Alchemised, page 63
An alchemical surgeon like Maier could normally perform a thoracotomy without needing to open a patient. It only needed incisions large enough to get slender tools inside; with training and resonance, their instruments were an extension of their fingers and senses.
Helena held back her resonance, using ordinary touch to check Lila’s vital signs, because it was easier than trying to parse all the interference. “She’s holding on.”
They made an incision between Lila’s ribs, using makeshift retractors to pry the bones apart so they could reach all the remaining shards. The pieces varied in size and crumbled if they weren’t picked out carefully enough. There were little cuts and grooves in Lila’s lungs and heart where shards had nicked her—wounds that could be easily repaired if Helena could use her resonance but were laborious and dangerous now, each requiring manual sutures.
The procedure was all unfamiliar, and they were racing against time. The longer the nullium had to break down and distribute into Lila’s blood, the greater the likelihood that she might die from the metal toxicity. The surgery was pushing her body to its utmost limits, and Lila had to survive on her own.
Helena manually siphoned the blood, keeping Lila’s heart beating as Pace worked. A nurse had taken the larger shards to Shiseo to analyse and synthesise the sequestering agent, but that treatment was hours away.
It was possible that until they managed to purge the metal from Lila’s bloodstream, they would be unable to use any kind of resonance on her.
“A thoracic lavage next,” Pace said at last, setting down her tools. Her eyes were bloodshot from strain by the time they finished.
Maier took over the sutures. His stitches were beautifully neat, but he looked shaken as he worked.
Helena looked up and found it was growing dark outside. “I should check on Soren.”
She felt so strange as she washed her hands. She’d barely used her resonance, but the pressure of the last several hours had her head throbbing. Stepping out of the operating theatre, she found most of the hospital crowded around one bed.
Soren was awake and propped up. All the privacy curtains had been pushed aside, and at the forefront of the people surrounding him was Ilva.
Soren’s arm was in splints, and bandages covered half his face. He kept shaking his head. “I don’t—remember. It happened so fast.”
“Did you recognise anyone? Even imagine that you saw a face?” Ilva said, grasping Soren’s wrist.
“I don’t know,” Soren said again, his voice straining. “There was—an explosion. Something hit me. Might have been out seconds or minutes. When I got up, I couldn’t see. Luc was gone, and Lila was on the ground, bleeding out. She kept saying, Told him to run. I didn’t know where to look—so I came back.”
“There was no warning?” The questions seemed to be exploding from Ilva. She was visibly agitated. “No signs at all? Who was leading the unit?”
“I—” Soren’s expression twisted, and he seemed to struggle to remember.
“I always said it was a mistake, allowing a female paladin,” Matias said. “If I had been Falcon at the time, I would never have allowed such a violation of tradition to be entertained. I warned you, Ilva, Luc was partial to her, but no: Lila Bayard was too exceptional to separate from him. Now look what’s happened.”
“Shut your mouth!” Ilva snarled over her shoulder at Matias, her fingers still digging into Soren’s wrist. Then she turned back and shook him. “Did she say Luc surrendered himself? Did he hand himself over because of Lila?”
“I don’t know,” Soren half whispered.
Elain was standing near Soren’s bed, too awed by the number of Eternal Flame members currently flanking the bed to interfere.
“Pardon,” Helena said in a curt voice, and she pushed herself through the crowd. “Soren Bayard has a head injury. It’s inadvisable to stress him.”
Everyone turned to look at her.
“Is Lila awake? Can she answer questions?” Ilva said, instantly rising to her feet.
Helena shook her head sharply. “She is not available for anything. We performed an extensive manual surgery to remove a spike of nullium that she’d been stabbed with, but the alloy deteriorated and distributed through her bloodstream, which will interfere with anything involving resonance until it’s removed.”
“How long will that take?” The panic on Ilva’s face was clear.
Helena shook her head. “We have her under anaesthesia right now, but we’re working blind. She may wake in the next few hours, or it could take days. Lila is very strong, but this will still be harder on her than past injuries. Nothing’s certain yet.”
Soren had slumped back and looked as if he was on the verge of a panic attack, but Ilva drew herself up like a viper.
“I thought you had prepared for this eventuality,” Ilva said. “What have you all been doing?”
Helena’s jaw tensed. Why was it always the hospital’s fault when things went wrong? If Helena had come out and said that surgery was a success and Lila was already getting out of bed, they’d all be off to the perihelion to offer Sol flames of thanksgiving. But bad news was always the hospital’s fault.
How nice it must be, to be a god.
“The alloy has been altered, and the interference is much more intense. Manual procedures are not simple, especially in a hospital where only two people have any experience performing them. If you want the hospital prepared to perform manual surgery, the Falcon will need to approve the cadavers for practice, as we requested several months ago.”
Matias coughed as if he’d swallowed something the wrong way and suddenly stopped looking like he wanted to be present.
Ilva was gripping her cane but looked ready to topple. It was as if Luc’s loss had ripped the ground out from beneath her.
“Examine him, then,” Ilva said, moving unsteadily away from Soren’s bed. “There will be a Council meeting in an hour. I want full reports on both the Bayards.”
Everyone filed out. Helena glared and jerked her head, indicating that Elain put the privacy curtains back as she sat down next to Soren.
He was leaning back amid the pillows which had propped him up, covered in newly healed cuts. She could tell, as soon as her resonance touched him, that he’d lost his right eye. Whatever had hit him had fractured the socket and crushed it.
Her fingers trembled.
“She’s never going to forgive me,” he said, his voice a near whisper.
Helena didn’t know if he was referring to Ilva or Lila.
She squeezed his hand. “If you’d gone after Luc in this state, all three of you might be dead. That wouldn’t have been any help. I’m sure there’s more people looking for him because you came back.”
Elain had done well with her healing. He’d had several broken bones, including the same arm he’d shattered just a few weeks ago. It hadn’t fully healed, and it was likely to have lingering issues now.
“Do you think he’s still alive?” Soren asked.
Helena’s heart caught. She couldn’t think of any reason the Undying wouldn’t immediately kill Luc.
“Until we know he’s dead, he’s still alive. And we’re going to get him back,” she said, forcing her voice to sound hopeful. “Stop worrying now. I need to check your head.”
He had a concussion, but his eye and brow bone had absorbed most of the blow. All her visits to Titus had made her more familiar with brains; she felt as if she understood them better and could at least diagnose accurately, rather than shying away.
Elain hadn’t known what to do with the destroyed eye and had left it, just wrapping gauze over it and repairing only the bone.
“Soren, your right eye’s—”
“I know,” he said brusquely, as if it didn’t matter. “I can still fight, though, right?”
Her hands stilled. “You’ve broken your arm and lost half your range of vision. That’s going to require adapting. You’re going to be vulnerable. You won’t see things from the right.”
“I’ll just turn my head,” he said in a flat voice. “Handy thing, necks.”
She sighed. “You’re not going back out. Not for weeks at least.”
He shook his head. “Lila’s out. I have to bring Luc back before she wakes. She can’t wake up and find out I didn’t go after him.” His chin trembled. In twelve years of knowing him, Helena had never seen Soren cry. He looked down. “I didn’t tell them, but she told me to leave her. To go find him. But I didn’t. I told her I’d go, as soon as I got her safe—”
He started trying to climb out of the bed. It only took one hand to push him back. He was barely strong enough to sit up.
“Soren, I need to deal with the ruptured tissue in your eye,” she said, trying to sound firm.
He ignored her, trying to shove her off, but she was adept enough at combat now. She deflected his hand and slipped her fingers behind his head. It took only a frisson of resonance and his remaining eye rolled back as he collapsed, unconscious.
She closed his eye gently so it wouldn’t dry out. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered as she set to work.
If there was anything intact inside the socket, there would have been a small chance of saving some of his sight, but Soren’s eye was wrecked.
She removed all the tissue that couldn’t be repaired so that it wouldn’t rot or cause infection, then carefully rebandaged him. In a few weeks, someone would make a beautiful glass eye for him, or perhaps shape a gem.
Assuming there still was a Resistance in a few weeks.
Rhea arrived just as Helena finished.
It had been a long time since both twins had been in the hospital.
Rhea’s expression was stoic, but her eyes were searching as she moved towards Soren.
Helena stood up. “I just finished. I can wake him,” she said, quickly covering all the eye tissue with a cloth.
“No, let him rest.” Rhea sat down slowly on the edge of the bed, studying the parts of Soren’s face that weren’t obscured. “My little boy,” she said softly, her voice a murmur, as if she feared Soren might wake.
Helena stepped back, not sure if Rhea would want privacy or answers.
“You know, he was such a little thing when he was born,” Rhea said, one of her hands reaching and covering Soren’s. “Titus could fit him into one hand. The doctors didn’t think he’d make it. Lila came out bright red and screaming, but my little Soren was just a wisp of a baby. Quiet and pale. Even when he needed to nurse, he’d barely make a sound. He always followed Lila around, never caused trouble himself, but was always right there, getting into hers.”
Rhea gave a sobbing laugh. “I thought I was doing such a great thing when they were born. Twins. Two babies for the Bayard family. Our little paladins.” Rhea’s body trembled as she held Soren’s hand. “And now Titus doesn’t even know what’s been done to our beautiful children—all my family, I only have pieces of them left.”
She folded over Soren. Her body was shuddering, but she cried silently.
There was a trick to sobbing like that; it was something a person had to learn to do.
Helena slipped away, to give her space to grieve.
* * *
The meeting was sombre. Ilva sat at the Council table, looking almost drugged while the reports were being given. The attack had occurred on the lower part of the East Island. Luc and Lila had been leading the battalion towards Headquarters; they’d passed a condemned building, and just as Luc and Lila stepped beyond it, there had been an explosion. The building had collapsed.
Soren had been on the edge of the blast and thrown by it. Only two others had survived, because they’d fallen behind. They’d been caught in the rubble with only minor injuries.
There’d been signs of a fight, char marks and a pool of blood, presumed to be Lila’s. Burned human remains, presumed to be necrothralls, a lich with his talisman ripped out. Luc’s sword, rings, and other weapons were found discarded, as if he’d left first and then been stripped.
There’d been no word from the Undying. No proclamation that Luc was dead or even captured. The guards had all been told to prepare for the possibility that he might return reanimated or with his body possessed by a lich. If Luc reappeared, all due diligence must be performed. No one was to believe in any miraculous escapes.
As time passed, the questions grew. Why would the Undying keep him alive? Wouldn’t they announce if he was dead, or were they keeping him hostage to negotiate a surrender?
If he was a hostage, why hadn’t they reached out?
“Until we know that Lucien is dead, we will assume that he is alive,” Ilva said in an icy voice, rousing herself when one of the lead metallurgists referred to planning for contingencies. “The Undying have no reason to conceal his capture. It’s been twelve hours, and we haven’t received word. It may be a sign that not everything is as it seems.”
As the meeting closed, Matias stood, announcing his intention to entreat the heavens to return Luc to them safely. Many people followed him.
Ilva remained at the table, speaking to Crowther.
“Marino, a word before you go,” Ilva said when Helena rose to return to the hospital.
Helena waited until the room was empty. Ilva flicked a hand, and the guards closed the doors.
“You’ll head to the Outpost. We’re going to use Ferron,” Ilva said in a brusque voice. “Every piece of information he has or can obtain about the circumstances of Luc’s capture—I want it all. As well as an explanation as to why we received no warning about this.”
“Of course.” She’d expected as much.
“Tell him this is a critical mission,” Ilva added as Helena turned to go. “Those precise words, Marino. A top priority. If he has an opportunity to get Luc back for us, that would be preferable to the losses we’ll suffer with a rescue.”
They meant to sacrifice Kaine to recover Luc. It was the obvious choice. An easy trade-off. The kind that any strategist would make.
But—
“All right.” Her voice was lifeless.
* * *
Lumithia hung like a giant silver disc in the sky, so near full Ascendance that she blotted out the planets, leaving the night sky as an endless black abyss overhead. The bright silver light cast glaring shadows across the city.
When Helena reached the landing in the tenement, she paused and stepped intentionally into the silver shaft of light cascading from the broken skylight, looking up at the eye hidden in the corner. Then she waited.
It was a long wait.
The windows rattled in the wind, but she didn’t hear anything until the door clicked and Kaine strode in. Everything about him seemed sharper. “What happened?”
The instant he asked the question, she realised he didn’t know.
Ilva had been right: If the Undying had Luc, it was being kept secret.
“There was an attack today. A bombing,” she said, and her voice trembled. “Killed most of a battalion, the Bayard twins barely survived, and Luc—is missing.”
“Are you sure?”
She gave a stiff nod. “They used a weapon made from that resonance-interference alloy. We call it nullium. Lila was stabbed and nearly killed with it. You didn’t know this was in the works?”
He shook his head slowly. “I didn’t. There’s suspicion of a spy due to—recent sabotage. And I haven’t had the leisure to be as present as I used to be.”
She looked down, drawing a deep breath before she spoke. “We have to get Luc back. I was told to tell you it’s critical. Your top priority.”
“Right…”
“Any information you can get on his capture, who did it, where he is, if he’s alive…The Council wants you—” Her words caught. “—to do anything you can.”
“Of course,” was all he said, and he turned to go.
She watched his back, the shift of his shoulders, one dipping as he reached for the knob. She didn’t know if she was ever going to see him again.
“Wait,” she said.
He paused but didn’t look back. “I’ll call you when I have something.”
“Kaine…when I kissed you, I—”
He turned suddenly. In one moment he was across the room and in the next, he was in front of her, his expression venomous, his teeth bared. “Really, you want to discuss this now?”
Her throat was so thick with guilt, she could barely speak. But she was desperate. “Will you look at me, at least?”
A cruel glint entered his eyes as they locked squarely on her face. It was like being punched to have his full attention again.
“You want me to look at you?” His voice was light, almost cajoling, but there was fury beneath the surface. He leaned towards her. “Fine. I’m looking. I must say, it’s delightful, seeing all the guilt in your eyes.”
He sneered, drawing back. “You know, I used to think the circumstances of my servitude to the High Necromancer as cruel an enslavement as anyone could conceive, but I must admit, it pales beside you.”
He tilted his head. “At least before, I could console myself that it wasn’t my fault; acceptance was the best I could do to keep my mother safe. It’s different when I have no one to blame but myself.”
His hand came up, his gloved fingers wrapping around her throat, pulling her forward. “After all, I did choose you.”
She met his eyes, that deadened despair so visible when he looked at her.
“I envied your naïveté, how you credited me with goodness and failed to realise that it was a setup from the very beginning. When you begged for a chance to heal me, I gave in. When you touched me, I didn’t push you away. I thought, Where’s the harm? It all ends soon enough, and life has been cold for such a long time.”
She didn’t realise she’d started crying until his thumb brushed across her cheek.
