Quicksilver

Outside, Saeris encounters a magical vortex that Fisher calls a shadow gate, which allows for instant transportation. When Fisher forces a frightened Saeris go through the gate via her oath, Ren is angry that Fisher bound Saeris in this way. Saeris is astonished and furious when the oath makes her body obey Fisher’s orders no matter how much she resists.

Portal travel makes Saeris weak. Ren urges her not to judge Fisher too harshly, blaming his ruthlessness on the wearing effects of the quicksilver. He refuses to tell Saeris about Fisher’s exile, claiming the story must come from Fisher himself. Saeris feels there is no excuse for Fisher’s behavior, no matter what he suffers.

The next day, Carrion rudely wakes Saeris by pinching her. He reports that Hayden is alive; Madra did not make good on her threat to destroy Third Ward. Carrion got Hayden a good job in another ward. Saeris weeps with happiness, then demands to know what has happened in Zilvaren in her absence. Carrion insists that nothing has changed, but Saeris suspects that Madra still intends violence. He further reports that Fae healers treated Saeris while she slept.

Saeris explains everything she has experienced. Carrion teases her about kissing Fisher. When Fisher arrives and summons Saeris to learn about the relics, he does not use the oath magic, mostly to stop Ren from being angry, not for Saeris’s sake. Saeris agrees to learn, but only after Fisher promises to “allow [Saeris] and Carrion to return to Zilvaren the moment [she has] made enough relics for [his] people” (241).

Saeris is surprised that Cahlish is a beautiful manor, not the war camp she anticipated. She wonders how Fisher must have felt, as a child, moving at Belikon’s command from this peaceful home to the Winter Palace. A fire sprite called Archer sobs with happiness when he sees Fisher. Fisher embraces him warmly.

Fisher and Saeris debate their roles in helping their homelands. Fisher contends that he must protect Yvelia, as its guardianship is his birthright, but that Saeris is just a random person. She insists that helping her friends and family is morally right.

Fisher and Saeris go through a magic doorway to a well-stocked forge. Saeris is annoyed, assuming they could have traveled by this simple magic rather than the exhausting shadow gate. Fisher explains nuances of magic use: If they had summoned the gate at the Winter Palace, Belikon would have sensed the surge of magic. Unlike quicksilver, shadow gates can only work within Yvelia’s realm.

Fisher produces a chest full of nearly 2,000 rings; he has eight further such chests. She realizes that his promise to let her go after she makes enough relics means that she must complete 15,000 transmutations. She calculates that learning to make the relics will take months, then transforming them will take years.

The forge has books by long-dead Alchemists, but these prove unhelpful. Instead, Saeris experiments with scrap metal, feeling for the frequencies she can detect in different metal types. She produces a sample relic and then listens for the mental whisper that leads her to quicksilver. She tries combining the sample relic, quicksilver, and various powders in different ways to no avail.

At the end of the day, she encounters Ren, who has spent the day protecting the border against attackers. Ren confides that he has ordered Fisher to get to know Saeris, as he thinks this will help Fisher see her as a person, instead of a tool. Ren directs her to have dinner with Fisher. 

At dinner, they discuss her failed transmutation attempts. She laments the time it will take to re-purify the quicksilver needed for the experiments, but Fisher cannot provide her with more; quicksilver is scarce and Belikon has decreed that any new discoveries belong to him. He will not give any to his armies; Fisher suspects that Belikon does not truly care about winning the war. 

Archer and other sprites are shocked to see Fisher eating with a human. Archer dotes on Fisher, as he helped raise him, and is intrigued by Saeris. Saeris asks Fisher to send Carrion home immediately, causing Fisher to tease her about Saeris’s and Carrion’s sexual history. This connection is, Fisher contends, what led him to Carrion; he could smell a pheromonal connection between the two.

The window suddenly explodes inward and four enormous Fae burst in. Fisher fights with his sword Nimerelle so fluidly that Saeris is temporarily distracted. As she fights another of the creatures, maggots spill from the creature’s wounds. The creature nearly kills Saeris, but Fisher saves her at the last moment. Saeris grows weak from the poison in the creature’s claws, which scratched her. Fisher explains that these “Feeders” are foot soldiers from Yvelia’s enemy, Sanasroth. They can only be killed with silver.

Saeris has a nightmare about being trapped with the bloodthirsty Feeders. She wakes in Fisher’s bedroom. The two immediately begin bickering about who is to blame for the attack and whether it will happen again. She contends that humans and Fae are similar, while he asserts that they are starkly different, due to human weakness. He insists that she stay in his bed and rest while he travels to Innír, a war camp. He teases her that she will ask him to join her in bed, which she denies. When he leaves, she realizes that her oath means that she must physically remain in the bed. For the next five days, she is trapped in the bed, bored, only able to leave to use the restroom.

On the fifth day, Carrion comes to entertain her, proposing they have sex in Fisher’s bed. Saeris refuses, but Carrion continues to flirt. Carrion shows off new boots, which Fisher gave him in return for taking a bath. Saeris realizes this is the result of Fisher being able to smell Saeris on Carrion.

When she is finally healed, Saeris experiments at the forge for days with no success. Each attempt loses some of the silver scrap, leaving her with finite chances. She is startled from one experiment when Ren arrives, covered in blood, returning directly from camp to tell Saeris that Fisher is back and wants to have dinner that evening. Saeris insists that Ren join them. She asks about Nimerelle; Ren explains that nobody knows why it, unlike all the other god swords, still has magic or why it has become tarnished and black over the centuries.

Saeris brings Carrion to dinner, too. He flirts with her until Fisher growls at him. Fisher is annoyed that Carrion and Ren are there; Ren is astonished when Saeris sits directly next to Fisher. When Carrion admires Fae fighting styles, Ren invites him to train, and Saeris asks to go along, causing Fisher to snipe at her about continuing her task in the forge. Ren is amused by Saeris’s and Fisher’s bickering.

Fisher uses the oath’s magic to make Saeris eat, which she is stubbornly refusing to do despite being hungry. She accuses him of being evil; he retorts he has only used the oath to compel her to do things that are good for her. He is sexually explicit in describing how he could use the oath for evil, flustering her. She is appalled that she is aroused by his description and that Ren and Fisher both know it.

Fisher, Ren, Carrion, and Saeris travel to the Innír war camp, which has developed into a town in the many decades of war. The camp faces a river. Surrounding it is “a blackened, charred wasteland” (299). Beyond the riverbank is an obsidian castle with jutting turrets. Ren explains this is Ammontraíeth, the capitol of Sanasroth. A camp aide, Holgoth, tries to get Fisher to speak to the troops, but Fisher refuses to resume leadership, citing Ren’s excellent command over the last century.

Ren trains Carrion and Saeris in sword fighting while giving a lecture on the geography of the area. Though Ren’s skill far outstrips that of the humans, Saeris remains determined to learn to fight him. She feels renewed confidence at fighting back, even just in training. She is pleased with her accomplishments when Fisher arrives and mocks her. Ren insists that Fisher join him for the meeting with the army captains.

Fisher leads Saeris to his quarters in the camp. He asks her to eat dinner peacefully without their usual bickering. Even so, Saeris cannot resist baiting him. They debate the effectiveness of Fisher ordering Saeris to obey him via the oath or asking her to do something and explaining why, which would result in her fighting him less. He asks her to trust him.

Suddenly, he kisses her. Their kiss grows heated, but when she openly admits her desire for him, he pulls away. He kisses her again, signaling that she shouldn’t speak. He explains that he “can’t trust anything” and then leaves (316).

Saeris wanders through the camp, wondering what this means for their relationship. Ren, to her embarrassment, can smell evidence of the romantic interlude between Saeris and Fisher. She enters the war tent and sits near Carrion, who is happily eating by the fire despite the tension in the tent. Carrion draws Saeris’s attention to a small, bleeding wound on her neck. Fisher enters the tent, making the assembled Fae gasp. One captain, Danya, is angry that Fisher has been absent for a hundred years. Ren and a captain named Lorreth defend Fisher. Fisher insists he can’t tell them why he abandoned his troops so suddenly a century prior. 

Danya, furious, attacks Fisher, but before she can strike him, Saeris uses her metal-control powers to shatter Danya’s sword. Danya’s shock that Saeris is an Alchemist is cut short when the soldiers pile out to break the ice on the river so that the enemy cannot cross.

Carrion ignores the order to stay in the tent, rushing outside to help. Saeris follows him. They approach the river, where massive warriors use sledgehammers to batter the thick ice. Holgoth, the camp aide, tells Saeris and Carrion that 50,000 vampires are approaching the river; if they cross, the Fae at Innír will be overrun. The humans join the Fae in breaking up the ice with hammers and fire magic. When the ice shatters, Fisher’s smoke magic forces the vampires into the freezing water, drowning them.

A voice that someone nearby identifies as Malcolm calls out from the far side of the river, taunting Kingfisher, and reveals that Kingfisher was with him during his exile. Saeris recognizes this as a tactic to cause dissent among the Yvelian warriors.