“No,” Sciona laughed. “No, I’m not. But let me pose you a question that’s been troubling me for hours: must I forgo brilliance—no, not even brilliance; must I forgo any sort of intelligence; must I forgo the baseline mental functions that come with being alive—for stability? What is the point of stability then, Doctor? What is the point of anything?”
“To fulfill your God-given role as a woman, of course,” he said with irritating confidence. “To be a positive and pleasing presence to others, your husband, your family.”
“Except that I’m not anyone’s wife,” Sciona said, “nor am I anyone’s daughter, really. And I’ve never been very good at pleasing. The things I have to offer are greater than that.”
“Ah,” Mellier said with a sad and knowing nod. “This is a classic example of how dangerous it is for a female to have a career and ambitions like yours.” He kept up that air of paternal confidence—as though that would disguise the fact that he was reciting Ayerman verbatim like any brainless university student could. “It’s understandable, with a mind as great as yours, that you have aspirations beyond your sex, but the scientific truth is that these pursuits unsettle your mind and defy your nature.”
“Do they defy my nature, Doctor?” It was an honest question.
As far as Sciona could remember, from the first time she had grasped the concept of magical power, her academic aspirations had been the crux of her being. If there was a version of her that yearned for motherhood, subservience, and domestic life, it had never made itself known—and she knew for certain now that it never would. What woman with a heart could settle into a home full of magic-powered appliances and push out future mages for her mage husband, knowing what Sciona knew?
“All I know is that if you make me a stable woman now, Doctor, you destroy me. You destroy any chance at salvation.”
“What do you mean?”
“I may not be a medical alchemist,” Sciona conceded, “but on the highmage track, one does complete fundamental courses in every magical discipline. I know the remedies you have in that case for women.” She nodded to the leather briefcase resting at the doctor’s feet. “They’ll make me lethargic, make me compliant”—amenable to the evil all around her. “You will slow my brain, and, failing that, you will destroy it.” Lobotomy was Ayerman’s recommended treatment for women experiencing ‘fits of emotion,’ a condition Sciona had always thought disturbingly broad.
“I fear you may not have understood your fundamental medical courses, then. If you had, you would know that my work is not to destroy but to improve.”
“Meaning that you make docile housewives of discontented women.”
“Precisely.” The doctor smiled as though Sciona had just paid him a compliment.
“Right,” Sciona said coolly. “The problem is that I have a presentation before the High Magistry this coming week. If you would improve my mind, then surely, you would have no reservations sending me to present before the Council under the influence of your remedies?”
“Well—no, Highmage. But if your condition is as serious as your aunt says, you should spend the next week resting under close professional supervision. There are ninety-nine other mages in the High Magistry, are there not? Men with more resilient minds than your own. Surely, they can proceed in their business without you?”
“I’m afraid not,” Sciona said flatly to quell a laugh of indignation. “My role in the High Magistry is rather distinctive. I wouldn’t expect you to understand—especially when I consider that letting you lead this conversation has taken us all of nowhere.”
“On the contrary, Highmage, I think—”
“No, that’s the problem, Doctor,” Sciona said in frustration. “You don’t really think anything. Because you don’t listen. You’re not taking the information coming out of my mouth and processing it. You haven’t seriously engaged a single question I’ve posed. All you seem to be capable of doing is bludgeoning me with textbooks—ones I’ve already read, I might add. So, for now, you just listen while I do the thinking.”
“That’s not—”
“Not your strong suit, I understand, but don’t worry. I’ll start with the terms of your discipline, so you’re not confused.” And so Sciona could set a strong framework for her salvation. She was not strong in the humanities, after all. If there was a way out of this darkness, she had to build it from what she knew: magic and science. “As an alchemist, you siphon matter and transmute it into new forms.”
“Yes, of course.”
“There’s considerable power in that. You can break down poisons, make them benign. But a given matter sample is limited in its nature and potential. It must either be dangerous or benign, poison or remedy, and, dependent on its composition, there are finite ways you can transmute it.”
“Yes, Highmage. These are all very basic alchemical principles.”
“I know,” Sciona snapped. “I’m reviewing the 101 material to make sure you follow as we get to more abstract concepts.”
“Excuse me, Highmage! I have never in my life—”
“My magical specialization is trivially similar to yours,” Sciona forged on, worried that if she let the doctor slow her with his insipid interjections, she would lose this tenuous lifeline forming up in her mind. “Where you siphon and reapply matter, I siphon and reapply energy. Now, you are limited here by your role as an alchemist. Beyond your personal limitations as a stringent adherent to Ayerman, matter is inherently limited in its potential. Energy is not.”
“I don’t know that my discipline is limited.”
“Stop interrupting me, Doctor. We’re getting to the good part.”
“The good part?”
“Yes! Here, we come to the decision point. Because here we have my current affliction. Here, we must conceptualize this horrible feeling inside me one of two ways: as a problem of matter or a problem of energy—as poison or power. Earlier, I got stuck conceptualizing my condition as an alchemist would, in the limited terms of matter, as poisonous decay stitched into my skin and flesh, inseparable from my body and not transmutable to something less insidious. I know this is an underpinning of medical magic. It was in the texts you and I both studied, so this was the cage I put around my mind. I was trapped, just like you are.”
“How am I trapped?” Mellier asked, indignant.
“When you apply alchemical theory to psychology, you confine yourself to the characteristics of your patient’s emotions, just like you confine yourself to the nature of the matter you siphon. You ask yourself: how can I chemically transmute this sadness into happiness, this manic woman into a submissive one? How can I transmute Carseth Berald into the boy his parents loved? How can I transmute a soul as I would a toxic chemical compound?”
“That is how medical alchemy works, Highmage. Of course we seek to transmute the darkness of the soul into light.”
“Ah, but what happens when you run into your limits? For example: when the darkness is born of irrefutable truth? What way is there to transmute that darkness except to spit in the face of God and lie?”