CHAPTER 33
Junius 1786
HELENA SET OUT EARLY IN THE EVENING to ensure she wasn’t late, carrying new travel papers that claimed she was going to the Outpost to deliver medical relief.
She felt guilty that it wasn’t the real purpose of her trip. The Outpost had grown crowded, but the Resistance couldn’t afford to reduce their limited supplies by distributing anything.
When she reached the tenement, there were dozens of people inside,
clustered around a fire.
She stopped short, not sure what to do.
With his injury, Ferron couldn’t possibly get there without being noticed.
Someone might recognise him. She wasn’t even sure how he managed it normally.
As she stood, trying to find a path to the stairs around the huddled group, a figure crumpled against a nearby wall stood up. The hood covering the face slipped back for a moment, just long enough to reveal the waxy features of a
necrothrall.
Helena started back.
It had been a man. A tangled beard covered half his face, with thick eyebrows almost hiding the milky white of his eyes. He’d been expertly reanimated. He showed no signs of decay other than the sheen on his skin and the clouding of his eyes.
She was so used to hearing of necrothralls being aggressive, she hadn’t considered that they could be concealed, waiting.
It came towards her, and her heart lurched into her throat. A pulse in her temples began, throbbing like a drum, a burn of pain across the side of her
neck— Don’t think about it.
The necrothrall paused and pulled up his sleeve. Painted onto his arm was the same stylised symbol for iron that was on the doorway of the tenement.
This necrothrall belonged to Ferron. She’d almost forgotten that he was a necromancer. The sleeve slipped back down as the necrothrall gestured to the left.
Knowing the necrothrall was Ferron’s didn’t make it easier to voluntarily follow into the bowels of the Outpost.
Her heart was pounding inside her chest as they reached a door that blended into the wall. The necrothrall produced a small key and unlocked it, revealing metal stairs that descended into the belly of one of the factories. carrying newThere were dim electric lights that flickered unsteadily overhead. They entered a boiler room—the passage was cramped—then went through another locked door into a more spacious hallway. There was a large door, and as they approached, it swung open from the inside. The door was thicker than the length of her forearm, as though it were a bank vault.
Through the doorway was a large room filled with decadent furniture, chandeliers with glittery prisms dangling, and Ferron—drinking.
The indulgence in the room felt grotesque.
The walls were covered in heavy luxuriant drapes and murals. There were rows of decanters and bottles lining a wall. One section of the room had a seating area with ornate side tables, a large sofa, and chairs. On the other end was a mahogany desk and chaise. Everything was ornate, with the kind of dled group, acraftsmanship that cost a fortune.
“There you are,” Ferron said, drawing her attention away. He was wearing only trousers and a white shirt with half the buttons undone.
She was used to seeing him always fully dressed, layered in his defensive shell of a uniform, and while she’d stripped him to the waist twice now, both occasions had been for medical purposes.
The room they were standing in did not feel professional. Despite his n his skin andhaggard state, Ferron—Kaine, she mentally corrected—looked oddly striking, as if she’d never seen him in the proper environment before.
“What is this?” she asked, stepping cautiously into the room.
The necrothrall didn’t enter, instead stepping back and closing the door, which sealed with a heavy reinforced thud.
“A panic room,” Ferron said. “My grandfather had it built during a strike a few decades ago. In case of emergencies.”
“I can’t imagine why they’d want to hurt your grandfather when he clearly spent his money on such reasonable things,” she said, glancing at the three crystal chandeliers hanging overhead. stured to the“A mystery indeed.” There were several fingers of liquid in his tumbler, but he knocked it all back in one gulp.
She looked at him sidelong. “You know, you could take pain relief in those quantities, if you’re going for numbness.”
“No fun in that,” he said, hand trembling as he poured himself more.
“Alcohol only dulls things for a few minutes. I prefer poison when I really want to feel intoxicated. Generally, it lasts longer, and some poisons have very interesting side effects. I thought you might disapprove, though.” He ough anothersighed. “Given the current atmosphere in the Outpost and the fact that I have no desire to lie upon a kitchen table ever again, I thought this location made more sense.”
Helena nodded, not sure if she was offended or grateful that this was not where they usually met. She probably would have panicked if she’d initially arrived in a place like this.
She dragged one of the spindly-legged side tables over and refused to worry about scratching the polished surface as she pulled out her supplies.
Ferron knocked back the contents of his second drink and straddled a chair backwards, unbuttoning his shirt. Before she could help him, he twisted his shoulders to pull it off, stifling a low gasp of pain.
“Did you feel any better?” she asked, placing her bare hand against his arm. He flinched away. His skin was unnaturally cold. No fever, though,
which she hoped was a good sign.
He didn’t answer.
She cleaned her hands with a dilution of carbolic acid and unwrapped the bandages as carefully as she could until there was only the gauze over the wounds. She used a saline irrigation and tried to lift one, but it stuck. Kaine jerked, his body shuddering.
“Fuck! Don’t—!” His knuckles were white where he was gripping the back of the chair.
She snatched her hand back. “I have to get the gauze off.”
“Do you really?” He pressed his forehead against the chair back, breathing
ing a strike araggedly.
She felt that the answer was obvious.
He shuddered again. “Fuck.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Shut up!”
She stood silently, waiting until his breathing slowed.
“Fine,” he bit out. “Go on.”
“Do you want me to knock you out again?” she asked. elief in thoseHe lifted his head and looked at her. His eyes were empty. His face bruised with exhaustion. “Is there really a point to this?”
Helena met his stare. She could fix this. She wasn’t going to let him suffer and die for finally doing something good in his life.
“Please, let me try.”
Something incredulous flickered in his eyes. His lips started to move, but then he turned away, forehead pressed against the back of the chair.
“Fine,” he said, sounding resigned.
She slid her fingers against the base of his skull. It took only a few seconds, and he went limp.
She removed the gauze and cleaned the wounds, washing his entire back with saline and then a carbolic dilution. At least the Resistance had enough supplies now that she could treat him properly.
She examined him with her resonance, working slowly to better understand ddled a chairwhat the array was doing to him. When she’d finished in the lab, she’d gone to the library and researched arrays, trying to find any information that might be relevant. There was nothing. No one had ever carved an active array into a human before.
She could feel it in her resonance that his body was dying. Tiny flashes of that horrible dissipating coldness, over and over. The array was not only draining the energy from the talisman, but also stripping his body of every resource he had.
Ferron didn’t have the physiological resources to counterbalance the deterioration, so it grew worse with every passing moment.
She pressed a hand on his arm, using her resonance to try to warm him. If ping the backshe’d known sooner, if he’d summoned her, maybe she could have done
something more— She was so late.
She stood staring at him, throat too tight to swallow. She’d reported the injury to Crowther, and he hadn’t seemed to care, either that Kaine was hurt or that Helena had revealed her vivimancy. He’d provided her with the papers and instructed her to do what she could to get any further information from
Ferron, adding that if he was beyond hope of recovery, she should bring back the talisman. They had no use for Ferron as a lich.
Save him or kill him.
She stood, staring at the array, gripping her amulet through her shirt, feeling its points prick the scars in her palm. face bruisedShe couldn’t kill him. Not after he’d trusted her. Not after he’d helped
them.
A month ago, perhaps, but not now.
The Resistance needed him. All the advantages and territory they’d retaken was because of Kaine, and the war was still not won. She had to save him.
She pulled the amulet off, rubbing her thumbs across the surface.
She’d realised after she started wearing it again that she’d stopped feeling so tired, so physically strained by her vivimancy.
She knew the sunstone amulets were supposed to be special, to hold some of Sol’s light and strength within them, but she hadn’t realised what a difference it had been making all these years. Buying her time. Getting her to this moment.
If it could do that, maybe it could save Kaine, tilt things into balance and er understandgive him a chance.
If he died, it didn’t really matter what happened to her. There were other healers now, and with the ports back, her medicine wasn’t needed anymore,
e array into aeither.
She was replaceable. Ferron wasn’t.
She’d never had much resonance for gold, but she tried to use it to bend down the golden rays on the amulet. Kaine would never agree to wear the Holdfast crest, but if it looked a bit more ordinary— The setting bent, and the sunstone slipped, plummeting to the floor.
It hit the ground and shattered.
Helena stared in horror as red shards scattered everywhere, and on the ground all that remained was something silvery white.
She knelt down, reaching towards it. It was like quicksilver, a puddle of liquid metal on the ground, but the gleam was pearlescent, sort of glowing.
When she touched it, it turned solid and cold.
She picked it up and it melted again. Without using her resonance, she could feel a warm hum of energy coming from it, seeming to seep through ith the papersher skin. The feeling faded when it moved, turning solid like a stone.
d bring backShe watched, mesmerised. The hum seemed to grow as though she were in a dream. Things were almost real, but the details blurred when she focused on them.
Raw and exposed, it had a burn to it almost like the talisman inside Ferron’s chest, but softer, more familiar somehow. Like an old friend.
She’d always dismissed the claims of a healer’s intuition, the idea that vivimancy endowed any kind of fundamental understanding of human physiology that was divine or intuitive, but she was certain that the object in hey’d retakenher hand could heal Ferron. It would.
She went over to him, carrying it. Very carefully with her free hand, she pulled him back, trying not to put pressure on the lacerations.
She tilted her hand against his chest, near the talisman, and the liquid turned solid and rolled. When it touched his skin, rather than melt again, it stayed solid, only warm and liquid against Helena’s palm.
She pressed her hand flat over Kaine’s heart and used her resonance. It was Getting her tolike plunging her hand into scalding water. Heat ran up her nerves.
The stone was solid, but as her resonance pushed through towards Kaine, it flushed warm beneath her palm and vanished.
She snatched her hand back in time to see the silver brightness disappear through Kaine’s skin.
For a moment, his body was illuminated from the inside out.
She could see the shadows of his bones and veins and heart as it shone inside him and then disappeared.
Helena blinked as if she’d just woken from a daze. The humming was gone, the room still, and all that remained was the disfigured shape of the suncrest and the broken red glass on the floor.
She touched Ferron’s chest, tentatively, wondering if she’d just hallucinated. It didn’t feel like anything in the last several minutes had been real.
She reached out with her resonance, not sure what she’d just done. He felt the same, a dissonant sense of deadness and energy. There was no apparent change—except maybe he was a little warmer?
She leaned him forward in the chair, and her fingers trembled as she looked around. She swept up the glass with a calm she did not feel, pouring it into an empty glass vial and tucking it into her satchel, warring between trying to convince herself that it had happened and telling herself that it hadn’t. Neither option felt fully plausible.
h she were inShe went back and examined Ferron again as she would any patient. To he focused onher resonance, there seemed nothing distinctly different except that he was warmer now; the flashes of coldness didn’t tear at her resonance so intensely when she touched him. But there was nothing inside him except the talisman, still burning and glowing near his heart, and the lumithium alloy on his back.
She closed her eyes for a moment, reaching up out of habit to grip the amulet before remembering that it was gone. She’d just have to wait and see what happened.
She began applying the salve she’d made with Shiseo. They’d used morphine as the numbing agent, bonded in various forms of petroleum jelly and beeswax for prolonged release, along with copper and honey to prevent infection.
Then she bandaged him before putting her amulet back on, trying to flatten the empty setting before hiding it beneath her shirt. The gold was cool against nance. It washer skin.
As she woke Kaine, she took his hand again, rigid with tension, working it ards Kaine, itslowly, coaxing it to relax. She felt him regain consciousness, but he didn’t move or speak for several minutes. Finally, he slipped his hand away and stood, reaching wordlessly for his shirt.
She helped him dress, feeling his eyes on her as she fastened each button.
She tried not to stare at the place where the stone had vanished.
She only looked up when she reached his throat. His eyes seemed clearer.
More alert, but she suspected that was only because he was sober again.
“I’ll come back tomorrow night,” she said.
The next night, Ferron’s skin was no longer so visibly grey-tinged. He still looked skeletal, his face tight from pain, but along with his colour, his skin was a touch warmer. He refused to be knocked out again. She could tell he was suspicious of her and wanted to know exactly what she did, but he wouldn’t ask, and she wasn’t about to volunteer what had happened.
He wasn’t healing or regenerating; he just wasn’t dying so aggressively.
There was still a long journey ahead that relied on his body somehow adapting to the array.
She tried to be gentle, but he shuddered, gripping the back of the chair el, pouring ituntil his knuckles turned white as she washed and cleaned the wounds. She worked quickly, warning him each time she touched him, explaining each step, trying to help keep the end in sight.
He still flinched every time she touched him.
Every night she came back to the Outpost, following the same routine.
Most nights, Kaine didn’t speak to her at all. He was always slightly drunk and somehow seemed annoyed that she kept coming back. After five days, the talisman,the talisman stopped radiating energy as if it were a leaking battery, and she could feel the aggressive decay from overstrain slowing.
After more than a week of wordless treatment, he spoke abruptly when she was washing her hands. “The High Necromancer wants someone.”
She paused. “Who?”
“A guard from one of the Hevgoss’s prison complexes.”
“Why?”
“I’m still persona non grata, so I don’t know all the details of what’s going on. Apparently at some point, Morrough promised the Hevgotian militocrats ing to flattenthe key to immortality. It’s been decades, and he hasn’t produced the version s cool againstof it that they want. The reason they’re supporting the Guild Assembly is because the High Necromancer somehow convinced them that he can develop it if he can take Paladia. The alliance soured with the latest setback, and now Morrough’s suddenly concerned with getting his hands on this guard without Hevgoss knowing. A few aspirants are going in quietly, trying to track him down. If the Eternal Flame wants more details, they should send
someone after them.”
“Why not send the Undying?” she asked.
“It’s more complicated to send us. It takes special preparations, and there’s
limits to how long we can go.”
She paused. “Why?”
She could feel his annoyance at the question. “Because we’re bound to Morrough.”
Her hands froze. “Do you mean like”—there was no polite way to phrase it
—“are you like—the necrothralls?”
He glared from the corner of his eye.
It was well known that necrothralls could go only so far from their necromancer or else they’d “die” again. Most necromancers could manage a few miles at most. The Undying’s reanimations were particularly powerful; the necrothralls in Paladia moved so freely, no one was sure of their limits, but they were assumed to be somewhere within Paladia’s borders.
That a limitation of distance applied to the Undying indicated parallels
between the two.
“Yes,” Kaine said, his tone begrudging.
“But Morrough left, and he didn’t take everyone. You were still here. How did that work?” she asked as she began applying the salve to lacerations that were still fresh and raw.
“We’re not always bound to him exactly.” He sighed. “We’re—he uses his bones, pieces of them, when we’re made. Part of the outer bone of his right tly when shearm was used on me. He calls them phylacteries. It’s what creates our physical immutability. A part of that is used to make the talismans.” He gestured at his chest. “He takes the phylacteries out sometimes and either grows a new bone or takes a spare from some necrothrall. That’s what he did when travelling, so he could leave some of us behind during his trip. He what’s goingdoesn’t like to do it often, but if he travelled without leaving the phylacteries, the connection would sever, and we’d—die.”
“His bones?” Helena was stuck on that point.
He nodded. “Yes. He shares a piece of himself with us, and we give all of ourselves to him.”
He was silent, and Helena just kept working, her mind churning, until he on this guardspoke again.
“A few tried to run, back when the war started. When they realised it wouldn’t be a tidy little coup to depose the Holdfasts. The High Necromancer had the corpses brought back. He’d made new talismans from each of the phylacteries and put them into the corpses. I believe you call them liches s, and there’swhen they’re dead like that. That was when we began to realise what being ‘Undying’ meant.”
“What would happen if you stole your phylactery?”
He laughed under his breath. “You’ve never been anywhere near Morrough if you think that’s doable. He can fill rooms with his resonance. y to phrase itBut even if it were possible to steal from him, they start crumbling after a while. That deterioration doesn’t kill the Undying, but—their minds start to go.”
Well, that explained why Ferron needed the Eternal Flame; he was dependent on them defeating Morrough for him.
“I’ll let Crowther know,” she said as she finished.
HELENA PAUSED HALFWAY ACROSS THE bridge to the East Island, looking back towards the dam and mountains. Lumithia was a waning crescent, approaching the summer Abeyance, but still her light gilded everything.
ll here. HowA few more weeks and the summer tides would fully ebb, making passage across the seas possible, and the month-long deluge of trade would pour across the sea, hurrying inland. The Resistance had secured the ports just in —he uses histime for the annual trade season.
Helena stood, studying the stark world around her, cast in black and silver.
She felt lost. Kaine’s injury was eating into her detachment. She could feel herself losing focus. Now that he was showing signs of recovery, she couldn’t let herself forget her task.
Hold his attention. Make him loyal. Or obsessed. Whichever came more readily. As vital as his information was, he remained a liability if his service phylacteries,was solely at his own discretion.
Undying. Murderer. Spy. Target. Tool.
She repeated the list to herself, but her conviction in them rang hollow.
The motives Crowther attributed to Kaine felt like an ill-fitted façade, something that Kaine hid behind. Helena was an alchemist; she was not in the habit of manipulating or altering things until she understood their nature.
She crossed the bridge, heading towards Headquarters, but a rain garden caught her eye. She’d passed it countless times but never stopped. Tonight Necromancersomething drew her. It had probably been pretty once but was neglected now.
In the middle of the stream sat a shrine to the goddess Luna.
Acknowledgements of Luna were a rare thing in Paladia. Outright snubbing one of the gods was regarded as dangerous, but she was rarely recognised except as part of the Quintessence.
In Paladia, Luna was regarded as fickle and vain, treacherous as the tides.
According to the Faith, it was because of Luna’s inconstant nature that Sol had birthed Lumithia from his own heart, placing her in the night sky so that mankind would not fear the dark. Luna, envious of Lumithia’s greater brilliance, had sought to drown the world in retribution. Lumithia had faced Luna in a celestial battle so devastating, it had rained fire across the earth.
After the battle, Lumithia settled in the sky and—to repair the destruction caused by the Great Disaster—bestowed the gifts of alchemy upon mankind.
Meanwhile Luna, remorseless even in defeat, continued to express her fury by keeping the ocean and sea frothing with her endless jealousy, only calming when she ruled the skies alone.
Millennia later and Luna remained reviled, small and insignificant compared with Lumithia’s brilliant beauty and power.
The statue of Luna was worn featureless, leaving little more than a vague figure behind.
The Paladian treatment of Luna had been a shock when Helena first arrived. She’d known of Paladia’s great devotion to Sol and Lumithia, but the k and silver.very concept of religion was different. he could feelThe islands of Etras had little metal for alchemy, and being in constant proximity to the sea meant that Etrasians regarded Lumithia as the one responsible for the severe tidal shifts that ruled them. In their myths, Lumithia was a violent interloper who’d sought to destroy the earth, and Luna had thrown herself into Lumithia’s path. The act had left Luna so grievously wounded, she nearly fell from the sky, and the seas had tried to rise from their beds to catch her. Lumithia, chastened by this act of self- sacrifice, was quieted from her violence and came to share Luna’s vigil over the night sky. But the seas did not forget: They still rose in rage when was not in theLumithia waxed full, only quieting in her absence.
Because of this, in Etras, Luna did not merely rule the seas; she was also regarded as the patron goddess of protection, an intercessor. A mother.
Helena picked up a smooth stone from the creek. glected now.In Etras, to pray to Luna, they’d balanced rocks in stacks along the beach, each stone a prayer for the tides to carry to her.
There would be no tides here to wash it away, but Helena had always loved the meditative focus of the ritual. She made a neat stack, the first stone Luc, then Lila, and Soren, Matron Pace, the medics and nurses and trainees in the hospital, Shiseo, Ilva (begrudgingly), the Eternal Flame, and the Resistance.
The tower grew until it wobbled dangerously.
Helena held one last stone. She hesitated.
If she knocked the tower down while building it, it would be for naught.
She almost put the stone back.
She placed it.
Don’t make me responsible for Kaine Ferron’s death.
The stack wobbled, threatening collapse. Then it settled.
Her throat thickened, and a weight in her chest lifted, as if the universe was telling her it was possible.
A southern ritual had no place in the North, but she’d given everything for
the war, and it had not been enough.
Superstition was all she had left.
mithia, but the
always loved
universe was