Page 67 of Alchemised

B EFORE THE NEXT M ARTIDAY, H ELENA SUBMITTED FOR and received a standard-issue alchemical knife. Because of the chimaeras, she skipped foraging and went directly towards the Outpost, casting a wistful glance over the wetlands as she turned towards the dam.

There had been more than ten chimaeras spotted outside the city, mostly wandering the banks of the West Island. There were no deaths reported yet, but many of the people trapped in the city and on the Outpost relied on the river for food. It was only a matter of time.

Several units were being assembled into hunting parties. Predictably, Luc had immediately volunteered his battalion.

Inside the tenement, the door to the unit had been replaced. Helena hoped it was a good sign as she let herself in.

Her cloak and jacket, both abandoned by her flight, were on a table, neatly folded.

Ferron was not there.

She walked around the room, inspecting it.

There were remnants of a kitchen, and a far door revealed a filthy bathroom, the sink chipped and stained as if there’d been chemicals poured down it.

At least it had a bathroom. Some of the tenements in the low districts were so old, they didn’t even have that.

She sat, fingers curling against her palm, using her resonance to tamp down her rising unease and keep her thoughts from anxiously spiralling. It was fine, Ferron was just late.

The minutes dragged on.

She hadn’t told Crowther or Ilva what had happened. She’d passed it off as a brief meeting; Ferron had warned of the chimaeras and she’d hurried back, no mention of anything else.

But if Ferron didn’t show up, she would have to tell Crowther, explain what had gone wrong. Her chest grew so tight she could barely breathe.

When ten minutes had passed, she forced herself to accept that Ferron was not coming, but as she pulled her satchel up onto her shoulder, the door clicked and he walked in.

He didn’t seem at all surprised to find her still waiting there.

He closed the door and stood in front of it, his expression unreadable, body eerily still. It was strange how empty his posture was.

Helena had relied heavily on body language after moving to Paladia. Etras was culturally expressive; words, expressions, gestures were all part of communication. Northerners were canny, and they often communicated more through subtext than their actual words.

That was why Helena had been so drawn to Luc: He wasn’t like that; he didn’t say things he didn’t mean. With other Paladians, Helena had learned to decipher what they meant through their bodies instead of their mouths.

However, Ferron’s body said almost nothing. He reminded her of a gambler, hiding his tells. There was nothing about him that indicated his current mood.

“I’m sorry,” she said, breaking the tense silence. “I shouldn’t have said that last week. I lost my head. I’ll do—whatever you want to make it up to you.”

Ferron didn’t react beyond his eyes flickering briefly.

“It’s fine,” he said after a moment, his voice void. “When I specified willing, that meant you were allowed to say no. Although, perhaps try saying it next time, instead of provoking me.”

Helena looked at him in astonishment. From the moment Ilva and Crowther had told her the terms, she’d assumed her willingness, once given, was irrevocable.

Anything that happened after, she’d already agreed to.

She didn’t believe him. He’d mentioned looking forward to her regret. That didn’t imply any permission to change her mind or refuse what was demanded. No, he was altering the terms of their agreement because of what she’d said to him.

Her eyes narrowed appraisingly.

Her suspicion seemed to anger him. Irritation flashed across his face.

She averted her eyes; best not to provoke him again. Given time, he’d be sure to change his mind, to redefine the terms to suit his ends, but in this moment, he wanted to believe he had some kind of moral code, that there were things he was above.

She nodded as if she believed him.

“I have an alchemy knife now,” she said, hoping the change of subject would distract him.

He held out a gloved hand. “Let me see it.”

He took it carefully, his gloves not even grazing her skin. He now seemed overly aware of her.

He inspected the knife, testing the balance. Despite his gloves, the blade morphed, the knife edge spiralling around the inner core.

The purpose was to stab when the blade was flat, transmute, and pull out, leaving a massive wound.

The larger a wound, the longer it took the Undying to recover, and the quicker necrothralls were rendered immobile.

The blade could also be manipulated into a range of lengths, but that took effort and required familiarity with the idiosyncrasies of the alloy to keep it from being shattered.

Because it was standard-issue, the knife had been forged using lumithium emanations to increase its resonance.

That way, alchemists with limited steel resonance could still transmute it.

Helena’s natural resonance didn’t need supplementing—it made the alloy resonance feel uneven—but she was assured that she’d get used to it.

“Are you trained with a knife?” he finally asked.

She’d hoped he wouldn’t ask that. “No.”

“You’d do better with something longer, then.” He flipped it in his hand, catching it deftly; slicing through the air, it morphed into a curving blade. “If anything gets close enough for you to use this, you’re already dead.”

The Resistance was not going to give a noncombatant anything but a basic weapon. “But … anything bigger is more noticeable. I’d be more likely to get stopped.”

“Mmm,” was all the answer she got as he transmuted the blade back to its base form.

“Any news about the chimaeras?”

He handed back the knife. “Four are already dead. They don’t tolerate the cold very well.” His mouth twisted with amusement. “Bennet’s in high dudgeon.”

“Where did the animals come from?” Crowther had told her to ask.

“He’s using whatever he can. Domestic animals are the most easily accessed, but larger predators are preferable. I believe there’ve been a few hunting trips into the mountains. There was also the zoo.”

“It seems a lot of work just to have them die in the wetlands.”

Ferron gave an absent shrug. His eyes avoided her, instead looking almost anywhere else in the room. “There’s not much else that they’re good for. They’re not manageable. There are rumours the High Necromancer feels misled about the project’s potential and the resources involved.”

He pulled out an envelope, but rather than handing it over, he set it on the table and left without another word.

It was the same routine for the next several times. Ferron would arrive, occasionally answer a few questions, and then leave. Sometimes he was there for less than five minutes.

There was no more mention of any training. Each time, Helena had to admit to Crowther that she had no progress to report. Ferron’s information continued to be good, but Helena was little more than a glorified mail carrier.

She kept training the other healers, and working in her lab, where she now had an unofficial assistant. Shiseo was a small, balding man with dark eyes. He could read and understand Northern dialect fluently but spoke very little.

He caught on to the techniques of chymiatria quickly but kept to himself, shadowing Helena at a conscientious arm’s length.

Helena knew she should appreciate him—after all, she had asked for help—but with the trainees and now a lab assistant, there was nowhere left for her to go where she wasn’t reminded that the accommodations were there because her priority was supposed to be Ferron.

Everything else was theatre now, a cover for a mission she was failing.

F ERRON WAS LATE AGAIN. H E was often late, but he’d never left her waiting this long. She dreaded the thought of going back empty-handed, but at least the trip hadn’t been a complete waste of her time.

She’d resumed foraging. The chimaeras had mostly died, and it felt criminal to miss the entire spring harvest. The river was rising, the floodwalls were marked to track the steady creep of Lumithia’s Ascendant phase, and the mountain wind was losing its icy edge, which meant that soon the snowmelt would come rushing into the basin and the wetlands would be left underwater until nearly summer.

She opened her satchel and started sorting her harvest, blinking to concentrate.

She’d been so tired lately. Hospital shifts sometimes left her so exhausted, she could barely make it to her room.

She knew it was a sign she was over-expending herself healing, but she’d always healed that way, and it had never bothered her before. She couldn’t understand it. The Toll wasn’t supposed to take effect so suddenly, but she couldn’t think of what else it could be.

She stared stupidly at the bundles of gathered herbs. Eventually, she leaned forward, resting her head on her arms. Her eyes fluttered shut.

The mechanism in the door startled her awake. She jolted upright. How long had she been asleep?

A gear in the door spun, but the lock didn’t click and the door didn’t open. There was a pause.

Helena shot to her feet as she heard the gear begin moving again, grinding slowly, as if the lock were being picked.

She fumbled for her satchel, digging for her knife. As her fingers wrapped around the hilt, the door swung inward. A stripe of red ran down the centre of it, topped with a scarlet handprint.

Ferron stood, swaying in the doorway.

His face deathly pale, his eyes out of focus.

The knife slipped from her fingers. “What happened?”

He looked at her as if confused to find her there. “Ss-nothing.” He waved her off with his right hand as he got clear of the door, more blood spattering on the floor. There was a trail running down the hallway.

“You’re … you’re injured?” It was half a question. She didn’t know he could be injured. Wasn’t he supposed to be instantly regenerative? How could he be bleeding like this?