Alchemised - 72

Julius 1789

S HISEO WAS DEAD.

His return had hung over Helena like a raised sword, so long a foregone conclusion. He would return and she would go. That fact had felt immutable.

Kaine was shaking his head slowly, as if he could scarcely believe it himself.

“Is it confirmed?”

“They sent his head. Novis is claiming they had no direct part in it, that it’s a surviving faction of the Eternal Flame, but—there isn’t one. Not with those kinds of abilities. This was an experimental salvo. The queen is calculating, and she wants to see if the allying countries will distance themselves if pressured to choose a side, and whether New Paladia has any recourse.” He lowered his head, and the air warped with his resonance, but then he laughed. “The irony is, this is what we orchestrated, this was our plan, except they weren’t supposed to do it until I was gone.”

He threw his helmet against the wall. “Now they’ve given Morrough warning and time to assemble forces and recall the necrothralls from the mines, and I am still here and I can’t refuse orders. Fuck!”

So they were all going to die, then. Kaine was going to die, she would die, their daughter would die. Spirefell was a cage and a tomb.

She reached out to him, her fingers almost numb. “It’s all right, Kaine. You did everything you could.”

I’d rather die in your arms.

His eyebrows knit together for a moment. “You’re still leaving.”

Helena stared at him, not understanding. The escape plan had hinged on Shiseo.

He pulled off his gloves. “There are other ways, they’re just … not as clean. There’s more risk of being tracked down if they move quickly to pursue, which is likely to happen. Morrough will do anything to recover you. If you can reach the coast in time, you’ll disappear into the islands long before they can catch up. But—you’ll have to get to Lila alone. Unless you think you’re strong enough to take Amaris by yourself.”

“How—alone?”

Even before, during the war when she’d been stronger, not prone to fits of panaphobia, flying on Amaris was something she’d endured only out of necessity. The height and speed had always terrified her, and Amaris had known where to go, requiring no guidance from Helena.

Flying at night as Lumithia’s crescent shrank out of sight was almost unimaginable. It would be black as pitch, the world an abyss beneath her. Her head felt light just thinking about it.

“I’ll take you as far as I can, and there will be a ship downriver that will sail to the coast. I’ll show you maps and the route you’ll take inland to find Lila. I can arrange transportation, but it would be safest if you travelled at least part of the way on foot, if you think you’d be able to manage the distance. Just before the Abeyance, you’ll go to the ports; there is passage booked and false identification papers waiting. You’ll take a ship to Etras. I’ve arranged a place there.”

Her heart stuttered, tripping over itself as she tried to think.

“You don’t have to decide now,” Kaine said, his hand on her shoulder. “I’ll arrange for both, and you can choose. I know it’ll be hard, but it will be worth it. Lila’s been waiting for you a long time.”

She nodded shakily.

Everything had to move fast. The Abeyance wouldn’t wait, and if there was a war about to break out between Paladia and the surrounding countries, Kaine did not want her there for it.

After all the years spent hoping that Novis or any of their neighbours might intervene on their behalf, they now acted at the worst possible moment.

“I have to go,” he said after a bit. “I’ll come see you when I can. Try to eat and rest as much as you can. Keep the doors barred. Fortunately, with Aurelia gone, the door is more secure. Crowther had no iron resonance to speak of, despite my father’s efforts to plumb some from the decrepit depths of his corpse. As long as the door’s locked, he can’t open it.”

He was rambling, because he was nervous; things were slipping out of his control. All his carefully laid plans destroyed by the very intervention the Resistance had been waiting for when annihilated.

S HE BARELY SAW K AINE AFTER that. For days, he was gone; she didn’t think he slept at all. She tried to do her part, to eat and perform callisthenic exercises inside her room to build up stamina and get a little stronger so that preparations were not so limited by her.

Atreus returned to Spirefell, apparently no worse off for having murdered Aurelia, assuming it had become known. He seemed to have run out of prisoners; instead he prowled around the house. She heard his footsteps in the hallway outside her door and spotted him entering and leaving the chantry several times.

When the windows rattled from the wind of Amaris’s wings, she knew Kaine had returned at least briefly. He was busy with more than merely preparations for her escape. He was the High Reeve; he’d be expected to coordinate the response to the attack.

She was surprised when only a few minutes later, the door opened and he walked in.

His eyes were so bright, they seemed to actually glow. He was the furthest from human he had ever appeared. He walked towards her as if he sensed but did not actually see her.

“Kaine?” she said, her heart in her throat.

He didn’t respond. The wrongness of whatever had happened to him was visceral. Cold swept through her. The instinct to run frayed her every nerve, but she went towards him.

She touched his face. “What happened?”

He blinked, and a little humanness seemed to seep into him. She held his face, tilting it down towards hers.

“Kaine?”

“I’ve never killed so many at once before …” he said softly.

“How many?”

His eyes flickered, darting as if trying to calculate the number. Then he shook his head.

“What happened?”

He was looking through her, as if he still wasn’t quite there.

“I was ordered to make a show of strength. A warning.” He swallowed. “There were rows and rows of prisoners. I don’t know where they got so many.”

As he spoke, his expression slowly thawed, growing younger and younger until he looked painfully boyish, his eyes huge. He was going into shock. He didn’t seem to be talking to Helena so much as trying to explain it to himself.

“I didn’t know there’d be so many,” he said. “This wasn’t supposed to happen until I was gone.”

She pulled him closer, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. He felt cold, even though it was nearly the peak of summer, and his skin was clammy.

It seemed impossible that he could continue much longer. As if he were trying to outrun fate, but every time he managed to outpace it, Morrough demanded something else.

And she couldn’t do anything. The impotence burned inside her. “Have you seen Ivy? Has she said anything to you? Is she still trying? Maybe if you both—”

He blinked and seemed to come back to himself. He shook his head, straightening. “Don’t. I’m fine … just tired. I’ll be fine. Almost over now.”

He meant it as reassurance, but the words left her empty as he vanished back through the door.

S HE WAS SO ON EDGE after Kaine left again that when she felt a sensation in her lower abdomen, her first reaction was pure panic.

She went utterly still, heart faltering, and it came again. Fluttering.

She stared down, pushed her dress flat so she could run her hands over the swell between her hips.

She still forgot sometimes that she was pregnant.

As unbelievable as Lila getting pregnant during the war had been, she had always liked children; they were drawn to her, and Lila knew exactly how to make them laugh.

Helena had never had that kind of allure. She didn’t know if she could be a good mother, or if wanting to keep this baby wasn’t just her selfishness rearing its head. Her inability to let go.

To love someone. To be needed.

Her hand trembled violently as she pressed it against her stomach, letting her resonance reach hesitantly inwards, sensing the tiny bones softer than cartilage, veins like threads.

Soon this would be all that was left of Kaine in the whole world.

“I’m going to take care of you,” she whispered. “It’s—our way.”

She’d barely spoken the words when the door opened and Kaine strode in. It had been nearly a day but his colour was still unsettling, his eyes too bright.

“Stroud’s coming,” he said, his voice tense. “I came as fast as I could, but I have to—”

As soon as he reached her, he was removing the manacles and sliding the nullium tubes into place. Helena winced as her resonance vanished like an extinguished light.

Kaine was barely done fastening them when his eyes lost focus. “She’s here. Make sure everything’s hidden.”

When Stroud arrived, it was clear that the current tensions disagreed with her. There were hollows beneath her eyes. Her cheeks were red from split capillaries.

“Central is specifically designed to accommodate gestation,” she was saying in a strident voice. “Marino is our most crucial subject. She should be there, where I can keep a close eye on the foetal development and we can move quickly once viability is achieved.”

“And you think that the ‘gestational environment’ you’ve set up is conducive for someone with a heart condition agitated by stress? You might as well ask her to attempt a spontaneous abortion,” Kaine said, sneering at Stroud. “Marino is my prisoner. The High Necromancer entrusted her to me, and he has not changed his mind on that point. I will not have you tampering with my assignment just because you’ll no longer have Shiseo’s work to legitimise yourself with.”

Stroud turned a furious shade of red, as if a fresh wave of capillaries were splitting beneath the surface of her skin. “I will be appealing this.”

“You’re welcome to try, but I did tell him of your interference and its contribution to her current state. She might not have a heart condition at all if you hadn’t rushed her interrogation by injecting her with a nearly lethal dose of stimulants and threatened to cut her tongue out if she didn’t get pregnant. Now get on with whatever pretence brought you here.”

Stroud’s entire face was nearly beet red as she performed a perfunctory check of Helena’s heart condition and pregnancy. She’d seemingly hoped to sneak into Spirefell and commandeer Helena while Kaine was busy.

In a few minutes, she was done and furiously repacking her satchel so that Kaine could escort her back out.

Helena watched from the window as Stroud climbed into a motorcar and pulled away. The car was barely through the gates when the lights in her room flickered, and she heard the distant buzzing from the main wing. Kaine was already being summoned again.

She watched through the window as Kaine emerged from the house, swinging up onto Amaris’s back. The chimaera ran half the length of the courtyard and was airborne.

Helena pressed her hand on the window, the nullium tube pressing against the tendons of her wrist.

The day’s paper arrived with lunch. The photograph on the cover was enough to turn her stomach.

It was taken from the main gates of the Institute, which opened directly across from the steps of the Alchemy Tower. There on the steps stood Kaine, no helmet, nothing concealing his identity; his face was visible for all to see, his eyes so bright they distorted the photograph. Between him and the gate, covering the commons, were rows of bodies.

She kept waiting for Kaine to come back, but hours passed and he didn’t. It wasn’t like him to leave her in the house with Atreus unless she could secure the door.

Night fell and Lumithia was little more than a sliver of light, as if the night sky were a black curtain concealing the daylight, and someone had pierced it with a knife.

A low howl floated through the house. Helena went to the window.

Amaris was standing in the courtyard, a huge shadow, only her edges catching the moonlight. Her head kept dipping down to nuzzle something on the ground, and then she’d tilt her head back and give a soft breathy howl with those horse lungs of hers, like a moaning gust of wind.

As Helena watched, Amaris circled and pawed the ground, wings fluttering nervously. For an instant the feeble moonlight reached the ground, illuminating pale hair.

Helena ran to the door, finding one of the servants in the hall.

“Get Davies and the butler, I don’t know his name,” Helena said. “Kaine’s in the courtyard.”

It moved, but very slowly.

Helena barely had time to think about the dark or the shadows, clutching at the wall as she descended the stairs, willing her heart to stay steady. She faltered at the doorway. The house was all dark; there were no signs of Atreus. She tried to tell herself that it was good it was dark, Morrough wouldn’t be able to see well if he was watching.

She drew a deep breath and rushed across the gravel to where Amaris was giving another helpless howl.

The chimaera snarled, whirling when Helena got close. Helena stopped, showing her empty hands.

“It’s me,” she said. “Remember? I’ll help him.”

Amaris stopped snarling, but her muzzle remained curled back. She let Helena kneel and crawl the remaining distance to Kaine.

He was lying face down and when she rolled him over, her hands came away wet with blood. He smelled of rot, of that awful hall underground. His skin was cold, and he was barely breathing.

“Kaine? Kaine? What did he do to you?” She shook him gently. She’d seen him injured by nullium before, but she’d never seen anything like this. She had no resonance to reach out and find what was wrong. It was so dark outside, she could scarcely see more than his outline. She felt his pulse, but it was irregular in a way that would kill a human. Stopping intermittently and then restarting, pulsing and stopping again.

She tried to lift him, but with the nullium in her wrists, she couldn’t hold him. She hooked her elbows under his arms but didn’t have the weight or strength to move him across the ground. She sank back into the gravel, and his head lolled against her shoulder.

“Kaine—”

He didn’t respond.

She looked around for the servants and spotted Davies and the butler and several other servants coming out, carrying electric torches. They moved as if only half there.

Amaris snarled, and Helena quieted her, petting her ears and urging her back enough for the servants to reach Kaine.

“Take him to my room,” she said softly. “Be gentle, I don’t know where he’s hurt.”

The butler pulled Kaine carefully over his shoulder.

Amaris was trembling, a low groaning whine as her nose followed Kaine up the steps, head bobbing like she wanted to go with him into the house.

“He’ll be all right. I’ll take care of him. You did everything you could.” Helena stayed a moment longer, pressed against the immense, reassuring warmth of the chimaera, and then she forced herself to turn and cross the open gravel back to the far door.

Calm. Stay calm, she told herself over and over, willing her heart to stay even, not to let her mind slip into the shadows. You have to get upstairs to Kaine.

She reached her room before the servants did, in enough time to turn down the bed and clear the table of everything except what medicine she thought might be useful. She started wetting towels while she waited.

The butler was smeared with blood where Kaine’s body had pressed against him.

“Hold him so I can get these clothes off,” Helena said, pulling off his clothes and discarding them onto the floor, trying to find the source of the injury now that she had light. There were no wounds anywhere. Not anymore. What had they done to him? Where had the blood come from?

The more she couldn’t find a cause, the more her chest clenched in dread. Had they done something inside him?

“Bring me all the medical supplies you have in this house,” she said to the other two servants who hovered uselessly, their eyes even more unfocused than usual. “And hurry if you can.”

The butler laid him on the bed, and she wiped the residual blood away.

She wrapped all the bedding around him, trying to keep him warm, and then hurried back to the pile of blood-soaked, stinking clothes lying on the floor, rummaging through his coat until her fingers grazed a familiar shape. She gave a small gasp of relief and pulled out the medical kit.

It was still intact right down to the waxed sheet of written instructions, carefully folded and stored. Several of the vials were long empty, but in the slot she wanted was a new, full vial and the necessary syringe. Clearly it was something he used regularly.

She pressed her forehead against the kit, sighing with relief, and hurried back.

She checked his pulse. It was still intermittent, starting and stalling and failing and then beginning again.

She wiped his chest clean of any remaining blood.

“Sorry,” she said as she filled the syringe, tapping it to knock out any bubbles, and then she sank it into his chest, right over his heart, pressing down on the plunger, injecting the full dose.

Kaine slammed upright almost faster than Helena could pull the syringe away, clutching at his chest. Then he dropped back down on the bed, going limp. He was conscious now, his eyes roving blindly around the room.

“Kaine?”

“—H-lena …?” Her name slurred from his lips.

He sounded bewildered. She set the syringe down and came closer, but his eyes weren’t following her. They kept roving as if trying to find something to land on. She leaned over him, stroking his hair back.

“I’m here. What did he do to you?”

He furrowed his eyebrows. “Whe’re we?”

Her throat tightened, and she glanced around. The lights were on, the room familiar. Her face was just above his, but he was staring through her.

“We’re in my room. You collapsed outside, and I had the servants bring you here. Can you see me?”

“Can’t—g …” His mouth worked, and she’d never seen him look so scared before. “Can’t—sseee …”

Suddenly his expression changed, and he grasped blindly for her, hand bumping against her arm. “You all right?—your heart? Is your—heart—”

She caught his hand and pressed it to her chest and then her face. His fingers spasmed against her cheek. “I’m fine. My heart is fine. I’m a healer, remember? Patched you up a lot of times. Calm down.”

She cleared her throat, sitting on the edge of the bed so he could feel her nearness, checking his heartbeat and pulse again. Now it was racing, too fast, but at least it wasn’t failing. “I had to inject you with the stimulant to keep your heart going. It kept giving out, but I don’t have my resonance. Can you try to get my manacles off so I can check you?”

She led his hands to her wrists, placing them on the manacles, but his movements were disjointed, and his fingers kept twitching oddly. Whatever had been done must have been neurological; he’d never had symptoms like this before. He tried several times. She finally grasped hold of his fingers, stilling them.

“Never mind,” she said as she fought to keep her voice steady. “Never mind that. I’ll work manually.” She swallowed. “Can you tell me what happened? Why did he do this to you? You’ve been doing everything he wants.”

He was quiet for a while; when he finally spoke his words were smoother, no longer so disjointed. “Hevgoss announced their alliance with the Liberation Front this afternoon.”

That should have been good news.

“In their—declaration, they cited my ‘barbaric slaughter’ as the reason. Seems I should have foreseen this and refused orders. I was made an example of—the cost of failure and incompetence.”

His chest convulsed as if he were attempting to laugh.

“What did he do?” Helena said, afraid of the way he’d avoided the question.

He exhaled. “He ripped out my heart first. Said it was—f-fitting …”

Helena was speechless. It had never even occurred to her that something like that could be survivable.

He managed a grimacing smile. “I think I owe the Principate an apology—terrible way to go. Although growing back was the worst part …”

His voice trailed off again.

She was glad he couldn’t see as she forced herself to breathe slowly several times. She pressed her hand over his heart, feeling the heartbeat.

“And then?” she prompted.

His face twisted. “I’m not—I was still—” He gestured at his chest. “It was something—to my spine, I think. I couldn’t see. Couldn’t move. I don’t remember when my eyes stopped—”

Helena’s throat closed, but she kept her voice steady. “Well, your heart is stable now. I don’t know how long the neurological symptoms might last. The best thing is to rest and give your body time to recover.”

The servants finally returned, carrying several wooden cartons of medical supplies.

Helena sat beside him, going through their contents. Many more vials of the stimulant, which she hoped not to need. Kaine fell asleep after a little while but kept jerking, his fingers twitching spasmodically. He’d start awake, still blind, searching for her, his fingers grasping, trying to feel her heartbeat.

Helena would reassure him that she was fine, and he’d pass out again.

She worried the most about his spasticity. He kept tensing, twitching, his muscles curling inwards, hands and fingers curving into claws.

Helena knew the stimulant caused withdrawal symptoms like that, but she was worried about those symptoms being combined with some kind of brain or spinal injury. Should she have let him be? Was it possible for him to end up with permanent nerve damage? He regenerated so poorly now.

She took his right hand in hers, working at it slowly, knuckle by knuckle, until the muscles were no longer curved and rigid. Every time she moved her thumbs, the tendons twinged against the nullium, but she didn’t care. She kept going, working up his arm to his shoulders, and then she started on the other hand. A gnawing pain radiated up her left arm, but she couldn’t stop.

This was all she could do, and she would do it.

She checked his heart. It was finally steady. His expression relaxed when she spoke. So she talked to him softly, about anything she could think of. All the things she’d always meant to tell him.

After half a day without waking, she hooked him up to a saline drip. He still didn’t stir. A few times, she heard footsteps in the hallway, but if Atreus was lurking about the house again, he didn’t come too near.

Finally, Kaine’s eyes fluttered and opened, falling on her.

She went very still. “Can you see me?”

He squinted. “Shapes at least.” He squeezed his eyes shut, wincing and reopening them. “I think it’s getting better.”

“Good.” She nodded shakily. “I was thinking perhaps the heart injury could have caused blood clotting, or maybe there was nerve strain. Either could cause temporary blindness.”

He gave an absent nod because it hardly mattered either way. His fingers trailed over, finding her. “Are you all right?”

“Of course,” she said, grateful he couldn’t see clearly, because she was too exhausted to lie convincingly.

He started to close his eyes, but then they snapped open again. “My father is at my door.” He sat up stiffly with a groan. “I need to go deal with him. There’s still arrangements I haven’t—”

Helena caught him by the shoulder. “You can’t get up yet. You’re not recovered.”

He placed his hand over hers, trying to squeeze, but instead his fingers spasmed. “My father cannot find me here. I don’t need to recover anymore. You have to leave tonight. I can’t make it a perfect trip, but there’s enough in place. You’ll be able to manage.”

“T-Tonight?”

He said nothing else. He stood up, pulling the needle from his arm, and dressing quickly. He struggled with the buttons on his shirt; Helena had to help him.

“My eyes are getting better already,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I can see how disapproving you look.”

He took her hands in his and after some difficulty managed to get his fingers steady enough to remove the manacles. She locked the copper back around her wrists herself.

“Keep the door locked,” he said. “I’ll be back by nightfall.”