Alchemised, page 51
He exhaled. “My father sought treatment for my mother prior to my birth. A vivimancer they employed believed she likely possessed a latent degree of vivimancy, and didn’t realise that using her vitality wasn’t necessary.” He wasn’t looking at her. “Perhaps it was similar for yours.”
Hearing those words, Helena felt like an immense weight had been partly lifted from her. It was possible that her mother’s death, while still her fault, had at least not been her doing. She drew a shaky breath, not sure if she could believe it. Why would Kaine tell her this? Why would he care about her guilt?
“Vitality is a strange thing,” he said, stepping away. “It doesn’t take much to do things like necromancy or healing. If it did, necromancers would hardly be a threat, and you would’ve been dead in a week as a healer. Here’s what’s interesting, though: If I were a necrothrall, you could have ripped out my vitality. Reanimation doesn’t fully bond with other bodies, it just reactivates a corpse. Bennet would give almost anything to be able to transfer souls between living bodies, but it always kills them instead.” He arched an eyebrow. “Do you see where I’m going with this?”
“No.”
He waved a hand, and despite being halfway across the room, the lock turned and the door opened. Helena was horrified as a necrothrall entered the unit.
“Ferron!” she said sharply, backing away, but she ran into something solid. He’d moved behind her, and when she tried to escape the approaching necrothrall, he gripped her by the shoulders, trapping her in place.
She tried to kick him, her heart racing. “Let go! Let go of me.”
“You’re not going to blast it apart, and you’re not going to attack. When it reaches you, you’re going to take the vitality reanimating it.”
“Are you insane?” She tried again to twist away, but he took her by the wrist and pushed it forwards, firmly, so that her hand pressed against the necrothrall’s chest.
It was a man. He looked as if he’d been around forty. He’d been dead for a few days at least before being reanimated. She couldn’t see a visible cause of death, but she could smell it. It was probably hidden somewhere beneath his clothes. His eyes were empty, the whites yellow-stained, the skin taut.
“Feel the energy,” Ferron said softly. His hands were warm on her shoulders, simultaneously bracing and trapping her.
She’d never touched a necrothrall with resonance like this, never experienced the dissonance of life and death entwined. There was a heart beating sluggishly, oxygen-deprived blood crawling through the veins. There was no life; it was just energy.
The living had a vibrancy, but the necrothrall was dead. It was like a perpetual electric shock on an animal corpse to make the systems function.
“Do you feel it?” Ferron asked.
She gave a shaky nod.
“Then take it.”
She squeezed her eyes shut and pulled. It was like a plant in loose soil. The energy came loose, and a shock of power ran up her arm.
The world went silver-white, as if she’d exploded in place and then instantly reconstituted.
She dimly heard the muffled thud as the necrothrall hit the ground.
She blinked to find Kaine kneeling beside the corpse.
He touched the hand for only a moment, and the dead man sat up, standing and walking back out.
Kaine looked at her. “If you’re ever attacked by necrothralls again, don’t waste your energy obliterating them. Just rip out the reanimation.” He looked away. “It’s possible it may keep the Toll at bay for you.”
Helena said nothing. Beneath her skin, her nerves were still buzzing.
“I didn’t know that was something vivimancers could do,” she said, trying to get her thoughts straight.
“I don’t think that most can,” Kaine said, straightening. “It’s something only animancers are capable of.”
He said it so casually that it took Helena a moment to process his words. She looked at him sharply.
“How’d you realise?” she said.
A thin smile curved across his face. “It was just a guess.”
She flushed.
“I did think you were rather quick to catch on with the memory trick.” He straightened. “Now that you’re not at risk of keeling over from performing a bit of basic transmutation, I want to see your combat forms.”
Her stomach sank. She could already feel his impending judgement.
“It’s been a while,” she said, digging for her knife from her satchel. It had fallen to the bottom, and she had to dig out several bundles of herbs and sphagnum moss to find it. “I wasn’t very advanced. Academic track, you know.”
“So was I,” he said, watching her through insolently lidded eyes, but she could see a gleam of silver beneath his lashes. “You should be wearing that knife. You can’t afford to waste time fumbling through that bag of yours, and you should have at least two of them.”
“Two knives would get in the way of my vivimancy.”
He raised his eyebrows. “With thralls, yes, but not if you’re fighting the Undying. Or a chimaera.”
She looked up. “Couldn’t I still use vivimancy?”
“If you’re close enough to touch them, they’ll have already killed you. You don’t regenerate. To survive, you need distance.”
She looked down at the knife in her hand. It was annoyingly hefty, but everything standard-issue was. “A knife isn’t going to give me much more reach than I already have, and if I’m walking around armed, I’m more likely to be noticed. It’s safer to be mistaken for a civilian. Necrothralls usually leave them alone.”
“Not anymore. With the losses incurred this year, now that the Eternal Flame controls the entire East Island, there are no civilians any longer. Anyone on the East Island, or elsewhere without the right papers, is an enemy, and may be treated as such.”
Helena’s mouth went dry. “Anyone?”
“Man, woman, or child. When the Eternal Flame was constantly losing territory, the Undying could afford to be magnanimous, but the goal is eradication now.”
* * *
Helena knew about combat forms. Academically.
She had also practised them, but it had been a very long time.
Kaine seemed to think she was the most incompetent combatant he’d ever seen. After only brief observation, he started her all the way back with first-year forms, drilling them on and on until they were perfect.
After he was relatively civil about the animancy, she wasn’t prepared for how merciless he’d be about combat. He was completely vicious. It was only marginally preferable to being chased around the room having furniture thrown at her.
“I doubt this is going to save me from anyone,” she said after a week, growing uncomfortably sweaty. Her arm trembled as she raised the knife over her head for the hundredth time and channelled her resonance, altering the length and curve of the blade.
“If you can’t master the basics, you’re not going to survive anything.” A boot collided with the small of her back.
She gave a startled scream and barely managed to keep herself from ramming face-first into the wall by getting one foot out to catch her momentum, her knife curving instinctively as she spun around to face him.
Her spine was throbbing. A little harder and he might have broken it.
“What the fuck, Ferron?”
“Ah, back to surnames, I see,” he said coolly.
“That. Hurt,” she said through gritted teeth, touching her back gingerly, her resonance preventing the swelling before it could start.
“Then keep your guard up.” His eyes flashed. “I’m not training you to take a test. Do you think combat is for standing around seeing who transmutes best? You’ll never know what’s coming. You use your resonance to predict attacks. If you let me close enough to hit you, I will. Now keep going.”
She shook her head, refusing to move.
His expression darkened. “I said, keep going.”
“I’m not like you,” she said venomously. “If you hurt me to teach me a lesson, I need time to recover. And when I’m exhausted, I just make more mistakes. I’m not staying here to see how much you have to hurt me before you manage to remember that a trivial injury for you can paralyse me. You’re lucky you didn’t just now.”
His lips turned white. She turned away, sheathing the knife and shoving it into her satchel.
“This isn’t combat training,” he said when she was at the door. “You’re going to get killed if you don’t learn how to defend yourself. That’s the only way to survive.”
“Well, whatever it is, you’re a terrible teacher,” she said as she opened the door and slammed it behind her.
Chapter 41
Octobris 1786
The war had always moved slowly, but as autumn set in, it slowed to a crawl. The two sides held almost equal territory. The ports had made a significant difference in the Eternal Flame’s strength, but they lacked any clear path to victory. The West Island was even more vertical than the East. The way the towers and buildings interlocked and intersected made it almost impossible to retake without risking mass casualties.
The current balance was thanks to Kaine, but it was a tenuous stalemate because they had no idea when he might someday stop or, worse, betray them.
At his reappearance, the pressure from Ilva and Crowther resumed tenfold, but Helena had no idea how to make progress. Kaine was angry and perpetually on his guard around her, and his methods of training offered few openings, although he was noticeably careful not to hurt her again.
Under his exacting eyes, she learned to key up her resonance until it filled the air around her, sensing attacks coming before they hit.
“Finally,” he said after she at last managed to block a light-speed blow without breaking form at all and immediately followed it with an attack.
It was the closest thing to praise she’d earned.
She slumped against the wall, breathing hard. The muscles in her forearms and biceps felt raw and coppery from all the metal transmutations she’d done over and over. Her resonance ached inside her nerves, brain buzzing, a hum that made her teeth itch.
It was no wonder Lila was always jittery when she came back.
Helena flexed her hands.
“You need a better knife; that alloy’s wrong. It’s slowing you.”
She looked away. It was raining outside, water streaming across the windows. She was so hot that she wanted to walk out and douse herself in the fresh autumn rainfall.
“I don’t have the rank for anything else,” she said.
The Resistance metallurgists had years’ worth of projects on their dockets: tools, base weapons, rappelling harness gear, armour, prosthetics, not to mention the expectation that they’d invent new weaponry as the war progressed. Without the Institute being able to train new metallurgists, those they had were a critical resource. The generation who should be learning the craftsmanship were all either in combat or dead. Standard-issue was what everyone in the Resistance got. If they couldn’t fight with that, they couldn’t fight as alchemists.
To obtain bespoke weaponry was something combat alchemists dreamed of: weapons forged to perfectly match the owner’s specific resonance strengths and combat style. They were versatile, felt impossibly light, and took almost no effort to transmute. They were also much harder to defend against.
“What do you mean you don’t have the rank? Aren’t you a member of the Eternal Flame?”
“Yes,” she said quietly.
“I thought that was part of the package deal: You swear your life to a set of asinine religious ideals and get a valuable weapon in compensation.”
She stared at her shoes.
It was traditionally a part of joining the Order of the Eternal Flame. They were issued following a vow ceremony, a weapon to defend the ideals they’d sworn to uphold. They were deeply symbolic.
But when Helena joined, it was just after Principate Apollo’s death. Many people had joined at the time. She’d been sixteen, just starting basic training. New members going immediately into combat had greater need. Helena didn’t even know what type of weapon would be suitable.
The matter had been forgotten when she became a healer. Weapons were for those in combat. She was not, and never would be.
“There are more immediate needs than making me a special weapon that I’d barely use,” she said.
“Consider it an immediate need now. After six years, surely there’s been time,” he said. “How many swords and suits of armour does Holdfast have?”
She bristled. “Luc fights at the front lines.”
Kaine scoffed, his lip curling. “With fire. Get a better knife.”
* * *
She returned with the same knife.
Kaine was across the room the instant she pulled it out. Moving impossibly, terrifyingly fast, he was right in front of her. He ripped it from her hand.
“Why do you still have this?” he hissed. “I told you to get a new one.”
She tried to snatch it back. “I can’t just show up on the docket like that. People know weeks out before they’re up for testing. It’d be noticeable if I’m suddenly prioritised.” She tilted her head back, meeting his eyes, and recited verbatim, “ ‘Your request has been declined. It would raise too many questions.’ ”
Ferron looked like he wanted to strangle her. He raised his hand as if to fling the knife out the window but then drew a measured breath.
“Give me your resonance alloy, then,” he said, slamming the knife onto the table.
“What?”
His eyes turned flinty. “Surely you can manage that at least?”
“Yes—but—” She was flabbergasted.
“What?”
Outside of the Eternal Flame, bespoke weaponry was prohibitively expensive. That was why the weapons were such an honour. Especially during the war, most of the metallurgists who hadn’t joined the war effort on one side or the other had fled Paladia altogether and taken their valuable talents to safer countries.
She kept staring wordlessly at him until he looked away. “You can consider it thanks for healing my back.”
She seized the opportunity. “Did it—did the scar tissue set properly? I came back to check—but you—”
“It’s fine,” he said in a stiff voice, his posture rigid. His head was turned so that she could see only his jaw. “I hardly feel it.”
She exhaled. “Good. I was afraid that maybe something had gone wrong and that’s why you didn’t come—”
He whirled on her. “It’s not any of your fucking business.”
She started back. “I just meant—”
“Fuck off, Marino.” His voice was deadly soft. “I’m not your pet. I don’t need you.”
Before she could reply, he ripped an envelope out from an inner pocket and slammed it down on the table beside the knife, before stalking out.
Helena stashed her knife in the outer pocket of her satchel and set out, vigilant until she passed the first checkpoint; then she let her footsteps slow, ignoring the rain.
What was it he’d said about the array? That it didn’t countermand his behaviour but wrote in new aspects. That it was easier for him to be ruthless, and harder to resist impulses and what he wanted.
She’d spent so many evenings staring at it, she could still see it when she closed her eyes.
Calculating, Cunning, Devoted, Determined, Ruthless, Unfailing, Unhesitating, and Unyielding.
What Kaine was driven to do was unstated and thus left to his discretion. No doubt he’d thought himself clever, leaving himself that loophole.
Except Helena was the one who’d exploited it.
The decision to refuse Kaine’s demand for a weapon had been a gamble. Ilva and Crowther wanted to see what Kaine would do if he was told no. Their excuse was within reason, but the choice itself had been a test. They were forcing him to show his hand, and he had.
Helena was making progress.
She should be proud of that, but all she felt was the treachery and danger of it.
She blinked and found she’d wandered to the rain garden. The creek was swollen, overflowing its banks. The water streamed around Luna’s pedestal, but despite it, even after months, the prayer tower she’d built still stood. All Helena’s prayers were rejected.
She reached out and almost toppled them herself.
She looked up at the buildings looming above, the rain splattering her face. It still startled her sometimes how beautiful the city could be.
Even in the downpour, the buildings gleamed.
She looked at the abandoned shrine again.
Survive, Kaine kept saying. The only goal. She was learning to fight not to win, but to escape. As if she were a prey animal.
She knew very well that if it ever came down to her and Kaine, she would die. No matter how similar their abilities, murder was exclusively within his purview.
She smiled bitterly at the difference between them.
Her death count was the numerical representation of her failures. All the lives she hadn’t saved, the ways she fell short.
For Kaine, it was a mark of power. His victims, even Principate Apollo, all represented what made him so valuable.
They were the inverse and counter to each other.
A healer and killer, circling slowly, the push and pull inexorable.
* * *
As the Resistance re-established control of the island, their base of operations broadened. Headquarters remained most defensible, but forcing combat units and supply dispatches to travel the island from end to end was a waste of time and resources. There was now a secondary base of command near the ports, with a secondary hospital there. Matron Pace was currently stationed there to get it up and running.
