Page 10 of Alchemised

He gripped her face, twisting her head so that light fell on it from different angles.

His eyes were crawling over her skin as if looking for something.

He grabbed one of her hands, the dark heavy rings digging against her bones, shifting the manacle and sending a shock of pain down her arm.

He looked at her fingers and then back to her face.

The necrothralls did nothing.

Was this the High Reeve?

“Yes. That’s her.” Stroud had appeared, her voice much softer than Helena was accustomed to. She looked irritated at the way Helena was being manhandled but seemed reluctant to protest. “She’ll be ready soon.”

The lich gripped Helena by her hair, his expression twisting as he leaned in again, a hungry, desperate look in his eyes unlike anything she’d ever seen on Crowther’s impassive face.

“I’ve seen her somewhere.” He gripped her tighter, shaking her so hard that her head snapped back. “Where did I see you?”

“This was the Holdfasts’ pet, Guildmaster. You probably saw her at the Institute.”

The lich’s face contorted with contempt at the mention of the Holdfasts, and he let go, abruptly losing interest. Now he looked angry, a deep purple rising along his neck, mottling his face. “I expected more than this. I was told this assignment was something special.”

Stroud sucked at her teeth. “Appearances are not everything. You can tell the High Reeve she’ll be ready for him soon.

Now, you wanted to see the preparations for the chambers.

” Stroud gestured towards the lifts. “I intend to begin with a test batch very soon to see how quickly we can get things started. The interest has been almost overwhelming. I have dozens of applications, and the announcement is still weeks away.” Stroud gave a nervous laugh but caught herself, clearing her throat as she pressed her hand against a panel on the lift.

“It’s been difficult to determine the most promising combinations.

I’ve taken what I can from the hospitals’ records.

The guilds’ archives are quite useful, too, truly ahead of their time.

But you’re the only one who produced exactly what we’re hoping to replicate here, so I’m very eager for your insight. ”

The lich’s expression grew stony despite the praise. The lift arrived, and he and Stroud were gone before he gave an answer.

The necrothralls nudged Helena forward. She released a slow breath. Not the High Reeve, then. It was a relief that the first reanimated body she’d recognised had been Crowther, one of the more detached members of the Council, and not someone she’d known well.

She looked up and flinched at the sight of the only portrait that hung in the corridor.

The Tower used to be full of art and decorations, lined with portraits of significant alchemists who’d studied or taught at the Institute. Now there was only one, and it depicted a sallow, sullen-looking man with a large forehead and heavy chin.

The name ARTEMON BENNET was hammered into the plaque beneath it, with two dates below, spanning more than eighty years.

Helena remembered with visceral clarity the reports associated with that name.

Once the Undying had established a strong position in the city, they put out a call for all the vivimancers and necromancers in hiding to join their cause, setting up laboratories where such supporters could explore their powers, freed from the oppression of the Faith.

When Resistance fighters weren’t simply killed and reanimated into necrothralls, they were sent to those laboratories as research subjects.

Artemon Bennet had been the head of New Paladia’s science and research departments.

It was reported that he had a particular interest in experimentation on alchemists.

The only good thing about the portrait was knowing that Bennet was somehow dead.

Another walk was finally coming to its end. Helena still struggled with breathing deeply, a habit ingrained by the stasis tank’s limited oxygen and worsened by the necrothralls’ stench. Her head was growing light, vision threatening to blur. Her footsteps began to falter.

The necrothralls gripped her, not letting her slow. Her feet began to drag across the floor.

A strangled gasp jolted her to alertness.

“Marino?” A dark-haired girl in a wheeled chair was passing her.

She was gaunt, almost collapsed in on herself, but she straightened, leaning forward as her eyes fastened on Helena’s face.

She had scars like Grace’s, and there was a blanket over her lap.

She wore the same manacles around her wrists that Helena did.

She was being pushed down the hall in the direction of an operation theatre that Helena had vaguely noticed was open.

Helena staggered, trying to find her feet. “Penny.”

Penny was a year older than Helena. One of the few other girls at the Institute to pursue undergraduate studies in alchemy. She’d been among the first to enlist with the Resistance, determined to go to the front lines and fight.

The orderly pushing Penny walked faster, turning the chair to block the exchange.

Helena and Penny both craned their necks, trying to keep sight of each other as they were pushed apart.

“Penny, what are they—” Helena didn’t get the whole question out as she was shoved towards her room.

Penny leaned over the arm of the chair, looking back, her face stricken. “You were right. I’m so sorry. We should have listened to you.”

There was no time to ask what she meant. The orderly sped up, and Penny disappeared.

“I’m delivering you today,” Stroud said, walking in with a stack of files she was immersed in. She’d been increasingly distracted every time Helena saw her. “Get ready.”

“I’m leaving?”

Stroud looked up and gave an irritated, nervous smile. “Yes. Central has other purposes. The High Reeve has been waiting for you. Come. Now.”

There was no readying for Helena to do. She was bundled into the lift with nothing but the clothes on her back and a pair of wool slippers too large for her feet.

The lift descended to the fifth floor, where the Alchemy Tower was connected by skybridges to the surrounding Institute buildings.

In a city as vertical as Paladia, skybridges were frequently used to intercon nect buildings, some like slender passages, others large enough to hold plazas and gardens dozens of storeys above the rest of the city.

As the city had grown, the lower parts saw their sky almost blotted out, creating a damp, darkened underbelly that festered with diseases.

She could see the commons below, grassy patches bisected by geometric footpaths that ran between the dorms and the Tower and the Science Main.

White marble steps led up to the vast Tower doors. Helena’s memory instantly superimposed the wave of blood and gore and bodies that had covered it when she’d seen it last.

She looked away.

She had to focus on the present.

H ELENA WAS PUSHED INTO THE back seat of a motorcar, a necrothrall cramming her towards the middle as it seated itself beside her. The smell of rot immediately began to fill the enclosed space.

Her throat convulsed, and she clamped a hand over her nose and mouth.

Stroud climbed in on the other side, seemingly immune to the stench, flipping through her perpetual stack of files.

The motorcar drove down a long tunnel, amber light from the electric lanterns flickering across Helena’s lap, giving way to drab grey when the motorcar emerged from underground.

She peered out, taking in the sky. It was dark and overcast, a grey that seemed to leach the world of colour.

Looking out at the city, she was shocked by the scars still starkly visible from the war: huge gaps in the skyline, burned-out buildings, and collapsed ruins.

It hardly looked as if any rebuilding had begun.

The road was the only thing that appeared new.

When the motorcar crossed from the East Island to the West Island, nearly all traces of the war disappeared behind them.

Paladia had been founded on a river delta in the basin of the Novis Mountains.

The original island had a high northern plateau which sloped down to the southern tip.

The Alchemy Tower had been built on the highest point of the island, and the town—eventually a city—had grown around it until every inch of land had been built on.

The island of Paladia, later called the East Island, was home to industry, trade, government, the perihelion cathedrals, and the Alchemy Institute.

The West Island was built centuries later, engineered to accommodate the exploding population. All of it was newer, bigger.

During the war, the Undying held diluted control over the West Island, while the Resistance had headquartered in the Alchemy Institute, giving them an established point of defence on the East Island and splitting the city-state in two.

Because the East Island held most of the crucial infrastructure and the main ports, it had borne the brunt of the war as the Undying tried to seize control.

Contrasted with the ruins of the East Island, the West Island looked almost unscathed, its vast interconnected buildings vaulting up towards the sky, gleaming and unmarred.

When Helena had first sailed up the river and seen Paladia, it had looked as if some great deity had laid their crown in the dip of the mountains, the spires and gleam of the city reflecting across the water. She hadn’t thought anywhere on earth could be so beautiful.

The motorcar felt tiny as it sped through the West Island, crossing another bridge towards Paladia’s mainland, which spanned the miles from the river shore to the mountain tree line.

The mainland was mostly mines and agriculture, and the little that wasn’t commercial was owned by the oldest families who’d joined the Institute centuries ago, at the time of its founding.