Alchemised, page 38
Violent want was more likely.
There was a dull pounding in her head. She could feel Luc being pulled further and further from reach. All light in her life disappearing.
“You look so bitter.” Ferron’s mocking voice drew her back. His eyes glittered. “You’d think I just demanded you fuck me rather than not. Disappointed?”
Slow rage was seeping through her. “Do you always buy your company?”
It was only a guess, but Ferron seemed the type. Guild families with a tradition of resonance-based marriages had reputations for wandering into the beds of others. Marriage among the guilds was as much a business arrangement as the silk entertainment houses on the West Island.
Ferron’s eyes gleamed. “I admit, I enjoy the professionalism,” he said with a shrug. “Clear lines. No expectations. And I don’t have to pretend I care.” His lip curled at the last word, as though caring were the most offensive concept known to man.
“Of course. How very you.”
“Quite,” he agreed with a thin smile.
She wished she could hurt him, that there was a way for her to do it that counted.
He hurt her so much, without even trying, without needing to know anything about her. He’d simply spoken her name and reduced her to property, his whims locking an iron chain around her throat.
“Do you talk to them, tell them all about the tragic life you’ve had? Or are you just in and out, quick as you can?” she asked, her voice lilting with the taunt.
His eyes flashed.
“Want me to show you?” His voice was sharp and cold as a splinter of ice.
She met his eyes and raised her chin. “You won’t.”
His expression hardened. She knew that she could goad him if she kept going.
She’d finally get it over with, stop enduring Crowther and Ilva’s search for signs that she’d been ravished or ravaged. Stop lying awake at night, cold with dread, wondering when it would finally happen. She was sick of waiting. Of wondering on and on. Like bracing for a sword to fall.
She kept talking. “It would be too real for you, wouldn’t it? If it was someone you knew. I think that’s why you haven’t. You’re afraid I’ll mess with those clear lines, so you’re making up all these excuses about needing to train me.”
The muscle in his jaw rippled.
“Testing me, Marino?” His voice was cool, like the flat side of a knife blade.
She didn’t blink. “Yes. I am.”
There. She’d done it now.
He walked towards her across that cold, filthy room, and rather than quicken, her heart slowed. Each beat heavy, drawn out as he leaned forward until their eyes were level.
“Strip.”
It was all he said.
She couldn’t move.
She knew she was supposed to do whatever he wanted. That was the deal she’d made. And she’d wanted it to be over, but now her body wouldn’t obey.
She stood frozen. The tenement was nothing but an empty room with a chipped tile floor and a wooden table, and every aspect of Ferron that she could read screamed that he was about to exact a profound degree of cruelty upon her.
“I see now.” He smiled like a wolf. All teeth. “It’s been killing you, hasn’t it? Wondering. You expected me to do this to you right off. The waiting—trying to guess when I might get around to it—that bothers you more than having to fuck me. Well, you have your wish. Take your clothes off, Marino.”
She barely managed to swallow. Her ears were ringing until she could scarcely hear herself think.
He wasn’t even aroused. She could tell. He was doing it to teach her a lesson.
Crowther was wrong. He was so desperate to get some kind of leverage on Ferron, he’d convinced himself of some kind of slowly germinating obsession, but there wasn’t any. Ferron had simply identified what Crowther wanted to believe about him.
The whole mission was pointless.
Her jaw began to tremble uncontrollably. “You don’t even want me. Why did you ask for me?”
He laughed. “You’re right, I don’t want you, but owning you will never get old. As long as you live. What a promise to make. I wonder how much I can make you regret it.” His teeth flashed again. “Take your clothes off, Marino. It’s time to see what I’ve been paying for.”
Her hands trembled as she reached up and began unfastening the top button of her shirt.
“It’s power that gets you off, isn’t it?” Her voice shook with rage as she forced herself to move down to the next button. “Hurting people is the only way you know how to feel anything. But now even that barely does it for you, so you have to find new ways to do it, make your victims responsible for their pain; making it a choice they made, a vow they consented to. That’s what thrills you now. Using what people care about to coerce and enslave them rather than having to do the physical work of hurting.” She scoffed in his face. “You think you’re better than us because you’re immortal, but you’re dead inside already.”
She said it despite knowing he’d probably enjoy her attempt at bravado, because she wanted to say it at least once. He didn’t laugh at her words, though; instead the malice in Ferron’s expression vanished.
He stood there staring at her, growing paler and paler.
Then something metal inside the walls of the tenement groaned and the air hummed. Helena could feel Ferron’s resonance in the room, an uncontrolled surge of energy distorting the room. This was one of the many reasons alchemists were dangerous. When they lost control, their resonance could expand beyond them. It was a combat technique, but without stability and control, it could annihilate anything within their repertoire.
And Ferron was a vivimancer, which meant Helena was within his repertoire. She could feel his resonance in her bones.
Her skin vibrated. A thrum ran through her heart.
Ferron’s expression contorted into one of pure rage. “Get out!”
She didn’t move, terrified that in an instant she’d be atomised.
He snarled and turned away from her, and the door warped, the sharp sound of metal and mechanisms splintering as it folded in on itself and split apart, writhing as if alive.
“Get out!”
Helena did not need further invitation. She bolted through the door, leaping across the wreckage and fleeing down the stairs so fast, she slammed into the landing wall. She shoved herself back to her feet and fled the Outpost.
Chapter 29
Martius 1786
Helena was still catching her breath, a stabbing pain in her side, as she was taken to Ilva’s office to report on what she’d seen in the wetlands.
Ilva sat across from Helena at her desk, a fountain pen clasped in her fingers as Helena gasped out the information.
“I thought chimaeras were a transmutational impossibility,” Ilva said calmly when Helena finished.
“That’s what I was taught,” Helena said.
“And Ferron says there will be more?” Ilva’s expression was difficult to read.
Helena almost flinched at the name but nodded. “It was just the beginning, he said.”
Ilva hummed under her breath, her pale eyes distant.
When Luc was at the front lines, he abdicated his other responsibilities as Principate to Ilva, not realising how ruthless she was in making whatever choices protected him alone.
Helena had liked that about her. When Ilva had first taken an interest in Helena, Helena had been flattered, seeing herself and Ilva as kindred in a cause, because they were both fully willing to make hard choices for Luc’s sake.
She’d thought they were partners.
“How are things progressing with Ferron?” Ilva asked as Helena started to stand.
Helena stilled, sinking back into the chair, fingernails digging against the punctures in her palm. “He’s quite—mercurial.”
Ilva just hummed again. The strained expression she’d worn when the offer had been presented had vanished. Ilva seemed at peace with her choice now.
“Hopefully the new healers free you to focus.”
Helena’s throat closed, her knuckles whitening at the insinuation that the healers were for her benefit.
“I’m sure they will be a great help,” she said with a false smile. “Although—the initial training does take up quite a bit of time.”
Lines of tension appeared in the wrinkles around Ilva’s eyes.
“I’m sure you know about the shortages in the hospital inventory. Usually, when I have time off, I try to help supplement the hospital’s inventory—”
“Oh yes, Pace has mentioned it…” Ilva said slowly. “Your father had that—little apothecary in the low district, didn’t he?”
Helena gave a startled nod. Given that her father’s medical licensing hadn’t been recognised as legitimate in Paladia, the apothecary hadn’t been categorically legal. Medicine, like everything else in Paladia pre-war, was industrialised, modernised, and licensed, which rooted out would-be charlatans but had a tendency to raise prices. An amount considered trivial in the upper districts could be a month’s or a year’s wages in the water slums.
An unlicensed tincture might not be even half as effective, but it did have the added benefit of not sending the invalid and their family into debtor’s prison.
“He was a doctor, though, wasn’t he?” Ilva looked sincerely curious.
“Yes. He trained in Khem, manual surgery and medicine. He and my mother ran a surgery and apothecary together in our village before I was born.”
Ilva inclined her head. “Is that why you studied so much chymistry? I was on the board approving your scholarship every year. We used to wonder when we reviewed your transcripts. It seemed an odd choice considering your repertoire. You used it to help him during the summers, didn’t you?”
Helena froze. Working as an underaged, unlicensed chymist in an illegal apothecary was not within the Institute’s student code of conduct.
Ilva waved a dismissive hand. “It’s all in the past, Marino. You’re not going to be deported right now for a six-year-old violation of labour law. Really, it’s an example of Sol’s providence that you have all these skills.”
Her saliva turned sour; she stared at her hands. “Thank you.” She swallowed. “Um, due to the shortages, I’ve been trying to help where I can. I’ve been extracting salicin from willow bark; it can act as a stopgap for a few things until Novis sends more.” Her voice was stilted. “The thing is, the willow bark is best harvested in early spring. In a few weeks, the snowmelt and Ascendance will have the wetlands flooded, so the more I can process now, the better—but if I was working and got called away, it could spoil the batch. Cost us medical supplies. I was wondering, is there anyone with some chymistry experience who might be willing to help, just help finish up, if I’m called away? Or I could bring them supplies to process themselves.”
Ilva’s head inclined almost mechanically, her expression growing tight as a demurring smile drew her lips back. “Helena…”
“Since it’s all we have right now, it seems a shame to waste a resource,” Helena added quickly.
Ilva paused, measuring her words. “A few weeks ago, this might have been a very different conversation, but that’s hardly something I can ask of anyone now. Our chymists have extensive assignments of their own, and I suspect Falcon Matias is unaware of this supplementing you’ve been doing. He would have to be informed of anyone assigned to you in an official capacity.”
“Of course.”
“Actually—” Ilva suddenly sat forward. “I take that back. I just thought of someone who might be interested. Shiseo. I ran into him the other day.”
Helena looked up, forehead furrowed. “Who?”
“Oh, he’s an Easterner, Far Eastern. All the way from the Empire, in fact. He came to Paladia with a political asylum request after the new Emperor came to power.” Ilva tapped her chin. “He’s some kind of metallurgist, I think. Apollo was thrilled to have him, always loved foreign alchemy, said that kind of exposure was good for Luc. He’s still here. Very educated, I believe. He might enjoy the opportunity to observe Paladian chymiatria.”
“Doesn’t he work at the forge?” Helena asked in confusion. Metallurgists were a vital resource.
Amusement flickered in Ilva’s face. “No. We don’t allow an Easterner near the Athanor Furnace, Marino.” She nodded to herself. “Yes, I don’t think he’d mind at all. You two could work well together.”
A Far Eastern metallurgist was not what Helena had in mind. She didn’t want another trainee; she wanted help, for something in her life to be marginally less difficult.
“Well, if he’s willing, I suppose we could ask.”
Ilva hummed, seeming distracted again. “Very good. Well, you can go now, Marino. It would appear I have scouts to dispatch and a Council meeting to call about these chimaeras.”
Helena went to her lab and unpacked her satchel, washing and laying out all her willow bark and sphagnum to dry. When she went to her room in the Tower to clean up, the evidence of Lila’s return was littered everywhere.
Helena filled the bathtub, sinking in up to her neck. Now that she was alone, she could think about Ferron. Her brazen stupidity and his reaction to it.
He hadn’t hurt her.
She hadn’t realised how much she’d expected it. She’d assumed that if she ever provoked him, purposely or not, death or severe injury was inevitable.
Everyone knew the Undying were violent and sadistic. There were countless stories about the senseless cruelty they indulged in on the battlefield. Protected with invulnerability, they relished the atrocities they could commit.
Helena had assumed Ferron would be like the rest of them.
Now she wasn’t sure what he was.
He’d been so angry. Angrier than she had ever seen anyone, but he had driven her off. He hadn’t hurt her at all.
She sank under the water until it covered her face.
Why not? After all, he didn’t care about the Eternal Flame. So what held him back? It wasn’t as if Ferron was above violence. He’d ripped out a man’s heart with his bare hands.
She replayed what she’d said.
The shock on his face, as if he hadn’t realised what he was like until she’d told him.
Chapter 30
Aprilis 1786
Before the next Martiday, Helena submitted for and received a standard-issue alchemical knife. Because of the chimaeras, she skipped foraging and went directly towards the Outpost, casting a wistful glance over the wetlands as she turned towards the dam.
There had been more than ten chimaeras spotted outside the city, mostly wandering the banks of the West Island. There were no deaths reported yet, but many of the people trapped in the city and on the Outpost relied on the river for food. It was only a matter of time.
Several units were being assembled into hunting parties. Predictably, Luc had immediately volunteered his battalion.
Inside the tenement, the door to the unit had been replaced. Helena hoped it was a good sign as she let herself in.
Her cloak and jacket, both abandoned by her flight, were on a table, neatly folded.
Ferron was not there.
She walked around the room, inspecting it. There were remnants of a kitchen, and a far door revealed a filthy bathroom, the sink chipped and stained as if there’d been chemicals poured down it. At least it had a bathroom. Some of the tenements in the low districts were so old, they didn’t even have that.
She sat, fingers curling against her palm, using her resonance to tamp down her rising unease and keep her thoughts from anxiously spiralling. It was fine, Ferron was just late.
The minutes dragged on.
She hadn’t told Crowther or Ilva what had happened. She’d passed it off as a brief meeting; Ferron had warned of the chimaeras and she’d hurried back, no mention of anything else.
But if Ferron didn’t show up, she would have to tell Crowther, explain what had gone wrong. Her chest grew so tight she could barely breathe.
When ten minutes had passed, she forced herself to accept that Ferron was not coming, but as she pulled her satchel up onto her shoulder, the door clicked and he walked in.
He didn’t seem at all surprised to find her still waiting there.
He closed the door and stood in front of it, his expression unreadable, body eerily still. It was strange how empty his posture was.
Helena had relied heavily on body language after moving to Paladia. Etras was culturally expressive; words, expressions, gestures were all part of communication. Northerners were canny, and they often communicated more through subtext than their actual words.
That was why Helena had been so drawn to Luc: He wasn’t like that; he didn’t say things he didn’t mean. With other Paladians, Helena had learned to decipher what they meant through their bodies instead of their mouths.
However, Ferron’s body said almost nothing. He reminded her of a gambler, hiding his tells. There was nothing about him that indicated his current mood.
“I’m sorry,” she said, breaking the tense silence. “I shouldn’t have said that last week. I lost my head. I’ll do—whatever you want to make it up to you.”
Ferron didn’t react beyond his eyes flickering briefly.
“It’s fine,” he said after a moment, his voice void. “When I specified willing, that meant you were allowed to say no. Although, perhaps try saying it next time, instead of provoking me.”
Helena looked at him in astonishment. From the moment Ilva and Crowther had told her the terms, she’d assumed her willingness, once given, was irrevocable.
Anything that happened after, she’d already agreed to.
