Chapter 25: The State Alchemist
The tracks went on past Lesser Marlburg, four hundred miles northwest of Central City, but the trains did not. Cadet Second Class Roy Mustang and his brand-new canvas kit bag travelled the last thirty-six miles on a handcart worked by a pair of burly labourers. They wore greasy coveralls and they sang as they worked the double-handled lever. Between that and the reepetetive squeaking of the vehicle, Roy had a splitting headache by the time they finally reached their destination.
The encampment was not quite at the end of the line, but it was within easy walking distance. A collection of canvas tents spread to either side of the rails: housing for the crews that laid the ties and drove in the spikes. There was a rough cabin with a heavy iron door: the payroll office and quartermaster's. A couple of narrow shanties housed the latrines. There was an outdoor mess area with a canopy-covered open-air kitchen. Set apart from the rest of the camp was a corral containing a single long tent. Roy later learned that this was for the convicts whose purpose in life was to break gravel for the rail beds.
The work day was not over, and the camp was all but deserted. There was no one to be seen but the guard by the payroll cabin, three NCOs busy preparing the evening meal, and a tall, slender, androgynous figure in uniform. This person strode towards the handcart like a cat on the prowl, stopping a few yards short. Roy took in the pale, ascetic face, the cold dark eyes and the smooth ebony hair – which was pulled back severely into a long, thin plait. Even at such close proximity, Roy was not certain of the person's gender until the officer spoke.
"You're the cadet?" she said.
"Yes, sir," Roy answered, hopping off of the cart and saluting rather dustily.
"I'm Captain Bathory, the Major's attaché and personal assistant. Welcome to the end of the line." She looked him over with a critical eye. "A little small for a soldier, aren't you?"
Roy squared his shoulders indignantly, inwardly cursing himself for slouching. Just because she happened to be six feet tall – and she wasn't any broader than he was, either! It wasn't his fault that all he could put on was lean muscle! "My weight complies with the usual requirements, I assure you, sir," he said.
"Really?" Bathory commented dryly, a hint of disdain tainting the word. "Take your kit and come with me. The Major has decided that you are to have your own tent."
"That would be very nice, thank you, sir," Roy said, thinking of Mark Zlotsky. Then he curled his lips into a suave smirk. "Unless you'd like to share, sir."
"Don't thank me, cadet," Bathory said, completely ignoring his attempt at innuendo. Damn. So she wasn't going to fall for it like Captain Armstrong had. "If it were up to me, you'd be bunking with the warrant officers, but the Major has a... unique sense of propriety."
There was little that Roy could say to that, so he shut his mouth and followed the captain to a low canvas tent near the edge of the encampment. It was a simple two-pole affair, and peering inside Roy saw that it was furnished with an upturned packing crate, a tin washbasin, and a standard-issue bedroll.
"Drop your baggage. We'll be putting you straight to work."
"Great!" Roy exclaimed, momentarily forgetting his dignity. He had been looking forward to this for weeks: the opportunity to learn from one of the elite, a State Alchemist, someone who had achieved precisely what Roy hoped to... it was a priceless opportunity. He could almost hear Maes laughing at him and telling him how naive he sounded – but Maes wasn't around, was he? He was off in West City, learning how to direct traffic and arrest pickpockets.
Under a canopy by the tracks, a pair of military geologists were bent over tables full of ore samples while a skinny corporal who couldn't have been eighteen yet ran to and fro between them. A third table was overflowing with specimens of plant life: leaves, branches of pine needles, pieces of shrubs and bunches of wild grass and even glass jars full of lichen. It was to this table that Roy was led.
"You'll be working here," she said coolly. "You are to catalogue each sample and provide a summary of its constituents, paying especial attention to the presence of any heavy metals. Precision is of paramount importance. Understood?"
"Yes, sir," Roy replied. "When can I meet the Major?"
"He's on site today, blasting the piling holes. He doesn't have time to waste on cadets and neither do I. He told me that any alchemist worth his salt can do this job, so if you have problems, don't come to me. I hope I make myself perfectly clear?"
"Perfectly, sir," Roy said, grinding his teeth against his annoyance. If the alchemist didn't have time for cadets, why had he requested one?
By the time he composed himself again, Bathory was gone and he was alone with a table full of flora. Not knowing what else to do, Roy picked up one of the jars of lichen and looked helplessly at the two scientists. One was too absorbed in his own work to notice, but the other grinned sympathetically.
"Don't worry, son," he said. "They're all labelled, and the log'll tell you where they were picked up. Just go nice and slow and be careful. Nisbitt learned that the hard way, didn't you Nisbitt?"
"Yes, Mr. Lane, sir," the corporal said sheepishly.
Roy forced a smile and set to work. He quickly found that the work itself was pleasant enough. Botanical alchemy had never been an area of great interest to him, but his naturally inquiring mind was interested to learn the composition of the plants before him. The alchemy involved was simple, but some of the findings were surprising. There was a particular fern, for example, that contained quite a significant amount of cadmium. And who would have guessed that pine needles included trace amounts of gold?
Where he butted up against it was in the recording of the data. The ledger was cramped, and completely inadequate for the volume of information that he was expected to include. Written work had never been Roy's strong suit: he had not learned to read and write properly until he was almost nine years of age, and try though he had, he'd never quite made up the three-year deficit. As he worked, questions that never would have occurred to the majority of his classmates plagued him mercilessly. Was it "sulphur" or "sulfer"? Was there one "h" in "rhenium", or two? And how on earth did you spell "hafnium"?
By the time the dinner bell sounded and work concluded for the day, Roy's headache had magnified and proliferated. Rather than sit around the fires with the other soldiers, he retreated to his tiny tent and slept.
discidium
"When do I get to meet the Major?" Roy asked at breakfast one morning.
Second Lieutenant McClelland – the only other commissioned officer on site, besides Captain Bathory and the elusive State Alchemist – chuckled ruefully. "Kid, you don't want to meet him."
"He's my preceptor," Roy argued. "I'm here to learn from him, and so far I haven't even seen him."
Warrant Officer Saunders grimaced at his plate of eggs. "Would it put you off the trail if I told you he's a very private man?" he asked.
A couple of the other soldiers laughed. "That'd be a lie, Saunders, and you know it!" one of them chortled.
"Truth is," said another, "he's too busy with Bathory to bother with students."
"I dunno: the kid looks like his type too, you know. Pale. Dark. No hips."
"No tits," a fourth piped up.
"If we had to get stuck with a bird for a captain, couldn't she have been a good-looking bird?" asked McClelland.
"You shouldn't speak that way about a superior officer," Saunders muttered.
"But it's true," McClelland said. "Ain't that right, Mustang?"
Roy smirked. "Yeah, personally I prefer women who look like women. I mean, the duty uniform hides some of it, but not that much. Are we sure Bathory's female? I mean really sure."
This was met with some good-natured laughter. "Aw, if you'd see 'em together you'd know what we mean, kid," said one of the sergeants. "Nature popped 'em out of the same mould and then adjusted them to fit. No question about it."
"Who?" Roy asked curiously.
"Bathory and the Major," the NCO said, as if this should have been obvious.
"That's a lie, Clemens, and you know it!" McClelland snorted. "You know there's nothing natural about Major Kaboom!"
"You know he travelled with Circus Vargus? Before he took the State Alchemist exam?" a corporal interjected in a stage whisper.
"That's bullshit!"
"I dunno: he looks like a circus freak to me!"
"Did he juggle fire?"
"Naw, I'll bet he was a lion tamer!"
"A geek!"
"Close," the corporal said. "Only he didn't bite their heads off: he blew 'em up."
"Blew what up?" Roy asked curiously.
"Live chickens," said the NCO. "He blew up live chickens. Called himself Jan the Dynamite Man."
Almost everyone laughed. Clemens clapped the corporal on the back. "Good one, Danny," he applauded.
"I'm serious!" protested the soldier. "He blew up live chickens for Circus Vargus. My cousin knew a guy who had an affair with a trapeze artist who—"
Suddenly McClelland was on his feet, saluting crisply. "Captain Bathory!" he barked hoarsely. Around him, the other men scrambled to assume the same position as the androgynous woman strode towards the group.
"As you were," she said – but not until every last man was standing at attention. "Mustang. Come with me. The Major has a job for you."
"But it's twenty-two-hundred hours," Roy protested. "Sir."
"You're here to learn how to be an officer," she said. "That's a 'round the clock job, cadet."
"Yes, sir," Roy said with just a trace of impudence. He expected to be teased by the others as he stepped away from the fire, but they were silent. Probably afraid to speak in Bathory's presence – which made no sense to Roy. Certainly she was cold and self-assured (and not in the least attractive), but compared to Captain Armstrong she was a blushing violet.
She stopped before a large, square canvas tent, the inside of which Roy had not yet seen. She made no move to enter. "Inside," she said.
"Sir?" Roy said blankly.
"You heard me, cadet. Inside."
He opened the door flap and stepped through. The canvas was scarcely out of his hands when Bathory seized it from without and tied the laces firmly closed. Roy's pulse picked up a little. What was going on here?
The tent was dark, and after the bright firelight Roy was functionally blind. Instead, he focused on the movement of the air. Where he stood it was fresh and normally balanced – a function of being near the exit. Moving further into the cubic space, the gasses were more dense and stagnant, tainted with the subtle smells of human habitation. And there, towards the very back of the tent, was what Roy had expected to find: a higher concentration of carbon dioxide, indicating the presence of a person. As he focused his attention, he could feel the gasses moving in and out, swirling in the labyrinth of the lungs where nitrogen and oxygen were exchanged for the waste gasses.
"Hello, my young friend," the breathing presence said. The voice was low and ostensibly pleasant, but it made Roy uneasy. There was a subtle undercurrent of menace... or maybe it was just the fact that this man was breathing more deeply and slowly than a normal person had any right to. "What's your name, again?"
"Cadet Second Class Mustang, sir," Roy said, keeping his voice carefully modulated and confident.
"Your given name, cadet," said the man.
"Roy Mustang, sir."
There was a silence. Roy's eyes were beginning to adjust to the darkness, and he was able to see the outlines of furnishings: two cots, a small table, several crates and what looked like a radio... and in the corner, the dark shadow of a lean man lounging in a chair, one arm draped lazily over its back.
"Are you afraid of me, Roy Mustang?" the voice inquired. As it did so, it grew deeper and more ominous.
"No, sir," Roy asserted. It was true... more or less. He wasn't afraid, exactly, but he was uneasy. There was something not quite right here. "It's an honour to have the chance to serve with you."
A low, trilling chuckle made the small hairs on the back of Roy's neck stand on end. "Yes, I imagine it is," said the man. "It isn't every little soldier boy who has a chance to learn from the military's most valued asset."
"Permission to speak frankly, sir?" Roy said.
"Granted," the man acknowledged gracefully, sounding more than a little amused.
"If you're the military's most valued asset, why are you laying railroad tracks in the middle of nowhere?" Roy forced the words out before he could rethink them. It was better to seem impertinent than nervous. Or at least, that was how the new Mustang felt.
Another laugh. "You're a cheeky little thing, aren't you? Come here so that I can take a look at you."
Roy took an uncertain step into the darkness, shuffling forward and praying fervently that he would not bark his shin on some unseen obstacle. "How are you going to get a look at me in here?" he asked saucily. "Unless you're a bat."
"Not a bat," the man said.
Roy stopped: he was less than a yard away from the seated shadow. The man moved his arm, and suddenly the room was flooded with blinding light.
"A tiger."
Roy blinked furiously, trying to resist the urge to cringe away. He could feel his pupils twitching and contracting in an attempt to compensate for the change in illumination, and as they did so the person before him gradually came into focus.
What struck Roy first was how much the Major looked like Captain Bathory.
He had the same sleek, dark hair. A delicately boned face with prominent cheekbones. Dark, glittering eyes and a thin, scornful mouth turned up in amusement.
"Sorry," he cooed. "Didn't mean to throw you off-balance."
He looked more like a panther than a tiger: coiled and ready to spring. He was wearing the bottom half of a military uniform: trousers and combat boots polished to ebony perfection – but he had removed his jacket and his shirt, and was sitting there in a standard-issue undershirt. The knotted muscles of his arm tensed as he set down the oil lamp with which he had blinded Roy. A long, slender hand flexed itself, and the lamplight glinted off of smooth, meticulously shaped nails.
"They didn't tell me they were sending someone so young," he remarked, looking Roy over with a critical eye. "The military must be recruiting right from the cradle these days."
Roy resisted the urge to bristle. For one thing, this alchemist wasn't more than eight or nine years his senior. For another, Roy knew for a fact that he had only been certified last year, and that unlike many State Alchemists he had no prior military service. That meant that Roy had been in the military for twice as long.
"Young soldiers are loyal soldiers," the major said, and there was amusement in his eyes as he spoke. "I understand you have a little knowledge of alchemy."
More than a little, Roy thought. Instead, he said; "I must have, or I wouldn't have been able to do the work you set me."
"Touché," said the alchemist. He cocked his head to one side, only emphasizing his feline aura. "You have a very pretty mouth, my little soldier boy."
"And you've got lovely fingernails," Roy countered. It was a defence mechanism that had served him well over the last couple of years: a little snark went a long way to covering discomfort and discouraging precisely this type of needling.
"Thank you," the man said graciously, inclining his head. "I put a lot of work into them. After all, an alchemist's hands are the primary tool of his art."
With that, he opened his fingers, exposing his palms. Roy stared in astonishment.
Major Kimbley had transmutation circles tattooed onto the palms of his hands. While that provided the initial shock, Roy was more alarmed by the circles themselves. They were simple sigils: both marked for fire, the one with two concentric circles within the triangle, and the other with a rampant "D". There were dozens of uses to which the first circle could be put. Indeed, it was almost identical to the one that Roy had been using over the last two weeks to break down botanical samples. He didn't recognize the second circle, but it should have been innocuous enough as well. Yet – perhaps because of the gossip about blowing up live chickens, perhaps because of the strange demeanour of the alchemist himself, perhaps because Roy's instincts outstripped his reason – the arrays seemed to radiate an ominous power.
And they were tattooed to his flesh... presumably because an array imprinted on human tissue was convenient, permanent, swiftly accessible... functional. That thought turned Roy's stomach. If arrays carved into a State Alchemist's palms were functional, then so was the one on Riza Hawkeye's back. He had always wondered, but had never dared to try. Now, it seemed, he was faced with evidence that the marks on Riza's back could indeed be used in the traditional manner, and he found himself visualizing the nuances of that array, trying almost instinctively to divine how the words and images around the central sigil would alter the transmutation.
"My, my. The little soldier boy is speechless. What's wrong? Haven't you ever seen a tattoo before?" asked Kimbley.
Roy forced a credulous smirk. "On your hands?" he said. "That must have hurt."
"It was nothing," said the alchemist, smiling coldly. "My maternal grandmother had a tigress on her back – now that would have been painful."
Roy looked down at his own palms, unable to help himself. It was undeniably more effective than lipstick and eyebrow pencil. It wouldn't smudge, or wash away, or...
He pushed that thought to the back of his mind. It was ridiculous. Riza had been mutilated against her will by a half-demented old man bent on concealing his life's work from the world. It would cheapen her suffering for the youth to whom she had entrusted her secret to voluntarily maim himself just for convenience. Besides, flame alchemy still required a source of ignition: there was no point cutting corners with the circles.
"Impressive, isn't it?" asked the Major, flexing his fingers so that the markings rippled. "Not something that just anyone would have the guts to do. But then, that's what sets State Alchemists apart. We're willing to do anything to advance our cause."
He leaned forward, his keen eyes boring into Roy's. "I understand from your paper that you're interested in becoming a State Alchemist. How badly do you want it?"
"Does it matter?" Roy asked.
"Of course it matters. It's easy to have lofty goals and ambitious dreams. The measure of a man is how far he is willing to go to achieve those dreams. How far are you willing to go, little baby alchemist?"
The man's eyes were so intense; almost hypnotic. Roy's heart was pounding. There was danger here, strange and intangible danger. The old Roy Mustang would have cringed and fawned and said something meek and servile. The new Roy Mustang had another defence mechanism: just as effective, and much more fun.
He smirked enormously and gave his head a cocky toss.
"As far as it takes," he said. "As long as I don't have to compromise my love life."
Kimbley laughed.
