Page 90 of Alchemised

T HE WAR HAD ALWAYS MOVED SLOWLY, BUT as autumn set in, it slowed to a crawl.

The two sides held almost equal territory.

The ports had made a significant difference in the Eternal Flame’s strength, but they lacked any clear path to victory.

The West Island was even more vertical than the East. The way the towers and buildings interlocked and intersected made it almost impossible to retake without risking mass casualties.

The current balance was thanks to Kaine, but it was a tenuous stalemate because they had no idea when he might someday stop or, worse, betray them.

At his reappearance, the pressure from Ilva and Crowther resumed tenfold, but Helena had no idea how to make progress. Kaine was angry and perpetually on his guard around her, and his methods of training offered few openings, although he was noticeably careful not to hurt her again.

Under his exacting eyes, she learned to key up her resonance until it filled the air around her, sensing attacks coming before they hit.

“Finally,” he said after she at last managed to block a light-speed blow without breaking form at all and immediately followed it with an attack.

It was the closest thing to praise she’d earned.

She slumped against the wall, breathing hard. The muscles in her forearms and biceps felt raw and coppery from all the metal transmutations she’d done over and over. Her resonance ached inside her nerves, brain buzzing, a hum that made her teeth itch.

It was no wonder Lila was always jittery when she came back.

Helena flexed her hands.

“You need a better knife; that alloy’s wrong. It’s slowing you.”

She looked away. It was raining outside, water streaming across the windows. She was so hot that she wanted to walk out and douse herself in the fresh autumn rainfall.

“I don’t have the rank for anything else,” she said.

The Resistance metallurgists had years’ worth of projects on their dockets: tools, base weapons, rappelling harness gear, armour, prosthetics, not to mention the expectation that they’d invent new weaponry as the war progressed.

Without the Institute being able to train new metallurgists, those they had were a critical resource.

The generation who should be learning the craftsmanship were all either in combat or dead.

Standard-issue was what everyone in the Resistance got.

If they couldn’t fight with that, they couldn’t fight as alchemists.

To obtain bespoke weaponry was something combat alchemists dreamed of: weapons forged to perfectly match the owner’s specific resonance strengths and combat style. They were versatile, felt impossibly light, and took almost no effort to transmute. They were also much harder to defend against.

“What do you mean you don’t have the rank? Aren’t you a member of the Eternal Flame?”

“Yes,” she said quietly.

“I thought that was part of the package deal: You swear your life to a set of asinine religious ideals and get a valuable weapon in compensation.”

She stared at her shoes.

It was traditionally a part of joining the Order of the Eternal Flame. They were issued following a vow ceremony, a weapon to defend the ideals they’d sworn to uphold. They were deeply symbolic.

But when Helena joined, it was just after Principate Apollo’s death. Many people had joined at the time. She’d been sixteen, just starting basic training. New members going immediately into combat had greater need. Helena didn’t even know what type of weapon would be suitable.

The matter had been forgotten when she became a healer. Weapons were for those in combat. She was not, and never would be.

“There are more immediate needs than making me a special weapon that I’d barely use,” she said.

“Consider it an immediate need now. After six years, surely there’s been time,” he said. “How many swords and suits of armour does Holdfast have?”

She bristled. “Luc fights at the front lines.”

Kaine scoffed, his lip curling. “With fire. Get a better knife.”

S HE RETURNED WITH THE SAME knife.

Kaine was across the room the instant she pulled it out. Moving impossibly, terrifyingly fast, he was right in front of her. He ripped it from her hand.

“Why do you still have this?” he hissed. “I told you to get a new one.”

She tried to snatch it back. “I can’t just show up on the docket like that.

People know weeks out before they’re up for testing.

It’d be noticeable if I’m suddenly prioritised.

” She tilted her head back, meeting his eyes, and recited verbatim, “‘Your request has been declined. It would raise too many questions.’”

Ferron looked like he wanted to strangle her. He raised his hand as if to fling the knife out the window but then drew a measured breath.

“Give me your resonance alloy, then,” he said, slamming the knife onto the table.

“What?”

His eyes turned flinty. “Surely you can manage that at least?”

“Yes—but—” She was flabbergasted.

“What?”

Outside of the Eternal Flame, bespoke weaponry was prohibitively expensive.

That was why the weapons were such an honour.

Especially during the war, most of the metallurgists who hadn’t joined the war effort on one side or the other had fled Paladia altogether and taken their valuable talents to safer countries.

She kept staring wordlessly at him until he looked away. “You can consider it thanks for healing my back.”

She seized the opportunity. “Did it—did the scar tissue set properly? I came back to check—but you—”

“It’s fine,” he said in a stiff voice, his posture rigid. His head was turned so that she could see only his jaw. “I hardly feel it.”

She exhaled. “Good. I was afraid that maybe something had gone wrong and that’s why you didn’t come—”

He whirled on her. “It’s not any of your fucking business.”

She started back. “I just meant—”

“Fuck off, Marino.” His voice was deadly soft. “I’m not your pet. I don’t need you.”

Before she could reply, he ripped an envelope out from an inner pocket and slammed it down on the table beside the knife, before stalking out.

Helena stashed her knife in the outer pocket of her satchel and set out, vigilant until she passed the first checkpoint; then she let her footsteps slow, ignoring the rain.

What was it he’d said about the array? That it didn’t countermand his behaviour but wrote in new aspects. That it was easier for him to be ruthless, and harder to resist impulses and what he wanted.

She’d spent so many evenings staring at it, she could still see it when she closed her eyes.

Calculating, Cunning, Devoted, Determined, Ruthless, Unfailing, Unhesitating, and Unyielding.

What Kaine was driven to do was unstated and thus left to his discretion. No doubt he’d thought himself clever, leaving himself that loophole.

Except Helena was the one who’d exploited it.

The decision to refuse Kaine’s demand for a weapon had been a gamble. Ilva and Crowther wanted to see what Kaine would do if he was told no. Their excuse was within reason, but the choice itself had been a test. They were forcing him to show his hand, and he had.

Helena was making progress.

She should be proud of that, but all she felt was the treachery and danger of it.

She blinked and found she’d wandered to the rain garden. The creek was swollen, overflowing its banks. The water streamed around Luna’s pedestal, but despite it, even after months, the prayer tower she’d built still stood. All Helena’s prayers were rejected.

She reached out and almost toppled them herself.

She looked up at the buildings looming above, the rain splattering her face. It still startled her sometimes how beautiful the city could be.

Even in the downpour, the buildings gleamed.

She looked at the abandoned shrine again.

Survive, Kaine kept saying. The only goal. She was learning to fight not to win, but to escape. As if she were a prey animal.

She knew very well that if it ever came down to her and Kaine, she would die. No matter how similar their abilities, murder was exclusively within his purview.

She smiled bitterly at the difference between them.

Her death count was the numerical representation of her failures. All the lives she hadn’t saved, the ways she fell short.

For Kaine, it was a mark of power. His victims, even Principate Apollo, all represented what made him so valuable.

They were the inverse and counter to each other.

A healer and killer, circling slowly, the push and pull inexorable.

A S THE R ESISTANCE RE-ESTABLISHED CONTROL of the island, their base of operations broadened.

Headquarters remained most defensible, but forcing combat units and supply dispatches to travel the island from end to end was a waste of time and resources.

There was now a secondary base of command near the ports, with a secondary hospital there.

Matron Pace was currently stationed there to get it up and running.

It meant that Luc came back less. Even Crowther was often gone.

She took her report to Ilva, who never left Headquarters.

“Well?” Ilva asked when Helena entered her office.

“He’s asked for my alloy,” Helena said, sitting down in front of the desk and handing over the envelope. “He said he’ll take care of it.”

Ilva looked up, a gleam like sunlight in her pale-blue eyes. “Did he?”

Helena looked down at her nails. The nail beds were all stained with dirt, and her skin was tinged green from cuttings. “He said it’s thanks for healing him.”

“I’m sure.” There was a melodic note of sarcasm in Ilva’s tone.

Helena bit her lip. She hated debriefings like this, disclosing all her conversations and interactions, laying out Kaine’s words, his tells, his lack of tells.

Letting Ilva or Crowther dissect him as if performing a kind of emotional vivisection, identifying his weaknesses and vulnerabilities so that Helena could be sent back to try to exploit them with greater precision.

“Anything else?”

She looked up to find Ilva studying her closely. The brusqueness had thawed after Kaine had resumed training her. Now that Helena had potential use, she was worth their time again.

“With the way things are going, I don’t think we should discount the possibility that Ferron may kill me.”

Ilva straightened, her thin lips vanishing. “Are you asking to be pulled out, Marino?”

There was a sudden intensity in her voice.

Helena’s chest tightened as she shook her head.

“No. We need the information. I just—I want to know what I should prioritise. Elain is probably best suited as my replacement, but there’s still a lot of basic medical knowledge she needs to learn, and that’s not even considering some of the more advanced healing techniques that she’s been afraid to do.

She’s not as driven. I think the Council will need to officially designate her as my alternate so I can push her harder. ”

“I’ll speak with Jan and look over the hospital’s reports. If you could make a list of which areas would have the least redundancy, that would be useful.”

“All right.” Helena’s voice came out stilted and mechanical. A thought occurred to her. “Shiseo—he’s a metallurgist. Could I ask him to test my resonance for my alloy?”

Ilva coughed. “If you’d like.”

Helena stood to leave.

“Helena,” Ilva called softly just as she reached the door.

She paused, looking back. Ilva’s expression was unreadable.

“Tell me, what’s your strategy with Ferron now?”

Helena paused, feeling tired. She couldn’t rightly remember the last time she hadn’t been tired. She leaned against the door, letting it brace her.

“I think … he wants me. Treating the array changed things between us, but he knows what I’m doing.

” She swallowed hard. “He’s very obsessive about things.

I think he always has been, but the array makes it worse.

If things go according to plan, that’ll be good for us.

I don’t think he’ll ever abandon the Eternal Flame then.

Willingness seems critical with him, and he knows mine is conditional on the Eternal Flame’s survival.

But—given how far he’s willing to go for things, I’d say there’s a chance he’d destroy anything that stood in his way. That might include me.”

Ilva was silent, still watching Helena.

Helena felt raw, as if she’d been flayed and was now being kept under observation. “Maybe I’m just overthinking it.”

Ilva looked down at her desk, picking up a glass paperweight and rolling it in her hands. “You’ve done much more than I expected.”

Was that supposed to make her feel better?

Standing there, Helena thought she should feel something, but instead her heart seemed to be compacting inside her chest, growing smaller and harder day by day.

She used to think she had so much to give that she could never run out; now she felt like an upended pitcher, with an impatient cup waiting for the last drop.

“I’m not—” she started, and then paused. She twisted at the ring around her finger. “I think he’s lonely.”

Ilva straightened, rising several inches in her seat. “I hope you’re not getting attached, Helena. The Eternal Flame is depending on you to stay on mission. If you’re compromised, you should say so.”

Helena shook her head, regretting the comment. “Never. My loyalty will always be to the Eternal Flame.”

Ilva’s expression remained wary. “You know,” she said slowly, “I can only keep Luc and his unit away from the worst fights if we know which ones they’ll be.”

Helena’s heart slammed into her throat. “I know.” Her voice was tight. “I’m doing everything I can. I’ll never do anything that could risk Luc.”

Ilva’s posture softened. “All right, then. You can go.” She waved her hand in dismissal, returning to her files.

Helena turned, then gave a brittle laugh. “You know, I just realised, if I succeed, you’ll control Ferron the same way you use Luc to control me. It makes me feel rather sorry for him.”

Ilva didn’t look at her. “Well, he’ll deserve it more than you do.”