CHAPTER 40
Septembris 1786
DESPITE THE OUTPOST BEING RETAKEN, HELENA RETURNED the following week.
Even with necrothralls patrolling, there was no better place to meet.
Anywhere else in the city would have checkpoints maintained with living guards with long-term memories who’d inspect her papers every time she passed through. Helena was too memorably foreign looking to safely move in and out of enemy territory.
The Outpost, although Undying territory, was only being minimally patrolled by the necrothralls, something Helena would have known if she hadn’t been half asleep during the meeting.
Her leg still ached when she walked on it, a side effect of not being able to heal herself for the several days it took for her resonance to return.
Regenerated muscle took time to fully reintegrate, but the injury wasn’t anything permanent.
She navigated the Outpost cautiously, her knife gripped tightly in her hand, but she only saw a few necrothralls at a distance. No solitary necrothralls approached her with missives. She wondered if Kaine had gotten the memo about still using the Outpost.
She was about to leave when her ring burned. She headed for the tenement.
He was seated at the table, waiting, when she arrived. She’d grown so used to seeing him always straddling chairs, it was surprising to see him seated on one properly.
His eyes swept from head to toe, as if expecting her to be bleeding from somewhere again.
“I think it’s time I trained you,” he said as the door shut behind her.
She said nothing. She felt too many emotions to even begin to make sense of them all.
So he was back, no explanation for his month-long disappearance, while she’d been left to endure being written off as a failure and castigated for wasting critical resources on a gamble that had failed to pay off.
Crowther had been scathing, because although the missives had still arrived every four days, Kaine passed on only the information he chose to.
They could not ask for anything. Everything they received was at his discretion, for only as long as he chose to provide it.
Relying on Kaine Ferron was like walking on black ice, knowing that at any moment it might break beneath their feet.
Her fingers curled into a fist, feeling the punctures in her palm, not trusting herself to speak.
He tilted his head back. His dark hair was threaded through with silver so that it almost gleamed. “How long have you been healing?”
She paused, calculating. “Little more than five years now.” afely move inThere was an almost charring intensity in the way he was looking at her. “I
assume you’re aware of the Toll.”
She nodded.
“Have you burned out like that before?”
She shook her head. “No, it was the first time.” Her fingers bumped absently against her chest where the empty amulet hung beneath her clothes.
“I used to—handle it better.”
“Well, that’s something at least.” He stood up. “How was it explained to you? I assume that Falcon or the Holdfasts told you about it.” y in her hand,She looked away, staring out the window. “Vivimancy is a corruption of resonance that can use vitality as well as the energy of resonance. It’s caused when an unviable soul sustains itself by stealing life from another. Souls like that can only be purified through a life of self-sacrifice. The toll is—penance. he tenement.It’s giving up what was stolen.” rown so usedHis mouth twisted into a sardonic smile. “Right. You mentioned that your mother died when you were young.”
She nodded wordlessly, cold all over. She’d still been in shock from her father’s death when Ilva had her sent away to Matias, a Shrike at the time.
He had been the one to tell her that she was the reason both her parents were dead.
Her mother’s mysterious sickness, diagnosed as a kind of consumption, was the Toll. Not because her mother had been a vivimancer, but because from the moment of conception, Helena’s defective, corrupt self had leached
her mother of life from within her womb, stealing all but those seven years away. That vivimancers were parasites by nature, and they would rot and burn in the bowels of the earth for an eternity if they did not repent and purify themselves by giving up every drop of the vitality they’d taken.
Just thinking about it made Helena’s head throb. All the years she’d spent hovering over her mother, watching her father attempt cure after cure, running them into debt buying expensive ingredients, and it was Helena who’d been the cause.
“So …” Ferron said slowly, moving idly towards her, “you use your , not trustingvitality to save—anyone you’re told to save, as penance?”
She wished he’d stop talking.
“I want to show you something.” He was in front of her. “Give me your
hand.”
She extended her left hand reluctantly. ing at her. “IHe took it and she had barely time to brace herself before his resonance shot down her arm into her chest, and she felt a hard yank.
It was like being wrenched forward on a cellular level. Her whole body lurched as if his resonance were hooked inside her, trying to rip her soul out, but before it could budge, a rebound of energy severed it, and Ferron’s resonance slammed back into him with bone-charring speed.
She felt it scorch his fingers as he let go. She almost fell backwards.
“What’d you do—” Her tongue scarcely worked. She doubled over and nearly threw up.
He flexed his hand as if burned. “I just tried to take your vitality by force.
Notice anything?”
Helena’s hand pressed against her chest, trying to erase that awful pulling is—penance.sensation that seemed diffused through her entire body. “It—hurt?”
“It didn’t work,” he said. “It’s not possible to take it by force like that. If it was that easy—” He scoffed. “—Morrough wouldn’t be bothering with most of this. Try it yourself now.”
Helena drew away from his proffered hand. “No, thank you. I get the idea.”
His expression hardened. “I don’t need you to get it, I need you to believe it. You’re being driven by the guilt over crimes you never committed, that you think you deserve to suffer for, and that’s making you a liability for me.”
Of course this was all self-interest on his part. As usual.
“Take my hand,” he said.
She grasped his hand limply.
“You know what your vitality feels like when you use it; feel for mine.” nt and purifyShe shot him a look. “You’re not exactly normal.”
She focused on reaching with her resonance, not merely trying to get a read on his physiology but searching for the actual spark of life within him.
Except it was not so much a spark as a small sun.
It was like being flung bodily into the face of Lumithia at full Ascendance, a cold searing burn that etched itself into her teeth and bones.
She tried to ignore it. Pull. She had no idea how to do that. Healing, when it required the use of vitality, worked in the opposite direction, pushing in, giving, but she knew what it felt like when Ferron did it, so she tried to imitate the feeling.
She reached with her resonance towards the overwhelming burn and tried to tug at it. It prompted an instant recoil.
Her resonance rebounded like a rubber band snapping her fingertips. An odd look of amusement flickered on Kaine’s face as she let go.
She swallowed, blinking hard. “But if that’s—if that’s true, then why did my mother die? If I didn’t take it?”
He exhaled. “My father sought treatment for my mother prior to my birth.
A vivimancer they employed believed she likely possessed a latent degree of vivimancy, and didn’t realise that using her vitality wasn’t necessary.” He wasn’t looking at her. “Perhaps it was similar for yours.”
Hearing those words, Helena felt like an immense weight had been partly lifted from her. It was possible that her mother’s death, while still her fault, had at least not been her doing. She drew a shaky breath, not sure if she could believe it. Why would Kaine tell her this? Why would he care about her guilt?
“Vitality is a strange thing,” he said, stepping away. “It doesn’t take much to do things like necromancy or healing. If it did, necromancers would hardly be a threat, and you would’ve been dead in a week as a healer. Here’s what’s interesting, though: If I were a necrothrall, you could have ripped out my vitality. Reanimation doesn’t fully bond with other bodies, it just reactivates a corpse. Bennet would give almost anything to be able to transfer souls between living bodies, but it always kills them instead.” He arched an lity for me.”eyebrow. “Do you see where I’m going with this?”
“No.”
He waved a hand, and despite being halfway across the room, the lock turned and the door opened. Helena was horrified as a necrothrall entered the unit.
“Ferron!” she said sharply, backing away, but she ran into something solid.
He’d moved behind her, and when she tried to escape the approaching necrothrall, he gripped her by the shoulders, trapping her in place.
Ascendance,She tried to kick him, her heart racing. “Let go! Let go of me.”
“You’re not going to blast it apart, and you’re not going to attack. When it reaches you, you’re going to take the vitality reanimating it.”
“Are you insane?” She tried again to twist away, but he took her by the wrist and pushed it forwards, firmly, so that her hand pressed against the necrothrall’s chest.
It was a man. He looked as if he’d been around forty. He’d been dead for a few days at least before being reanimated. She couldn’t see a visible cause of death, but she could smell it. It was probably hidden somewhere beneath his clothes. His eyes were empty, the whites yellow-stained, the skin taut.
“Feel the energy,” Ferron said softly. His hands were warm on her shoulders, simultaneously bracing and trapping her.
She’d never touched a necrothrall with resonance like this, never experienced the dissonance of life and death entwined. There was a heart beating sluggishly, oxygen-deprived blood crawling through the veins. There was no life; it was just energy.
The living had a vibrancy, but the necrothrall was dead. It was like a perpetual electric shock on an animal corpse to make the systems function. e if she could“Do you feel it?” Ferron asked.
She gave a shaky nod.
“Then take it.”
She squeezed her eyes shut and pulled. It was like a plant in loose soil. The would hardlyenergy came loose, and a shock of power ran up her arm.
The world went silver-white, as if she’d exploded in place and then instantly reconstituted. reactivates aShe dimly heard the muffled thud as the necrothrall hit the ground.
She blinked to find Kaine kneeling beside the corpse.
He touched the hand for only a moment, and the dead man sat up, standing and walking back out.
Kaine looked at her. “If you’re ever attacked by necrothralls again, don’t waste your energy obliterating them. Just rip out the reanimation.” He looked
away. “It’s possible it may keep the Toll at bay for you.”
Helena said nothing. Beneath her skin, her nerves were still buzzing.
“I didn’t know that was something vivimancers could do,” she said, trying mething solid.to get her thoughts straight.
“I don’t think that most can,” Kaine said, straightening. “It’s something only animancers are capable of.”
He said it so casually that it took Helena a moment to process his words.
She looked at him sharply.
“How’d you realise?” she said.
A thin smile curved across his face. “It was just a guess.”
She flushed.
“I did think you were rather quick to catch on with the memory trick.” He en dead for astraightened. “Now that you’re not at risk of keeling over from performing a bit of basic transmutation, I want to see your combat forms.”
Her stomach sank. She could already feel his impending judgement.
“It’s been a while,” she said, digging for her knife from her satchel. It had fallen to the bottom, and she had to dig out several bundles of herbs and sphagnum moss to find it. “I wasn’t very advanced. Academic track, you know.”
“So was I,” he said, watching her through insolently lidded eyes, but she could see a gleam of silver beneath his lashes. “You should be wearing that knife. You can’t afford to waste time fumbling through that bag of yours, and you should have at least two of them.”
“Two knives would get in the way of my vivimancy.”
He raised his eyebrows. “With thralls, yes, but not if you’re fighting the Undying. Or a chimaera.”
She looked up. “Couldn’t I still use vivimancy?” ose soil. The“If you’re close enough to touch them, they’ll have already killed you. You don’t regenerate. To survive, you need distance.”
She looked down at the knife in her hand. It was annoyingly hefty, but everything standard-issue was. “A knife isn’t going to give me much more reach than I already have, and if I’m walking around armed, I’m more likely to be noticed. It’s safer to be mistaken for a civilian. Necrothralls usually up, standingleave them alone.”
“Not anymore. With the losses incurred this year, now that the Eternal Flame controls the entire East Island, there are no civilians any longer. .” He looked
Anyone on the East Island, or elsewhere without the right papers, is an
enemy, and may be treated as such.”
Helena’s mouth went dry. “Anyone?”
“Man, woman, or child. When the Eternal Flame was constantly losing territory, the Undying could afford to be magnanimous, but the goal is eradication now.”
HELENA KNEW ABOUT COMBAT FORMS. Academically.
She had also practised them, but it had been a very long time.
Kaine seemed to think she was the most incompetent combatant he’d ever seen. After only brief observation, he started her all the way back with first- year forms, drilling them on and on until they were perfect.
After he was relatively civil about the animancy, she wasn’t prepared for how merciless he’d be about combat. He was completely vicious. It was only marginally preferable to being chased around the room having furniture thrown at her.
“I doubt this is going to save me from anyone,” she said after a week, growing uncomfortably sweaty. Her arm trembled as she raised the knife over her head for the hundredth time and channelled her resonance, altering the length and curve of the blade.
“If you can’t master the basics, you’re not going to survive anything.” Aof yours, and boot collided with the small of her back.
She gave a startled scream and barely managed to keep herself from ramming face-first into the wall by getting one foot out to catch her momentum, her knife curving instinctively as she spun around to face him.
Her spine was throbbing. A little harder and he might have broken it.
“What the fuck, Ferron?”led you. You “Ah, back to surnames, I see,” he said coolly.
“That. Hurt,” she said through gritted teeth, touching her back gingerly, her resonance preventing the swelling before it could start.
“Then keep your guard up.” His eyes flashed. “I’m not training you to take a test. Do you think combat is for standing around seeing who transmutes best? You’ll never know what’s coming. You use your resonance to predict attacks. If you let me close enough to hit you, I will. Now keep going.”
She shook her head, refusing to move.
His expression darkened. “I said, keep going.”
“I’m not like you,” she said venomously. “If you hurt me to teach me a lesson, I need time to recover. And when I’m exhausted, I just make more mistakes. I’m not staying here to see how much you have to hurt me before you manage to remember that a trivial injury for you can paralyse me. You’re lucky you didn’t just now.”
His lips turned white. She turned away, sheathing the knife and shoving it into her satchel.
“This isn’t combat training,” he said when she was at the door. “You’re going to get killed if you don’t learn how to defend yourself. That’s the only way to survive.”
“Well, whatever it is, you’re a terrible teacher,” she said as she opened the door and slammed it behind her.
gingerly, her
g you to take
“I’m not like you,” she said venomously. “If you hurt me to teach me a lesson, I need time to recover. And when I’m exhausted, I just make more mistakes. I’m not staying here to see how much you have to hurt me before you manage to remember that a trivial injury for you can paralyse me. You’re lucky you didn’t just now.”
His lips turned white. She turned away, sheathing the knife and shoving it into her satchel.
“This isn’t combat training,” he said when she was at the door. “You’re going to get killed if you don’t learn how to defend yourself. That’s the only way to survive.”
“Well, whatever it is, you’re a terrible teacher,” she said as she opened the door and slammed it behind her.