Page 28 of Alchemised

He straightened, adjusting his cuffs with the flick of his wrist. “Executions are required to be clean now, Durant. His Eminence has been quite clear on that point. I hope you weren’t expecting to break the law here on my property and in front of our illustrious governor and a dozen journalists.”

Ferron patted Durant on the shoulder, his expression impassive, as if it were nothing that he’d done. He raised two fingers, signalling, and several servants hurried through the dazed crowd to drag the bodies away. Durant stood looking like a child whose toy had been stolen.

The silence was broken by hushed voices as the crowd woke from their stupor. The music began falteringly, and after some slight hesitation, the party resumed.

In a few minutes, it was as if the deaths had been forgotten.

Helena almost left, not wanting to witness what might happen next, but equally afraid to miss something important. She’d been cut off from everything for so long.

The party did not end until dawn, although the numbers dwindled as those who had work the next day were forced to excuse themselves.

Eventually only the most affluent remained.

Helena tried to notice everything she could, to identify as many faces as possible.

She looked for signs of tension or familiarity.

Trying to construct a sense of the social hierarchy that existed.

From overhead, unable to hear words, it was easy to notice the ways people lied to one another.

She just watched their bodies move, observing the contradictions between their expressions and their subconscious gestures, slowly picking out who among the guests were the Undying.

There was a kind of fearfulness they tended to evoke after even short conversations.

Ferron also watched the room, only conversing when approached. He did not mingle, and he never sought anyone out. The entire room seemingly oriented itself around him instead.

It grew readily apparent which people in attendance knew him to be the High Reeve and who were unaware.

There was a reverence and delicacy in how certain people approached, while some of the liches who spoke to him seemed overtly resentful.

Atreus did not appear to be there at all, assuming he was still in Crowther’s body.

Ferron smiled smiles that never reached his eyes, engaging in endless small talk as if he were a benevolent ruler. To Helena, unable to make out his words and simply watching him from a distance, he looked completely bored.

Morning light was streaming through the windows when the last guests finally began to leave.

Helena turned to make her way back to her room and nearly jumped out of her skin.

One of the servants was standing silently beside the steps, watching her.

She was an older servant, one of Helena’s most regular minders.

Not a housekeeper but something senior. Helena had been so absorbed by the party, she hadn’t even noticed when the necrothrall had come.

Halfway to her room, they paused at the sound of an angry voice.

“Still?” It was a man speaking.

“It’s not like it’s something I can just do on my own,” Aurelia’s sharp voice retorted.

“The only reason you exist is to give the Ferrons an heir. If they cast you aside, do you think anyone else would ever take you?”

“There’s nothing else I can do! I’ve tried everything.”

“Get him drunk. Drug him if you must, or find someone else to put a child in your womb. I will not let you bring our family to ruin.”

“He can’t get drunk!” Aurelia snapped. “Do you think I haven’t tried? I’ve gone to every shop, used every drug and perfume, and nothing ever works. If I get pregnant, he’ll know it’s not his.”

“Useless girl. I should have kept your sisters instead of you.”

There was no response to that.

Helena heard rapid footsteps and barely managed to shrink into an alcove before a viper-faced man with thick sideburns came around the corner. He was markedly less lavish in his clothing than the other guests.

Helena heard the clatter of Aurelia’s heels on the wood floor, and a door in the distance slammed.

She released a slow breath. She’d known the Ferrons were an arranged marriage, but she hadn’t realised how dysfunctional they were.

When she reached the hallway leading to her room, she peeked warily around the corner and found Ferron standing outside the door, waiting for her. Her blood ran cold, the crack of the boy’s neck still ringing in her ears. She’d known what he was, but seeing it was different.

It had happened so fast, and in front of everyone.

He hadn’t even hesitated.

He glanced over. “Enjoy your spying?”

She swallowed hard and made herself walk towards him. “It was—something new.”

He inclined his head, studying her beneath lidded eyes. “Are you bored?”

Of course she was bored. There was little for her to do but frantically search his decrepit house and worry over her inability to find anything. “Imprisonment is not particularly diverting.”

“You do realise you’re allowed to ask for things. Within reason.”

She most certainly did not. “I am?”

He nodded as if it were obvious. “Ask the servants if you want something. They know what you’re allowed.” His eyes narrowed. “Why is Lancaster interested in you?”

Of course that was why he was there.

“I don’t know.” She shook her head, a curl falling across her face, suddenly tired. “I don’t think I knew him. Guild students never spoke to me.”

Curiosity bloomed in his eyes, real interest rather than the feigned attention he’d employed during the party. “You’re full of surprises.”

“Do you say that to every girl?” The words popped out thoughtlessly.

Ferron gave a short laugh, his gaze sharpening, eyes darting across her face.

“I think you should go to bed,” he said.

She looked at him in confusion, feeling as if the encounter had suddenly veered off course, but she wasn’t sure how.

She was tired, though. She hadn’t expected to be up the whole night. She looked at him for another moment, then went into her room without looking back. When she climbed into her bed, she could still see Ferron’s shadow outside her door.

Somehow, knowing it was his, the sight of it didn’t frighten her even though it should have.

T HE NEXT DAY WHEN H ELENA spotted one of the maids, she stopped her. “Can I have a knife?”

The maid shook her head.

Helena cocked her head, eyes widening innocently. “What about scissors?”

Another no. Well, she’d expected as much.

“Books? Or the day’s newspaper?”

The maid hesitated then nodded slowly.

Helena stared at her, torn between triumph and abject frustration. Had she really been allowed reading materials the whole time? And Ferron had assumed she’d know she was allowed to order the servants around?

“Then I would like them,” she said, her jaw tense. “Please.”

The paper arrived with her next meal.

It featured a photograph of Ferron and Aurelia’s kiss on the cover.

For all the world, they looked like a happy young couple, especially since the black-and-white photo made Ferron appear more human than he was in person.

His hand was resting on his wife’s waist, and her embellished fingers were curved up around his shoulder as if she were clinging to him.

It looked romantic and delightfully celebratory.

The article made no references to Ferron murdering a family for his guests’ entertainment, as if it wasn’t even notable.

The next page had a picture of the High Reeve executing several more “insurgents.” Apparently in anticipation of the new year, public executions had been held on all eight days of the week leading up to the solstice.

There was also an article about the repopulation program “showing promise.”

Ferron arrived that afternoon to check Helena’s memories. It hadn’t happened since before the latest transference, as if he’d been waiting for her brain to recover enough to handle the intrusion.

He was disinterested in what he found aside from the moment that Lancaster had entered her room.

He watched the encounter over and over, forcing Helena to repeatedly relive the abject mortification of her thoughtless relief when he’d stormed in.

He took no interest in Aurelia’s affair, and when he encountered the conversation between Aurelia and her father, he chuckled as he broke the connection with Helena’s mind.

If he had eyes and necrothralls all throughout the house, there was likely little he didn’t know.

He pulled out a vial of the small white tablets. Helena cringed at the thought of the withdrawal but opened her mouth obediently.

In a matter of minutes, every feeling within her was gone; she felt placid as a frozen lake.

“That will be the last one,” he said before he left.

Helena resolved to explore the remainder of the house. She’d yet to venture into the east wing, and after such a large party there was a chance that something useful to her might have been left out.

She slipped through the house, listening carefully for the sound of Aurelia’s heels on the wood floor, starting on the top storey and making her way down. The east wing was not a mirror of the west wing but similar enough that Helena almost felt as though she’d already explored it.

The servant from the previous night was following her once again.

As Helena explored the main floor, the servant paused to close the door, and Helena noticed that a large door across the way had been left ajar.

That was unusual. Locked or unlocked, the doors were almost always closed.

On impulse, Helena made a lunge, darting through the door and slamming it behind her. There was a lock on the inside, and she twisted it an instant before the knob rattled.

If she weren’t drugged, her heart would be racing.

She knew she had minutes at best before the key would be retrieved, so she turned away, eager to experience the freedom of exploring on her own and hopefully finding something she wasn’t intended to.

There was a switch on the wall. A dusty chandelier overhead came to life, the bulbs humming, barely illuminating the room. The lights flickered unsteadily, casting shadows that scrabbled across the floor like rats.

She was standing in a large drawing room.

The windows were covered, not merely curtained but boarded up, and the smell of dust and metal and something uncomfortably organic lingered in the air.

There was a pungent metallic ozone scent that she could taste on her tongue, a thick sensation caused by heavy alchemy use.

When resonance was channelled deeply, the air itself was left with traces of the transmutation.

It had been a long time since she’d encountered a smell like that.

She couldn’t help but feel that the heaviness about the house was stronger in that room.

There was a large cage welded into the floor, gleaming when the light flickered; the bulb filaments gave soft buzzing clicks each time.

She approached cautiously. The cage was too narrow for an animal but slightly shorter than Helena. A prisoner would be forced to huddle inside it.

It was iron, but roughly wrought, made with manual smithing not alchemy, which meant the iron was probably inert, not transmutable at all. She touched it, feeling the rough telltale traits that no alchemist would leave behind.

A pattern on the floor beyond caught her attention.

There was an alchemical array carved into the wood. The largest Helena had ever seen.

Transmutational arrays were often simply illustrative, to record processes, but they were also used for transmutation when the process was too complex for simple resonance manipulation.

Alchemisation always required the stabilisation of an array.

Proprietary arrays were what allowed the guilds to produce alchemical products inside industrial-sized forges.

Helena had never seen anything as elaborate as what was carved into the floor of Spirefell. Within the containment circle were nine smaller arrays which met to form the nine points, rather than a celestial eight or an elemental five.

Each inner array was marked with numerous symbols, and they all channelled towards a series of concentric circles in the centre.

It was not an iron forge array. The symbols and lines were all wrong for any kind of ironwork.

The light in the room kept cutting out. She knelt, trying to see more clearly.

Alchemists often used unique symbols to protect their discoveries from anyone without proper training and devotion to the subtle arts, but alchemical energy favoured certain patterns.

A scholar with a wide repertoire and sufficient experience could usually parse them.

It was like reading shorthand: If the fundamentals were there, an educated alchemist could divine the meaning through reason.

She traced her fingers along the lines, trying to envision the resonance flow.

There was a click and grind behind her.

She glanced back to see Ferron’s silhouette filling the doorway.