Nine

Edward and Alphonse are waiting up for her, heads bent together over the bedrolls. She stops short on seeing them, pocket-watch curled in her fist, and for a moment she considers not telling them—keeping it all inside, selfishly, a secret to hold alone. But then the lantern-light flickers and she catches a glimpse of the wells beneath Edward's eyes and the slump of Alphonse's broad shoulders, and she tosses the watch onto the bare blanket between them.

The back-plate springs free and rolls away, disgorging the watch's contents.

"It was a message," she says with a heavy sigh. "He covered the seam with something thin enough to melt, and that's what I found inside. That's why he told you to give it to me."

She sits heavily between them, scrubbing her face with her left hand before working her right loose of the sling. Ed takes the photograph between two fingers and gingerly unfolds the accompanying parchment. He reads the little folded fragment of paper that, unfolded, reveals line after line of Roy's cramped handwriting.

September second—saw Tabitha today. She prefers the river-walk, and always wears a spray of daisies in her collar. She introduced me to Henrietta and Emily, rooming together for the winter. They asked me to tea, and I declined. Tomorrow is Rosalie, and after her, Ernestine. Dance card's full. I passed a bakery and thought of Svenja. Abigail was working, but I didn't stop in. Francesca was somewhere around—no need to cause a scene. Irene's birthday is next week: penny candy and daffodils. Rebekah is going to bring her sister, Sarah, by the office sometime soon.

Flirtatious gibberish—and it goes on for the entire length of the page. Women she's never heard of and a thousand little anecdotes that don't quite connect. To a casual viewer, it is a list of conquests, a recorded series of empty and meaningless nights that never existed.

"You sure it's a message?" Edward says delicately. "Looks like just...keepsakes."

"First letter of each name," she sighs, dropping onto the roll and closing her eyes. His favored cipher—notes disguised as journal entries, meeting minutes. It takes the boys less than ten minutes to solve it for her.

"Theresa first brought me buttercups in nineteen-aught-nine."

Her tired eyes snap open, and she fixes Edward with a questioning frown.

"What did you say?"

She checks their decryption herself, entirely awake now, but it's correct:

Theresa first brought me buttercups in nineteen-aught-nine."

"But that's not right," she says. "It was 1898."

"What?"

"Look at the photograph."

She pulls their notes closer to herself, brow creased, while Edward flips the photograph around.

"Riza, Wellesley, 1899," he reads. "I don't—"

"We first met in 1898," she explains, eyes skating over the page again and again. "I was nine—we met the train in Wellesley, and I brought him buttercups from the garden. This—"

She shakes the page.

"—is wrong. By 1909 we were in Ishval."

"But who's Theresa?"

"My name is a derivative of Theresa," she says quietly. "It means reaper."

She takes up the pen in her left, murmuring more to herself than them.

"Why does it say 1909?"

As they watch, she writes out two shaky lines:

U-i-f-s-f-t-b-g-j-s-t-u-c-s-p-v-h-i-u-n-f-c-v-u-u-f-s-d-v-q-r-j-o-o-j-o-f-u-f-f-o-b-v-h-i-u-o-j-o-f.

S-g-d-q-d-r-z-e-h-q-r-s-a-q-n-t-f-g-s-l-d-a-t-s-s-d-q-b-t-o-r-h-m-m-h-m-d-s-d-d-m-z-t-f-g-s-m-h-m-d.

"What does that look like to you?"

"Elements," Alphonse says, after a lengthy silence. "The first one: uranium, iodine, fluorine, sulfur. A couple don't fit, but the second line's nothing."

So she writes the line out again, grouping the letters into elements, bracketing the nulls, discarding, rearranging. They are left with a list of repeats which Riza copies out, for a final time, at the bottom of the page.

Her glance skitters across the mess of notes and lines and cross-outs above, and the curve of her knuckles glints so hauntingly familiar. A shiver knocks the pen from her grip.

"That's enough," she says. "That's enough for tonight."

The riddle distracts the boys sufficiently from questioning her transmutation—and she pushes the incident from her mind as well. Always her father insisted she had no natural talent at it—her requests to learn even a modicum of what he freely gave his apprentice were always rebuffed without a second thought.

What she knows now is only the product of rote memory: idle observation spanning years, a study only of boredom. She recognizes the symbols easily enough—fire cradled by air and earth—but their deeper meaning eludes her. The mechanism as well is a mystery. It's not enough to have the array: something within the alchemist is necessary for activation.

Father always told her she had no feel for it, after all.

She can't remember the catalyst of her display—too focused on tearing into Hughes to even really begin to be conscious of what she'd been tracing into the dust. What in her mindless doodle had created the lantern's explosion? Anger? Confusion?

She is thankful for the lack of questions from all other witnesses, but still she cannot seem to find a moment to herself in the days that follow the discovery of the pocket-watch's secrets—a moment to reflect, to consider, to examine the mysteries of the picture and the note. She had wanted in, after all, and now there is no escape.

Everyone is waiting to debrief her—the laboratory and the philosopher's stone and the homunculi and the countrywide transmutation circle—and when she can distract herself from her thoughts, Riza is mostly listening, still shadowed close by Edward and Alphonse. Jean seems unwilling to test their new boundaries, and Hughes seems set on making up for past exclusion by over-inclusion. She still doesn't really know what to make of Scar.

Ground was lost, ground was gained—everyone acts very busy, but no one seems to know what exactly they are doing anymore. Riza learns quick when to nod and when to keep still.

The pocket-watch is a weight now, stabbing between her ribs when least expected, carving its own little hollow into her chest. The message consumes her thoughts—stuffed between the pages of a small notebook that accompanies her everywhere.

The riddle of his final words. She is desperate to solve it—while the others are discussing a move north to pursue some lead of Scar's, Riza is tracing and re-tracing the elements and their atomic numbers, arranging in her mind every possible combination. Truth within the truth, as she had once heard Edward say, so long ago.

Elements, atomic numbers—this is only the second layer.

For a week she carries it, too proud to ask for any more of the boys' help, too distracted by the impending move to properly examine her own thoughts. Mebdo is closing to them—the conspiracy has overstayed its welcome and must clear out before discovery endangers them all. At Jean's suggestion they will be northbound, seeking an abandoned old mining town called Baschool. Scar will go a bit further to retrieve a book or journal or something—while the rest of them carry on doing exactly what this conspiracy seems best at: waiting.

"We still don't know what they're planning to use the portal for or when—or why they need sacrifices alive."

At the far end of the table, Hughes is pouring over a map with Edward and Alphonse and Breda. They have marked out every significant conflict with dates and casualty counts—the country is a sea of angry red waves.

Riza stays on her end, half-turned from them, scribbling and scrawling.

"Seems to me if we want answers to those questions," Rebecca says, "we should be asking the ones that know."

"If you can catch them," Riza mutters, tracing the letters of Theresa over and over again. She raises her voice a little, so they'll know it's directed at them. "Could've done so already—if you'd had a net in place when you were using me as bait."

"Are you suggesting something?"

She drops her pen and meets Hughes's guarded gaze.

"It went after me, specifically," she says, "to quiet him. The fact that it failed—that attacking me was enough to make him break free, even for a little while—that can't go unnoticed."

"Lieutenant's right," Edward says, a little too quickly. "And if we get the colonel—we could try to figure out how we can get that thing out of him."

The adults look away from him—save for Riza, who drums her fingers on the tabletop.

"If they think you're alive still," Hughes concedes quietly.

"And why wouldn't they?"

He meets her eyes briefly, sighs, looks away—stalls.

"You've been reported missing," Hughes finally says, with a heavy. "In two days, a body's going to be found a few miles downriver of East City. Grumman will identify it as you."

She huffs out a breath, incredulous.

"Suicide? Have an old man pretend his only living family...isn't anymore?"

"Groundwork was there," Hughes says, and she's gratified that he looks at least a little ashamed. "Most of your personal effects left at home—your wallet, your dog. A few people have already reported seeing you that night, walking alone and looking...distressed. And you were—"

He clears his throat and looks away again.

"—you were already on watch, pending release from duty."

Not gratified enough to eliminate anger completely, of course. Riza's pen hits the tabletop with sharp, rapid little taps.

"Whose body is it?" she snaps.

"A convincing fake."

Another moment or two of tense silence before she relents.

"Well, there's nothing for it now. Guess we just hope it's not that convincing."

"I don't think they'll give up that easy," Breda interjects gently. "I think they'll take the bait."

"If we set it up right," Rebecca says. "If we're ready. If they don't send more than one. Maybe."

Riza drops her gaze back to the scrawled mess of her notes.

"What we need is firepower," she says quietly.

"I'll think about it," Hughes says, and suddenly he has closed enough distance to tap the page, interrupting her scrawl. "What's so important about September second?"

The atomic number for uranium, written out large and centered on the page, as though size will engender further discoveries. She flips the page closed.

"Nothing," she says sharply. "Just scribbles."

The significance hits her hour later—as she stands beneath a tepid shower stream, scrubbing clumsily at her scalp. Her first proper shower in nearly a week: they all have to share the one working stall in their makeshift medical building. Rebecca waits on the other side of the curtain, humming.

Ninety-two. Nine and two. September second.

"Saw Tabitha today," she whispers, pressing her fingers into the seam between broken tiles until her knuckles blanch. It's not her voice she hears—it's his, his voice and his lips forming the words, the simple clear perfection of his lopsided smile.

The pocket-watch is back beneath her pillow, hidden away, and she must wait through getting dressed, through Rebecca brushing and braiding her hair, through Marcoh carefully fixing the binding around her now numb hand. No haste in the shivering walk back to the barrack—Ed's gloved hand holding on to her elbow, guiding her through the snow drifts.

She can't hope to explain the logic of this assumption nor the absolute certainty of it—so she doesn't bother. She says good night and crawls into her bedroll and pulls the watch from its hiding place. The back-plate pops off easily in her hand, and she extracts the folded parchment with two trembling fingers. One long edge is ragged—a page torn from a book. She holds the watch to her chest and tries to keep her breathing even.

The next morning is more waiting—partially from a desire for discretion and partially from fear of confirmation. After breakfast, she paces the beaten-dirt floor of their common hall, waiting to catch Breda alone.

"What's up, Riza?" he asks, as she motions him into a quiet corner.

"Can you still get a message to Central? I need to send a telegram. To a Madame Christmas—she runs a bar down by the markets near the river."

He blinks.

"Uh, sure. What d'you need it to say?"

She stares down at the hand strapped immobile to her chest, focusing on the slight tingle of burn.

"Did he ever keep a journal?"