“You told me.”

“You should escape, Kelley. For God’s sake, don’t you have a family?”

Kelley said nothing. He had no family. But really, where else was there to go? He felt branded, like an outcast. He felt it so strongly in his heart that surely it must show on his face. Where could he go where decent people would look him in the eye and not know he’d spit in the face of God? No, Kelley was doomed to live out his days in Prague Castle, a sinner hiding among other sinners, a madman in a city of madmen.

“The dreams are the worst,” Roderick said. “It is always early in the morning, on the verge of waking. I’m dead and my soul travels into a deepening gray, no color, no light, just on and on into eternal gray, a vast nothingness.”

“It’s just a dream.”

Roderick erupted into a spasm of coughing that startled Kelley.

The astrologer gestured to a white cloth on the stand next to his bed, and Kelley handed it to him, jumping back when the coughing was renewed with double the force. Roderick coughed into the cloth, his body shaking violently. The cloth came away bright red.

Roderick sank back into his pillow. He seemed to deflate right before Kelley’s eyes, as if the life force fled from the old man’s decaying body.

The astrologer closed his eyes. “Don’t let this happen to you. Edward, listen. Don’t let it happen. Go now. There’s nothing you can do here but watch me die.”

Kelley opened his mouth, could not think of one comforting thing to say, no words of hope or wisdom, nothing to acknowledge anything other than death. He said nothing, walked away from Roderick’s bed, walked out of the infirmary, didn’t look back. His mind’s eye saw again the blood so red on the white cloth.

Kelley went back to his room in the White Tower and uncorked a fresh jug of wine. He drank and drank, but nothing would wash away his sins.

The sun shimmered orange on the horizon when Kelley heard the bells. Something was happening. He rose from his chair, stumbled, realized he hadn’t moved in hours. He’d sat staring out the open window, slowly making the jug of wine disappear. He righted himself, went to the window ledge.

People ran across the courtyard below. One came toward the White Tower.

Kelley flopped back into the chair, closed his eyes, and waited. Soon he heard the footfalls on the stairs. A second later, there was a knock at the door.

Go away.

The lock came louder, a voice shouting on the other side of the door, “Master Kelley!”

He stood reluctantly, went to the door, and opened it a crack to see a teenager on the other side, with a dirty face, greasy hair. Some random lackey from the stables or kitchens.

“Master Kelley?”

“What is it?”

“Word’s all over that he’s dead, sir. The emperor has everyone running every which way. Said to come fetch the alchemist. I’ve got to get back, but the emperor wants you right away and no mistake!” Breathless. He dashed away before Kelley could ask him anything.

He went downstairs and out of the tower, paused to dunk his head in the water trough, where he drank handfuls of water. Damn, he was still half drunk.

He was halfway to the castle when he was intercepted by one of the emperor’s robed advisors. He recognized the man’s face but couldn’t come up with a name.

“Is it true he’s dead?” Kelley asked.

“I’m afraid so,” the advisor said. “Naturally, the emperor wants to… ah… take the opportunity to test the device.” The advisor quickly looked around to make sure no one had overheard him.

Kelley shook his head. What would Roderick think about being brought back to life by his own invention? “Where is he?”

“They’re putting him into dry clothes now,” the advisor said.

Kelley stopped walking, then looked at the advisor, confusion on his face. “Dry clothes?”

“I thought you’d heard. He drowned in the Charles River. It happened just an hour ago.”

“Wait. What was he doing in the Charles River?”

“That’s hardly relevant.” Haughty. Impatient.

“But I just… how did he get to the river?”

“The emperor’s cousin was boating with a couple of young ladies. He fell in and drowned. It’s hardly-”

“Hold on. Who? The emperor’s cousin?”

“Who do you think we’ve been talking about?”

“I just…” The emperor’s cousin. Not Roderick. “I was confused for a moment. Never mind. Lead on.”

Kelley followed the advisor to St. Vitus Cathedral, past a brace of guards keeping out casual worshippers, and into the vault leading to the caverns below. The paths had been completed and roped off for safety; the entire underground complex had been completed. Even the ladder that led down the front of the dam had been replaced by narrow stone steps along the cavern wall.

It had been explained to Kelley that the caverns would be the most well kept of state secrets, the legacy of the Holy Roman Emperors. That was one of the reasons a dead peasant had not been brought in previously to test the machine on a human. If the peasant was brought back to life, then he would need to be killed again to keep the secret, and not even Rudolph could bring himself to be that bloody. Only the emperor and the royal family and his heirs would have access to immortality.

Laborers who’d worked in the caverns had been pressed into the army and sent to faraway campaigns. Soldiers standing outside the cathedral had no idea what they were guarding. Of course, rumors spread of the strange activities in and under the castle, but the emperor’s spies continued to spread the tale that the alchemists were transmuting lead into gold. (A rumor that also helped explain why so much lead was being sent to the castle.) It was a cover story that would hold for centuries.

They entered the waterwheel chamber, where Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II waited with more advisors and captains, the most powerful and influential people at court. They watched him expectantly as he approached. Kelley stood before the emperor and bowed his head just enough to show respect. He’d been through too much to grovel. He no longer cared what happened to him.

Rudolph looked him up and down. “Kelley, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Highness.”

“And you can operate this machine? Roderick has shown you?”

“Yes, Highness.”

The emperor stepped aside, gesturing to the table on the stone dais. A man lay stretched out on the table. A circle of lenses hung from a thick chain above, with a prism and another, larger lens in the middle of the circle.

“My cousin,” Rudolph said.

Kelley nodded, climbed the steps of the dais, looked down at the young man on the table. Fair hair, still slightly damp, clean bright skin. He’d been put into a dry robe of plain, white cloth. Bare feet. He didn’t look dead at all. He looked like he was sleeping, dreaming of something far away. Kelley put his hand on the man’s chest. No heartbeat.

“Can you do it?” Rudolph called from below.

Kelley pointed at a wall of lead a dozen feet wide and seven feet tall. It had been erected as protection from the machine’s rays. “You’ll be safe behind there.”

The emperor and his advisors looked at one another a moment, then scurried behind the wall.

Kelley looked at the cousin’s smooth face again. Had he deserved to die so young? Was he a good person? Kelley had never met him in life. Maybe God had selected him for death. Perhaps he was wicked and cruel, and it was a kindness to the world to be rid of him. Who was Kelley to decide his life or death? Kelley tried to convince himself he wasn’t deciding anything. Roderick had built the machine. Rudolph had given the orders.

Kelley was simply pulling the levers.

“What’s happening over there?” Rudolph called from behind the wall.

Kelley frowned, ignored the emperor.

The alchemist circled to the other side of the dais, where a row of twenty levers connected to gears and pulleys and flywheels. He pulled the first lever, and the sound of rushing water filled the cavern. The waterwheel turned, slowly at first, then more rapidly. The other levers determined the order of the lenses, the flow of light, lowering the whole apparatus. It all had to be done in the exact order. Kelley had been over the scribbled instructions in his journal a thousand times. He knew the procedure by heart.