Chapter 13 - 13

"Try, then, I suppose," he said, "It's not like there's ever been any-

thing stopping you from killing me."

She ignored the comment. "You should lie down, then."

The table was cracked down the middle, but still stable enough, so

she assembled it into a makeshift bed, spreading out his cloak. His

hands trembled, gripping her shoulder as she helped him stand, and he

groaned under his breath as he leaned his weight on her. His whole

body was shaking violently as he nearly collapsed onto the table.

She laced her fingers through his hair until she found the dip at the

base of his skull just below the occipital protuberance.

It required only a little shift in the energy until she felt the peace of

numbness flood through his body as he slipped unconscious.

She could work more easily now that Ferron wouldn't flinch every

time she touched him. She drew out the infection, wiping it all away,

but all she could think about was how old the injury must be.

She should have come back sooner. This was her fault: She'd as-

sumed he'd leave the city to burn, and she'd pushed him from her mind.

She'd been so terrified he would betray them that she'd never stopped

to consider what would happen if he didn't.

Her hands trembled, hovering over the now clean wounds, as she

debated what to do. She wanted to pry the metal out of his bones, but

the titanium had bonded.

She gripped her amulet, desperate for any sense of reassurance.

The injury was more than merely incisions and metal transmutation.

The array was active; she could feel the hum of resonance moving

through it. Altering an active array was extremely dangerous. The kind

of thing that cost limbs.

Attempting it might kill them both.

She had to figure out a way to make Ferron survive it, but it was

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Alchemised • 403

rooted into him and drawing on the energy emanating from the talis-

man, diverting what should have been regenerating him and instead

sending that power along the pathways of the array.

There was no containment circle to limit it. It was activated con-

stantly, the symbols not acting on an external target as they would in a

lab, but on Ferron. The power was being diverted, mutated, and then fed

back into him in a closed loop.

That would kill a normal human, but Ferron didn't die so easily—yet

he also couldn't change. Helena was beginning to understand how the

Undying were "immortal." He was not ageless; his body was trapped in

time, his regeneration keeping him exactly as he was. It did not let him

change, not with age or injury. But the array was designed to change

him. The mutated power existed for the sole purpose of alteration, and

that contradiction was killing him in a way far more profound than the

mutilation of his back.

He was in a crucible, and he was the crucible, and he would either

die terribly or be wholly alchemised into something that could survive

the paradox.

She studied the symbols, trying to understand what they were in-

tended to do.

She'd never seen an array intended to act on a person, but she was

well versed in alchemical notation.

The fundamental design was a classical celestial star correlating to

the eight planets. Paladians loved things in sets of five or eight. The only

exception she knew was pyromancy, which the Holdfast Suncrest was

modelled after. Which used seven.

The use of the notation carved into Ferron's skin was like using an

alchemical formula to express a literary concept. It wasn't unheard of for

alchemists to write with alchemical symbolism and symbols, particu-

larly in textbooks as a way of restricting information to the educated,

but Helena had never seen the method applied to a functioning array.

Each of the eight points had a distinct concept using combinations of

symbols. Helena parsed the meaning slowly.

Calculating, Cunning, Devoted, Determined, Ruthless, Unfailing,

Unhesitating, and Unyielding.

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404 • SenLinYu

It made sense that an array on a person couldn't be a typical trans-

mutation formula, but the idea of forging traits into a human was hor-

rific. If it worked, it would carve Ferron down into these eight

compounding qualities, potentially erasing everything else about him.

He would have kept healing at least until the metal had been welded

into place. The lacerations were all interconnected to make the array

continuous. Given the way Ferron reacted when she offered to knock

him out, he'd probably been conscious the entire time.

Her fingers trembled, and she laid her hand over his. His skin was

cold and papery thin.

She wanted to close the wounds, but there was too much interfer-

ence channelled through the incisions. It would kill any new tissue.

If she could get him healthy again, then his body might work with

her to close them, but that would take time. As much as it had taken for

him to reach that point.

She used her vivimancy to remove the dead tissue and then went to

her satchel, rummaging through her supplies for the little medical kit

she'd repacked. She debated running to Headquarters, but it would take

too long.

She sorted through what she'd foraged that morning, trying to think

of what would be useful.

Sedatives and transmutational interference didn't work, but topical

treatments might still have an effect. They would at least prevent infec-

tion. She'd make a transdermal salve with a prolonged release. Shiseo

would be sure to have ideas.

She gnawed her lip as she pulled out a salve she'd made with her

willow bark, tapping her fingers on the lid, wishing she had something

with opium in it. It would do for now and keep the wounds clean until

she came back.

She coated the incisions with the analgesic, emptying the entire jar,

and then placed gauze over each one, sprinkling dried sphagnum over

them to keep the wounds acidic and prevent infection, before swathing

his back in bandages.

She knew she should wake him, but he was exhausted. He could use

the rest.

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Alchemised • 405

Reaching out tentatively, she tucked his dark hair back from his face.

His features were sunken, hollows in his cheeks, temples, and eyes, all

that eerie youth gone.

He looked broken.

She fidgeted with her nails, wishing there was something else to do,

as she fought back the storm of emotions in her chest. She was so ac-

customed to resenting him, to seeing him as a threat to her and every-

one else.

She thought of him flipping that silver coin and telling her what the

Eternal Flame needed for the attack. He'd known he'd be punished.

His rambling, barely conscious comments about purposefully pro-

voking another commander to gain control of a new district: She'd

brushed them off, attributing them to ego and stupidity. He'd been

building up to this all along.

He could have made it a trap. He could have spent the last several

months drip-feeding the Eternal Flame inaccurate information to ex-

ecute a perfect sabotage. Instead he'd given them more than they'd

dreamed they could achieve in a year, knowing he'd pay the price.

And he'd thought she'd known. The thought gutted her. That he'd

thought she knew and had abandoned him to this.

She touched his temple, leaning closer, searching his face. "Why are

you doing this?"

When she couldn't justify keeping him unconscious for any longer,

she laced her fingers through his hair and woke him as slowly as she

could so that the pain wouldn't hit immediately.

As he was regaining consciousness, she took his nearest hand, careful

not to shift his shoulder as she started massaging the palm and worked

slowly to his fingertips, knuckle by knuckle, her resonance seeking out

every bit of tension and knotted muscles.

Her father used to massage her hands like that, even before Paladia.

Every night. An alchemist's hands were like a surgeon's, he'd said, they

had to be taken care of.

She knew Ferron didn't need it. It was only meaningful to her, but it

was all she could do.

The instant he became conscious, she could feel the tension radiate

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406 • SenLinYu

across his body. His eyes snapped open, his pupils contracting with pain.

His fingers spasmed against hers, but he lay there unmoving, and so she

kept working along his fingers.

His eyes weren't quite focused yet.

"What did you do?" he finally asked.

Helena wet her lips. "I drew out all the infected blood and removed

the dead tissue, then applied an analgesic salve to the incisions and got

you bandaged. It's not the most effective treatment, but I think it'll help

until I can make something better back at Headquarters. I—I can't

close the incisions yet, but I might be able to eventually, once you're

stronger. If you can recover some first."

He pulled his hand away and slowly got up as she was speaking. It

had to be agony to move, but he didn't make a sound, although he wa-

vered as if on the verge of fainting as he pushed himself off the table.

"It doesn't matter," he said, reaching for his shirt. "Healing me isn't

your job."

"Your wounds need to be monitored and watched for infection or

further deterioration. And the bandages should be changed at least

once a day," she said, stepping forward and blocking him.

"Unfortunate," was all he said.

"Ferron." She took his shirt away from him. "I know you're not used

to it, but you need medical care. If you leave things as they are, you'll

probably die—or maybe something worse."

He gave a rasping laugh. "Marino, that is the point. You think Ben-

net did this expecting it to work?"

"But I can help you," she said desperately, helping him slip his shirt

on, trying to prove how useful she could be. "Listen. I have a laboratory.

I'm good at chymiatria. I'll make a salve for you, it'll be topical so it'll

work on the incisions. I'll come every day to change your bandages and

make sure nothing goes wrong."

"Really, you have time for all that?" His expression was scathing.

"I'll make time. I'll come every day. Please."

He seemed caught off guard. "Fine," he said, looking away from her.

"Eight o'clock in the evening. But if you make me come here, and you

don't show up, I won't come back again."

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Alchemised • 407

"I'll come," she promised. "Every evening at eight."

She might need new papers to get permission, but she'd make

Crowther give them to her. Or forge them herself.

She buttoned his shirt, pausing when her fingers were just below the

dip of his throat. His bones showed through his skin, the dark-coloured

veins still visible. "I'm so sorry, Kaine."

His expression was almost blank with exhaustion, but he quirked an

eyebrow. It had less of an effect when she could see all the effort it took.

"If I'd known healing would make you so familiar, I would have said

no." He almost sounded like himself.

She shrugged and picked up his cloak, doubtful about the added

weight on his back. "Should I not call you Kaine? It seems odd to keep

going by surnames. We're going to be around each other for the rest of

our lives, you know."

He looked heavenwards and sighed. "I don't care what you call me,

but I'm not changing anything."

"Good. Then it's Kaine now."

She needed to make herself think about him differently. She'd made

too many wrong assumptions while seeing him as Ferron.

"I'm a bit out of the loop at the moment, but I do know where Ben-

net's new lab is." He gave a strained smile. "He likes them near the

water. One of the warehouses near the West Island shipyard. I'll bring a

map next time."

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CHAPTER 33

Junius 1786

Helena set out early in the evening to ensure she wasn't

late, carrying new travel papers that claimed she was going to the Out-

post to deliver medical relief.

She felt guilty that it wasn't the real purpose of her trip. The Outpost

had grown crowded, but the Resistance couldn't afford to reduce their

limited supplies by distributing anything.

When she reached the tenement, there were dozens of people inside,

clustered around a fire.

She stopped short, not sure what to do.

With his injury, Ferron couldn't possibly get there without being

noticed. Someone might even recognise him. She wasn't even sure how

he managed it normally.

As she stood, trying to find a path to the stairs around the huddled

group, a figure crumpled against a nearby wall stood up. The hood cov-

ering the face slipped back for a moment, just long enough to reveal the

waxy features of a necrothrall.

Helena started back.

It had been a man. A tangled beard covered half his face, with thick

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Alchemised • 409

eyebrows almost hiding the milky white of his eyes. He'd been expertly

reanimated. He showed no signs of decay other than the sheen on his

skin and the clouding of his eyes.

She was so used to hearing of necrothralls being aggressive, she

hadn't considered that they could be concealed, waiting.

It came towards her, and her heart lurched into her throat. A pulse

in her temples began, throbbing like a drum, a burn of pain across the

side of her neck—

Don't think about it.

The necrothrall paused and pulled up his sleeve. Painted onto his

arm was the same stylised symbol for iron that was on the doorway of

the tenement.

This necrothrall belonged to Ferron. She'd almost forgotten that he

was a necromancer. The sleeve slipped back down as necrothrall ges-

tured to the left.

Knowing the necrothrall was Ferron's didn't make it easier to volun-

tarily follow into the bowels of the Outpost.

Her heart was pounding inside her chest as they reached a door that

blended into the wall. The necrothrall produced a small key and un-

locked it, revealing metal stairs that descended into the belly of one of

the factories.

There were dim electric lights that flickered unsteadily overhead.

They entered a boiler room—the passage was cramped—then went

through another locked door into a more spacious hallway. There was a

large door, and as they approached, it swung open from the inside. The

door was thicker than the length of her forearm, as though it were a

bank vault.

Through the doorway was a large room filled with decadent furni-

ture, chandeliers with glittery prisms dangling, and Ferron—drinking.

The indulgence in the room felt grotesque.

The walls were covered in heavy luxuriant drapes and murals. There

were rows of decanters and bottles lining a wall. One section of the

room had a seating area with ornate side tables, a large sofa, and chairs.

On the other end was a mahogany desk and chaise. Everything was

ornate, with the kind of craftsmanship that cost a fortune.

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410 • SenLinYu

"There you are," Ferron said, drawing her attention away. He was

wearing only trousers and a white shirt with half the buttons undone.

She was used to seeing him always fully dressed, layered in his de-

fensive shell of uniform, and while she'd stripped him to the waist twice

now, both occasions had been for medical purposes.

The room they were standing in did not feel professional. Despite his

haggard state, Ferron—Kaine, she mentally corrected—looked oddly

striking, as if she'd never seen him in the proper environment before.

"What is this?" she asked, stepping cautiously into the room.

The necrothrall didn't enter, instead stepping back and closing the

door, which sealed with a heavy reinforced thud.

"A panic room," Ferron said. "My grandfather had it built during a

strike a few decades ago. In case of emergencies."

"I can't imagine why they'd want to hurt your grandfather when he

clearly spent his money on such reasonable things," she said, glancing at

the three crystal chandeliers hanging overhead.

"A mystery indeed." There were several fingers of liquid in his tum-

bler, but he knocked it all back in one gulp.

She looked at him sidelong. "You know, you could take pain relief in

those quantities, if you're going for numbness."

"No fun in that," he said, hand trembling as he poured himself more.

"Alcohol only dulls things for a few minutes. I prefer poison when I re-

ally want to feel intoxicated. Generally, it lasts longer, and some poisons

have very interesting side effects. I thought you might disapprove,

though." He sighed. "Given the current atmosphere in the Outpost and

the fact that I have no desire to lie upon a kitchen table ever again, I

thought this location made more sense."

Helena nodded, not sure if she was offended or grateful that this was

not where they usually met. She probably would have panicked if she'd

initially arrived in a place like this.

She dragged one of the spindly-legged side tables over and refused

to worry about scratching the polished surface as she pulled out her

supplies.

Ferron knocked back the contents of his second drink and straddled

a chair backwards, unbuttoning his shirt. Before she could help him, he

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Alchemised • 411

twisted his shoulders to pull it off, stifling a low gasp of pain.

"Did you feel any better?" she asked, placing her bare hand against

his arm. He flinched away. His skin was unnaturally cold. No fever,

though, which she hoped was a good sign.

He didn't answer.

She cleaned her hands with a dilution of carbolic acid and un-

wrapped the bandages as carefully as she could until there was only the

gauze over the wounds. She used a saline irrigation and tried to lift one,

but it stuck. Kaine jerked, his body shuddering.

"Fuck! Don't—!" His knuckles were white where he was gripping the

back of the chair.

She snatched her hand back. "I have to get the gauze off."

"Do you really?" He pressed his forehead against the chair back,

breathing raggedly.

She felt that the answer was obvious.

He shuddered again. "Fuck."

"I'm sorry."

"Shut up!"

She stood silently, waiting until his breathing slowed.

"Fine," he bit out. "Go on."

"Do you want me to knock you out again?" she asked.

He lifted his head and looked at her. His eyes were empty. His face

bruised with exhaustion. "Is there really a point to this?"

Helena met his stare. She could fix this. She wasn't going to let him

suffer and die for finally doing something good in his life.

"Please, let me try."

Something incredulous flickered in his eyes. His lips started to move,

but then he turned away, forehead pressed against the back of the chair.

"Fine," he said, sounding resigned.

She slid her fingers against the base of his skull. It took only a few

seconds, and he went limp.

She removed the gauze and cleaned the wounds, washing his entire

back with saline and then a carbolic dilution. At least the Resistance

had enough supplies now that she could treat him properly.

She examined him with her resonance, working slowly to better un-

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412 • SenLinYu

derstand what the array was doing to him. When she'd finished in the

lab, she'd gone to the library and researched arrays, trying to find any

information that might be relevant. There was nothing. No one had ever

carved an active array into a human before.

She could feel it in her resonance that his body was dying. Tiny

flashes of that horrible dissipating coldness, over and over. The array was

not only draining the energy from the talisman, but also stripping his

body of every resource he had.

Ferron didn't have the physiological resources to counterbalance the

deterioration, so it grew worse with every passing moment.

She pressed a hand on his arm, using her resonance to try to warm

him. If she'd known sooner, if he'd summoned her, maybe she could

have done something more—

She was so late.

She stood staring at him, throat too tight to swallow. She'd reported

the injury to Crowther, and he hadn't seemed to care, neither that Kaine

was hurt nor that Helena had revealed her vivimancy. He'd provided her

with the papers and instructed her to do what she could to get any fur-

ther information from Ferron, adding that if he was beyond hope of

recovery, she should bring back the talisman. They had no use for Ferron

as a lich.

Save him or kill him.

She stood, staring at the array, gripping her amulet through her shirt,

feeling its points prick the scars in her palm.

She couldn't kill him. Not after he'd trusted her. Not after he'd helped

them.

A month ago, perhaps, but not now.

The Resistance needed him. All the advantages and territory they'd

retaken was because of Kaine, and the war was still not won. She had to

save him.

She pulled the amulet off, rubbing her thumbs across the surface.

She'd realised after she started wearing it again that she'd stopped

feeling so tired, so physically strained by her vivimancy.

She knew the sunstone amulets were supposed to be special, to hold

some of Sol's light and strength within them, but she hadn't realised

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Alchemised • 413

what a difference it had been making all these years. Buying her time.

Getting her to this moment.

If it could do that, maybe it could save Kaine, tilt things into balance

and give him a chance.

If he died, it didn't really matter what happened to her. There were

other healers now, and with the ports back, her medicine wasn't needed

anymore, either.

She was replaceable. Ferron wasn't.

She'd never had much resonance for gold, but she tried to use it to

bend down the golden rays on the amulet. Kaine would never agree to

wear the Holdfast crest, but if it looked a bit more ordinary—

The setting bent, and the sunstone slipped, plummeting to the floor.

It hit the ground and shattered.

Helena stared in horror as bits of red shard scattered everywhere,

and on the ground all that remained was something silvery white.

She knelt down, reaching towards it. It was like quicksilver, a puddle

of liquid metal on the ground, but the gleam was pearlescent, sort of

glowing. When she touched it, it turned solid and cold.

She picked it up and it melted again. Without using her resonance,

she could feel a warm hum of energy coming from it, seeming to seep

through her skin. The feeling faded when it moved, turning solid like a

stone.

She watched mesmerised. The hum seemed to grow as though she

were in a dream. Things were almost real, but the details blurred when

she focused on them.

Raw and exposed, it had a burn to it almost like the talisman inside

Ferron's chest, but softer, more familiar somehow. Like an old friend.

She'd always dismissed the claims of a healer's intuition, the idea

that vivimancy endowed any kind of fundamental understanding of

human physiology that was divine or intuitive, but she was certain that

the object in her hand could heal Ferron. It would.

She went back over to him, carrying it. Very carefully with her free

hand, she pulled him back, trying not to put pressure on the lacerations.

She tilted her hand against his chest, near the talisman, and the liq-

uid turned solid and rolled. When it touched his skin, rather than melt

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414 • SenLinYu

again, it stayed solid, only warm and liquid against Helena's palm.

She pressed her hand flat over Kaine's heart and used her resonance.

It was like plunging her hand into scalding water. Heat ran up her

nerves.

The stone was solid, but as her resonance pushed through towards

Kaine, it flushed warm beneath her palm and vanished.

She snatched her hand back in time to see the silver brightness dis-

appear through Kaine's skin.

For a moment, his body was illuminated from the inside out.

She could see the shadows of his bones and veins and heart as it

shone inside him and then disappeared.

Helena blinked as if she'd just woken from a daze. The humming was

gone, the room still, and all that remained was the disfigured shape of

the suncrest and the broken red glass on the floor.

She touched Ferron's chest, tentatively, wondering if she'd just hal-

lucinated. It didn't feel like anything in last several minutes had been

real.

She reached out with her resonance, not sure what she'd just done.

He felt the same, a dissonant sense of deadness and energy. There was

no apparent change— except maybe he was a little warmer?

She leaned him forward in the chair, and her fingers trembled as she

looked around. She swept up the glass with a calm she did not feel,

pouring it into an empty glass vial and tucking it into her satchel, war-

ring between trying to convince herself that it had happened and telling

herself that it hadn't. Neither option felt fully plausible.

She went back and examined Ferron again as she would any patient.

To her resonance, there seemed nothing distinctly different except that

he was warmer now; the flashes of coldness didn't tear at her resonance

so intensely when she touched him. But there was nothing inside him

except the talisman, still burning and glowing near his heart, and the

lumithium alloy on his back.

She closed her eyes for a moment, reaching up out of habit to grip

the amulet before remembering that it was gone. She'd just have to wait

and see what happened.

She began applying the salve she'd made with Shiseo. They'd used

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Alchemised • 415

morphine as the numbing agent, bonded in various forms of petroleum

jelly and beeswax for prolonged release, along with copper and honey to

prevent infection.

Then she bandaged him before putting her empty amulet back on,

trying to flatten the empty setting before hiding it beneath her shirt.

The gold was cool against her skin.

As she woke Kaine, she took his hand again, rigid with tension,

working it slowly, coaxing it to relax. She felt him regain consciousness,

but he didn't move or speak for several minutes. Finally, he slipped his

hand away and stood, reaching wordlessly for his shirt.

She helped him dress, feeling his eyes on her as she fastened each

button. She tried not to stare at the place where the stone had vanished.

She only looked up when she reached his throat. His eyes seemed

clearer. More alert, but she suspected that was only because he was

sober again.

"I'll come back tomorrow night," she said.

The next night, Ferron's skin was no longer so visibly grey-tinged.

He still looked skeletal, his face tight from pain, but along with his co-

lour, his skin was a touch warmer. He refused to be knocked out again.

She could tell he was suspicious of her and wanted to know exactly

what she did, but he wouldn't ask, and she wasn't about to volunteer

what had happened.

He wasn't healing or regenerating; he just wasn't dying so aggres-

sively. There was still a long journey ahead that relied on his body some-

how adapting to the array.

She tried to be gentle, but he shuddered, gripping the back of the

chair until his knuckles turned white as she washed and cleaned the

wounds. She worked quickly, warning him each time she touched him,

explaining each step, trying to help keep the end in sight.

He still flinched every time she touched him.

Every night she came back to the Outpost, following the same rou-

tine. Most nights, Kaine didn't speak to her at all. He was always slightly

drunk and somehow seemed annoyed that she kept coming back. After

five days, the talisman stopped radiating energy as if it were a leaking

battery, and she could feel the aggressive decay from overstrain slowing.

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416 • SenLinYu

After more than a week of wordless treatment, he spoke abruptly

when she was washing her hands. "The High Necromancer wants

someone."

She paused. "Who?"

"A guard from one of the Hevgoss's prison complexes."

"Why?"

"I'm still persona non grata, so I don't know all the details of what's

going on. Apparently at some point, Morrough promised the Hevgo-

tian militocrats the key to immortality. It's been decades, and he hasn't

produced the version of it that they want. The reason they're supporting

the Guild Assembly is because the High Necromancer somehow con-

vinced them that he can develop it if he can take Paladia. The alliance

soured with the latest setback, and now Morrough's suddenly concerned

with getting his hands on this guard without Hevgoss knowing. A few

aspirants are going in quietly, trying to track him down. If the Eternal

Flame wants more details, they should send someone after them."

"Why not send the Undying?" she asked.

"It's more complicated to send us. It takes special preparations, and

there's limits to how long we can go."

She paused. "Why."

She could feel his annoyance at the question. "Because we're bound

to Morrough."

Her hands froze. "Do you mean like"—there was no polite way to

phrase it— "are you like—the necrothralls?"

He glared from the corner of his eye.

It was well known that necrothralls could go only so far from their

necromancer or else they'd "die" again. Most necromancers could man-

age a few miles at most. The Undying's reanimations were particularly

powerful; the necrothralls in Paladia moved so freely, no one was sure of

their limits, but they were assumed to be somewhere within Paladia's

borders.

That a limitation of distance applied to the Undying indicated paral-

lels between the two.

"Yes," Kaine said, his tone begrudging.

"But Morrough left, and he didn't take everyone. You were still here.

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Alchemised • 417

How did that work?" she asked as she began applying the salve to lac-

erations that were still fresh and raw.

"We're not always bound to him exactly." He sighed. "We're—he

uses his bones, pieces of them, when we're made. Part of the outer bone

of his right arm was used on me. He calls them phylacteries. It's what

creates our physical immutability. A part of that is used to make the

talismans." He gestured at his chest. "He takes the phylacteries out

sometimes and either grows a new bone or takes a spare from some

necrothrall. That's what he did when travelling, so he could leave some

of us behind during his trip. He doesn't like to do it often, but if he

travelled without leaving the phylacteries, the connection would sever,

and we'd— die."

"His bones?" Helena was stuck on that point.

He nodded. "Yes. He shares a piece of himself with us, and we give

all of ourselves to him."

He was silent, and Helena just kept working, her mind churning,

until he spoke again.

"A few tried to run, back when the war started. When they realised

it wouldn't be a tidy little coup to depose the Holdfasts. The High Nec-

romancer had the corpses brought back. He'd made new talismans from

each of the phylacteries and put them into the corpses. I believe you call

them liches when they're dead like that. That was when we began to

realise what being 'Undying' meant."

"What would happen if you stole your phylactery?"

He laughed under his breath. "You've never been anywhere near

Morrough if you think that's doable. He can fill rooms with his reso-

nance. But even if it were possible to steal from him, they start crum-

bling after a while. That deterioration doesn't kill the Undying,

but— their minds start to go."

Well, that explained why Ferron needed the Eternal Flame; he was

dependent on them defeating Morrough for him.

"I'll let Crowther know," she said as she finished.

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418 • SenLinYu

Helena paused halfway across the bridge to the East Island, look-

ing back towards the dam and mountains. Lumithia was a waning cres-

cent, approaching the summer Abeyance, but still her light gilded

everything.

A few more weeks and the summer tides would fully ebb, making

passage across the seas possible, and the monthlong deluge of trade

would pour across the sea, hurrying inland. The Resistance had secured

the ports just in time for the annual trade season.

Helena stood, studying the stark world around her, cast in black and

silver.

She felt lost. Kaine's injury was eating into her detachment. She

could feel herself losing focus. Now that he was showing signs of recov-

ery, she couldn't let herself forget her task.

Hold his attention. Make him loyal. Or obsessed. Whichever came

more readily. As vital as his information was, he remained a liability if

his service was solely at his own discretion.

Undying. Murderer. Spy. Target. Tool.

She repeated the list to herself, but her conviction in them rang hol-

low.

The motives Crowther attributed to Kaine felt like an ill-fitted fa-

çade, something that Kaine hid behind. Helena was an alchemist; she

was not in the habit of manipulating or altering things until she under-

stood their nature.

She crossed the bridge, heading towards Headquarters, but a rain

garden caught her eye. She'd passed it countless time but never stopped.

Tonight something drew her. It had probably been pretty once but was

neglected now. In the middle of the stream sat a shrine to the goddess

Luna.

Acknowledgements of Luna were a rare thing in Paladia. Outright

snubbing one of the gods was regarded as dangerous, but she was rarely

acknowledged except as part of the Quintessence.

In Paladia, Luna was regarded as fickle and vain, treacherous as the

tides. According to the Faith, it was because of Luna's inconstant nature

that Sol had birthed Lumithia from his own heart, placing her in the

night sky so that mankind would not fear the dark. Luna, envious of

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Alchemised • 419

Lumithia's greater brilliance, had sought to drown the world in retribu-

tion. Lumithia had faced Luna in a celestial battle so devastating, it had

rained fire across the earth. After the battle, Lumithia settled in the sky

and—to repair the destruction caused by the Great Disaster—bestowed

the gifts of alchemy upon mankind. Meanwhile Luna, remorseless even

in defeat, continued to express her fury by keeping the ocean and sea

frothing with her endless jealousy, only calming when she ruled the

skies alone.

Millennia later and Luna remained reviled, small and insignificant

compared with Lumithia's brilliant beauty and power.

The statue of Luna was worn featureless, leaving little more than a

vague figure behind.

The Paladian treatment of Luna had been a shock when Helena first

arrived. She'd known of Paladia's great devotion to Sol and Lumithia,

but the very concept of religion was different.

The islands of Etras had little metal for alchemy, and being in con-

stant proximity to the sea meant that Etrasians regarded Lumithia as

the one responsible for the severe tidal shifts that ruled them. In their

myths, Lumithia was a violent interloper who'd sought to destroy the

earth, and Luna had thrown herself into Lumithia's path. The act had

left Luna so grievously wounded, she nearly fell from the sky, and the

seas had tried to rise from their beds to catch her. Lumithia, chastened

by this act of self-sacrifice, was quieted from her violence and came to

share Luna's vigil over the night sky. But the seas did not forget: They

still rose in rage when Lumithia waxed full, only quieting in her ab-

sence.

Because of this, in Etras, Luna did not merely rule the seas; she was

also regarded as the patron goddess of protection, an intercessor. A

mother.

Helena picked up a smooth stone from the creek.

In Etras, to pray to Luna, they'd balanced rocks in stacks along the

beach, each stone a prayer for the tides to carry to her.

There would be no tides here to wash it away, but Helena had always

loved the meditative focus of the ritual. She made a neat stack, the first

stone Luc, then Lila, and Soren, Matron Pace, the medics and nurses

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420 • SenLinYu

and trainees in the hospital, Shiseo, Ilva (begrudgingly), the Eternal

Flame, and the Resistance.

The tower grew until it wobbled dangerously.

Helena held one last stone. She hesitated.

If she knocked the tower down while building it, it would be for

nought. She almost put the stone back.

She placed it.

Don't make me responsible for Kaine Ferron's death.

The stack wobbled, threatening collapse. Then it settled.

Her throat thickened, and a weight in her chest lifted, as if the uni-

verse was telling her it was possible.

A southern ritual had no place in the North, but she'd given every-

thing for the war, and it had not been enough.

Superstition was all she had left.

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CHAPTER 34

Julius 1786

She noticed the streaks of silver while treating Kaine's

back. They were just barely visible at his temple, glimmers of silver-

white threaded through his dark hair.

She stopped and leaned closer, inspecting them. "Did this just start?"

He reached up, brushing the spot with his fingers. "I noticed it this

morning."

"I thought you couldn't change."

"Well, I am an experiment now," he said dryly. "It's not as if anyone

knows what will happen. That's why people perform experiments."

She leaned in closer, trying to convince herself that he was simply

going grey, and that it was not the exact shade of silver-white the stone

had been.

He swivelled his head to face her, their faces a breath apart. "Do you

mind?"

She blushed, drawing back quickly. "Sorry."

He spoke again as she was applying the bandages. "Apparently I'm

being gifted a chimaera."

"Gifted?"

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422 • SenLinYu

The casual way he said it made it sound like he'd been given an un-

wanted house pet rather than a rabid monster that had a tendency to-

wards decomposing while still alive.

"So far, they've all been savage, but a tameable chimaera would be

ideal." He stood up. "Those of us with the 'resources' to raise one are

being 'given' a chimaera to train. It's a test, obviously."

She stepped around him, helping him put his shirt on. The haggard

bruising under his eyes had almost faded entirely. "But you're injured.

It's not fair to expect you to tame something like that when you can't

heal properly or raise your arms."

He looked condescendingly down at her. "Marino, this may be a

shocking revelation for you, but the High Necromancer does not care

about fairness. It's his opinion that anyone without the wits and will to

survive deserves to suffer and die. Ideally for his amusement."

She could tell he was baiting her. "Do you know what kind of chi-

maera it will be?"

"Well, given the use of the word 'train,' I imagine it will be at least

part dog. But I'm not Bennet's favourite person. Whatever it is, I'm sure

to get the worst one."

The idea of a chimaera that could be trained was horrifying. More

and more of them kept appearing. They died quickly, but the deaths as-

sociated with them were slowly increasing.

"Could you— kill it?"

He raised an eyebrow. "You think I should kill my gift that I'm being

tested with?"

She went hot and cold all over, not sure how to reply.

He was already injured. If the chimaera he was entrusted with were

to die, he'd undoubtedly be punished, but—

He caught her chin, tilting her head back until her eyes met his.

There was a vaguely silver gleam in them. "If you were me, what would

you do?"

"I—" she stammered. "I would see if I could make it loyal."

"And if you couldn't? If a monster can't be made loyal, what would

you do then?"

Their faces were close. Helena's throat tightened, her heart beating

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Alchemised • 423

too fast.

"I'd look for flaws in the transmutation," she said. "The splicing isn't

very good, so there are mistakes that could be aggravated to accelerate

deterioration. You wouldn't have to kill it outright, you'd just—speed up

the inevitable."

He leaned forward, so close she could feel his breath. For a moment

she thought he was going to kiss her.

"You're so pragmatic." The words brushed against her lips.

He released her chin abruptly and stepped away, eyes glittering.

Her cheeks were still hot as she packed up all her supplies, refusing

to look at him again.

He spoke just as she was leaving.

"Don't die, Marino. I might miss you."

Vanya Gettlich was a stubby-limbed spinster with small eyes, a

large round nose, and sharp ears. The combination, she'd always said,

that was the secret to her success as one the best scouts in the Resis-

tance. No one ever noticed a homely woman.

Generally, scouts didn't live very long. Months was considered im-

pressive. For many it was far less. Vanya had been a scout for years,

crossing in and out of enemy territory collecting intelligence and infor-

mation that no one else dared obtain.

But when she vanished, everyone knew that she wouldn't come back.

She was marked missing for two weeks before being listed among the

presumed dead.

It was a shock when Helena received an emergency summons to the

gatehouse after one of the patrols radioed in, claiming to have found

her. Gettlich was grievously wounded. They'd verified that she wasn't a

necrothrall, but it was harder to be sure that it wasn't a lich trying to

infiltrate Headquarters using her wounded corpse.

When she was checked for any signs of a talisman, they'd found

anomalous forms of metal distributed through her body, including de-

tectable lumithium.

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424 • SenLinYu

There were no exceptions to the rules. Anyone found with lumith-

ium inside their body could not enter Headquarters without full re-

straints.

They strapped Gettlich down while she screamed, begging them not

to, promising it was her, but Helena was not allowed to treat her other-

wise.

Helena had just stepped forward when the doors burst open and

Luc entered, threatening to put his own guards in the ground if they

tried to stop him.

Lila had stood beside him, weapons ready, conflict written across her

face as Luc leaned over Gettlich, indifferent to the danger.

"Gettlich," he said, his voice hoarse. "I'm so sorry."

Gettlich calmed then. Luc had that effect on people. She hushed his

apologies, called him a silly boy. While Helena worked, unnoticed,

Vanya gave her final report.

She'd been caught while investigating the new lab near the West

Port. The Undying had used her as a test subject there, trying to sup-

press her alchemy. They'd injected her with metal over the course of

days. The experiment was deemed a failure when her organs started to

shut down.

The guards ordered to dispose of her had decided to make use of the

dying prisoner. They'd taken her out of the building for privacy and left

her for dead once they were done.

As Gettlich told Luc all this, Helena verified it. The metal in the

blood interfered with Helena's own resonance, making it blur like static.

Her arms and legs were mottled with old bruises from restraints. She

was slick with blood from the waist down. She would have died from

metal poisoning her blood, but the internal damage was going to kill

her first.

All the metal interfered with Helena's vivimancy too much for her to

do anything. She had to keep shaking her head each time Luc begged.

Laudanum was all Helena could offer. Relief until it was over.

Gettlich's heart kept trying to rally whenever Luc spoke, promising

that the Eternal Flame would never forget her, that he'd find everyone

who'd hurt her. He'd make them all pay.

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Alchemised • 425

The Council had to lock Luc in his quarters to keep him from trying

to take his battalion and find the lab. The Gettlichs were an old family.

Luc had known Vanya his entire life.

Because of the circumstances of the death, the traditional mourning

and cremation processes were suspended. The body was placed in a se-

cure room, still strapped to the gurney, covered with a sheet.

Helena was summoned to Falcon Matias's office, a drab little room

with no decorations except one very large painting of the sun. She al-

ways felt cold in any room that Matias occupied.

"The Council has determined that an autopsy on Gettlich is neces-

sary," Matias said without preamble, his face puckering as he looked at

Helena. "You have been selected to perform it."

"I'm not trained— "

"There are books on the matter. You can ask Surgeon Maier for

them," Matias said, waving his hand.

"Then shouldn't Maier be the one to—"

"I am told the state of Gettlich is deeply disturbing. You have already

seen it, it will do you no harm to see it again." he said, cutting her off

again. "You will be observed throughout to ensure you take no untow-

ard actions." His watery blue eyes narrowed. "If you are suspected of any

violation of that body, I will have your hands cut off and your soul cursed

to sink into the dark fires of the earth. Do I make myself clear?"

He glared at her, sticky strings of saliva visible in his mouth as he

spoke. He only imbibed enough water to survive, considering the de-

mands of the flesh as something to conquer. It was a common idea

among those of faith, although Matias took it further than anyone else

Helena had ever met.

Helena's stood; her stomach knotted in dread. She'd never performed

an autopsy.

Gettlich had taught introductory alchemy, one of Helena's first in-

structors. She knew her.

But nothing from Matias was ever a request. His word was law for

Helena.

She gave a slow nod.

"The procedure will take place tomorrow, when Sol is at his zenith."

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426 • SenLinYu

Matias's tongue smacked again. "Go purify yourself in preparation."

Helena left, her head hollow, but there was nothing she could do.

She couldn't bring Luc into this. He was already shattered by the death

and wouldn't want an autopsy at all, but the Council was right: They

needed to know what had been done.

She spent her evening researching autopsy methods until it was time

to head to the Outpost. She felt almost comatose with dread and was

grateful for a routine to escape to.

Ferron was in his usual place, a tumbler dangling from his fingers,

but the furniture in the room had all been shoved to one side. His ex-

pression was languorous, eyelids lowered, but a sharp, almost silver

gleam glittered beneath his lashes.

Helena didn't ask. She had her own preoccupations.

It was undeniable that he was in one of his moods. There was an

edge to him, a strange quality in the way his eyes landed on her when

she arrived. Not his typical resentment.

Helena feigned obliviousness, removing the bandages without a

word and studying the wounds. His colouring was almost back to nor-

mal, and there was no sign of rot or infection anywhere. Only tiny traces

of dead tissue in the immediate area around the symbols.

In a week or so, she might try closing the incisions. Survivable or

not, it wasn't sustainable for him to have a perpetually open injury. As

much as he tried to hide behind a routine, she knew he could barely

move without excruciating pain. She didn't trust Crowther's or Ilva's

charity lasting much longer if Kaine was unable to resume spying.

She rested her hand briefly on his shoulder. He shifted but didn't

flinch at all.

"You're done," she said quietly as she finished wrapping the bandages

and helped him with his shirt.

He said nothing, just stood and poured himself another drink.

She packed up her bag, heading for the door, but it didn't open. Usu-

ally the necrothrall opened it as soon as she was near.

She stood waiting for a moment before finally looking back towards

Kaine, standing by the bar. "I never got around to training you, did I,

Marino?"

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Alchemised • 427

Her mouth went dry. The room around her was suddenly very pres-

ent.

She'd known that once Kaine began feel better, he'd find it necessary

to remind her that he was in charge. He so obviously hated feeling vul-

nerable around anyone. He'd feel the need to put her back in her place.

She'd known, and filed it away as a future concern.

She backed away.

"Come here."

She shook her head, "I have—I have a procedure tomorrow. You

can't hurt me t-tonight."

He stilled, and then his knuckles gripped the tumbler, turning white

as his expression darkened. "I realise you consider me a complete mon-

ster," he bit out. "But I do generally keep my word. I'm not planning to

hurt you. Come here. I want you to try attacking me, so I can see what

you know."

"What?" She stared at him incredulous.

"You're travelling at night, outside of Resistance territory." He was

speaking through clenched teeth. "We've already established you're shit

at defence. Let's see your offence. Come. Here."

She glanced around the cleared space in disbelief. "I'm not going to

attack you when you're injured."

He stared at her in confusion. "It's not like I can die."

She wanted to tell him he was insane but tried to be tactful about it.

"Look, Ferron—Kaine, I appreciate the concern, but I'm a vivimancer.

I'll be fine."

"Will you?"

She gave a sharp nod. "Yes. I might not be best a defense, but I've

always got that. So my fighting abilities aren't something you need to

worry about. But"—she drew a deep breath—"I appreciate that you

did."

"I suppose you have a point," he said slowly, his eyes sliding out of

focus.

She heard the door behind her open and gave him one last nod as

she turned to go.

In the doorway, instead of the one necrothrall waiting for her, the

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428 • SenLinYu

passage was crowded with them. There were a dozen at least, some old

and grey, others new, their wounds still red.

The blood drained from her head.

"Don't worry, they're all mine," she dimly heard Ferron say. "Now

then, let's see you fight with vivimancy."

He said something else but she couldn't hear him anymore. Her eyes

were trapped on the necrothralls that were all shuffling into the room

towards her. Their faces blank.

There were so many.

They crowded towards her. She was trapped. Trapped with them.

She couldn't escape.

They'd all close in.

"You call yourself a vivimancer. Show me."

She barely heard his words.

It's not the hospital. You're not in the hospital, she tried to tell herself,

but every time she tried to breathe, her chest clenched tighter. She

managed to step back.

She tried to hold one hand out, to ward them off, but it shook vio-

lently.

"Marino." Kaine's voice was annoyed. "Are you more afraid of thralls

than you are of me? I'm actually offended."

"F- Ferron, call them off," she said, a tremor in her voice. She couldn't

tear her eyes away from the necrothralls.

"No. I want to see you fight."

"I don't want to fight," she said, backing away farther. "Stop it. You

said I could say no to things. I'm saying no."

Her voice was rising.

"They're corpses. You said you can protect yourself. Show me!"

Her stomach clenched, her legs threatening to give out.

"Let them go." Her voice shook.

"You take any out, and I'll burn them." His tone was sardonic, as if

the whole thing were funny. "Come on now. Show me what you've got."

The necrothralls fanned out, backing her into the corner. Her shoul-

ders hit a wall.

"Ferron!" Her voice was sharp, a note of hysteria in it. "Call them off.

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Alchemised • 429

I don't want to do this!"

"This is war." His voice came from somewhere beyond the bodies

crowding around her. "You don't get to want; you get to live or die."

She shrank back, making herself as small as she could. Her throat

was closing, as if fingers were already wrapped around it. They'd slit her

wide open.

She screamed and shoved her hands out.

Everything turned red.

Everything.

She blinked and couldn't see anything but the dark coagulating

blood dripping down her face. It covered her skin, sticking to her lashes.

There were no necrothralls now, just bits and pieces of bodies.

Her knees gave out, and she slid down the wall to the floor, gripping

the strap of her satchel.

She could taste the blood in her mouth. The scent of decomposition

was thick in the air. She was still suffocating, choking on blood and

viscera as she tried to breathe.

Two hard hands gripped her shoulders.

She shoved outwards with her resonance, but it was met and shoved

back in so violently that it was like a cannon going off inside her head.

Her vision went white, and when it returned Ferron's face swam be-

fore her, except he was glowing. His eyes had gone bright silver.

"What the fuck, Marino?"

Her head was ringing, and she couldn't form words. She just knelt

there, staring at his living face.

"I told you—I didn't want to," she finally said. Then her face crum-

pled, and she burst into tears.

There was a pause.

"Perhaps I did slightly underestimate you." He pulled a handkerchief

out and wiped her face until there was no more blood clotted in her

lashes.

She sat, numb, until he dragged her up from the floor, his arms nearly

giving out as he pulled her along to the bathroom.

He pushed her in, twisting a tap to turn on the shower before open-

ing a cabinet and pulling out several towels and some fresh clothes.

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430 • SenLinYu

"Clean up," he said.

Helena looked down at herself. She was covered in viscera. It smelled

worse than the hospital. All the decomposition. Her throat convulsed.

She stepped into the shower with her clothes on, fingers trembling

as she forced herself to remove them, peeling off the wet layers like skin.

It was as if Ferron had found a festering wound and jabbed his fin-

gers into it. Cocooned under the water, she could barely bring herself to

step out.

She knew she was only delaying the inevitable as she slowly dried

and rebraided her hair, pinning it carefully back into place before look-

ing at the clothes Ferron had left. They were his. Trousers and a shirt.

Did he live here? She pulled them on slowly.

As she stood, slowly fastening the familiar buttons, her shock

thinned, her mind resurfacing raw with anger.

When she emerged from the bathroom, she braced herself for the

nightmare of blood and gore, but the room was cleaned. She'd been in

the bathroom longer than she'd realised.

The floor had been mopped. Even the furniture had all been put

back. The scent lingered, but visual traces were all gone.

Ferron was seated backwards on the chair, the fingers of one hand

pressed against his forehead as if he were dealing with an intense mi-

graine.

She hoped he was.

He looked up, hand dropping languidly away.

"Well," he said slowly, his enunciation precise. His eyes still had a

strange silver gleam to them. "You really are full of surprises."

The sight of him so unapologetic only added to her brewing rage.

She went over to the bar, pouring herself a generous amount of

something from a very fancy- looking bottle.

She sipped it. It was sharp and bitter. She wished she'd chosen some-

thing else; she'd always preferred wine, but Ferron didn't appear to keep

any. Likely not strong enough for his taste.

She braced herself and gulped it, not caring at all about the way it

curdled her tongue, burning down her throat and into her empty stom-

ach.

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Alchemised • 431

She squeezed her eyes shut and then poured more, drinking it al-

most as quickly.

She wanted to get drunk as fast as possible. She swirled her fingers,

feeling her own body with her resonance, prompting her digestive sys-

tem to absorb the alcohol a little faster, to get it into her blood before

she did something like throwing every single bottle on the wall at Fer-

ron's head.

She closed her eyes, sinking hard into the warm, blurring relief.

She rarely drank alcohol, and now she was reminded why. It felt so

much better to feel like this than the way she actually felt all the time:

like a raw nerve.

She gripped the glass, pouring herself a bit more.

"I think that's enough," Ferron said behind her. "I don't believe your

liver regenerates."

She'd only intended to add a little, but at those words she upended

the bottle, pouring all the rest into her glass. It sloshed over the side,

spilling onto the rug.

"Fuck off," she said.

"I didn't know you could swear." He sounded amused.

Her jaw clenched, and she turned and told him to fuck off in three

more languages.

He arched an eyebrow. "Am I supposed to take you more seriously

now?"

"I hate you."

He gave a strained laugh. "I am aware."

She looked down at the drink. She wanted to leave—she was tired,

jittery, and knocked completely off kilter—but the door was closed

again. Ferron clearly intended to keep her. She went over and curled up

at the end of the sofa, as far from him as she could get.

"I hate you," she said again.

"I hate you, too."

The alcohol had set her tongue loose. "This war is your fault. Every-

one who's died. It's on your head. And now, because of you, even when

it's over, I'll still have nothing."

"Am I supposed to care? Do you think that ruining your life is the

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432 • SenLinYu

worst thing I've ever done?"

She looked away.

"When did you find out you were a vivimancer?" he asked.

She was not drunk enough for that conversation. She gulped more

of her drink. She was going to have the most blistering hangover to-

morrow.

"I should've wondered that sooner, shouldn't I?"

She said nothing so he kept talking.

"Vivimancy is often a late-onset ability. Mid- to late adulthood.

Young people tend to manifest it as a reaction to a traumatic event. You

weren't surprised at what you did to those thralls, which tells me that

wasn't the first time you've done that. So what did it? What happened

to set you off like a bomb?"

Helena tilted her head back, staring at the ceiling. Everything inside

her went soft when she was this drunk.

"We thought at the beginning that the usual rules of war would

apply. We set up field hospitals so that people wouldn't have to travel

through combat zones to reach a hospital."

"The massacres."

She nodded.

The hospital massacres had been the first major atrocity in the war.

Apollo's assassination had been devastating, but the massacres were

when it all became irrevocably real.

The Undying followed no rules. It was not an "honourable" war.

Morrough wanted people to be afraid or dead.

The Guild Assembly defended the attacks, saying that the hospitals

were run by the Eternal Flame as covers for military bases, and the sur-

rounding countries swallowed the lie, because it was easier than involv-

ing themselves in Paladia's conflict.

"My father was a Khemish surgeon. Here in Paladia, manual surgery

is considered antiquated, so he didn't have much luck getting a job."

Helena swallowed hard, staring across the room. "When the war started,

he wanted to go back to Etras, but I'd promised Luc that I'd stay. When

I wouldn't go, he didn't, either. The Resistance was setting up the field

hospitals. It was my idea—him working there. I thought he'd be safe,

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Alchemised • 433

and if the people saw how talented he was, he'd have opportunities—

afterwards."

She gulped more from her drink. The room was swaying.

"I was going to be a combat medic, so I'd volunteer at the hospital

while we were training for dispatch. That day—we thought it was poi-

son. All these people came in with fevers. We couldn't bring them down.

One of them, he kept getting hotter and hotter, screaming, 'Get him

out'—and he got violent. My father sent me to look for someone, and

the patient was dead when I got back. They were trying to find a cause

of death, and the patient suddenly sat up." She hiccoughed. "We knew

about the Undying regenerating, but we didn't know about the liches

then."

Her voice was barely more than whisper.

"They blocked the doors and started killing and reanimating every-

one. The necrothralls they made helped them kill faster." She swallowed.

"The hospital wasn't equipped. My father—he'd never—he'd only heard

about necrothralls. These were colleagues. Patients. I told him they

weren't people anymore, but he still didn't fight back when they caught

him."

She reached up, pressing her palm against her throat for a moment,

her fingers curled, following the thin scar just below her left ear that

swept towards her throat.

"He was so gentle. He had this deep voice that would rumble in your

chest when he hugged you. He would never have hurt me . . ."

"The reports said there were no survivors." Ferron's voice seemed to

come from somewhere far off.

"They didn't find me right away," she said dully.

She squeezed the glass in her hand. "All the field hospitals. In one

day. They killed everyone, nurses, doctors, surgeons, all the patients. And

we found out about the liches. And what I was."

"The liches who infiltrated the hospitals were a failed experiment,

I'm told," Ferron said quietly. "Morrough and Bennet were trying to see

if placing talismans inside other living bodies would let the Undying

take over and remain alive. But the host bodies always went into shock."

"Oh," was all Helena could think to say. Her intoxication had struck;

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434 • SenLinYu

even stringing words together felt arduous, but she struggled through.

Gettlich's face floating in her mind. "Do you know what they're work-

ing on now?"

His eyes narrowed. "I don't hear much beyond rumours presently.

Why?"

She looked away. "No reason."

"Why'd they make you a healer?"

She blinked. "Healing's efficient. Things that can take weeks or

months recover from, can be fixed in minutes or hours with vivimancy.

They needed someone who could save people."

Ferron gave a derisive scoff.

Her anger reignited. "You have no idea how hard it is to save some-

one, to fix all the ways the people like you break them." She glared at

him. "I hope someday you have to try. See how little you think of it

then."

He looked away.

She felt an odd spark of satisfaction.

There was a long silence. Ferron seemed completely lost in his

thoughts, and Helena was so drunk she could barely see straight. She

closed her eyes, drifting. When she reopened them, he was staring at

her.

She looked back and couldn't help but think he looked different now.

Older. Or perhaps she was incredibly intoxicated now.

"Can I ask you a question?" she asked, struggling against dizziness.

"Do you feel the array? Can you tell it's affecting you?"

"Yes," he said with a faint nod. "I didn't think I could change, but it's

like being cold-forged. I'm gradually being beaten into a new iteration

of myself. It doesn't countermand who I am, but I feel certain things less

than I did. It's easier to be ruthless and focused, harder to dissuade my-

self from impulses that align with what I want."

She squinted at him "Why that design? What was Bennet trying to

turn you into?"

"I designed it," he said quietly.

That information was shocking enough to sober Helena. She sat up.

"It was my punishment," he said. "I expected it would kill me, but if

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Alchemised • 435

I survived, I didn't want them to choose what I became. So I asked to

design it, as proof of my penance."

She sat forward, studying him. She wasn't imagining it; he was dif-

ferent. It was like witnessing a slow metamorphosis. The effect of the

array was likely exacerbated by the delay in healing, the deterioration

making him more malleable.

His features had grown more defined, still gaunt from sickness, but

it had carved the boyishness from his face. He actually looked like an

adult now.

She tilted her head to the side. If she saw him, without the context

of who he was, she might find him rather handsome.

The thought made her blink so hard, the room went out of focus.

She stood quickly. "I need to go back; the checkpoints close soon."

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CHAPTER 35

Julius 1786

Helena had the most blistering hangover the next morn-

ing and lay in bed, so nauseous she didn't even feel guilty for sleeping in

until someone was sent reminding her that she was due to perform an

autopsy.

She almost threw up upon being reminded, but there was no delay-

ing. She spent several minutes transmuting her own body until she

didn't feel sick from standing upright.

The autopsy would take place in the Alchemy Tower's operating the-

atre so that Falcon Matias and several of the Flame Keepers who man-

aged the crematorium could observe to ensure she did nothing to violate

the sanctity of the body.

Helena's mouth was dry as she stood before the covered gurney, the

metal instruments laid out on a tray, gleaming under a bright light that

illuminated her and Gettlich, leaving her audience in the shadows.

She felt disconnected from her body as she pulled the sheet back.

"May I begin?" she said to the darkness.

"Begin," came Matias's voice.

There was something particularly horrible about having to cut open

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Alchemised • 437

the body of someone she'd known, removing the organs and examining

the body in components while narrating in detail the kinds of abuse she

found evidence of. What she could and couldn't feel through resonance

about the experimentation.

She wished she could cover the face, so she didn't have to look at it

while she was working, but the dead had to be respected.

When it was over, two of the Flame Keepers emerged from the

darkness and took the body carefully away. It was important for every

part to be burned, to ensure that no earthly remains could hold back the

soul's ascent.

In the war room, Helena listened as the guard reported on how Get-

tlich had been found and what she'd said. Then Luc recited in an empty

voice everything that she'd told him.

General Althorne showed the location of the West Port Lab. Fer-

ron's contribution. It was better protected than the previous lab had

been, the building extensively reinforced to repel an assault. It would be

difficult to reach, and they risked too many combatants if they went

that far into enemy territory.

"The Council recognises Healer Marino," Matias said. It was the

first time Helena had spoken before the Eternal Flame since her "hys-

terical outburst." She hadn't known that she'd be called on. Matias could

give the report himself.

Ilva's eyes flicked to Crowther as Helena stepped forward.

She wet her lips. "Based on my—examination, the information Get-

tlich gave Luc—the Principate, appears accurate. It was likely an unsuc-

cessful attempt to neutralise her resonance. There were multiple injection

sites throughout the body, some near the brain but most along the arms.

It was a variety of metals reduced to microparticles and injected with a

carrier fluid into the muscles. I couldn't accurately analyse it through

resonance; there seemed to be some compounds beyond my repertoire.

I extracted what I could and turned the samples over to the metallur-

gists. It wasn't possible to determine whether the method was successful

in suppressing alchemical abilities, although prior to her death, I did

have difficulty offering relief through healing."

"How would such a thing work?" Ilva asked, her fingertips drawing

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438 • SenLinYu

absentminded circles on the table in front of her.

Helena inhaled, hoping that they would not punish the messenger.

"My theory is that the injections were intended to create an internal

interference with Gettlich's resonance. By placing the microparticles

inside the body near the brain and hands, they thought to obscure Get-

tlich's ability to sense metal outside her body. Based on the number of

injections, I believe they kept dosing her until she couldn't resonate

anymore, but the quantity of metal was toxic at that point."

"What are the odds they succeeded?" Althorne asked in his deep

voice.

"I couldn't say," Helena said.

"What I wish to know," Falcon Matias said from his seat beside Ilva,

"is what the purpose of this experiment is. What use would they have

for suppressing resonance?"

"I don't know," she said.

"You're a vivimancer," he said pointedly. "Surely you have some idea

of how it could be useful for your kind."

Luc, who'd been slumped in his seat ever since Althorne overruled

any possibility of raiding the lab, suddenly straightened. "What's that

supposed to mean?"

Matias smacked his tongue, pressing a handkerchief beneath his

narrow nostrils. "It is a relevant question. Healer Marino"—he said the

title as if it were an insult—"has the same abilities as those responsible.

Because of that, she may have ideas that would not occur to the rest of

us."

Luc's eyes flashed dangerously. "Helena is a healer. She has devoted

her life to our cause. She's as loyal as anyone. She's nothing like those

responsible."

Rather than answer Luc, Falcon Matias turned his gaze back to Hel-

ena. "Healer Marino, prior to this autopsy, you performed a transmuta-

tional dissection, did you not?"

Helena nodded, fingers flexing inside her gloves. "At the Council's

request— "

"That was a yes or no question," Matias said sharply.

"Yes."

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Alchemised • 439

"And during that dissection, you used transmutational abilities to

examine and reverse the creation of the chimaera in ways that any other

medical personnel would have been incapable of, did you not?"

"I was instructed to— "

"Yes or no?"

"Yes."

Matias turned his attention triumphantly back to Luc. "Then my

question stands. Healer Marino, as a vivimancer, what would you con-

sider the potential use of people with suppressed alchemy?"

The room faded from view, and all Helena could see was Gettlich,

cut open, her arms with the skin purpled and greyish around the injec-

tion sites, the holes left behind from the syringes, and her own subcon-

scious puzzling out the methodology, trying to understand the intent

and technique, unable to keep from noticing avenues of improvement

because that was how she'd been trained to perceive all forms of al-

chemy. Even torture.

If she admitted those theories, it would proof of what she was. If she

refused, she might endanger the Eternal Flame by withholding impera-

tive information.

"It would control prisoners," Crowther said before she could answer,

"or they may endeavour to weaponise it. Or use it to make human sub-

jects easier to manage during their experimentation. There are many

possibilities, Falcon."

Matias glanced scathingly towards Crowther. There were mutters in

the audience. Crowther almost never spoke during meetings.

Helena gave a stilted nod. "There may be a number of potential uses

for suppressing alchemy, but there's currently no evidence that they've

discovered a reliable means of doing so, only that they're attempting it."

"We should prepare for the possibility, but keep the information

away from the general population," Ilva said. "We have no need for

fearmongering over something that may never come to pass. And Ma-

tias." She turned imperiously to gaze at the Falcon. "Need I remind this

Council that Healer Marino's work and title come with the blessing of

the Faith and the Principate?"

Matias nodded sourly as Helena went back to her seat.

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440 • SenLinYu

It was both unsurprising and undeniable that Falcon Matias wanted

Helena removed from the Eternal Flame, possibly the Resistance. With

all the trainee healers, Helena was no longer the necessity she'd once

been. Luc might be the only obstacle to that.

The Council was supposed to be five equal votes, but Luc had greater

sway than the other four members combined. They could outvote him,

but they'd never dared to veto him openly.

They preferred to simply keep him in the dark.

Luc had an overpowering sense of what was right, his decisions

ruled by conscience, but as a result, he was left out of many of the Coun-

cil's deliberations, nudged to spend his time at the front where choices

did not involve such delicate politics.

Helena watched him sitting among the Council, Ilva and Matias on

one side and Althorne and Crowther on the other, like a marionette

unaware of its strings.

Helena wished she could save him from it, but she knew that left to

his own devices he would blindly sacrifice himself at first opportunity.

Crowther gestured to Helena to follow him when the meeting

ended.

"Is Matias going to be a problem for me?" she asked once they were

alone.

"Yes," he said as they walked across the skybridge into the Alchemy

Tower.

They entered the lift, but rather the ascend to his office, he inserted

a key and the lift went down.

"He wants you gone, and now he's begun taking steps to achieve it."

Helena swallowed hard. "Is that something you'll allow?"

He glanced towards her. "Are you doing anything that would make

interfering worth the effort? Insofar as I'm aware, the only thing you've

done for the last several weeks is waste our limited opium supplies on

Ferron."

The lift was still descending. They passed the ground floor. Helena's

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Alchemised • 441

stomach seemed to drop with it.

"Where are you taking me?" she asked.

"To see how useful you can be," was all Crowther said as the lift

lurched to a stop and the doors opened, revealing a dark passage.

Helena knew there were places underground. She'd been down there

a few times to retrieve things from the storage rooms. The plateau where

the Tower was built was stone and had been extensively excavated over

the centuries. She had no idea why Crowther would take her there.

He led the way, picking up an electric torch from a ledge, clicking it

on and wedging it into the space between where his body and his para-

lysed arm were strapped together so he could unlock a heavy door. In-

stead of revealing a room, it revealed a flight of stairs that led down into

pitch blackness. The scent of mildew rose from the darkness.

Helena stalled. "Where are we going?"

"On occasion I have—special prisoners who require medical atten-

tion. Ivy doesn't always possess the finesse needed. Come, Marino, show

me how much effort you're worth."

Helena didn't know much about the Resistance's prisoners, but she

did know they weren't supposed to be kept in what amounted to a hole

underground. There were ruins beneath the Tower, tunnels and under-

ground rooms, too elaborate to have been made just for Institute stor-

age. Most of them had been transformed into cells filled with

unfamiliar prisoners.

She also knew that burn injuries were common in the war, but com-

bat pyromancy was a blunt weapon. It left large burns, not wounds tar-

geted precisely at areas of the body with the highest concentrations of

nerve endings.

The person would need to be restrained, and the pyromancer very

experienced.

Helena lost track of how long she was down in the dark, eyes strain-

ing to pick out details from the unsteady sweep of Crowther's electric

torch that gave her only glimpses of filthy bodies and charred flesh. She

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442 • SenLinYu

healed by touch, reaching out and finding bodies in the darkness.

It felt criminal. Relief but for what? Further atrocity?

She debrided, regenerated the tissue, closed the open sores, healed

fractures, and found many hands with every bone meticulously broken.

Which threat was Crowther making by taking her there?

"I'll—I can have Ferron healed by next week," she said in the lift

afterwards, trying to keep her voice from shaking. She was cold all over,

and the daylight light hurt her eyes. Complicit. Complicit. Complicit.

The word rang through her head. "I'll get it done."

Crowther said nothing, his thin, spider-like fingers tapping absently

along his paralysed forearm.

She pressed on, speaking quickly. "He's—I think he's starting to re-

generate normally again. The array will be difficult to work with, but I

can do it. I think it could be an advantage in the long run. The injury has

made him more emotionally vulnerable than he would have been oth-

erwise."

Crowther's fingers stilled. "Don't mistake that for loyalty."

Dread shivered in her lungs.

"I don't. I realise that it's not necessarily leverage yet, but—the array

affects him. He mentioned that it's become harder to dissuade himself

from what he wants. I can take advantage of that."

"You're deluding yourself."

Why was he suddenly sceptical when this was the mission he'd given

her?

He looked over. "Kaine Ferron remains the youngest of the Undying.

In all this time, there has never been another so young." He was stand-

ing near enough in the lift that she could see the metal fillings in his

back molars as he spoke. "He should have been taken advantage of im-

mediately— a boy of immense fortune, not yet a man, fatherless in a war.

And yet he has climbed rank. He has no friends, no lovers, not even a

particular whore he favours. He is calculating and mercurial and takes

risks that anyone else would consider insane."

"I kno— "

"No. You don't, if you did, you'd realise the error in your strategy. He

is not a person, he's not human, and you are not creating a relationship

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Alchemised • 443

of trust with him. He is an animal."

Helena stared at Crowther in bewilderment. The lift stopped, the

doors opened, and she almost tripped stepping out. "But you told me

to— "

"I told you to use vivimancy," Crowther snarled. "And instead, you

offered endless excuses about needing the right opportunities, that it

would be too obvious, and now you think the array, this injury is the

solution to your failures."

"You said to take priority over his original goals. I'm doing that."

Crowther's eyebrows dipped into a sharp frown, and he seized her by

the elbow and dragged her towards his office, not answering until they

were behind closed doors.

"I told you to enthral him with vivimancy." Crowther's voice had

grown icy. "What you are doing is making him depend on you, to con-

sider you someone he needs. That is entirely different. Can you turn this

array off ? Control the intensity of its effect? No, you cannot. I did not

ask for something irreversible, I asked for a vivimancy-controlled obses-

sion."

"Well, that's not how vivimancy works," she snapped back. "You can't

just turn human emotions on or off, not in a way that gives you the kind

of leverage you're wanting. It's not magic."

He glared at her as he seated himself at his desk. "I have no use for

tools I cannot control. If you manage to succeed in this manner, you're

more likely to destroy the Eternal Flame than save it. The Ferron family

is fuelled by their ambitions. They have always resented the noble fami-

lies. Now Paladia is built with their steel, and they think that means it

belongs to them, whether to seize or ruin. They do not share. They are

obsessive about what they regard to be theirs. You do this and Kaine Fer-

ron will never let you go, and he will not be content with being second-

ary to anyone."

Terror ran through Helena like a knife, but she squared her shoul-

ders, meeting Crowther's glare, refusing to back down because she had

nowhere to go. Her every bridge was burned. He'd seen to that.

"You gave me to him," she said, her voice full of fury. "Now, and after

the war. Those were the terms. You said it was Ferron or lose, and so I

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444 • SenLinYu

chose him. When was he ever expected to let me go?"

She drew a shaky breath. "You said to make myself the mission for

him. He is changeable right now, and this may be the only moment in

which he ever will be. If you think what I'm doing is too dangerous,

then give me a different option, because this is the only way I can give

you what you asked for."

She could see anger in Crowther's eyes, but he said nothing.

What had he expected her to do? Had he really believed that vivi-

mancy could create obsession in Ferron without a sense of need? That it

was a faucet she could turn on and off ? Did no one understand what

vivimancy was?

Crowther sat, staring at her, and she could almost see the pieces

moving as he adjusted his strategy, weighing what to do. When he said

nothing for several minutes, she eventually turned to leave.

The corridors of the Tower felt too warm and enclosed in the sum-

mer heat. Helena could barely breathe.

She went out onto a skybridge.

Down below, Luc and Lila were sparring against their unit while

Soren was calling out critiques of their forms. A small crowd was gath-

ered to watch.

Knowing Ilva, she'd probably told Soren or Lila to do something to

preoccupy Luc and keep him from fretting over the West Post Lab.

Combat alchemy could be so beautiful, it was almost hard to re-

member the violence of its purpose, and the ceaseless ugliness left in its

wake.

Helena watched, listening to the cheers below, heart aching.

She'd always thought that she could do anything for her friends. She

didn't need recognition, just the comfort of knowing she'd done what

was necessary. Pragmatism had stolen away any lustre of heroism from

her, and she kept telling herself it was all right . . .

But she was so lonely.

Her fingers wrapped around the empty amulet, the points catching

on her palm. There was a dull sense of emptiness that never went away

now, a slowly growing wound that she couldn't heal.

She couldn't fix herself anymore, and no one else seemed inclined to

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Alchemised • 445

even notice she was breaking.

You are all alone, and when the war is over, you will still be alone.

She blinked as the figures below blurred into halos of gold and silver.

That night, she studied the array with a renewed sense of urgency.

It had become a familiar sight, but when she paused to take it in, it was

horrifically stunning. Designing it had required the work of a meticu-

lous alchemist.

Which Ferron had been, prior to becoming an assassin.

She couldn't imagine designing something so intricate, knowing

that every line drawn would be an incision into her own skin.

"I think I can close the wounds soon," she said.

He was silent for a strangely long time. "Really?"

His voice was so toneless, she couldn't read his reaction.

"It will be experimental, the procedure," she said as she applied oint-

ment. "But I'm familiar with how your regeneration works now, and

how it intersects with my resonance. There's only one thing . . ."

He tensed. She watched the subtle ripple of his back, incisions wid-

ening.

"What?"

"The Abeyance. Resonance will be at its lowest ebb. It would make

working with the lumithium in the alloy on your shoulders easier, but

I'm not sure if completing the array with its effects reduced is safe or

not."

"It shouldn't matter, but with low ebb, I'll regenerate slower."

"That's fine. Preferable actually."

She was at the door when he spoke up behind her. "Marino."

She looked back.

"There's a rumour Bennet's experimenting with alchemy suppres-

sion."

"Why?" she asked, hoping he knew something, that she'd be able to

take new information back to Crowther, proof of Kaine's continued

usefulness.

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446 • SenLinYu

Kaine didn't shrug, but his expression shifted to communicate that

he would if he could. "Who knows."

She stepped away from the door. "You mentioned once that Mor-

rough thinks Paladia is key to the immortality Hevgoss wants. Do you

think he could be looking for the Stone of the Heavens?"

He set down the drink he was pouring. "You think the High Necro-

mancer came here to steal a magical orb that doesn't exist?"

She flushed. The stone was a fairy tale. The belief that Sol's blessing

was a physical object was a misinterpretation of the early artistic ren-

derings of Orion Holdfast. The region had been prescientific and illiter-

ate at the time, the imagery was all that many people knew.

While the historical records had been corrected, the myths had en-

dured. Helena had believed there was a real stone for years until Luc

awkwardly corrected her.

"No," she said quickly. "I know it's not real. I just thought maybe

Morrough heard the stories and came here thinking it was. It's not like

there's any reason Sol couldn't have made it a stone."

Ferron scoffed. "You believe in Sol?"

She shifted, gripping the strap of her satchel. "Yes, well, maybe not

exactly the way people here do, but—you don't? Not—not at all?"

Kaine's lip curled. "Not at all."

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CHAPTER 36

Julius 1786

Knowing that her daily healing pilgrimage was coming to

an end, Helena found herself taking a sense of proprietary pride in her

work. She hadn't been sure a full recovery was possible, but now the

wasted, skeletal version of Kaine had vanished completely. When he

was dressed, a person might not even realise he'd been injured.

When the Abeyance arrived, Crowther still had not sent word or

issued orders. The choice to heal Kaine, and whatever consequences

arose from it, would rest entirely upon her.

Helena packed her satchel in preparation, and she was applying the

finishing touches on what she hoped would be the last batch of numb-

ing salve when there was a knock at the door.