Page 337 of Alchemised

Helena’s head throbbed. “Can you—describe these fevers for me?”

Pace’s eyebrows furrowed. “Well, I’ve only examined him a few times. Elain manages him now; he’s more cooperative with her. She believes it’s caused by recurring brain inflammation. The symptoms are delirium, with a rapid heartbeat. We thought it was related to his organ damage, but they appear to be separate conditions.”

“What’s the opium for?” Helena asked.

Pace sighed and looked away. “His fevers seem prompted by a condition of the nerves. Calming him keeps them from growing so severe. We’ve tried everything, but inhaling the vapours is the only thing that prevents them. If he becomes fully delirious, it can take days before he recovers, and he requires extensive treatment to get back on his feet.”

“That’s just—masking the symptoms. That’s not fixing anything. You should have told me this was going on.”

This couldn’t be.

“Helena,” Matron Pace said firmly, “he’s been examined over and over by myself and Maier and Elain. There’s no cause. It’s all in his mind. Managing the symptoms is all we can do. He was specific that he didn’t want you involved. Every time your name was even brought up, he worsened.”

“And you never questioned that?”

Pace looked at her pityingly. “It’s not as if you have any particular experience with brain fevers.”

Helena shook her head. Pace was wrong. She had a great deal of recent experience with brain fevers. She knew exactly what caused them. Animancy.

But that wasn’t the only time she’d encountered brain fevers. She’d seen them before that. The exact symptoms Pace had described. The impossibly hot fevers, as if the mind were trying to burn something out from inside it. The self-mutilation, screaming, “Get him out.”

She’d seen all of it just before her father had been murdered.

At the field hospital.

But Luc had no talisman like those liches had. He had been checked and rechecked. It would have been found.

… unless the talisman had not been coated in lumithium, which would make it undetectable.

Morrough had captured Luc but hadn’t killed him, and they’d thought it was only because they’d arrived in time.

But maybe they’d been too late after all.

She jolted out of her seat. Pace reached out, trying to stay her, but Helena bolted from the room, running through the hospital and straight to the war room. There was no one there except a cadet, who looked up nervously and told her that she didn’t have the clearance to be there.

She glared at him. “Do you know where Crowther is? It’s urgent I speak to him.”

He shook his head, clearly sullen about guarding an empty room. “No. They were looking for him earlier. Disappeared last night, it seems.”

That made no sense.

It was as if she were standing in a trap laid with dominoes. She could feel them falling around her. Closing in.

“Do you know where Luc’s battalion is?”

The boy rolled his eyes and drew himself up. “You don’t have clearance to—”

Helena eyed the map on the table. There was a golden flag amid the sea of blue.

She turned and left before the cadet was done talking.

She ran to her lab, snatching up everything she could get her hands on. First, her new set of knives. Then a couple of obsidian knives Shiseo had been experimenting with. She ransacked her remaining healing supplies.

Shiseo entered with a box from the off-site lab as she was cramming a final vial into her overfilled satchel. He was probably the only person who would take a warning from her without asking for proof or an explanation.

“Get out of Headquarters,” she said. “Take everything you can and go back to the off-site lab. I’ll send word if it’s safe to come back. I can’t explain now, but something’s about to go wrong.”

She went to Crowther’s office, but it was empty. Where was he? There was no time to search. She headed out.