Alchemised, page 56
She stopped short and looked up. “What?”
She’d never seen Morrough, but she’d heard that during his rare appearances, he wore a golden mask—a large crescent that obscured most of his face and fanned out like horns on each side of his head. An eclipsing sun.
“It’s rather gory to look at, but he doesn’t seem to mind.” He pulled his hand free, clearly done with the lecturing. “It’s like someone burned them out. He uses his resonance to see.”
“I didn’t know that was possible.” She rubbed her hands on her skirt. “Well, that’s the basics. If there’s anything you’d want added to the kit, or ideas you have, I can try to make them.”
“The basics?” He pulled a watch out of his pocket. “You’ve been talking for over an hour.”
She fumbled for her own watch, certain he was mistaken. No, he wasn’t. She was going to be late for her shift if she didn’t leave.
“I mean…it was still only the basics,” she said defensively, but she added, “I should go. Happy solstice. I hope your days grow brighter.”
He did not return the season’s greeting but then spoke as she reached the door.
“Marino.”
She tensed, looking back. He was still standing where she’d left him, irritation evident in the sweep of his eyes. He looked her up and down as if debating something.
“I have—something for you,” he finally said, as if having a tooth extracted. He pulled out something rolled up in an oilcloth and held it towards her.
Inside lay a set of beautiful daggers, sheathed in mesh holsters. Helena felt her resonance respond before she even touched them.
“The longer one goes on your back, the smaller one on your forearm,” Kaine said when she was silent. “They’re sized for you. Titanium and nickel is a mnemonic alloy, which will allow you to transmute them further than most weapons; they’ll still return to form. It has three memory shapes depending on the resonance phase you use, and you can alter them if you wish. That’s why the sheaths are malleable.”
She picked up the larger dagger.
After the months of training with a steel weapon, the dagger hardly weighed anything. She slipped it from the sheath, and it sang in her fingers. She barely had to focus her resonance before it morphed, maintaining its razor edge but changing shape and length entirely, unfurling like a ribbon into a long, flexible whiplike blade. She altered the timbre of her resonance just slightly, and without her even needing to guide the metal, the blade morphed back into a perfect dagger.
She let out an unsteady breath, hardly able to believe that anything could be so easy to transmute. It was as effortless as moving her own fingers, and it weighed nothing.
She couldn’t stop turning them over, taking in every detail, the weight and texture, the incredible sharpness of the blades. There were elegant curving details like vines on the hilts that made the grip more secure.
She didn’t know what to say. Thank you felt entirely insufficient.
Kaine was watching her, his eyes intent, but the expression vanished the instant she looked up. His eyebrows drew down. “You are not ever allowed to take these apart or turn them into medical instruments. Not for anyone.”
She flushed. “I thought you said the shapes were programmable.”
“Not enough to be entirely deconstructed. Are we clear, Marino?” His voice was icy.
“All right. I promise,” she said, rolling her eyes. Trust Kaine to ruin any moment.
After a pause she looked at him again. “Thank you. I don’t even know what to say. They’re beautiful.”
He avoided meeting her eyes. “It’s nothing.” He cleared his throat. “I’m glad you like them, though, because I expect you to wear both every time you set foot outside of Headquarters. Actually—you should always be wearing them. They shouldn’t come off unless you’re asleep. These do not belong in the bottom of your satchel. When you arrive here, I will expect to see them already on you, every time. Are we clear?”
“Yes, I’ll wear them,” she said as if it were a concession. She didn’t ever want to put them down.
“Good.” He shifted. “Well, this has been delightful. I can’t even remember how many times I’ve wished someone would lecture me on the systems of the human body.”
She looked up, and he smiled insincerely at her.
He started turning to leave and then paused. “Now that you have a decent weapon, I think we’ll move on to training that’s a bit more intense. Be ready for that next week.” He held out an envelope. “My latest instalment.”
As she reached to take it, he held on until she met his eyes.
“I must say, Marino, you’ve ended up being quite expensive.”
Chapter 45
Decembris 1786
Crowther was still absent from Headquarters, so Helena had no choice but to take her report to Ilva.
As she ascended the floors to Ilva’s office in the main building, she kept thinking about all the things Ilva knew about her. She’d been on the board that had approved Helena’s scholarship each year, and likely the admissions board, too.
The particular interest Ilva had personally taken in her since her father’s death felt much less warming now.
Ilva was staring down at a report, a pen dangling from one hand as she read, and didn’t look up when the guard let Helena in.
“Marino,” she said, her voice cool. “Sit. I’ll be with you in a moment.”
Helena waited, fingers flexing.
“How is your work on the nullium with Shiseo progressing?” Ilva asked, flipping the file closed and looking up.
The Council had named the lumithium-mo’lian’shi alloy nullium for the sake of convenience. While the knowledge of the alloy was not widespread, several metallurgists and chymists were all experimenting with it.
The question caught Helena off guard; she’d expected enquiries about Kaine.
“Good. We’ve finished synthesising the chelating agent using the samples I took from Ferron. If any of our combatants are injured by it, hopefully it will be able to capture and remove the traces of metal in the blood.”
The shrapnel samples Helena had retrieved could not make a sturdy weapon, but the alloy wasn’t supposed to. The fusion was intentionally unstable; it shattered on impact and the shards tended to deteriorate quickly when exposed to blood, dissolving like a poison blade targeting resonance. Helena and Shiseo had been instructed to pursue potential treatment methods.
Because metal toxicity could happen frequently in certain fields of alchemy, chelators were already commonplace.
Ilva nodded. “What does Shiseo think?”
“He doesn’t think that true alchemy suppression is possible with the method they’re using. While it does prevent healing and alchemical surgery, it’s of limited use for combat, but that could change if they reconfigure the ratio and composition.”
Ilva’s eyes narrowed. “Is there an alternative method that you and Shiseo have in mind?”
Helena swallowed, trying not to squirm. “We have an idea, but it’s purely theoretical. We don’t have enough nullium to test it.”
“And it is…”
Helena’s stomach knotted. She hated these kinds of conversations.
“Given the alloy’s behaviour and how resonance is used, making it into a weapon or injecting nullium into the blood is less effective than simply targeting the limbs with it. If that kind of interference was focused near the hands, it would be almost impossible for an alchemist to accurately sense their resonance. Shiseo thinks that if the alloy was paired with something that has a high, sharp resonance point—like copper processed with a high level of lumithium emanations—that could create a type of interference that would suppress most kinds of resonance regardless of the alchemist’s repertoire.”
“How would we counter that?” Ilva leaned forward with interest.
“Well, any good metallurgist could, if they were comfortable working without resonance. But that’s not something most Paladian metallurgists have ever had to worry about.”
“Fortunate, then, that you fished those shards out of Ferron,” Ilva said, although the sentiment was hardly reflected by her tone.
Helena gave a tight nod. “Here’s his report,” she said, pushing the envelope across the table.
Ilva plucked it up and dropped it into a drawer.
“And I—” Helena hesitated, heat rising to her hairline and the tips of her ears. “He gave me a set of daggers as a solstice gift, using the titanium-nickel alloy.”
She pulled out the oilcloth and opened it on the desk for Ilva’s inspection. Ilva raised an eyebrow, glancing for a moment before flicking the cloth to cover them as if she found the mere sight distasteful.
Helena’s stomach dropped and she wrapped them up quickly, wishing she hadn’t shown them without being asked. “It’s a good sign, isn’t it?”
Ilva tilted her head, studying Helena for a moment. “Ferron’s climbing rank,” she said as she reached into a drawer and pulled out a file, dropping it onto the desk. “Did you know?”
Helena’s heart stalled. She had noticed his uniform was darker.
“It seems he’s already surpassed everything he’d ever achieved prior to that injury of his. He controls several extremely valuable districts. Recently he’s taken over the factory Outpost where you’ve been visiting him, consolidating power at a remarkable speed. It seems all our recent successes have benefitted him greatly.”
Ilva tapped a fingernail on the desk, looking up at Helena with a cold smile.
“I didn’t know,” Helena said.
Ilva shook her head. “No, I didn’t imagine so. I’m beginning to worry whether you remember what he is.”
Helena’s breath caught, but Ilva continued, flipping through page after page in the file before her.
“There have been rumours for months that Morrough has a new weapon. We thought it was a chimaera, like the one that nearly killed Lila, or the nullium, but no. It’s neither of those things, is it?” Ilva folded her hands, looking squarely at Helena. “How is it that he’s still alive?”
“Crowther told me to do what I could.”
Ilva’s eyes flicked down from Helena’s face to her neck, where the chain of her necklace was barely visible beneath her collar. Helena went very still.
“You know, Ferron’s not our only spy,” Ilva said. “We have a number of informants. Based on their reports, following the recovery of the ports, he was punished. Extensively. He was dying. I was assured of that.”
“You knew?” Helena asked, her voice shaking. “You knew what they did to him, and you—you didn’t tell me?”
Ilva stared piercingly at her. “Why would we have told you?”
Helena could hardly speak. “Is that why the attack was so elaborate and used so much of the intelligence? Because you expected he’d be killed for it. Because you wanted him killed for it.”
Ilva said nothing, but now Kaine’s resentment and disbelief when Helena kept coming back began to make sense.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Helena’s voice trembled with rage.
Ilva’s lips pursed, her eyes flicking across Helena’s face. “You’ve always been—remarkably forthright.” A smile stretched across her lips. “That’s why Luc trusts you so much. If we’d told you the plan, do you really think you could have gone, knowing, without giving any sign to Ferron?”
Helena began to tremble. She gripped the arms of her chair as the room blurred.
“We assumed you’d realise it,” Ilva added. “When it became clear that you hadn’t—that you felt some sort of obligation to him—we agreed to let you try to heal him in the hope that once you realised the futility of it, you’d be able to bring his talisman back.”
Ilva cleared her throat. “So you can imagine our surprise that he has not only survived but become more dangerous than ever before, that treacherous spy of ours. How did you do it?”
Helena swallowed hard. “We were losing, and it was only because of him that we could retake the ports. He did that for us. You didn’t see him the day I went back. He knew he’d be punished; he expected to die.” She gave a panicked breath. “If you wanted him dead, you should have told me. Crowther said to do what I could.”
“What did you do?” Ilva had become impossibly more tense. “Did you—” Her lips thinned, her eyes flickering to the chain around Helena’s neck once more. “Did you use something to manage it?”
Helena squeezed her hand into a fist. “I assumed that if you had to choose between the two of us, you’d want him.”
Ilva’s face went white.
“So I used the amulet you gave me, I thought it—”
“You gave the amulet to him?” The question was almost a shriek.
Helena had never heard Ilva raise her voice. “No, I—”
“Do you still have it or not?”
Helena’s stomach twisted into a tight knot as she reached up, pulling the chain over her head. “I have the amulet, but the sunstone is gone.”
Ilva snatched it from her so quickly, the chain ripped open Helena’s kidskin glove. Ilva pressed her thumb against the centre where the stone was missing, staring in horror before looking at her. “What did you do?”
Helena swallowed nervously. “It broke and this—substance came out. Like quicksilver, and—it—it fused with Ferron.”
There was a ghastly silence. Ilva looked so stunned she said nothing, just looked at the amulet again, as if the stone could magically rematerialise. Finally, Helena couldn’t bear it anymore.
“If you didn’t want him healed, you should have told me.”
Ilva didn’t reply, just stared at the amulet in her hand. “Do you know the story of the Stone of the Heavens?” she finally said, still running her thumb over the empty setting.
Dread swept through Helena like a tidal wave.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s a myth. Everyone knows that was a misinterpretation. Luc said it wasn’t real.”
“Every choice I have made was to protect Luc,” Ilva said. She wasn’t talking to Helena so much as speaking aloud or perhaps to the amulet in her hand. “I was never trained to be a steward, to bear the weight of this legacy. I was happy with my role, but Luc was too young for all this. I’ve tried to make the best choices I could.”
Ilva looked up at Helena. “When your—vivimancy made its appearance, I thought I’d been given my way forward. That Sol had provided a fail-safe so that I could protect him. Of course there was still the politics of it to contend with. Matias did not make it easy. With all the concessions he demanded, I was concerned about the Toll taking you too prematurely. That amulet had been locked away for centuries, lying idle as generations of Holdfasts protected it. I’d hoped this war might rouse it to do something.”
“What was it?” Helena asked.
Ilva stood, seizing her cane so tightly that her swollen knuckles showed white as she walked past Helena to the window, looking out towards the Alchemy Tower.
“My family built this Institute and this city to ensure that necromancy would never come to power again. They gave their lives to that cause and kept countless secrets to that end.”
Ilva fell silent for a long time. Helena didn’t dare speak.
“Have you heard the stories of Rivertide?”
Rivertide was the name of Paladia back before the first Necromancy War. It had been wiped out by a plague, and when the Necromancer found it, he’d used the corpses for his army.
“There was no plague,” Ilva said, still not looking back. “Orion called it a plague because it was kinder than immortalising what truly happened to them all.” She pressed her hand, still clutching the amulet, against her chest. “The Necromancer realised the alchemical potential of the area and came to Rivertide specifically because of the people living here.”
“He killed them?” Helena couldn’t understand the purpose of that secret. That the Necromancer massacred Rivertide was even more believable than a story of finding a convenient town of corpses.
Ilva shook her head. “No, they’re still alive, to this day.”
Helena stared at her, not understanding.
“The Necromancer was a vivimancer, just like you, but the ability was even more mythical back then. He came to Rivertide performing miracles. They thought he was a god. They built him a temple on the plateau, gave him everything he asked for, and he promised them immortality if they only had the faith for it. Then one day, he brought them all together in a great assembly, in a secret place he’d carved underground, and declared that if they trusted him fully, utterly, he could make them live forever. I’m not sure of the process, but afterwards, his temple was full of corpses, and their souls were bound together, synthesised into this—substance. He used it, the power, to reanimate them all.”
Ilva began to pace, her steps jerky, her cane trembling in her hand; she was too agitated to be still. “When Orion fought the Necromancer, the souls were still conscious, aware of the betrayal exacted upon them—that the gift of ‘immortality’ came at the price of eternal enslavement. During the battle, the Necromancer’s control slipped, and the Stone turned on him. There was a light as bright as the sun. It filled the valley, destroying the Necromancer and all the necrothralls in a wave of fire. When it was over, Orion and his followers were all that remained.” Ilva shook her head. “If the truth of the Stone’s nature were known, Orion feared that others might be inspired to rediscover the methods, and so, when those who’d witnessed the battle called the Stone a gift from Sol, Orion had no choice but to let them believe it.”
Ilva paused, her expression mournful.
“It’s all a lie?”
Ilva whirled on her, looking furious. “What else could he do?”
Helena stood up, ready to ignite. “Tell the truth! You don’t get to make up history to suit your preferences. Do you realise what you’ve done? Luc thinks he’s supposed to be earning a miracle. That the reason he hasn’t already won this war is because he hasn’t suffered or been enough like Orion to earn it, and that’s his fault. But there will never be a miracle that will save us. You’re torturing him to death on a lie.”
