Alchemised, page 24
“I—”
Aurelia slapped her across the face, the iron rings cracking against her cheekbone. “I don’t want to hear from you!”
There was a loud bang outside the door, as if someone was trying to break it down. Aurelia jumped.
There was another boom.
Aurelia smiled. “I think he’s noticed I’m in here,” she said. “But they’re never going to get through that door in time. Not when I have this.”
Aurelia set the short staff directly onto one of the iron bars in the floor, and they twisted up like vines, wrapping around Helena’s wrists and jerking down. Her knees hit the floor with a sickening lurch that shuddered up her spine.
Aurelia stood over her. “I told you not to cause problems for me.”
The banging on the door had grown louder. Aurelia tilted her head to the side.
“You know, Kaine’s terribly hard to shop for. I can never find anything he wants, but there is one thing that he started collecting…Do you know what it is?”
Helena’s heart was racing. She shook her head.
Aurelia nodded towards the far corner of the room. “Eyes. There’s one right over there. I bet he’s watching us now. I don’t think he’s got any brown ones.”
“Please don’t.” Helena tried to wrench her hands free, but the iron around her wrists did not yield.
“Don’t worry,” Aurelia said. “This way Kaine will still have pieces of you once you’re sent back.”
Helena tried to jerk free, but Aurelia made the iron pull her lower until her shoulders threatened to dislocate.
Ferron will come. Ferron will come.
The words ran through her mind in a relentless loop. He would; he had to know what was happening. He wouldn’t let Aurelia—
He was in the city. She knew how long that journey was.
Aurelia grasped Helena by the chin. Her rings had lengthened into threatening points. “Open your eyes wide.”
Helena trembled. “Please—”
“Shut up,” Aurelia said, dropping the short staff and gripping Helena’s jaw tighter, the tips of her rings sinking into Helena’s cheek.
The banging outside the door grew louder.
Aurelia pressed the tip of one of her ring spikes against the outer corner of Helena’s left eye, digging the tip back into the socket. She smiled, eyes alight with malice. “I hope I’m there when Kaine sees you next. Even if he kills me, the satisfaction of this will be worth it.”
Helena jerked her head back as Aurelia’s ring sliced along her cheek.
“Aurelia!”
The scream shattered the air. Not one voice but several all at once. All in unison.
“Aurelia!”
The thralls were screaming through the door. Inhuman, tearing rage in their voices.
Aurelia started and gave a panicked laugh as she glanced towards the door. “I didn’t know they could do that. Guess you get all the special treatment.”
She turned back to Helena, her fingers digging into Helena’s hair to hold her in place as she dug the spike into the side of Helena’s eye again.
Pain and pressure grew; Helena could feel that her eyeball was on the verge of being pulled from its socket. The thralls were still screaming, but Helena barely heard them above her own heartbeat. She was struck by the surreal thought that Aurelia Ferron’s face would be the last thing she ever saw.
She was going to be left in the dark forever.
Her eye gave, and her vision became one-sided.
The whole house shook as the floor rippled, like a creature come to life.
Aurelia let go, turning in bewilderment. Before she could do anything, iron bars tore themselves out of the floor and walls, darting towards Aurelia like striking serpents, closing around her and dragging her away.
Aurelia screamed in terror as she was dragged off the floor, fighting to free herself with her own resonance, but the iron bars wrapped tighter and tighter until Helena heard bones breaking and Aurelia went limp, her iron-taloned fingers splayed and contorted where they’d been trying to push back against the bars.
Everything stopped.
As quickly as it had come alive, the house sank back into stillness.
Chapter 17
Helena’s arms were straining against the implacable iron, the edges scraping across her skin, shoulders screaming as she struggled, trying to wrench herself free. The room around her was only half visible, and all in ruins. Her terrified breathing was the only sound. The house was utterly quiet.
It seemed an eternity before Helena heard the distant sound of footsteps in the hall. The door warped, opening, and then Ferron was kneeling in front of her, blocking the ghastly sight of Aurelia from view as the iron around her wrists melted away. She collapsed towards him.
Her chest was spasming with suppressed panic.
He tilted her face up towards his, and his expression grew horrified. He touched her cheek and held her face as he drew several deep breaths.
“Your eye is out of the socket, and you have a deep puncture in the white,” he said, his voice shaking. “How do I fix it?”
Helena stared dazedly at him, shuddering as tears tracked down her face, running along his fingers. Her breath came faster and faster.
She should know the answer to the question, but she couldn’t remember. She could only feel the spot where Aurelia’s iron talon had punctured her eye.
Ferron gripped her firmly by the shoulders. “Look at me. I need you to stay calm and tell me how to fix this. You know how to do it.”
She choked back a sob.
Think, Helena. She was a healer. Someone had an injured eye. She needed to work efficiently if she was going to preserve their sight. Focus.
“F-F-For a punctured sclera,” she said in a wobbling voice, casting her mind back, trying to recall the technique. She had no idea how to explain it to a novice vivimancer; she’d never taught anyone to heal.
It was pointless anyway. Ferron might be able to repair damaged tissue, but he wouldn’t restore her vision. She’d still be blind in one eye. She crumpled.
Ferron gripped her tighter, holding her firmly upright. “Come on. You know how you’d do it. Tell me.”
She swallowed hard. “The resonance has to be very close,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. “You start at the deepest part and replicate the tissue exactly like the surrounding tissue; it won’t matrice the way skin will on its own. You have to regenerate each structure fully. Layer by layer.”
That answer alone would have been enough to deter any knowledgeable healer. Basic regeneration was one thing, but matricing tissue was technically taxing and mind-numbingly repetitive, like watching one’s skin being rubbed off. It made the brain itch, but concentration had to be maintained the entire time.
Ferron was ignorant of this.
He placed his hand over hers, their fingers aligning, and she could dimly feel his resonance through her own fingertips before it cut off at her wrists.
“Show me.”
Her wrists were ringed with bruises. Pain shot through the bones as she moved her fingers. She ignored it, focusing on the intuitive sensation that had been absent for so long, dimly feeling her eye where his resonance ran through her fingertips.
Transmutation always started with an initial touch to forge the connection. Once it was established, the alchemist could allow their fingers space to manipulate the channel.
Her fingers moved cautiously, prompting his, weaving invisible filaments of energy into a lattice of fragile tissue.
Ferron’s silver eyes were almost luminous as he imitated the motions.
A tug came from the centre of her eye.
She whimpered, trying to hold still.
It was like a needle being poked into the puncture, a thread pulled through, on and on.
It took all her willpower not to jerk away, to focus on the feeble sense of resonance, to keep creating the complex regenerative structure.
Despite how small the wound was, it took ages. Ferron didn’t stop even when Helena’s fingers cramped and failed and fell away, the sensation leaving her ready to scream.
“And now?” Ferron asked the moment it was finally over, not giving her even a moment’s respite.
She drew a deep breath.
“For—for a—a luxated eye,” she said in a voice far calmer than she felt, “you have to morph and retract it carefully or you’ll strain the optic nerve—more.”
The motion was like turning a dial. Her eye slid back, squeezing and morphing before settling back into place with a nauseating pop.
She blinked slowly. Her eye hurt; it had grown dry and sticky after being so long exposed.
“H-How much can you see?” Ferron asked, tilting her face up towards his, his fingertips pressed against her jaw, his thumb running along the place where Aurelia had sliced her cheek open.
She stared at him and covered her right eye with her hand. His face was mere inches away, but there was only a dark blur.
“I can’t—” Her voice cut off, chest constricting. Her hand slid from her eye to clamp over her mouth as she fought not to sob.
“What else do I need to do? How do I fix it?” He gripped her shoulders, still not letting her slump.
She shook her head, pressing her hands against her temples. “The optic nerve’s probably damaged. I can’t—help, though—it’ll be too—”
His fingers pressed around her eye socket, and she could feel his resonance moving along the nerve towards her brain. Her body convulsed violently at the sensation, but he held her still. She felt heat and the same agitating regeneration process as he found the damage hidden between her eye and brain. An animal-like whimper escaped through her clenched teeth.
He pulled his hand away and stared at her. It was lighter now, like peering through a heavily fogged window.
“Anything?” His voice was hoarse.
“Your hair’s pale. I think—I can make out your eyes and mouth a little—”
“Good, we’re getting somewhere, then. Now what?”
He wanted to do more?
“Um…Atropine drops, from belladonna. It would dilate the pupil, keep it from straining while the tissue’s recovering.”
“Get the kit,” Ferron said to the servants, all of whom had been frozen in place, inanimate while Ferron’s full attention was on Helena. One of them sprang to life and hurried down the hallway.
“I need to deal with Aurelia now,” Ferron said. “Wait here.”
Helena nodded, slumping back.
She watched through her blurred vision as Ferron turned to face his wife.
He didn’t even need to touch the twisted metal that wrapped around her. A flick of his hand and the tangle of iron slipped away, slithering back into the floor and walls.
Ferron knelt, pressing two fingers against Aurelia’s neck.
The imbalance in Helena’s vision made it hard to track how injured Aurelia was as Ferron began setting bones and popping dislocated joints back into place as easily as if he were assembling a puzzle.
He set a hand on Aurelia’s chest, and Helena expected to watch Ferron create a new necrothrall. Instead, Aurelia screamed, lurching up from the floor, her eyes wild with terror.
“What? How did you—?” Aurelia was spluttering, her hands flying to her chest and sides, touching herself all over in confusion. “How? How are you here?”
“This is my house.” The rage in Ferron’s voice was palpable in every word.
“But you—you were in the city!” Aurelia seemed more hysterical about that than anything else.
Did she not remember what Ferron had done to her? Or was it simply too much for her to comprehend?
“Yes, I was. It was incredibly inconvenient of you, forcing me to leave in the middle of a ceremony.”
“But—how did you—” Aurelia looked around the ruins of Helena’s room.
“Did you think the thralls were the only things I can control from a distance? This is my house, and my family metal.”
Helena stared at him in shock. What he was claiming wasn’t possible.
There was no way that anyone could possibly transmute iron from a distance, especially not in that manner.
Ferron’s resonance might be beyond anything Helena had ever seen, but even he couldn’t reach all the way from the city and control the inner workings of Spirefell with such accuracy. He would have been acting blind, with no idea of what he was doing, unless—
She looked towards the eye in the corner.
No. It still wasn’t possible, even with that. Every inch of distance from a transmutational target increased the effort. Even if he’d merely been in a different wing of the house, he’d be dead, dissolved into nothingness like a collapsing star, to use that much power.
It happened sometimes in the factories when the transmutational array sourcing was too powerful. The alchemists would disintegrate.
“That’s impossible,” Aurelia said, echoing Helena’s thoughts.
“Underestimating your husband twice in one day? That’s not very wifely of you.”
“Oh, are you here for me? No, you aren’t, you’re here because of her.” She pointed accusingly at Helena. “You nearly killed me, and you did kill Erik Lancaster, because of her!”
“Yes, I did. Do you know why? Because she is the last member of the Order of the Eternal Flame, which means that she is important. Infinitely more so than you will ever be. More important than Lancaster dreamed. My job is to keep her mind intact. When your father had you educated, did he ever mention that the eyes have a nerve connecting directly to the brain? What do you think happens if you just rip them out?”
Aurelia glanced towards Helena in horror.
Ferron kept talking in his cold, unsympathetic voice. “I’ve tried to be patient with you, Aurelia. I’ve been willing to overlook your indecent behaviour and petty interferences, but do remember, aside from being somewhat decorative, you are useless to me. If you ever go near her again, or speak to her, or so much as set foot in this wing again, I will kill you, and I will do it slowly, perhaps over the course of an evening or two. That isn’t a threat. It’s a promise. Now get out of my sight.”
Aurelia scrambled up clumsily, her face contorted in fear and pain as she fled, limping, from the room.
Ferron stood, breathing deeply before he turned back to Helena. His eyes were still blazing silver.
He approached her slowly and knelt, turning her face up towards his again, studying her eyes. “The pupils are different sizes,” he said. “I’ll call a specialist. See if there’s anything else to be done.”
She stared back at him. He looked haggard, his skin pallid grey, his eyes too bright in contrast, but maybe it only seemed that way because of how her vision blurred.
“Were you in the house when you—” She gestured at the wreckage of the room.
He glanced over. “No. Or I might have managed it more neatly. I’d reached the edge of the property.”
“How—?”
He gave a tired grimace. “The ability came compliments of Artemon Bennet, although he didn’t have any idea at the time of what he was doing. It was intended to be a punishment.”
Helena’s eyebrows furrowed. She had no idea what could be done to make a person’s resonance so powerful that they could control iron from a distance like that.
“How could anything—?”
“I don’t want to discuss it right now,” he said, cutting her off.
There was a pause. She still felt like she should say something.
“How did you know I’d be able to fix my eye?”
“You were a healer.”
“Yes, but…” Her voice faded. She was unable to explain why she felt dissatisfied with the answer.
“Where did you learn to heal?” she asked, thinking back not only on how easily he’d imitated her directions but also how he’d dealt with Aurelia, and repaired the nerve damage on his own.
“Well, you see, there was a war, and I was a general. Picked up a few things.”
A headache was developing in Helena’s temples from her imbalanced vision.
“Well, you—you have a natural talent for it. In another life, you could be a healer.”
“One of life’s great ironies,” he said, glancing towards the door, his jaw tight.
The maid had returned carrying a satchel, the kind that field medics wore, strapped over the shoulder and belted at the waist.
Ferron took it, rummaging through the pockets. She heard the rattle and clink of glass vials.
“Just atropine?” he asked, looking towards her with a vial in hand.
She shook her head. “Five drops of atropine diluted in a teaspoon of saline.”
There was more tinkling, unscrewing, pouring, and then he pocketed something and snapped the satchel shut. The maid immediately took it back.
Helena started pushing herself unsteadily to her feet.
“I should—lie down so it doesn’t run,” she said. Her balance felt off and her hands and arms shook, refusing to bear her weight. She sank back to the floor. Perhaps she’d just lie there.
A hand closed around her elbow and drew her to her feet.
“I’m not leaning over you on the floor,” Ferron said in an irritated voice. Rather than pull her to the bed, he led her out of the room and down the hallway to another room.
The air was stale, the bed stripped and bare. Ferron wrenched a dustcloth off a sofa, and Helena lay down flat on it.
He leaned over her, vial in hand. His face went in and out of focus every time she blinked. Dark. Light. Dark. Light.
