CHAPTER 39
Julius 1786
HELENA RETURNED TO THE OUTPOST THAT EVENING, but found the door in the factory wall locked, the necrothrall that usually appeared with the key nowhere in sight.
She went to the tenement, but the unit was cold and empty, too. She lingered for a little while, just to be sure.
The next evening was the same.
She told herself it was a good sign. The healing was a success. Still, it felt abrupt to suddenly have her evenings again.
Helena hadn’t realised how much time she’d spent making salves and journeying back and forth until all those hours were at her disposal once more.
On Martiday, she went foraging and then headed towards the tenements.
She wasn’t even halfway there when a necrothrall stepped out of the shadows, intercepting her. Helena’s stomach clenched. It wasn’t the normal man, but a woman. She showed an iron symbol on her pallid inner wrist and then held out an envelope.
Helena took it, and the necrothrall turned and walked away.
Helena didn’t usually open the missives, but this time she broke the seal and pulled out the contents, looking for instructions or a message.
It was just an encoded intelligence report.
On Saturnis it happened again.
She hadn’t considered that Kaine could do that, but there was nothing about the way his information was passed on that required the in-person meetings.
She spent her newfound free time in the laboratory experimenting with Shiseo, who had become a collegial companion and collaborator.
Because healing was considered separate from medicine and medical care, the two did not always complement each other. Many sedatives inhibited vivimancy, requiring countering or workarounds in ways that made the healing process unnecessarily complicated. Healing Kaine, far from Matias’s purview, had allowed her to begin considering the possibilities of chymiatria designed for vivimancy.
She began with tonics to support things like blood regeneration and bone repair, but her primary interest was developing something that would maintain vivimancy’s effects by controlling the body’s inner chymistry. She and Shiseo synthesised a glycoside from foxglove and extracted alkaloids from nightshade, working piece by piece.
Creating a niche for herself was a consolation because Elain Boyle was becoming widely preferred as a healer. Helena tried to tell herself it was a good thing to have a healer so naturally likeable. No one ever jumped or even batted an eye when Elain forgot her gloves, but Elain’s social strengths also undermined her as a healer. She was too much of a people pleaser, and it affected her methods. She had a relentless tendency towards prioritising her intuition over her training and healing symptoms rather than causes.
A necessary fever never ran its course when Elain was on shift. People felt better but developed infections more often and recovered slower.
In late Augustus, Basilius Blackthorne tried to retake the southern tip of the East Island. Blackthorne was one of the Undying that everyone feared. He didn’t wear a helmet as most of the Undying did, making no effort to hide his identity. Whether he won or lost his battles, the devastation he left behind was terrible. He was known for eating his victims on the battlefield.
After days of fighting, when it was clear the attack was a failure, Blackthorne set his own army on fire and sent them as far into Resistance territory as they could get. The rainy season hadn’t begun; everything was unusually dry. The flames spread fast, jumping across the tributary between the East and West islands and consuming a large swath of the city. The sky to the south glowed red as an ember.
The hospital was flooded with burn injuries and lung damage, combatants and civilians alike.
The healers were on duty in the hospital for so long, Helena lost track of the days. She didn’t realise how tired she’d become until she was in the war room, listening to reports, and Ilva made a comment that they were unlikely to have an estimate on enemy losses for another day.
She’d already missed more than a week. She had to go.
When she got up the next morning, the room tilted. Lila was sound asleep, a lump under the blankets on her bed. The battalion had returned black with smoke. Luc had kept the fire from advancing on Headquarters, but even his pyromancy had limits against an inferno.
Helena’s head was hollow, throbbing from exhaustion as she dressed and headed out.
Everything was eerily quiet, as if even the birds were afraid to sing. The smoke hung like a shroud over the city.
Even the Outpost was quiet, but Helena paid no attention, just looking for the necrothrall so she could get Kaine’s missive and head back.
She came around a corner and found four of them. She was so tired, she stopped and stood staring stupidly for several moments, trying to understand mped or evenwhy Kaine would send four.
Then it dawned on her that they were not his. These were ordinary combat necrothralls.
She immediately began backtracking, noticing only then that the encampments that covered the Outpost were torn apart. The Undying had retaken the Outpost, and she had walked straight into it.
She turned and fled, only to run into another group of necrothralls.
She had to retreat again, winding through the maze of buildings and ne feared. Hefactories. She tripped over a body, not reanimated. rt to hide hisEvery time she escaped one group, she stumbled across another.
Necrothralls didn’t generally move fast, but they didn’t need to. They were herding her away from the gate, from the bridge, from the only way off the Outpost.
She ripped her gloves off as she was cornered in a tight alley and backed away until she hit the wall. It was narrow enough that they could only enter a
few at a time. y. The sky toThey shuffled forward.
A few carried weapons. It was hard to say what was worse.
When they got in range, she shoved her hands towards them, forcing her resonance outwards, closing her eyes instinctively.
Her resonance flared for a moment and then burned out like a lightbulb filament.
She opened her eyes, barely seeing the remaining necrothralls approaching because of how raw and wounded she felt inside, as if she’d ripped out a
vein.
Burnout was common for defence alchemists, who frequently strained the limits of their range and abilities. It also happened to healers. Once it started
happening a lot— She forced herself to focus.
There was blood everywhere, but two of the necrothralls were still coming towards her.
She fumbled for her knife, lost in the bottom of her satchel, barely managing to grasp it in time.
She aimed for the nearest necrothrall’s throat. Straight through to the spinal cord. With her resonance burned out, she couldn’t transmute the blade, but she twisted it and jerked left. The head toppled off with a grotesque squelch, body following as fiery, white-hot pain exploded up her leg.
When she’d lunged towards one, the other necrothrall had tried to stab at her with a metal spike.
It had missed her torso and gone through her calf.
Helena nearly collapsed, slashing clumsily. She barely managed to sever enough fingers that it couldn’t jerk the spike back out.
Her brain clamoured to pull out the spike, as her calf muscles tore around it, but she knew she’d bleed out if she did. The rough metal shifted, and she bit through the sleeve of her shirt to keep from screaming.
The necrothrall was still coming. Most of the fingers on one hand were gone, but it could still bludgeon her, and she knew the most dangerous part of o. They werenecrothralls was often their teeth.
She gripped the knife tighter, forced to wait until it reached for her. As soon as it was in range, she grabbed its outstretched hand, her absent resonance like a hole inside her. Teeth swung towards her face, and she shoved her knife straight through the V of the jaw.
Something slammed into the side of her head, sending her stumbling.
The arm was wrenched free of her grasp. Broken fingernails clawed at her
skin.
There was thick old blood in her eyes.
She lurched forward. Her left leg failed, but it gave her enough momentum to drive the knife through the top of the skull. Purple blood spurted across her face as the necrothrall collapsed. approachingHelena stood dazed and gasping for breath, scrubbing at her face. The blood was all she could smell.
She tried to make out where she was using the towers of the city to orient herself. The bridge was on the far side from her, but the tenement was nearby.
She’d hide there first, and then make a plan. She leaned against the wall, trying to keep from putting weight on her left leg. Even dragging it was agony.
She reached the tenement building and crawled up the steps, but it was only as she reached the landing that she remembered that door had a resonance lock. She couldn’t get inside.
She crawled over and pressed her hand against it anyway, as if her ute the blade,resonance were a well and there were some final drops she could plumb, even though she knew burnout often took days to come back from.
She sat back, cursing herself for being so accustomed to the routine to be this careless. Her head was swimming, although she didn’t know if it was from exhaustion or blood loss.
She found the cleanest spot in the corridor and forced herself to look at her leg. Blood had coated her calf and foot, leaving an obvious trail. Fortunately, necrothralls weren’t generally aware enough to notice anything that didn’t move.
Her vision blurred, the pain seeming to crush her ability to think down into a funnel.
No artery, she didn’t think. She debated pulling out the spike, but she gerous part ofdidn’t have enough supplies to pack a wound that large.
If she could reach the checkpoint, they’d get her to Headquarters, but no one was going to come looking for her on the Outpost.
She fumbled through her satchel.
The priority was stabilising the spike, and applying pressure to reduce the bleeding. Then she’d plan.
She chewed on an abandoned sprig of yarrow as she wrapped bandages around her leg.
Blood was already seeping through before she’d finished, and her mind had gone sluggish. h momentumShe tried harder to focus, head lolling as she struggled to stay alert. ed across herStay awake. You have to stay awake.
Her vision lengthened. Her legs seemed far away, all the way down a
tunnel, and then everything faded away.
“What are you doing?”
Helena started, her leg jerking reflexively, pain bursting through her.
Kaine was standing over her, seemingly having appeared out of thin air.
At least, she thought it was Kaine. Her vision was blurry, and his presence seemed to swallow the space. As his face swam into focus, he was glaring at
her icily.
Her heart lurched at the sight of it.
“It’s Martiday,” she managed to say.
“What happened?”
She gestured limply at the metal spike still running through her calf.
He barely glanced at it. “Yes, I noticed. I’ll admit, your commitment to the plumb, evenbit is impressive. I can’t say I expected you to go this far.”
She stared at him, not understanding.
“Tell Crowther I have no time for his tricks. Pull something like this again, and he can consider the deal off.” Kaine turned, walking away.
Her chest felt hollow as she watched him leave, realising that he thought o look at hershe’d injured herself on purpose.
He paused at the top of the stairs, staring at the trail of blood before looking back at her.
“Get up.” He was speaking through clenched teeth. nk down intoShe shook her head. “I’m waiting for my resonance to come back.”
His head jerked sharply. “What?”
She looked down. “The fires … there were a lot—I was too tired today. I didn’t realise—never burned out before. So I’m—waiting.”
Kaine walked back over and crouched in front of her, his eyes narrowed.
His hair was so much more silver now.
“Marino, what kind of vivimancy do they have you doing in the hospital?”
“Depends who’s injured.” Her head was very light; her consciousness was threatening to rise through the top of her head and float away.
Fingers snapped sharply in front of her face.
“Focus,” he said. “Describe the healing you do. Are you just transmuting physical injuries away or are you using your vitality to keep people alive?”
“Depends …” she said again. She was having trouble making her eyes focus. His own eyes shone, and she stared at them, mesmerised. “We use triage protocol. Can’t afford to lose our combatants. Especially not alchemists.”
His jaw tensed. “I assumed they’d save that for the likes of Holdfast.”
The corridor had stretched into a tunnel once more.
“Luc can’t win by himself,” she said.
Ferron was suddenly very close, reaching towards her. He pulled her up off the ground, sending an inferno of pain through her body. She screamed and fainted.
When her eyes opened again, she was in the tenement unit, lying on her back, her injured leg elevated with a chair. She felt simultaneously better and
worse.
She was overwhelmingly thirsty.
Kaine was studying her calf where the spike ran through it. itment to the“How do I heal this?”
She blinked sluggishly, the ceiling swirling overhead.
Think, Helena, you’ve taught healing before. “Numbing the area is the first ke this again,step, but I don’t have enough blood to …”
Her words slurred away. Explaining the lack of saline and plasma expanders was too many words to string together. Did he even know how to numb? With the new healers, she’d use her resonance at the same time and guide them, so that they’d know what to look for.
She was so thirsty.
She shook her head. “I don’t think … It’s … tricky for beginners … nerves.”
Annoyance flashed across his face. “I did paralyse you once. I’m familiar with nerves.” His bare hand pressed just below her knee. “Here?”
She nodded and barely felt his resonance before her leg went numb. She drew several deep breaths, feeling less shaky now that she wasn’t distracted by pain.
“Um,” she said, swallowing, “you need to identify what’s damaged before you pull the spike out. Nerves, veins—I don’t think it went through the artery, but you should check. Might’ve fractured the bone. Blood flow’s easy to sense. Close the veins and arteries temporarily—not too long.”
Kaine was silent, his bare fingers pressed against her calf, and his eyes went out of focus. She couldn’t feel what he was doing, which would normally bother her, but right now she was not lucid enough to care properly.
He placed his hand on the spike. Despite being numb, she tensed, bracing herself for the grind of metal against tissue.
Rather than pull it out, he transmuted it. The metal rippled in his hand, shrinking out of the wound so that it didn’t drag or tear. Only a little blood
spattered on the floor. He dropped the bar, studying the puncture with a ed her up offcritical eye.
“I don’t feel any trace metals left. Do I clean it?”
She nodded, starting to tremble even though the spike was out and the pain was gone. “There’s leftover carbolic dilution in my satchel.”
He rummaged through it and found the vial.
“Lucky I healed you,” she said as he wordlessly unscrewed it and poured the contents over the wound. It looked like water trickling through and joining the puddle of blood on the floor.
Then he began closing the puncture. She warned him to only perform the most basic regeneration, because she didn’t have the physical resources for ea is the firstmore.
Gradually the hole in her leg was gone, replaced with delicate, extremely inflamed new tissue, and he partially removed the block on her nerves. Pain rolled through her like a wave. She’d need more healing, but this was enough to get her back.
She tried to rotate her foot, but the muscles weren’t intact enough. She
could limp, though.
“Thank you.”
He didn’t acknowledge her, wiping his hands off on a handkerchief and pulling his gloves back on. He radiated impatience as she got up, favouring her left leg. There was a new sort of hardness about him.
Her head was light, but she felt less wobbly.
She touched the door, but her resonance was still just a gap, like a lost tooth. Her fingers skittered across the surface. Before she could say anything, she heard the mechanisms inside move, and the door clicked open.
She looked back, expecting to find Ferron behind her, but he was still across the room.
are properly.
spattered on the floor. He dropped the bar, studying the puncture with a critical eye.
“I don’t feel any trace metals left. Do I clean it?”
She nodded, starting to tremble even though the spike was out and the pain was gone. “There’s leftover carbolic dilution in my satchel.”
He rummaged through it and found the vial.
“Lucky I healed you,” she said as he wordlessly unscrewed it and poured the contents over the wound. It looked like water trickling through and joining the puddle of blood on the floor.
Then he began closing the puncture. She warned him to only perform the most basic regeneration, because she didn’t have the physical resources for more.
Gradually the hole in her leg was gone, replaced with delicate, extremely inflamed new tissue, and he partially removed the block on her nerves. Pain rolled through her like a wave. She’d need more healing, but this was enough to get her back.
She tried to rotate her foot, but the muscles weren’t intact enough. She
could limp, though.
“Thank you.”
He didn’t acknowledge her, wiping his hands off on a handkerchief and pulling his gloves back on. He radiated impatience as she got up, favouring her left leg. There was a new sort of hardness about him.
Her head was light, but she felt less wobbly.
She touched the door, but her resonance was still just a gap, like a lost tooth. Her fingers skittered across the surface. Before she could say anything, she heard the mechanisms inside move, and the door clicked open.
She looked back, expecting to find Ferron behind her, but he was still across the room.