Alchemised, page 105
She was the loveliest thing Helena had ever seen.
“Look at her. She’s ours. She’s all ours. You’re not going to hurt her.”
Kaine was frozen as he stared at her. He’d stopped breathing, and his fingers spasmed, trembling as he finally reached out. He barely brushed the baby’s palm, as if he thought his touch might poison or break her. The tiny hand instantly closed around his finger, gripping it.
Helena watched him and recognised the expression that slowly filled his eyes as he stared at the tiny person tenaciously clinging to him: possessive adoration.
* * *
Enid Rose Ferron was, according to Lila, the easiest baby ever born. The older she grew, the more she looked like Helena, except for her eyes, which were, in colour and angle, just like Kaine’s and the grandmother that she was named for.
She slept beautifully and rarely cried. She would sleep for hours in her overly indulgent father’s arms, snoozing on his chest as he watched Helena work in the kitchen or in the little laboratory set up in one of the outbuildings.
Enid possessed the solemn curiosity of an owl, head swivelling as she observed everyone around her. Helena would carry her in a sling, tucked against her chest, where she could wrap her arms tightly and protectively around Enid’s tiny body when the shadows grew too long.
Once Enid could safely sit up, she would spend half the day sitting on Kaine’s shoulders, riding about with him while he walked the perimeter of the property over and over, checking all the buildings and visiting Amaris, who would vibrate with excitement but hold utterly still when Enid tugged her ears and patted her.
Kaine talked to Enid more than he talked to anyone, even Helena. He would monologue to her about everything: the trees, the sea, the tide and moons, alchemy techniques and array theories, what the weather might be, and Enid listened to him intently, fretting if he got distracted or fell silent for too long.
When the next summer Abeyance arrived, it brought news from the North, detailing the siege currently in progress, how the city was being starved into compliance as demands of surrender were ignored.
They were all relieved when the Abeyance ended and there was no more unspoken question hanging in the air of whether they could or should do something more.
Enid might have been a perfect child, if not for the terrible influence of Apollo Holdfast.
The instant Enid could walk, the idyllic quiet of the island was forever shattered. The two children tore through the house, shrieking and shouting, oblivious to the ways their parents flinched and started at sudden noise.
From Pol, Enid learned to climb hills and trees, tearing her clothes to bits scrambling down the cliffs. She made mud pies and soups and “healing” potions in jars stolen from the kitchen. She learned to wrestle, and to fight with the play swords that Lila had made to teach Pol combat basics.
Pol planned to be a warrior someday, and Enid wanted to be one, too. Both children held Lila in high esteem because she was a warrior with a metal leg, which they found significantly more interesting than their own legs.
Pol showed an early and exceptional proficiency for pyromancy. Then Enid, apparently not to be outdone, healed Pol’s lip after he split it open running into a door. Helena was horrified by the early manifestation, but Lila reassured her that she had been similarly young when her abilities began making intermittent appearances.
Enid was reading by the time news came that Paladia had finally surrendered. The allies had poured into the city, securing and dispatching necrothralls so stick-thin and malnourished that they scarcely put up a fight. There were stories about the conditions found there, of citizens so starved that they were mistaken for necrothralls as they swarmed the liberating soldiers, begging for food.
By all accounts, it was an exceptionally successful campaign, with few casualties for the allied armies. The Liberation Front was ceaselessly praised for bringing the tyranny of the Undying to an end.
But Helena felt sick reading of it, overcome by a sense of betrayal. How different it could have been if the international community had decided to put even a negligible amount of effort into caring sooner. If Hevgoss and Novis had been less concerned over which of them would control Paladia afterwards. They’d all bided their time, waiting until the situation grew intolerable for them, and only striking after their victory was assured, and still somehow they were heroic.
In the papers, all the horror stories about the conditions inside the city, described in lurid detail, were only shared to highlight what the Paladians had been saved from, rather than as an admonishment of what they’d been left to endure.
Morrough was not among the casualties or captives. Somehow he remained alive in the caves beneath the Institute, and after a few failed attempts to breach the underground, the Liberation Front left him there, hoping he would die on his own.
With the “liberation” out of the way, the focus of the allies turned to the urgent matter of getting Paladia economically productive once more, with debates raging about what Paladia should look like in the future, whether it should exist at all or perhaps become a shared territory that Hevgoss and Novis would collaboratively control.
Trials were expected to begin soon. The international community denied any knowledge of the forced labour on the Outpost, or that all the industrially vital lumithium had been extracted by necrothralls for the last several years. However, they couldn’t deny knowledge of the repopulation program, so instead they insisted that as far as they knew, participation had been voluntary.
At some point in the siege or seizure of the city, Stroud had disappeared.
When the women began to be released from the Tower, stories about the program began to emerge—the abuse and torture that Stroud had permitted, and the children born and subjected to experimentation to study early-childhood resonance and how it developed—but they were regarded as too horrifying for print. Most of the focus was on the forced labour on the Outpost and the mines and the malnutrition among the surviving civilian population.
There was pressure for the matter of the repopulation program to be quietly resolved. The women urged to move on rather than be retraumatised in court; hysterical unmarried mothers could hardly be expected to provide admissible testimonies. It was a stain upon the Northern identity that such atrocities had occurred, and so it was treated as some evil and twisted idea that had sprung from the Undying’s regime, as if selective breeding had not been long rooted in guild culture.
No, there would be convents for the mothers and, for the children, an orphanage where they could grow up to become productive members of society. And so it could all be forgotten.
Kaine was the only one who didn’t seem surprised at how things unfolded. Helena was so upset that she was sick for days, and Lila started to disappear, leaving Pol with Helena and Enid for long periods.
After the children were in bed one night, Lila came into the kitchen where Helena was working on a chymiatria project that she hoped might help to manage her heart.
“I need to talk to you,” Lila said. She was very pale; she’d been quiet and withdrawn ever since the Abeyance passed. She sat down and stared at the fire for a long time. “I have to go back.”
Helena had known this day was coming, but her stomach twisted at the announcement. Lila was not made for a quiet life. She was never going to be happy on an island. She’d stayed because of Pol and Helena. But from the moment they’d read the bulletin on the ship, Helena had known that if Lila hadn’t been a mother to a toddler, she probably would have jumped off and joined the Liberation Force.
“I’ve been thinking about it for a while. I can’t let them do this. They’re erasing everything. Everyone. They’ll bury everything that happened. They don’t care; they just want the manufacturing back. It’s like watching vultures close in after they spent all these years watching us die.”
Helena sighed. “What does going back do, Lila?”
“I’m going to kill Morrough,” Lila said. “I’m going to go in, and I’m going to kill him. And then I’m going to make sure that no one ever forgets about the Resistance.” Lila’s throat worked repeatedly, the scar twisting her face. “So I need you to take care of Pol for me. And I need to learn how to fight using vivimancy, and get whatever obsidian’s left. And, Helena, I need you to teach me how to build a bomb.”
“Morrough might be dead in a year.”
“I know. I won’t wait that long. I’m going to go during the winter Abeyance.”
“That’s an incredibly dangerous voyage,” Helena said sharply.
“I have to go!” Lila’s voice rose. “They killed my family, they killed Luc, they killed—everyone. I can’t tell Pol about how brave and wonderful his dad was and know that the person who killed him is still out there. No one cares about the way Luc fought and suffered trying to save us”—she gestured furiously—“because he didn’t win. They’ll forget all about him if I don’t go back.”
“You could die. Don’t leave Pol an orphan.”
Lila was staring at the fire, the expression on her face so intense, so yearning, she looked as if she might slip her hands into it if it would let her touch Luc again.
“I made an oath that I would die before I let Luc come to harm, but he died and I’m still here. I’ve tried to bear it, for Pol, but I can’t. Not anymore.”
* * *
Helena reluctantly compiled her research on bomb-making. The technique used to bomb the West Port Lab had the most potential, especially if they could find the sources of oxygen feeding into the underground.
She’d thought about the design over the years. She’d been in a rush and improvised, using the materials available. With time, and resources, it could be far more effective.
In the meanwhile, Kaine trained Lila in combat vivimancy. To the surprise of no one, Lila had been training in secret. Objectively she was a better fighter, except that Kaine did not follow any rules. He switched from vivimancy to combat alchemy to sheer underhandedness constantly, so that the instant Lila had an advantage, the fight became something different. He was brutal with her, exacting and impatient to a degree that he’d dramatically softened with Helena. He gave Lila no such consideration. He beat her weaknesses out of her.
Helena hadn’t realised how much time and consideration Kaine had devoted to thinking about killing Morrough. The strategy it would require. As if he’d spent the years on the island waiting for Lila to ask. Perhaps he had. Or perhaps he would have gone and tried to do it himself if he’d been physically able to, but he wasn’t. He’d never fully recovered from the torture Morrough had last inflicted on him. Under stress, his tremors were worse than Helena’s.
“You should put your name on this,” Lila said when Helena finally gave her a design for the bomb. “Even if people think you’re dead, you should get credit for your work. Luc always used to say you’d be the one to outshine us all.”
Helena shook her head. “I don’t want anyone to wonder about me or to look too hard. It’s not worth the risk. Just say you took the design when you escaped, and you don’t know who developed it.”
Pol came to slowly understand that his mother was leaving. He was five by then, and he and Enid had birthdays close together. As an early gift, Lila and Pol went to one of the larger islands and returned with a leggy white shepherd puppy named Cobalt, named for his father’s horse.
“He’ll keep you company and keep you safe until I come back,” Lila said. She’d let the dye in her hair fade, letting it grow blond again. It was braided and pinned around her head, because this was how she wanted Pol to remember her. “I won’t be able to send letters, but I’ll send messages sometimes, all right? And whenever you see Lumithia, that means I’m thinking about you, and when you see the sun shining, that’s your dad, watching you for me.”
Lila’s eyes shone with tears. “And you’ll look out for Enid? She’s your best friend. You have to stick together, because that’s what best friends do.”
* * *
The High Necromancer, Morrough, once known as the first Northern alchemist, Cetus, died on a spring day.
According to the newspapers, the underground stronghold was breached by an elite team of Novis and Hevgotian military, accompanied by Paladin Lila Bayard, the last surviving member of the Order of the Eternal Flame. A mysterious pyromancy bomb was used in the initial attack.
The blast caused the famed Alchemy Tower to collapse, and the wreckage was painstakingly excavated and infiltrated as the team was mobbed by necrothralls.
Many were killed in the attack. Lila Bayard was nearly killed. The general leading the attack ordered that everyone fall back, but Lila had refused. She went on alone.
Newspapers across the continent featured a photo of Lila Bayard emerging from the rubble of the Alchemy Tower, helmet gone, face filthy, her armour streaked with blood. The brutal scar across her face was starkly visible, sharpening the look of cold triumph as she dragged the remains of Morrough’s mutated and rotting corpse behind her.
There was no denying Lila Bayard’s heroism. She had done what a dozen countries had failed to do.
Having a living, breathing member of the Eternal Flame who had done the impossible made it harder for the allied nations to treat Paladia as an utterly failed nation that needed external control. Lila was offered all sorts of ceremonial roles, but she refused them.
She had not come back to rule. She wanted those lost remembered, and she wanted the tragedy of the war confronted, not buried, so that it could not happen again.
* * *
In Lila’s absence, Pol and Enid grew intensely attached to each other, to the point that Helena and Kaine began to watch them with worry.
“She’s not going to handle it,” Helena said as they watched Enid and Pol run from tide pool to tide pool. “She’s so much like us. I don’t know if it’ll be better or worse to begin preparing her for it.”
Kaine nodded as the children teased a large crab which then chased after them, scuttling sideways. Enid and Pol both tripped, shrieking with laughter as they tried to drag each other away from the pursuing claws, and Cobalt barked wildly.
Word had come that Lila was leading reconstruction efforts to have the Alchemy Institute reopened. There would be a new Tower, a new school, but not all Northern alchemy would be funnelled through the narrow admissions rate of the Institute. Generations of knowledge and alchemy had been destroyed; the continent was in desperate need of more alchemists, as many as could be trained. Alchemy certification would no longer be exclusive to Institute students but overseen by external bodies and given to anyone who could pass the necessary resonance tests and exams.
The Institute would return to its original purpose of new heights and advancements in alchemy.
After fierce debate, vivimancy was added as a field of alchemical study at the Institute. Lila had insisted on it. Healers had been vital to the Eternal Flame during the war. The potential of the resonance was being villainised and wasted by superstitious paranoia; it should not be an ability exclusive to those willing to abuse it. Paladia’s discriminatory treatment of vivimancers had played a role in how easily the Undying had recruited them. Paladia had to evolve.
It took a year and a half, but finally Lila returned, but she had not come to stay. She was taking Pol home.
Helena tried to change her mind, but Lila would not be moved. Luc’s son had to go to Paladia and see what his family had built.
The only consolation to Helena was that Pol would never be the Principate, for there would be no more Principate.
The world had seen Lucien Holdfast grovel at Morrough’s feet and beg for immortality before his execution. Even with claims that perhaps he’d been coerced, promised leniency for the rest of the Eternal Flame, the mythos surrounding the Holdfasts and the idea of a lineage of divinity had been irrevocably shattered.
Pol would go to Paladia as a Holdfast, and he and his mother would rebuild what had been dearest to his family’s heart. The Alchemy Institute.
“Come back with me, Helena,” Lila said as Kaine took the children on a walk along the cliffs. “You can run the vivimancy department; think of what a difference you could make. You’d be establishing a whole new formalised field of alchemy. You’d be perfect for it.”
“How would that work?” Helena asked. She could tell that reality was setting in for Lila, the realisation of all the politics and pressure that were the price of her choices.
“Do I leave Enid here? Or take her with me while I try to clear Kaine’s name?”
Lila looked away, staring out at the sea. “You can’t clear his name. It’ll never happen. I know you think he’s a tragic hero with no choice, but he’s done the most terrible things. People talk about Morrough, make jokes about him, but do you know who no one ever jokes about? The High Reeve. People look sick at the mere mention of him. His signatures and seal are everywhere. He was involved in everything. There was nothing that happened in that regime that Kaine didn’t know about.”
Helena’s throat tightened. “Well, that’s the thing about being a spy and destabilising a regime. You have to know about things. How else did you expect him to do it?”
Lila’s shoulders drooped. Helena understood why Lila did not want to be a sole survivor, the lonely hero. In Paladia, she was still surrounded by vultures, watching her, waiting for any mistake, some means to tear her apart, just as they had when she was a paladin.
Now Pol would be in their clutches, but even knowing that, Lila couldn’t leave her family, country, or legacy. It was not in her nature to give up a fight.
“I’m not going to leave him,” Helena said after a pause. “There’s no version of me that survived the war without Kaine. I was loyal to Luc, and I know you want Paladia to remember him, but that country killed him, as much as Morrough did. I can’t go back to it.”
