Page 61 of Alchemised

“W HAT DO YOU MEAN YOUR RESONANCE FELT wrong?” Crowther said when Helena finished reciting all that had happened. He’d summoned her to his office the moment she’d walked through the gates.

Helena crossed her arms, hugging herself.

“I assume it’s because he’s Undying. It was different than I expected. I’m not sure if I can transmute him. He looks identical to his student portrait; maybe he can’t be changed. He doesn’t feel like it’s possible, and even if it is, I’m not sure I can do this subtly enough.”

“Would a test subject help?”

She stared at him in blank horror. “What? No.”

“It would be effective, wouldn’t it?”

“No,” she said again. “I’m a healer, I’ve taken oaths—”

“No, you’re not,” Crowther cut in, a susurration in his voice like the snap of scissors.

“Not in this room, not on this assignment. I don’t have any use for a healer.

I need a vivimancer who will do what is necessary.

Heroism is something for others to perform for the masses.

Intelligence work—our work—is breaking people open by whatever means necessary to reach their secrets. That is what you are a part of now.”

Helena glared at him. “I know how to perform the physiological aspects; it’s the regeneration that I’m not sure about. Unless you have one of the Undying on hand, a test subject isn’t any use.”

Crowther sat back and looked sour. “Not at present, but it’s possible if need be.” His eyes narrowed. “Did he give you that ring?”

Helena slipped it off, sliding it across the desk.

“It’s entangled. He intends to use it to summon me in emergencies.

He was very specific that the deal’s off if I ever use it in reverse.

You were right about him, he’s incredibly prideful.

Just the idea of being called by me practically threw him into a rage. ”

Crowther scrutinised the ring, rolling it between his fingers. “Is this silver?”

“Yes.”

He nodded. “He must have inherited it from his mother. She was a silver alchemist here at the Institute. Minor noble family but passable talent. Atreus was quite taken with her for a time.”

“You knew them?” Helena stared curiously at Crowther.

“Of them. The sentiments among the guilds towards sponsored students were no different then. Everyone assumed it was a brief infatuation. A Ferron would hardly stray outside his resonance to that degree. It was a shock when Atreus quietly married her, obviously out of obligation. I can’t imagine how an ambitious man like Atreus chafed from his entanglement, but he could hardly afford the social and religious condemnation of putting her aside. ”

Anyone who studied metallurgy knew that silver and iron were incompatible metals. They couldn’t be alloyed. Silver was a noble metal, however, which would have placed the wife above her husband in station if not fortune.

“Kaine was conceived out of wedlock, then?” she asked hesitantly.

Crowther shook his head. “No, he came sometime later. Enid had—difficulties. There were miscarriages, clearly an unfortunate combination of resonance. When Enid was brought to the hospital, pregnant, the doctors had reason to believe her condition showed clear signs of vivimancy in the child. The Ferrons were warned of what she carried, and advised, but Atreus was desperate for an heir. They disappeared to their country estate. A few months later Atreus was caught employing vivimancers to help manage the pregnancy and arrested for several weeks. By the time he was released, Kaine had been born.”

Crowther set the ring on his desk.

“They lived very quietly at their country estate after that. The birth was said to have been so traumatising for Enid that she never went into society again. Atreus rarely spoke of her. Rumours sprang up among the guilds that Kaine was a Lapse and the family was endeavouring to hide it. Eventually the belief grew so widespread, Atreus had no choice but to present him to guild society, but he was controlling of the boy. Like a dog on a chain. He knew that if there were any signs of vivimancy, the Eternal Flame would act. Atreus had paid so dearly for his heir, he could hardly afford to lose him. It was something of a surprise when Atreus enrolled him in the Institute, but what else could he do? If Kaine couldn’t disprove the rumours about his abilities and earn the certification, the family would have lost control of the guilds. ”

“How do you know all this?” Helena asked, slipping the ring back on.

Crowther raised an eyebrow. “Why do you think I was brought onto the faculty and made Kaine Ferron’s academic advisor?”

Helena’s eyes went wide. “You were watching him for signs.”

Crowther gave a short nod. “Yes, he was one of the students I was asked to observe. Unfortunately, I was reassigned to investigate rumours in the city. If I’d been here, I would have noticed something was amiss when he returned after his father’s execution.

Everything might have been quite different then. ”

W HEN H ELENA ARRIVED AT THE tenement the next week, she pulled her gloves off and paused, pressing her hand against the door, using her resonance to sense the mechanism inside. Even though the unit looked abandoned both inside and out, she could tell the door contained an intricate lock.

The best locks were a mix of metal and rare compounds, often tai lored to the owner’s particular resonance, and usually included some inert metals as well, all intended to create blind spots.

To unlock it, the alchemist had to know how the movement of the mechanisms was supposed to feel, and which ones to manipulate.

She left her fingers on the panel as she knocked. She was tracking how they spun, so focused on the pattern they followed that she wasn’t prepared when a pale hand shot out, catching her by the wrist and dragging her inside.

The door slammed behind her and Ferron had her backed against the wall.

So much for his promise not to touch her.

He leaned in and pressed his palm against the side of her neck, fingertips tracing the ridges of her spine. She forced herself to tilt up her chin as his head dipped forward towards hers.

She started to inhale but couldn’t move. Her heart stalled as she registered it.

Ferron drew back, studying her with flat, emotionless eyes.

Her lungs were already starting to burn as she tried to work out exactly what he’d done to her. Experienced as she was as a healer, she’d never had anyone use vivimancy on her.

He tilted his head, holding her upright against the wall by one shoulder. “Do you have any sense of self-preservation? I could have killed you fifty times in this building alone.”

Helena couldn’t respond. Her eyes were beginning to bulge. Her heart still worked at least; it was racing inside her chest. Her eyes must have looked terror-stricken, because he chuckled.

“Don’t worry, I won’t take advantage of you,” he said softly in her ear.

His fingers just barely moved and the paralysis on her lungs disappeared, but only her lungs.

She drew a ragged breath through her teeth because it was the closest she could get to screaming.

She couldn’t find a way to untangle her body from his control, couldn’t even find her own resonance. He’d caught her completely off guard by making her think he meant to kiss her.

“I’m going to show you something interesting now. I’m told it’s one of my special talents.” His free hand pressed against her forehead, obscuring her vision.

That was all the warning she got before his resonance pushed into her mind like a large needle puncturing her skull.

Her body jerked.

She could feel him. His resonance hit the forefront of her consciousness like a bolt of lightning, and her memories sprang up before her eyes like a zoetrope.

It was as though she was reliving the moment: her shoulders against the wall, his body leaning in, tilting her face up; then time skipped back and her hand was pressed against the door; then she was finding her way through the tenement and the claustrophobic nearness of the buildings.

Ferron moved deeper into her memory; she watched herself strapping on her medical satchel to head out.

He could read her mind.

She couldn’t let this happen.

She struggled, trying to get free, to rip her consciousness out of his control.

He delved further.

She was in an empty chymistry lab transmuting several rare compounds into an elixir. She coated his ring with it, careful not to disrupt the mirrored entanglement.

Ferron let go very suddenly, and the paralysis vanished.

Her knees gave out and she slid down the wall, her head throbbing so violently that she could barely see straight.

“What did you do to my ring?” he asked, standing over her.

“What did you do to me ?” she retorted, her voice tremulous.

“It’s a trick I learned from Artemon Bennet,” he said, stepping away from her. “He calls it animancy. When we take Resistance fighters alive, it’s not unusual for us to examine their memories. So if you’re ever captured, there’s a chance it’ll happen to you. Which makes you a liability for me.”

Helena closed her eyes, struggling to compose herself. The Eternal Flame had no idea such a thing could be done. What kind of defence was possible?

“Now, I’ll ask again.” Ferron’s voice was implacably cold. “What did you do to my ring? Where is it?”

She swallowed, forcing herself to speak steadily. “It’s an elixir that’s bonded to the surface. The coating bends light to make things hard to notice unless you know to look for them.”

He crouched and lifted her left hand, his thumb sliding across her fingers until he found the ring by touch. His eyes narrowed. He tilted her hand this way and that.

His eyebrows went up.

She could tell he could see the ring again.

He was silent for a long moment. “I’ve never heard of anything like this before.”

“It was never fully developed.”

An eyebrow rose as he met her eyes. “Yours?”

She gave a reluctant nod. “One of my undergraduate projects. Never got it to work well on things much bigger than this, though. The refraction grows irregular.”

He stood, pulling her to her feet.

She struggled not to flinch away now that she knew what he could do with that touch.

“I’m not having my cover blown because you’re incompetent,” Ferron said.

Helena had never been called incompetent in her life, and she bristled. “I wasn’t aware that immunity to mind-reading was something you expected from a war prize.”

“It’s not mind-reading,” Ferron said, looking derisive.

“What I did was simply a minor manipulation of your brain. It might feel as if I’ve reached in and seen your thoughts as vividly as if you were reliving them, but unless I’m being exhaustive and replaying them, there’s only glimpses; most of it is lost in the noise.

It’s only the things you focus on that are clear enough to decipher easily.

If you’re ever caught, don’t let your interrogator trick you into thinking they saw more than they have. ”

“So, what did you see?” she asked, trying to understand.

He smirked. “Mostly your terror. Disorienting you with fear made you vulnerable. You weren’t coherent enough to do anything to resist. Then it was a blur.

The two clarity points were when you were analysing the door, and the ring.

You were so focused on them, you weren’t thinking about anything else that would have blurred the memories.

The mind is excellent at betraying its priorities. ”

So an interrogator couldn’t see everything, just all the important things. Lovely.

“What do I do, to protect myself?” She hated that she had to ask him. “How are you expecting me to prevent that?”

“An interrogator won’t stop until they have valuable information.

If you’re captured, there’s nothing you’ll be able to do to stop it, but if they think you’re weak they won’t look carefully.

You have to give up something valuable enough that it seems legitimate as a way to keep the things that matter most hidden. ”

She considered this, still leaning against the wall because she wasn’t sure her legs would hold her.

“Think about it. Choose something. If I’m looking for information about the Eternal Flame or Holdfast, what can you give up that would seem like the biggest secret you have?

Using resonance on the mind like that is like setting someone’s house on fire.

Minds instinctively bolt to protect what’s most important to hide.

You have to train yourself to do the reverse.

Focus on what doesn’t matter. And remember, whatever you think they saw, unless you draw attention to it or they’re being extremely thorough, they only glimpsed. Don’t focus on it.”

She nodded slowly. “All right.”

“I’m going to test you again next week. Be ready for it.”