Page 98 of Alchemised

C ROWTHER WAS STILL ABSENT FROM H EADQUARTERS, SO Helena had no choice but to take her report to Ilva.

As she ascended the floors to Ilva’s office in the main building, she kept thinking about all the things Ilva knew about her. She’d been on the board that had approved Helena’s scholarship each year, and likely the admissions board, too.

The particular interest Ilva had personally taken in her since her father’s death felt much less warming now.

Ilva was staring down at a report, a pen dangling from one hand as she read, and didn’t look up when the guard let Helena in.

“Marino,” she said, her voice cool. “Sit. I’ll be with you in a moment.”

Helena waited, fingers flexing.

“How is your work on the nullium with Shiseo progressing?” Ilva asked, flipping the file closed and looking up.

The Council had named the lumithium-mo’lian’shi alloy nullium for the sake of convenience. While the knowledge of the alloy was not widespread, several metallurgists and chymists were all experimenting with it.

The question caught Helena off guard; she’d expected enquiries about Kaine.

“Good. We’ve finished synthesising the chelating agent using the samples I took from Ferron. If any of our combatants are injured by it, hopefully it will be able to capture and remove the traces of metal in the blood.”

The shrapnel samples Helena had retrieved could not make a sturdy weapon, but the alloy wasn’t supposed to.

The fusion was intentionally unstable; it shattered on impact and the shards tended to deteriorate quickly when exposed to blood, dissolving like a poison blade targeting resonance.

Helena and Shiseo had been instructed to pursue potential treatment methods.

Because metal toxicity could happen frequently in certain fields of alchemy, chelators were already commonplace.

Ilva nodded. “What does Shiseo think?”

“He doesn’t think that true alchemy suppression is possible with the method they’re using. While it does prevent healing and alchemical surgery, it’s of limited use for combat, but that could change if they reconfigure the ratio and composition.”

Ilva’s eyes narrowed. “Is there an alternative method that you and Shiseo have in mind?”

Helena swallowed, trying not to squirm. “We have an idea, but it’s purely theoretical. We don’t have enough nullium to test it.”

“And it is …”

Helena’s stomach knotted. She hated these kinds of conversations.

“Given the alloy’s behaviour and how resonance is used, making it into a weapon or injecting nullium into the blood is less effective than simply targeting the limbs with it.

If that kind of interference was focused near the hands, it would be almost impossible for an alchemist to accurately sense their resonance.

Shiseo thinks that if the alloy was paired with something that has a high, sharp resonance point—like copper processed with a high level of lumithium emanations—that could create a type of interference that would suppress most kinds of resonance regardless of the alchemist’s repertoire. ”

“How would we counter that?” Ilva leaned forward with interest.

“Well, any good metallurgist could, if they were comfortable working without resonance. But that’s not something most Paladian metallurgists have ever had to worry about.”

“Fortunate, then, that you fished those shards out of Ferron,” Ilva said, although the sentiment was hardly reflected by her tone.

Helena gave a tight nod. “Here’s his report,” she said, pushing the envelope across the table.

Ilva plucked it up and dropped it into a drawer.

“And I—” Helena hesitated, heat rising to her hairline and the tips of her ears. “He gave me a set of daggers as a solstice gift, using the titanium-nickel alloy.”

She pulled out the oilcloth and opened it on the desk for Ilva’s inspection. Ilva raised an eyebrow, glancing for a moment before flicking the cloth to cover them as if she found the mere sight distasteful.

Helena’s stomach dropped and she wrapped them up quickly, wishing she hadn’t shown them without being asked. “It’s a good sign, isn’t it?”

Ilva tilted her head, studying Helena for a moment. “Ferron’s climbing rank,” she said as she reached into a drawer and pulled out a file, dropping it onto the desk. “Did you know?”

Helena’s heart stalled. She had noticed his uniform was darker.

“It seems he’s already surpassed everything he’d ever achieved prior to that injury of his.

He controls several extremely valuable districts.

Recently he’s taken over the factory Outpost where you’ve been visiting him, consolidating power at a remarkable speed.

It seems all our recent successes have benefitted him greatly. ”

Ilva tapped a fingernail on the desk, looking up at Helena with a cold smile.

“I didn’t know,” Helena said.

Ilva shook her head. “No, I didn’t imagine so. I’m beginning to worry whether you remember what he is.”

Helena’s breath caught, but Ilva continued, flipping through page after page in the file before her.

“There have been rumours for months that Morrough has a new weapon. We thought it was a chimaera, like the one that nearly killed Lila, or the nullium, but no. It’s neither of those things, is it?” Ilva folded her hands, looking squarely at Helena. “How is it that he’s still alive?”

“Crowther told me to do what I could.”

Ilva’s eyes flicked down from Helena’s face to her neck, where the chain of her necklace was barely visible beneath her collar. Helena went very still.

“You know, Ferron’s not our only spy,” Ilva said. “We have a number of informants. Based on their reports, following the recovery of the ports, he was punished. Extensively. He was dying. I was assured of that.”

“You knew?” Helena asked, her voice shaking. “You knew what they did to him, and you—you didn’t tell me?”

Ilva stared piercingly at her. “Why would we have told you?”

Helena could hardly speak. “Is that why the attack was so elaborate and used so much of the intelligence? Because you expected he’d be killed for it. Because you wanted him killed for it.”

Ilva said nothing, but now Kaine’s resentment and disbelief when Helena kept coming back began to make sense.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Helena’s voice trembled with rage.

Ilva’s lips pursed, her eyes flicking across Helena’s face. “You’ve always been—remarkably forthright.” A smile stretched across her lips. “That’s why Luc trusts you so much. If we’d told you the plan, do you really think you could have gone, knowing, without giving any sign to Ferron?”

Helena began to tremble. She gripped the arms of her chair as the room blurred.

“We assumed you’d realise it,” Ilva added. “When it became clear that you hadn’t—that you felt some sort of obligation to him—we agreed to let you try to heal him in the hope that once you realised the futility of it, you’d be able to bring his talisman back.”

Ilva cleared her throat. “So you can imagine our surprise that he has not only survived but become more dangerous than ever before, that treacherous spy of ours. How did you do it?”

Helena swallowed hard. “We were losing, and it was only because of him that we could retake the ports. He did that for us. You didn’t see him the day I went back.

He knew he’d be punished; he expected to die.

” She gave a panicked breath. “If you wanted him dead, you should have told me. Crowther said to do what I could.”

“What did you do?” Ilva had become impossibly more tense. “Did you—” Her lips thinned, her eyes flickering to the chain around Helena’s neck once more. “Did you use something to manage it?”

Helena squeezed her hand into a fist. “I assumed that if you had to choose between the two of us, you’d want him.”

Ilva’s face went white.

“So I used the amulet you gave me, I thought it—”

“You gave the amulet to him?” The question was almost a shriek.

Helena had never heard Ilva raise her voice. “No, I—”

“Do you still have it or not?”

Helena’s stomach twisted into a tight knot as she reached up, pulling the chain over her head. “I have the amulet, but the sunstone is gone.”

Ilva snatched it from her so quickly, the chain ripped open Helena’s kidskin glove. Ilva pressed her thumb against the centre where the stone was missing, staring in horror before looking at her. “What did you do?”

Helena swallowed nervously. “It broke and this—substance came out. Like quicksilver, and—it—it fused with Ferron.”

There was a ghastly silence. Ilva looked so stunned she said nothing, just looked at the amulet again, as if the stone could magically rematerialise. Finally, Helena couldn’t bear it anymore.

“If you didn’t want him healed, you should have told me.”

Ilva didn’t reply, just stared at the amulet in her hand. “Do you know the story of the Stone of the Heavens?” she finally said, still running her thumb over the empty setting.

Dread swept through Helena like a tidal wave.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s a myth. Everyone knows that was a misinterpretation. Luc said it wasn’t real.”

“Every choice I have made was to protect Luc,” Ilva said.

She wasn’t talking to Helena so much as speaking aloud or perhaps to the amulet in her hand.

“I was never trained to be a steward, to bear the weight of this legacy. I was happy with my role, but Luc was too young for all this. I’ve tried to make the best choices I could. ”

Ilva looked up at Helena. “When your—vivimancy made its appearance, I thought I’d been given my way forward.

That Sol had provided a fail-safe so that I could protect him.

Of course there was still the politics of it to contend with.

Matias did not make it easy. With all the concessions he demanded, I was concerned about the Toll taking you too prematurely.

That amulet had been locked away for centuries, lying idle as generations of Holdfasts protected it.

I’d hoped this war might rouse it to do something. ”

“What was it?” Helena asked.