CHAPTER 32
Maius 1786
THE NEWS THAT MORROUGH WOULD BE GONE along with so many of the Undying was the opportunity the Eternal Flame had been waiting for. Like a machine springing into action, the Resistance rapidly began preparing to attack.
Crowther had been disseminating Ferron’s intelligence over the last several months, attributing to various sources his maps, the information about patrols and rotations, chains of command and the hierarchies of who’d be called on first, and how they’d counterstrike if the Resistance attacked.
The battalions were raring for the fight.
However, a relentless sense of dread lurked beneath Helena’s skin, growing with each passing moment. What if it was a trap? What if Ferron had lied, hidden a noose within his information? She kept thinking about how strange he’d seemed.
The hospital waited, tense, strangled between hope and dread. Then the sirens started, and the lorries began to arrive, bodies flooding in, filling the hospital and lining the halls. There wasn’t room for all the wounded.
Helena had no opportunity to more than register her despairing guilt as the fallout of the battle filled the hospital. She had to work.
Your fault. You should have known. Ferron’s a monster. A born traitor, just like his father. She had never done so much healing, working in such a frenzy that the amulet around her neck almost burned against her skin. Two of the trainee healers collapsed, their resonance shot from burnout.
It was more than a day before someone told her they hadn’t lost. The attack was not a failure but a spectacular success. The Resistance had the ports; they’d retaken most of the East Island. Battles were still raging in the south- west corner, but they expected to retake the entire island.
Even once it was confirmed, Helena still barely believed it. The injuries just kept coming.
The Resistance found prisons filled with dissidents. One of the largest buildings near the ports had been a laboratory. The Resistance brought back lorries filled with medical supplies and tools that Helena had not laid eyes on in years. Real anaesthetic and antiseptics. Cases upon cases of opium resin.
Gauze and fresh bandages.
But the elation that filled the hospital as all the supplies poured in vanished as the victims from the laboratory began to arrive. Medics and nurses who’d worked unflinchingly for years had breakdowns over the victims and had to be excused.
The laboratory had not only been making chimaeras with animals. The victims arriving were nearly unrecognisable, experimented on in ways that defied reason. Bodies methodically dismembered and reassembled. There e last severalwere so many. about patrolsAttempts to treat them fell to Helena. The surgeons were at a loss, and the trainees couldn’t take it. There was nothing Helena could do, either. No matter what she tried, they all died.
For their combat forces, the Retaking was over quickly. What the Undying had spent years slowly carving into, recovered in one coordinated sweep. It if Ferron hadwas regarded as a military triumph for the ages.
For the hospital it was an unending nightmare.
Reports that Morrough had returned were followed by rumours of extreme upheaval among the ranks as blame fell. Then came the counterattacks and attempts to retake the ports.
It took weeks before things finally calmed, the hospital shifts slowly resumed the normal rotation, and more trainee healers were brought in.
Crowther and Ilva somehow knew exactly who possessed the latent resonance for it, even when the girls themselves did not.
Helena was so exhausted by the end that she could barely talk for several days. As if she’d forgotten how to be human anymore.
Pace kicked her out of the hospital when she found her in the supply room, st. The attackmechanically taking inventory, saying that barring an emergency Helena was not to come back for four days at least.
Helena didn’t know what to do but resume her old schedule, and so when Martiday arrived, she rose with the dawn, took her satchel, and went out of
the city. The spring flooding had ebbed, and the wetlands had come into bloom.
There were flurries of insects dancing in swarms, light glistening on their wings. Sun limned the eastern stretch of the mountains, turning their ridges gold. The wind no longer rattled the dead reeds but whispered through marsh grass. The air was filled with warbling birdcalls. The wetlands were lush with new growth, brimming with life. Helena could have harvested for hours and d in vanishedstill left plenty behind. She took only what she thought was most valuable before she washed her hands in an alga-green pond and headed to the Outpost.
She’d barely had time to think about Ferron, but she figured she should at least check and see if he’d left any messages. She’d received no instructions from Crowther since the attack.
She caught sight of him the instant the door opened. He was leaning his hip against the table. His shoulders were stooped, arms hanging limply at his sides.
“You look awful,” he said as she came through the door.
She stopped short. “You look worse.” the UndyingHe gave a strained laugh. “Do I?”
She was too shocked to reply.
His face had grown gaunt, as if he’d lost almost all his remaining weight, the bones of his skull jutting starkly through his skin.
He looked—
—like a corpse.
Her heart lurched into her throat.
His skin was grey and papery, eyes sunken. His dark hair hung limp around his face. Dirty and uncombed.
He didn’t appear to have eaten, slept, or bathed in all the weeks since Helena had last seen him.
“Are you—are you a—are you dead?” she forced herself to ask. Could he be killed and then made into a lich using his own body? Was that possible? supply room,He cracked a smile that made his lower lip split, a trickle of red blood running down his chin. It healed instantly. “You’d think that, wouldn’t you?
No. Still—alive.”
“What happened?”
She went forward but was afraid to touch him. He looked like he might crumble into dust.
He drew a shallow breath. “Well, you may have noticed, the High Necromancer wasn’t pleased about the ports.” He drooped, his head dipping, but then he jerked up sharply, face contorting in pain. “Bad luck—for the commander in charge.”
Helena’s head went light. No … that wasn’t possible. He’d been gone, ere lush withwith Morrough and the others to Hevgoss.
She shook her head. “But you’re not in command there. It’s—they were commanded by—by—”
She couldn’t remember the name, but it was someone else. She would have remembered if Ferron had been the one in charge. He wasn’t ranked high enough for a position like that.
“It was a recent change in leadership,” he said. There was hoarseness to his voice. “Doesn’t matter. Did it work? The attack? Obviously you got the aning his hipisland, but—” He swallowed. “—you’ll keep it? You have enough men for that still?”
She wasn’t supposed to tell him anything, but he was so clearly in pain,
she couldn’t help herself.
“More than we hoped,” she said.
He swallowed and gave the barest nod. “Good.” His eyes fluttered closed for a moment. “That’s something, I guess.”
He drew an unsteady breath. “I should go. Just—wanted to know … Won’t be making this trip again.”
He tried to straighten but collapsed. He caught the chair and fell onto it. A low, almost screaming gasp escaped him. He tried to stand again but couldn’t seem to put weight on his arms. His breathing was growing increasingly ragged.
“Ferron, what’s happened to you? What’s wrong?” Her voice rose sharply as she hovered, not sure what to do.
His eyes shut. He was breathing shallowly. “F-Fuck off, Marino.”
She approached like he was an injured animal, her hands outstretched and visible.
“Ferron—I know you’re hurt. Maybe I can help,” she said as gently as she could.
He gave a rasping laugh. “There’s nothing you can do.”
“Let me try.” She was close enough now to see the veins beneath his skin along his neck, not blue but almost black like poison. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
His eyes snapped open, anger lighting his face.
“Don’t pretend to care,” he spat. “You expect me to believe you didn’t know this would happen?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t. I would have come back sooner if I’d known.”
Based on his appearance, this was not quick deterioration he was suffering from. He’d reached this point slowly, over the course of weeks.
If he was telling the truth, if he’d been in command at the ports during the e would haveattack, then all the information he’d passed on would have been to his knowing detriment.
“Please.” She held out her hand. “Let me try to help.” rseness to his“Your marsh herbs aren’t going to fix this,” he said, grimacing as he tried to stand again. “A medic like you can do fuck all.”
She swallowed hard.
“That’d be true if I actually was a medic.” She touched his cheek with her fingertips, and didn’t hide her resonance.
She knew that she was sabotaging her mission, but that wouldn’t matter if he died; the mission was already a failure on every level. When her resonance connected with his body, she almost snatched her hand back. The talisman in his chest was emitting so much power, it threatened to burn her nerves ow … Won’ttouching him. Every cell in his body was singed from it.
He was dying. Over and over. His body pushed so far over the edge that it failed, only to be instantly regenerated, and fail again. He was simultaneously but couldn’tdead and alive because it was a sort of repeating cascade of regenerative failure.
Ferron jerked away as if he were the one burned. “You conniving little bitch. I knew I felt your resonance when I lost my arm.”
She let her hand drop, avoiding his accusing glare. “I was ordered not to tell you.”
“And now?” His eyes were narrowed into slits.
“I don’t think it matters. If I don’t do something, you’re going to die.”
“I doubt I’m fortunate enough to manage that,” he said in a dull voice.
She reached out, just barely touching his arm. “Ferron, what’s happened to your back?”
His eyes fluttered closed as if he was too exhausted for the conversation.
She could see the black veins even in his eyelids.
“See for yourself,” he finally said, “since you’re so determined.”
Very slowly and carefully she unfastened his cloak and lifted it off. He flinched but didn’t utter a sound. The miasma of old, fetid wounds filled the air as she unfastened the buttons of his shirt. Stepping behind him as gently as she could, she drew the clothing off his shoulders.
There were no bandages underneath. His entire back was a rotting wound, lacerated surgically from his shoulders down past his ribs.
There was an alchemical array carved into his skin.
He inhaled and she could see the white of his ribs, scored with grooves.
The incisions over his shoulders were the worst of it. Not merely cutting to the bone but into the bone, carving into his shoulder blades, a lumithium alloy welded in, bonded with the bone to keep the array intact and activated.
Whatever regenerative abilities Ferron had, it was not enough to counter an injury of this magnitude.
Arrays could be simply illustrative, to record or visually calculate a process, but they were also used for transmutation or alchemisation when the process was too complex for simple resonance manipulation, or when working with organically derived compounds that tended to be volatile. her resonanceDrawn with chalk or charcoal, or etched into a surface with a stylus. But Helena had never seen anything like what had been done to Ferron.
“Why—” Her voice failed. “—why would they do this to you?”
“Well …” Ferron said slowly, his voice far away. “There were lots of ideas about what to do with me—all manner of punishments were discussed for my multaneously—failure. Bennet was put out over losing his lab, all those subjects and experiments of his. He’s been wanting to experiment on one of the Undying.
He said that as the one who’d suffered the greatest loss, he should be allowed to punish me.”
He was silent for a moment and added, “The High Necromancer says if I survive, I’ll be forgiven.”
Helena couldn’t tear her eyes away from the wound. The skin around the incisions showed signs of septicaemia. Tendrils of infection were spreading beneath his skin, leaching into his blood.
Too afraid to touch near the array, she placed her hand on his arm. He happened toflinched at the contact. His body was still trying to regenerate, to heal the wounds that made up the array. The nerves were all intact. He had to be in an incomprehensible amount of pain.
She didn’t know where to begin, but she couldn’t just stand there looking at it. She tried to numb the area, to work inwards, but it didn’t last. Anywhere
with enough living tissue to numb, his regeneration reversed it. She couldn’t even spare him the pain.
Working as close as she dared, she could feel the metal welded into his shoulders was a lumithium-titanium alloy, its resonance so sharp that Helena could feel it in her teeth. She had no idea how Ferron was even sane while having it adhered to his body.
This was beyond the scope of her abilities, more than anything had ever been before. ely cutting to“I’m sorry, I can’t heal this.”
He gave a dry laugh. “I know.”
“But—” She swallowed hard, still thinking. “—I think I could help contain to counter anit, and reduce the strain it’s putting on you. It might—give you a chance of surviving. That’s the condition, right? If you survive, they won’t do anything
else to you.”
Ferron gave no response.
Starting on his left shoulder, she followed the veins with her resonance, her fingertips a breath away from his skin, drawing the blood poisoning back to the incision. Pus and blood that was nearly black trickled down across his back. She used the corner of a handkerchief to wipe it away as gently as she could, to keep it from getting into the other wounds. lots of ideasFerron’s whole body shook, and he gave a soundless rasp. ussed for my“What are you doing?” he ground out through his teeth.
“These incisions are poisoning you. You’ve been dying and your body is pulling resources from everywhere it can to regenerate and revive you, but d be allowedit’s running out of places to draw from. This is like when you lost your arm.
You couldn’t regenerate until you stopped bleeding. If you want to recover, we have to deal with this infection and work backwards from there.”
He dropped his head, exhaling unevenly. “How fortunate that you got such a thorough overview of my physiology while I was passed out.”
“Yes, it is,” she said curtly, and pulled out more poison.
He moaned through his teeth, his hands spasming repeatedly when the handkerchief brushed his back again.
He hadn’t even made a sound with his arm ripped off. d to be in anShe paused, hands hovering.
“Would a sedative work on you?”
“No,” he said dully. “Everything wears off. I can barely get properly st. Anywheredrunk.”
She tentatively touched the base of his skull.
“I usually work locally when blocking pain, but there’s a place here in your brain. If I stimulate it, it’ll put you to sleep. You won’t feel anything.
Your body shouldn’t interpret that as tampering since I’m not blocking anything. Do you want me to try?”
“You can—” His voice caught. “You can do that?”
“Yes. I think so.”
He was silent. She watched the flutter of his ribs as he breathed unsteadily.
“Try, then, I suppose,” he said. “It’s not like there’s ever been anything stopping you from killing me.” help containShe ignored the comment. “You should lie down, then.”
The table was cracked down the middle, but still stable enough, so she assembled it into a makeshift bed, spreading out his cloak. His hands trembled, gripping her shoulder as she helped him stand, and he groaned under his breath as he leaned his weight on her. His whole body was shaking esonance, herviolently as he nearly collapsed onto the table.
She laced her fingers through his hair until she found the dip at the base of his skull just below the occipital protuberance.
It required only a little shift in the energy until she felt the peace of numbness flood through his body as he slipped unconscious.
She could work more easily now that Ferron wouldn’t flinch every time she touched him. She drew out the infection, wiping it away, but all she could think about was how old the injury must be.
She should have come back sooner. This was her fault: She’d assumed he’d leave the city to burn, and she’d pushed him from her mind.
She’d been so terrified he would betray them that she’d never stopped to consider what would happen if he didn’t. you got suchHer hands trembled, hovering over the now clean wounds, as she debated what to do. She wanted to pry the metal out of his bones, but the titanium had bonded.
She gripped her amulet, desperate for any sense of reassurance.
The injury was more than merely incisions and metal transmutation. The array was active; she could feel the hum of resonance moving through it.
Altering an active array was extremely dangerous. The kind of thing that cost
limbs.
Attempting it might kill them both.
She had to figure out a way to make Ferron survive it, but it was rooted into him and drawing on the energy emanating from the talisman, diverting what should have been regenerating him and instead sending that power along the pathways of the array.
There was no containment circle to limit it. It was activated constantly, the symbols not acting on an external target as they would in a lab, but on Ferron.
The power was being diverted, mutated, and then fed back into him in a d unsteadily.closed loop.
That would kill a normal human, but Ferron didn’t die so easily—yet he also couldn’t change. Helena was beginning to understand how the Undying were “immortal.” He was not ageless; his body was trapped in time, his regeneration keeping him exactly as he was. It did not let him change, not with age or injury. But the array was designed to change him. The mutated power existed for the sole purpose of alteration, and that contradiction was killing him in a way far more profound than the mutilation of his back.
He was in a crucible, and he was the crucible, and he would either die terribly or be wholly alchemised into something that could survive the paradox.
She studied the symbols, trying to understand what they were intended to do.
She’d never seen an array intended to act on a person, but she was well all she couldversed in alchemical notation.
The fundamental design was a classical celestial star correlating to the eight planets. Paladians loved things in sets of five or eight. The only exception she knew was pyromancy, which the Holdfast Suncrest was modelled after. Which used seven.
The use of the notation carved into Ferron’s skin was like using an alchemical formula to express a literary concept. It wasn’t unheard of for titanium hadalchemists to write with alchemical symbolism and symbols, particularly in textbooks as a way of restricting information to the educated, but Helena had never seen the method applied to a functioning array. Each of the eight points had a distinct concept using combinations of symbols. Helena parsed the meaning slowly. hing that costCalculating, Cunning, Devoted, Determined, Ruthless, Unfailing, Unhesitating, and Unyielding.
It made sense that an array on a person couldn’t be a typical transmutation formula, but the idea of forging traits into a human was horrific. If it worked,
it would carve Ferron down into these eight compounding qualities, potentially erasing everything else about him.
He would have kept healing at least until the metal had been welded into place. The lacerations were all interconnected to make the array continuous.
Given the way Ferron reacted when she offered to knock him out, he’d Ferron.probably been conscious the entire time.
Her fingers trembled, and she laid her hand over his. His skin was cold and papery thin.
She wanted to close the wounds, but there was too much interference channelled through the incisions. It would kill any new tissue.
If she could get him healthy again, then his body might work with her to close them, but that would take time. As much as it had taken for him to reach that point.
She used her vivimancy to remove the dead tissue and then went to her satchel, rummaging through her supplies for the little medical kit she’d repacked. She debated running to Headquarters, but it would take too long.
She sorted through what she’d foraged that morning, trying to think of what would be useful.
Sedatives and transmutational interference didn’t work, but topical treatments might still have an effect. They would at least prevent infection.
She’d make a transdermal salve with a prolonged release. Shiseo would be sure to have ideas.
She gnawed her lip as she pulled out a salve she’d made with her willow bark, tapping her fingers on the lid, wishing she had something with opium in it. It would do for now and keep the wounds clean until she came back.
She coated the incisions with the analgesic, emptying the entire jar, and then placed gauze over each one, sprinkling dried sphagnum over them to keep the wounds acidic and prevent infection, before swathing his back in bandages.
She knew she should wake him, but he was exhausted. He could use the e eight pointsrest.
Reaching out tentatively, she tucked his dark hair back from his face. His features were sunken, hollows in his cheeks, temples, and eyes, all that eerie
youth gone.
He looked broken.
She fidgeted with her nails, wishing there was something else to do, as she fought back the storm of emotions in her chest. She was so accustomed to
resenting him, to seeing him as a threat to her and everyone else.
She thought of him flipping that silver coin and telling her what the Eternal Flame needed for the attack. He’d known he’d be punished.
His rambling, barely conscious comments about purposefully provoking another commander to gain control of a new district: She’d brushed them off, attributing them to ego and stupidity. He’d been building up to this all along. was cold andHe could have made it a trap. He could have spent the last several months drip-feeding the Eternal Flame inaccurate information to execute a perfect sabotage. Instead he’d given them more than they’d dreamed they could achieve in a year, knowing he’d pay the price.
And he’d thought she’d known. The thought gutted her. That he’d thought she knew and had abandoned him to this.
She touched his temple, leaning closer, searching his face. “Why are you doing this?”
When she couldn’t justify keeping him unconscious for any longer, she laced her fingers through his hair and woke him as slowly as she could so that the pain wouldn’t hit immediately.
As he was regaining consciousness, she took his nearest hand, careful not to shift his shoulder as she started massaging the palm and worked slowly to his fingertips, knuckle by knuckle, her resonance seeking out every bit of tension and knotted muscles.
Her father used to massage her hands like that, even before Paladia. Every night. An alchemist’s hands were like a surgeon’s, he’d said, they had to be with opium intaken care of.
She knew Ferron didn’t need it. It was only meaningful to her, but it was all she could do.
The instant he became conscious, she could feel the tension radiate across his body. His eyes snapped open, his pupils contracting with pain. His fingers spasmed against hers, but he lay there unmoving, and so she kept working
along his fingers.
His eyes weren’t quite focused yet.
“What did you do?” he finally asked.
Helena wet her lips. “I drew out all the infected blood and removed the dead tissue, then applied an analgesic salve to the incisions and got you bandaged. It’s not the most effective treatment, but I think it’ll help until I can make something better back at Headquarters. I—I can’t close the
incisions yet, but I might be able to eventually, once you’re stronger. If you at the Eternalcan recover some first.”
He pulled his hand away and slowly got up as she was speaking. It had to be agony to move, but he didn’t make a sound, although he wavered as if on hed them off,the verge of fainting as he pushed himself off the table.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, reaching for his shirt. “Healing me isn’t your job.”
“Your wounds need to be monitored and watched for infection or further deterioration. And the bandages should be changed at least once a day,” she said, stepping forward and blocking him.
“Unfortunate,” was all he said.
“Ferron.” She took his shirt away from him. “I know you’re not used to it, but you need medical care. If you leave things as they are, you’ll probably die —or maybe something worse.”
He gave a rasping laugh. “Marino, that is the point. You think Bennet did could so thatthis expecting it to work?”
“But I can help you,” she said desperately, helping him slip his shirt on, trying to prove how useful she could be. “Listen. I have a laboratory. I’m good at chymiatria. I’ll make a salve for you, it’ll be topical so it’ll work on the incisions. I’ll come every day to change your bandages and make sure nothing goes wrong.”
“Really, you have time for all that?” His expression was scathing.
“I’ll make time. I’ll come every day. Please.”
He seemed caught off guard. “Fine,” he said, looking away from her.
“Eight o’clock in the evening. But if you make me come here, and you don’t show up, I won’t come back again.”
“I’ll come,” she promised. “Every evening at eight.” n. His fingersShe might need new papers to get permission, but she’d make Crowther give them to her. Or forge them herself.
She buttoned his shirt, pausing when her fingers were just below the dip of his throat. His bones showed through his skin, the dark-coloured veins still visible. “I’m so sorry, Kaine.”
His expression was almost blank with exhaustion, but he quirked an eyebrow. It had less of an effect when she could see all the effort it took.
“If I’d known healing would make you so familiar, I would have said no.”
He almost sounded like himself.
She shrugged and picked up his cloak, doubtful about the added weight on his back. “Should I not call you Kaine? It seems odd to keep going by surnames. We’re going to be around each other for the rest of our lives, you know.”
He looked heavenwards and sighed. “I don’t care what you call me, but
I’m not changing anything.”
“Good. Then it’s Kaine now.”
She needed to make herself think about him differently. She’d made too many wrong assumptions while seeing him as Ferron.
“I’m a bit out of the loop at the moment, but I do know where Bennet’s new lab is.” He gave a strained smile. “He likes them near the water. One of the warehouses near the West Island shipyard. I’ll bring a map next time.” probably die
ow the dip of
She shrugged and picked up his cloak, doubtful about the added weight on his back. “Should I not call you Kaine? It seems odd to keep going by surnames. We’re going to be around each other for the rest of our lives, you know.”
He looked heavenwards and sighed. “I don’t care what you call me, but
I’m not changing anything.”
“Good. Then it’s Kaine now.”
She needed to make herself think about him differently. She’d made too many wrong assumptions while seeing him as Ferron.
“I’m a bit out of the loop at the moment, but I do know where Bennet’s new lab is.” He gave a strained smile. “He likes them near the water. One of the warehouses near the West Island shipyard. I’ll bring a map next time.”