Alchemised - 2

T HERE WAS A NECROTHRALL SOMEWHERE NEARBY. A LONE and able to focus, Helena could smell the rotting meat and chemical preservatives. The Undying used the dead like puppets to perform any undesirable or menial tasks. Chained and waiting, she wondered what this one was being used for. She peered around, looking for any shadows beyond the curtains.

“Marino?”

Her name was whispered so softly, it could have been a breeze.

Turning, Helena made out a face peeking through the dividing curtain. She squinted hard, and her eyes managed to focus enough to make out a pale face and hair.

“Marino, is that you?”

Helena nodded, still trying to see who it was.

“It’s Grace. I was an orderly in the hospital.” She crept through the curtains as she spoke. She had a heavy Northern accent, the kind that pulled hard on the consonants.

“Sorry, I’m—disoriented,” Helena said.

“I didn’t expect to see you here.” Grace came closer, youthful yet sunken features emerging from the dimness, her expression both frightened and curious.

Helena’s eyes widened.

Grace’s face was disfigured with scars, long cuts that bisected her cheeks and chin and nose. Not the accidental marring of injury. They were intentional.

Helena tried to lift a hand, but the shackles on her wrists were too short. “What happened?”

Grace looked confused, and then—following Helena’s stare—reached up to touch her face. “Oh, the cuts? We all have them.”

“What? Why would the liches—”

Grace shook her head sharply. “ Keep your voice down. ” She glanced around quickly, sniffing at the air before looking back at Helena again, her eyes angry. “They use the greys for listening sometimes. There’s one in here, can’t you smell it? You can’t call the Undying liches. ” The word came out barely a whisper. “If they hear—there’ll be—consequences.”

Helena nodded quickly, afraid Grace might flee if she wasn’t careful.

Grace crept closer.

“The Undying didn’t do this.” She gestured at her face. “We did it ourselves. The Undying can do anything they want to us—to anyone labelled Resistance. It’s the thing nowadays to keep greys instead of staff. Other times—they just want something to play with. At a party or—after a night out.” Her face twisted. “No one interferes. Even the ones who aren’t Undying or in the guilds will go along with it because they all hope it’ll give them a better chance of earning immortality, too.”

Grace gave a jerky, stilted shrug. “But if you’re messed-up looking, they won’t keep you for long.” She drew a shaky breath and then peered hard at Helena. “Where have you been?”

Helena shook her head, trying to absorb everything Grace had said. “They took me to a warehouse—after—”

Grace’s eyes narrowed.

Helena stared at her searchingly. “Is the Eternal Flame still—”

“No.” Grace shook her head violently, and her expression turned angry. “They’re all dead. Every one of them. After Luc was dead, they sent the rest of us out to the factory Outpost below the dam. Most of us can’t leave. Takes months of good behaviour to get permission, and we have to wear these.” She held up a wrist cuffed with a copper band, brighter and more fitted than Helena’s. “We have to check in morning and night. There’s a curfew. If anyone’s missed for more than twenty-four hours—” She swallowed. “If they don’t turn up, the High Reeve’s sent to hunt them down, and they’re always dead by the time he brings them back. The Warden likes to string them up, leaves them hanging for days sometimes, and then when they’re starting to rot, she’ll reanimate them and have them ‘work’ with us for a while before they go to the mines. Says it’s so we don’t forget the rules.”

“Who—” Helena forced herself to ask, even though she was afraid to know.

Grace hesitated, eyes softening slightly. “Lila Bayard was the first one he brought back.”

Grace was saying something else, but Helena couldn’t hear her. All she heard was “ Lila Bayard was the first, ” over and over.

Not Lila …

Grace’s voice came slowly back. “The Warden had her put into paladin armour and stationed at the gate. She’d been dead awhile already. Must’ve gotten pretty far. More than half of her face was missing, and she didn’t have the prosthetic leg anymore, so they welded a steel bar on to keep her upright. She—It can’t really move. Just stands there. We go past every day.” Grace seemed to finally notice Helena’s expression; she looked down. “She’s mostly bones now. The Warden thinks it’s—funny.”

Helena shook her head, struggling to accept it, but of course Lila was dead. For Luc to be captured and killed, his paladins had to be killed. That was the oath they took, to die for the Principate.

Helena swallowed hard. “But surely somewhere—the Resistance—”

“There’s no Resistance!” Grace said in a harsh whisper. “You think the rest of us were going to keep fighting, with everyone in the Eternal Flame dead? There’s no point. The High Reeve kills everyone. Any hint, even whispers get people killed. He has this—this monster he uses for hunting. There’s no point in running away or resisting or organising unless you want to be the next corpse.”

Helena fell silent. Grace watched her warily, fidgeting and seeming ready to bolt at any moment.

“Who’s the High Reeve?” Helena hoped it was a safe question to ask. She didn’t remember the title.

Grace shook her head. “I don’t know. He still wears a helmet the way the Undying did during the war. The High Necromancer’s too important for public appearances, so he sends the High Reeve instead. He’s some kind of vivimancer, but not like the rest. He kills people without even touching them.”

“Resonance doesn’t work like that,” Helena said, correcting her reflexively. “Without an array, a stable channel has to be formed through contact, and then—”

“I know how resonance works,” Grace said sharply. “But I’ve seen him do it. Last week—” Grace’s voice failed; her throat bobbed several times. “There was a smuggling ring. There’s been a grain shortage. Most of what we get on the Outpost is rotten. A few people were bringing in extra food. It wasn’t even a lot, but the Warden heard rumours about the prisoners organising. Ten people in all. Public execution. The High Reeve did all of them at the same time. Did it ‘clean’ so they’ll last longer in the lumithium mines.”

Grace seemed to shrivel as she spoke, as if the memory were enough to paralyse her. “All there is now is surviving. That’s all that matters. ” She whispered the last words as if they weren’t for Helena, but for herself.

“Why are you here, Grace?” Helena asked, glancing half-blindly around. “This isn’t—we’re not at the Outpost, are we?”

Grace shook her head. “No. They call this Central now. Houses all the Undying’s experimentation. I—” She choked. “I have three brothers. They’re littler than me. None of them were old enough to enlist, so they weren’t in the Resistance rosters. My brother Gid, he’ll be old enough to work soon, and he can come off the Outpost. He’ll get real wages when he does. We—we just have to make it till then.”

“Grace …”

“They’re offering really good money for eyes. Just one, and it’d cover us for months.”

Helena looked at her, bewildered. “What do they want eyes for?”

Grace shook her head. “I don’t know. I just want the money.”

If she weren’t chained to the bed, Helena would have reached towards her.

“Grace, if you do this—that’s not ever going to be healable—”

Grace gave an abrupt, almost wild laugh. “I know eyes don’t grow back. That’s why the pay’s good.”

“Yes, but—”

“Why should I keep them?” Grace sounded nearly hysterical. “So I have two eyes to watch my brothers starve? There’s no food!” She wasn’t whispering anymore. The scars on her face reddened, growing stark. “You don’t know—you don’t have any idea what it’s like now. Where have you been? Why didn’t you save Luc? You were supposed to, but you didn’t. He died! We all watched it. And the Bayards are dead. And everyone in the Eternal Flame is dead—except you. And you think I should care about my eyes?”

Before Helena could answer, or Grace could say more, the sound of footsteps drew close.

Terror washed across Grace’s face, and she fled.

The curtains on Helena’s other side were shoved aside, and several figures filled the space. As one came towards the bed, Helena recognised her interrogator. The lines on the woman’s face were stark with tension.

Helena couldn’t make out the others behind her, but they were an unnatural grey that instantly made her skin crawl, the space within the curtains filling with the smell of preservatives.

“It’s this one,” the woman said. “Quite secure, as I assured you.” She glanced nervously towards the figures, which seemed to move as a collective.

Necrothralls. They were all necrothralls.

She looked at Helena. “The High Necromancer has sent for you. He wishes to watch your examination personally.”

Helena’s chest clenched, and she pulled against the restraints. “No.”

She couldn’t. She couldn’t see him again. The only time she’d ever seen the High Necromancer, Morrough, he’d killed Luc.

Luc, who’d been the whole world to her.

Helena had enlisted in the Resistance and sworn fealty to the Order of the Eternal Flame—not out of faith, but because of Luc Holdfast. Because she might not believe in the gods, but she had believed in him, that he was good and kind and cared about everyone.

She’d promised she’d do anything for him.

But he’d died before her eyes.

Her throat was closing. “No,” she said again as the bed jolted and began to roll, her captors paying her no mind.

It was at the lifts that Helena recognised her surroundings, realised what Central was. The murals and art had been scraped from the walls, the portraits and gilding all gone, leaving the interior brutal and raw, but she knew the intricate metalwork of the lift gate.

She’d seen it every day since she was ten.

She was in the Alchemy Tower. In the very heart of the Alchemy Institute that the Holdfasts had founded.

This was Central.

“What did you do?” Her voice shook with horror and grief. “What did you do?”

“Calm down,” the woman said through gritted teeth, glaring at Helena. She kept glancing at the necrothralls around them.

Helena couldn’t be calm. It was like coming home and finding all the comfort it had once offered torn apart, the beauty flensed, everything once familiar peeled off into ruin.

Helena had come halfway across the world to study in this Tower. Luc had been so proud of the Institute his family had built. It had been the heart of Paladia. She’d known it through his eyes, all the history and meaning of it. Now it was ravaged and mutilated.

The breadth of Luc’s loss was more than she could hold, but somehow she had the capacity to grieve this fragment of it. A sobbing, screaming moan tore from her.

Fingers gripped the base of Helena’s skull until nails bit into her skin.

She was spiralling down. Down.

A long tunnel. Twisting darkness.

Cold dead hands and the smell of death.

When her mind cleared, she was strapped down on a table. A bright light hung overhead, the beam directed at Helena so that the room beyond disappeared.

There was a small man beside her with a pinched nose, and he kept touching Helena’s face with sweaty, damp fingertips, prodding between her eyes, at her temples, poking through her hair to her skull.

“This is—quite a marvel of human transmutation, I must say,” the man was saying in a high, rapid voice. He had an accent—not the Northern dialect, but something more western sounding. “Vivimancy of this skill is—miraculous. Very right to call me.”

There was a long, oppressive silence.

He coughed. “The—the thing is. This is—impossible. This—can’t be done.”

“It’s obviously possible. The evidence is right here,” the woman said sharply from Helena’s other side, barely visible in the severe shadows.

“Yes, quite right, Doctor Stroud. Of course, it is as you say. But—the use of vivimancy on a brain has always been a most delicate procedure. Transmutation of this scale and complexity is beyond all known scientific possibility. Memory is a mysterious thing, very changeable as it’s moved around. Not a place, it is—the mind’s journey. A path. The more important, more journeyed, the stronger the path. The less journeyed”—fingers fluttered—“it fades.”

“Get to the point,” said the woman—Doctor Stroud.

“Yes, yes. There are areas of the brain that can be altered. In the laboratories, we have vivisected countless human brains and reassembled them in various ways, to some success and also … failure. This transmutation, however, is upon—thought. M-M-Memory. What has been done here—” Something wet fell onto Helena’s face, and she realised the man was perspiring on her. “This is alteration of the unalterable. Someone—has disassembled the pathways of her mind and created alternative routes for them. How could it be done without knowing all her thoughts and memories? No. No. This is scientifically impossible.”

“I thought the mind was your specialty.” A voice emerged from the darkness, low and rasping.

The man whimpered and looked ready to weep. “The—the brain is, Your Eminence.” He bowed towards the shadows. “But this work is beyond me. Bennet and I, you remember our labours for your cause? I hope … Memories cannot simply be regenerated; the mind and spirit must forge them. The spirit cannot be altered by external force—the—the fevers—”

“Is there any way to uncover what is hidden?”

The man opened and closed his mouth as if he were a fish, staring into the darkness as though he expected to be swallowed by it.

“The Holdfasts are dead,” the rasping voice said, “the Eternal Flame erased from this earth. What would they have hidden within her mind?”

The question was met with silence.

“Who placed her in that warehouse?”

Stroud stepped forward. “There’s nothing confirming it, but based on the records, Mandl was overseer at the time. It was shortly before her ascendance and transfer to the Outpost.”

“Send for her.”

Stroud nodded and disappeared. As she did, the shadows moved.

Helena could only see from the corner of her eyes, but she could not fail to notice when Morrough emerged from the darkness.

The High Necromancer was not what she remembered. When he’d killed Luc, he’d been human. Now he was mutated. His limbs stuck out in ways that were impossibly jointed, and he was nearly the size of two men.

She thought, at first, that he was wearing a mask. The High Necromancer had been masked during the celebration, wearing a huge golden crescent that concealed half his face like an eclipsed sun.

As he drew nearer however, she realised it wasn’t a mask she was staring at. Morrough’s face was skull-like, his features so sunken, the skin so translucently pale, that she could see through to the bone.

Where his eyes should have been were two blackened, empty hollows, as if they’d been burned out with live coals.

Somehow, he still seemed to see Helena.

He walked forward, one hand outstretched, but there was something wrong about it, over-jointed, the skin bizarrely stretched. Too many bones inside it. Before his fingers grazed her skin, the pain of his resonance lanced through her skull.

Her vision turned red.

Screaming surrounded her, blistering her eardrums and going on and on as her memories detonated inside her brain. A cascade of images tore through her consciousness.

Everywhere she looked, people were dying. Her hands were covered in blood. There were bodies everywhere.

She was kneeling on the floor, holding together torsos and faces and limbs, trying to put them back together, knitting them into wholeness. Again and again and again. Bodies raw with burns, so consumed by fire that she couldn’t find their features.

Always another body, and another.

The resonance burrowed deeper and deeper, and the screaming grew louder.

She saw Luc. Vivid as if he were there with her. His beautiful face, and eyes as blue as a summer’s sky, golden sunlight reflecting in them.

Then Luc was gone. Blood was everywhere. All she could see was a reddened light, fractured and disjointed, swimming overhead. And the screaming.

Her screams. Her vocal cords were shredded, raw pain tearing through her lungs and throat. A lancing pain through her heart each time she gasped for air.

The small man was muttering, “I wouldn’t recommend—” over and over with his arms cradled defensively around his own head.

There was a knock on a door, and Stroud reappeared, barely glancing at Helena.

“Mandl is on her way. And—” She hesitated. “I brought Shiseo. I thought he might have some insight into our prisoner. He did consult with the Eternal Flame. She needs a new nullification set anyway; I thought he might apply them before his departure.”

There was a quiet shuffling in the dark. Helena craned her neck as much as she could, eyes straining for a glimpse of the traitor.

A round-faced man with dark hair emerged, carrying a small case. He paused to bow reverently before the High Necromancer.

Morrough waved him towards Helena. “What kinds of vivimancy did the Eternal Flame utilise?”

Shiseo drew closer, and Helena realised he was Eastern. Far Eastern. He only met Helena’s accusing stare for a moment before he averted his gaze.

“I am sorry.” He bowed slightly once again. “I was only consulted on occasion due to my metallurgical knowledge.”

Helena released a small breath of relief.

“Surely you know something—you did work in their laboratories,” Stroud said, impatiently. “Do you recognise her, at least?”

Shiseo barely glanced at Helena.

“I believe she was a healer,” he said quietly as he returned his attention to his case.

Helena fought back a wince.

Stroud looked sharply at Helena, her eyes narrowed.

“Really? A healer, you say?” The way Stroud spoke was venomous. She cleared her throat, glancing around. “Of course I knew there were vivimancers who supported the Eternal Flame. As if martyring themselves could earn acceptance, even though the Faith spurned their gifts as an abomination.” Her eyes were scathing. “I just didn’t realise this was one of them.”

No one said anything. Stroud’s face reddened. “I’m sure I would have realised if I’d had more time to retrieve the Resistance’s records. But why would someone transmute a healer’s mind?”

Shiseo bowed to Stroud now. “I could not say.”

A growing sense of agitation permeated the room.

Morrough sighed like a gusting bellows. “He knows nothing. Apply the nullification and get him out.”

Shiseo bowed and lifted Helena’s hand as far as it would go, inspecting her wrist and the cuff around it. He had soft hands for a metallurgist.

“These are—a very old model. They do not fully suppress the resonance,” he said. He slid the manacle up Helena’s forearm as far as it would go, and it was as if the static of the suppression was pushed up towards her brain along with it.

His fingers pressed deftly along her arm, finding the dip just below her wrist between the two bones of her forearm.

Her pulse beat against his fingers. He felt it for a moment and moved his fingers away from it, squeezing briefly before he turned to Stroud. “Just here.”

Stroud’s dry, hard fingers wrapped around her wrist. Helena felt a brief tingle of Stroud’s resonance before all sensation from hand to elbow vanished and her body went limp with paralysis. Without explanation or warning, Stroud plucked something out of the case. It gleamed in the light, revealing the bulbous handle and long pointed spike of an awl.

With practised ease, Stroud drove the tip straight through Helena’s wrist. Helena felt nothing, but her throat closed, stomach inverting as she watched Stroud work the awl in slow circles as it sank between the bones, the tip emerging on the other side.

When Stroud pulled it out, there was a drop of blood on the tip and a hole running straight through Helena’s wrist. The wound was bloodless, all the torn skin, muscle, and broken vessels instantly closing in the process.

Setting the awl aside, Stroud manipulated Helena’s hand, bending and arching it back, checking for range of motion. Sensation returned, but the paralysis lingered.

“Nerves and veins are all intact,” Stroud said, letting go.

Helena could do nothing but watch as Shiseo stepped over and pushed a tiny, notched tube through the hole now running through her wrist until the ends protruded on each side. The moment the tube slipped into place, the blurred sense of resonance in Helena’s left hand vanished completely.

It was as if one of her senses had been ripped out.

She could feel the tube inside her, a deadening sense of inertia emanating from it.

Shiseo pulled out a ribbon of metal. It was smooth and shining on one side, grooved on the other. He slid the groove over one notched end of the tube before wrapping the ribbon around her wrist and sliding it over the other, locking the tube in place before he wrapped the rest of the metal ribbon around and around.

He inspected the tension and fit, lined up all the layers, and with little more than a flick of his fingers, the layers morphed into a solid ring of metal, perfectly fitted.

No lock, no way to open it without resonance.

Shiseo slid a strangely shaped wire into a tiny opening on the old cuff. A mechanism inside clicked, and it fell off.

He picked it up as if it were a curious antique and put it in his case before moving around to Helena’s right side.

Helena grasped desperately at her dim sense of remaining resonance, trying to focus, to remember the sensation of who and what she was, knowing it would be gone in minutes.

Shiseo was just removing the second old manacle when the door opened and a guard entered.

“Warden Mandl.”

A woman in uniform strode into the room with a quick, confident step that faltered when her eyes landed on Helena.

She had a wide mouth, and it dropped open in shock.

“What did you do to this prisoner, Mandl?” Morrough asked. He had disappeared back into the shadows, but his voice emerged, even more dangerous now.

Mandl flung herself prostrate, disappearing from Helena’s range of vision.

“Your Eminence …” Her pleading voice rose from the floor.

“I saved you from the Holdfasts and the Faith. Saved all the necromancers and vivimancers like you who lived like rats fearing the Eternal Flame’s punishment for your ‘unnatural gifts.’ I let you ascend above those who had sought to subdue you. Now I learn you betrayed me?”

“No! It was not a betrayal! I am loyal. Loyal to our cause, and loyal to you! It was my foolish desire for vengeance—I confess it. I wanted her to suffer. But I would never betray you.”

“Explain yourself.”

Mandl pushed herself up, still kneeling, her head bowed but her voice shaking with emotion. “She is a traitor to vivimancers! She tormented me! Thought herself better than me for having been a part of the Holdfasts’ Institute, her vivimancy blessed by the Eternal Flame. She had to be punished!”

Helena stared at the woman in dazed bewilderment.

“You tampered with a prisoner and her records out of—jealousy?” Stroud looked astonished. “Why didn’t you report her abilities?”

Mandl shrank back. “I feared that she would be favoured if it was known. That you might find her useful and not punish her as she deserved to be punished.”

Stroud leaned over her. “And what kind of punishment did you think she deserved?”

Mandl swallowed nervously. “I—left her conscious—in the stasis tank. I intended to return. I wanted her to be trapped, knowing and dreading what I would do to her, but then I was assigned to the Outpost and selected for ascendance. I was afraid my temporary lapse in judgement would disappoint, so I did not disclose it. But I would never betray our great cause!”

“She has been in that warehouse for the fourteen months since you were reassigned. Why are there no records?” Stroud sounded highly sceptical.

“I’d intended to complete her records once I was—done with her. When I left, I assumed she would die and then no one would ever know. Forgive me! I did nothing else, I swear it.” Mandl flung herself back down onto the floor.

“I see now I have been too generous,” Morrough said. His nightmarish face and looming eye sockets emerged from the shadows. He tilted his head as though staring down at Mandl. “You were not worthy of my gift.”

“Please! Your Eminence, I beg of you—give me—”

Mandl stopped speaking as she was jerked up onto her feet by an unseen force. The front of her grey uniform tore open as her ribs unfurled in a gush of blood, her chest rent apart.

Helena’s skin crawled, terror slithering like a worm through her gut as the warm wet smell of fresh blood and exposed organs permeated the room. There was a sensation like a hum in the air that she could feel all the way into her own lungs.

But Mandl, split open as she was, was not dead.

Her hands rose up, and she tried to claw her ribs closed with one hand and ward off Morrough with the other, her exposed lungs pulsing. “Another chance—please! I will not fail you! I swear. You will not regret it.”

“No, you will not fail me again,” Morrough said, his rasping voice almost gentle as he reached into Mandl’s open chest, fingers sliding beneath her lungs and extracting a gleaming piece of metal from somewhere near her heart. Little tendrils of viscera were wrapped around it, clinging to both the metal and Morrough’s fingers as it was torn free.

When it came loose, Mandl’s body dropped to the ground. Silent. Dead.

Morrough gave a low sigh and seemed to shrink momentarily as he stood, cradling the metal in his hand. Through the blood, the piece had a sharp, bright, lumithium gleam.

He gestured with his other hand. A necrothrall crawled from the shadows like an animal. It was a young woman in the early stages of necrosis, still wearing the tattered remains of the Eternal Flame’s hospital uniform. Her expression was blank. A rip in the uniform exposed a chest latticed with blackening veins.

When the corpse reached Morrough, she stood, and he shoved the metal piece into her. There was a soft crunch of breaking bone that left a hole purpled with old blood in the centre of her chest.

The corpse-woman shuddered, and then her expression morphed, the blankness vanishing.

She stumbled and gave a wild screeching moan as she looked down at her blackened fingers and deteriorating body.

“No! Please, no—it wasn’t my—”

“Do not fail me again, Mandl,” Morrough said, “and in time perhaps I will permit you a better reliquary. Perhaps your original.”

He gestured at Mandl’s corpse on the floor. The air hummed again as his fingers curled, and the ribs closed. Mandl’s body stood. The front of the uniform was ripped open, exposing her, and she was covered in blood. The skin knit back together, but her face showed nothing. The corpse-woman fell to the floor moaning and pleading, clawing at the oozing wound in the middle of her chest as if trying to rip the metal back out while Morrough walked back towards Helena.

Stroud kicked Mandl. “Thank the High Necromancer for his mercy in allowing you a vivimancer’s corpse, and a return to the Outpost, Warden.”

The corpse-woman gave one last guttural moan and struggled to her feet.

“Thank you, Your Eminence,” she rasped, and stumbled from the room.

Stroud joined Morrough, appearing unfazed by what had transpired.

“Is it possible for someone to survive fourteen months in stasis?” Stroud asked.

Morrough said nothing, but the nervous, perspiring man spoke up from where he’d been cowering against the wall. “Ac-Actually that idea does have some potential,” he said, stepping forward and then shrinking back as Morrough’s eyeless attention turned to him.

He adjusted the collar on his shirt several times. “Our good friend from the Far East”—he gestured towards Shiseo, who was absorbed in cleaning his awl—“mentioned that the suppression she was wearing was an old model, without a complete resonance block. Perhaps that explains both her mind— and her survival.”

Stroud’s eyes narrowed. “How?”

“The transmutation done to her isn’t something another person could do. Those memories are too deeply enmeshed with her mind. However, if you had someone capable of such complexity—a healer, as our friend says she was—perhaps she …”

“You’re saying she did this to herself?” Stroud gestured towards Helena with scathing disbelief.

He choked on his saliva. “Well—it seems the most likely explanation. In my opinion.” His face was gleaming with perspiration.

Stroud sucked on her teeth. “And the survival?”

“She—did not let herself die. Per-Perhaps a low level of internalised resonance in a competent healer would provide a sufficient means of self-sustenance when ordinarily a body would perish under such conditions.”

“That’s absurd!” Stroud snapped.

“That is immaterial. Can we recover the memories?” Morrough said. “The Eternal Flame would not go to such lengths unless the information was of vital importance.”

“Your Eminence.” Stroud sounded pleading. “The Order of the Eternal Flame is gone. Their ashes are all that remain.”

“I did not ask you,” Morrough said, his focus on the man, who’d turned a sickly green.

“I don’t—believe—”

“ Get out. ” The air hummed.

The man blanched and bowed repeatedly, thanking Morrough for his mercy and patience as he walked backwards out of the room with visible relief on his face.

“What are you hiding?” Morrough loomed above her.

Her heart beat faster and faster. She had no answer.

Stroud leaned over as well, eyes narrowed in appraisal. “Your Eminence, perhaps if we removed the frontmost section of her brain, we might be able to penetrate some of the memories before the fevers become detrimental,” she said, trailing her finger thoughtfully across Helena’s forehead. “Or it might alter the pathways enough to revert things. I would be honoured to maintain her vitals while you perform the vivisection.”

Terror sliced through Helena as Morrough nodded. Stroud stepped to the side, adjusting the light overhead, as though intending to begin immediately.

“Pardon,” a soft voice interrupted, and Helena felt a rush of relief until she realised it was the traitor, Shiseo, standing with his case gripped in his hands. “I have just remembered one small thing. There was a General Bayard. His head was injured in the war.”

“Yes.” Stroud seemed irritated by the interruption.

“The brain was healed, but”—he paused as if struggling to find the right words—“it blocked him from who he was—his mind, his true self.”

“Yes. We are aware of what happened to Bayard. Nonverbal. Dependent. His wife had to care for him like a child,” Stroud said, her voice waspish.

“Of course, I apologise. It was probably nothing.” Shiseo bowed and appeared to be on the verge of leaving.

“Wait.” Stroud sounded conciliatory. “You’ve begun now. Tell us what your point is.”

Shiseo stopped. “I don’t know all the details, but I believe they pursued a cure for him late in the war. A complicated procedure of the mind.”

“By a healer or by a surgeon?” Stroud leaned forward.

Shiseo tilted his head as if trying to recall. “A healer.”

Stroud pursed her lips. “Elain Boyle, I imagine.”

Shiseo tilted his head again, no recognition in his face.

“She was Luc Holdfast’s personal healer. The Eternal Flame was rather lax in their record keeping, but Elain Boyle’s name appeared frequently in the last year of the war. She seemed to have become unusually distinguished.” Stroud tapped her fingers on her lips, sucking at her teeth again.

“Where is Boyle now?” Morrough asked.

“Killed when we seized the Institute. I believe her body was sent to the mines. We could see if there are any remains.” Stroud’s attention returned to Shiseo. “What did the Eternal Flame do with Bayard that you think is somehow relevant?”

Shiseo bowed again.

“I was only aware of this because they hoped there were similar techniques used in the Eastern Empire. The healer, I was told, had a special ability to—to alter not just the brain but the mind. They proposed to enter the mind of Bayard and heal him from within.”

The mood in the room suddenly shifted, growing electrified.

“That would be animancy, not healing,” Stroud said with slow incredulity.

“I do not know, the words were—different,” Shiseo said. “The mind, I was told, resisted another’s presence, but this healer believed that with many small treatments, it was possible. Like learning to tolerate a poison.”

“Mithridatism,” Morrough said slowly. He straightened into his full, tremendous height. “Soul mithridatism …”

He advanced on Shiseo as if intending to rip the answers out of him. “The Eternal Flame found a way to make living subjects survive soul transference? And you never thought to mention this?”

Helena thought she was about to watch another rib cage be torn open.

Shiseo remained eerily calm and bowed again. “I apologise. They asked me many questions. It is hard to remember.”

Morrough seemed appeased by this excuse and turned back, considering Helena once more as if still inclined to vivisect her in search of answers.

“If the Eternal Flame did have an animancer who developed a temporary transference method … could that explain this form of memory loss? If another person could enter someone’s mind like that, they might be able to alter thoughts and memories, just as we see here. It would explain everything,” Stroud asked, gesturing at Helena. “And … I must say it seems more likely than far-fetched notions of self-transmutation.”

“If the Eternal Flame discovered a viable method of transference, that has more significance than mere memory loss,” Morrough said. Helena could feel his resonance in her marrow, as if it were burrowing into her flesh, attempting to peel her apart, layer by layer.

He looked towards Stroud. “Record every detail Shiseo remembers of this procedure before his departure east. We will begin testing this gradual transference method. I want it perfected. If it is possible, we’ll use it to remove the transmutation on her and see what the Eternal Flame was so desperate to hide from me.”

Morrough drew a breath that rattled as he turned away.

“Your Eminence,” Stroud said, her voice nervous. “This transference procedure you wish to begin testing, it would require an animancer, I believe?” She gave a weak cough. “I’m sure Bennet would have been thrilled by the opportunity, but unfortunately souls are not within my resonance repertoire, and there’s only one other. Would this be something that you and I—” Her voice lifted hopefully.

“Let the High Reeve manage it.”

Stroud’s face fell. “But I found h—”

“I have other work for you.”

Stroud straightened but still looked disappointed.

“The High Reeve was Bennet’s favourite after all.” Morrough waved a dismissive hand as he vanished into the shadows. “It’s time he’s given more to do than hunting.”