's tattoo, but he had done it, and he had decoded the first circle of the cipher. The secrets were in his grasp, and then it would be over. Then they could forget that this had ever happened.
"A-are you ready?" Riza asked, unbuttoning the man's shirt that she wore around her slender torso.
"Oh," Roy said flatly. "Not tonight." He didn't need to see it tonight.
Riza frowned. "But if you don't study it, you'll never..." She stopped, and seemed to flush a little. "You need to solve it."
"I've already solved part of it," Roy admitted. Riza looked almost disappointed, and suddenly he felt remorseful. It was their struggle, after all, not his alone. She wanted to help him, to contribute to the pursuing of his dreams for a better world, and at the moment all she could do was let him study her back. "I could certainly do with another look," he said. "If you don't mind..."
"I don't," she said quietly. And for the first time, she really sounded as if she meant it. She removed the shirt and lay down, and he sat next to her.
The patterns, the lines, the arches. The delicate parabola of the serpents' intertwining tails... suddenly the equation clicked into place. The geometry problem from the first half of the code could be applied to the alignment of the shapes on Riza's back...
With a small noise of exhilaration, Roy snatched up his notebook and began to lay out hasty calculations.
discidium
He was so close to the answer. Mr. Mustang had told her on no uncertain terms that he was close: he had already solved one circle of the cipher, and the next one, which had something to do with the orientation of the various geometrical figures on her back, would soon be cracked. Riza dreaded that day.
It was strange. Two months ago – one month – one week ago, she had been anxious for it all to end. For Mr. Mustang to solve the puzzle and break the code, so that the late-night examination of her flesh could end. So that she no longer had to bare her body to him. So that, most importantly of all, she could finally be free of the burden of her father's research and the horrible responsibility that went with it. Every night she had prayed that he would find what he needed, that he would crack the enigma, that he would unravel the mystery.
Now, when he was so close, she wished that he would never solve it, for when he did she knew that he would not need her anymore.
Mr. Mustang was an alchemist, and as an alchemist he had no use for her except as the crucible of her father's work. When he was finished studying her back, he would no longer have need of her. He would not want her anymore. He would cast her off, as her father had – or not quite. Because he was an honourable man, Riza knew he would take care of her as long as she needed him.
He would continue to help pay for her upkeep, but surely the visits would stop. Why would he waste his time coming to see her, if she had no secrets to share with him?
A tiny part of her mind protested that he did care about her, about Riza Hawkeye the individual. After all, he seemed to worry about her. He had remembered her birthday and bought her a gift. He was kind to her, considerate and generous. Surely that was not all because of the tattoo... and yet she remembered how he had left her, gone away when she was ten years old, without even saying goodbye. He had not answered her letters, nor even written to her father. Only after she was marked with Mordred Hawkeye's research did Mr. Mustang return. In everything he did for her, therefore, there was this ulterior motive: he wanted her father's research, and he was willing to do anything in exchange for it.
He leaned over her now, scrawling hasty notes and mumbling to himself. Riza was lying with her face in her pillow, and she could not see his expression, but she could imagine it. It would be that intense, almost manic look that reminded her of her father, of the light of eager madness that had overtaken him while he worked on his research. Riza could almost feel the keen slate eyes boring into her back, sucking in the lines of the tattoo like nourishment.
"Oxygen..." he muttered. "But oxygen doesn't burn. Pure oxygen doesn't... there must be more to it than that..."
Riza heard his pencil scratching as he worked through logarithms and calculations that even with her firm grounding in mathematics were beyond her comprehension. Riza remembered her father once saying that Mr. Mustang had a rare head for figures. A genius, she thought, though Mordred Hawkeye would never have used those words. Her father had never been one to lavish praise: the only attention one could get from him was negative.
"It doesn't make sense!" Mr. Mustang snarled. "There must be something missing. I must have made a mistake... I can't have made a mistake, Riza! I checked it six times!"
She wondered if he wanted her to speak.
"It's not logical," Mr. Mustang went on. "Pure oxygen doesn't burn. You have to mix it with something. Something combustible, like carbon or sodium or..."
There was a silence, a long and leaden silence. When Mr. Mustang spoke again, his voice was flat as if the power of his epiphany had robbed him of the strength to speak.
"Hydrogen."
discidium
It was simple. Absurdly simple. Ridiculous in its elegance. Roy had heard before that fire, which was not a compound but an energy, could not be controlled by alchemy, any more than light or heat or sound could. He had foolishly thought that his sensei had found some way around that fundamental law of nature. This was not the case. You could not manipulate fire with alchemy, but you could manipulate something else: the fuel that formed it.
"Flame alchemy" was a misnomer. What it was, in fact, was air alchemy. The instructions hidden in the geometric design of Riza's tattoo made that plain. To form and mould and control the fire, one altered the concentration of covalent gasses in the air. Hydrogen to burn, oxygen to feed the flames. Inert gasses were needed to form a buffer around the fire, or else it would burn itself out or ignite the air. The warning there was clear. The array itself was to work with the air, not the fire. Send the air forth, and the flames would follow.
To create the flame, all that was needed was a spark. Sensei's words spoke of a flint and steel, and Roy remembered the set his teacher had always carried. With it he had set candles ablaze or shot tendrils of flame into a fireplace. With it, he had created the pillars of blazing glory that he had shown Roy on the day that he had turned him unceremoniously out of the house, without even the chance to bid farewell to Riza. A spark...
He would need a safe place to practice. Perhaps there was a quarry nearby, or a cave, or some place where he could experiment without posing a risk to anyone or anything. When Maes returned, Roy would ask for his help in finding such a spot. Maes had a singular talent for gleaning the lay of the land, and after the deception concerning Riza, Roy wanted his friend to know that he was still valued and needed.
Only two problems remained. The second body of text that he had decoded gave no instructions for controlling the fire, save the bit about noble gasses. And there was one line that made no sense. It read aecabedgsharp, or, as Roy divided it:
Aec a bed g sharp.
Clearly, something was still missing.
