The instant Enid could walk, the idyllic quiet of the island was forever shattered. The two children tore through the house, shrieking and shouting, oblivious to the ways their parents flinched and started at sudden noise.
From Pol, Enid learned to climb hills and trees, tearing her clothes to bits scrambling down the cliffs. She made mud pies and soups and “healing” potions in jars stolen from the kitchen. She learned to wrestle, and to fight with the play swords that Lila had made to teach Pol combat basics.
Pol planned to be a warrior someday, and Enid wanted to be one, too. Both children held Lila in high esteem because she was a warrior with a metal leg, which they found significantly more interesting than their own legs.
Pol showed an early and exceptional proficiency for pyromancy. Then Enid, apparently not to be outdone, healed Pol’s lip after he split it open running into a door. Helena was horrified by the early manifestation, but Lila reassured her that she had been similarly young when her abilities began making intermittent appearances.
Enid was reading by the time news came that Paladia had finally surrendered. The allies had poured into the city, securing and dispatching necrothralls so stick-thin and malnourished that they scarcely put up a fight. There were stories about the conditions found there, of citizens so starved that they were mistaken for necrothralls as they swarmed the liberating soldiers, begging for food.
By all accounts, it was an exceptionally successful campaign, with few casualties for the allied armies. The Liberation Front was ceaselessly praised for bringing the tyranny of the Undying to an end.
But Helena felt sick reading of it, overcome by a sense of betrayal. How different it could have been if the international community had decided to put even a negligible amount of effort into caring sooner. If Hevgoss and Novis had been less concerned over which of them would control Paladia afterwards. They’d all bided their time, waiting until the situation grew intolerable for them, and only striking after their victory was assured, and still somehow they were heroic.
In the papers, all the horror stories about the conditions inside the city, described in lurid detail, were only shared to highlight what the Paladians had been saved from, rather than as an admonishment of what they’d been left to endure.
Morrough was not among the casualties or captives. Somehow he remained alive in the caves beneath the Institute, and after a few failed attempts to breach the underground, the Liberation Front left him there, hoping he would die on his own.
With the “liberation” out of the way, the focus of the allies turned to the urgent matter of getting Paladia economically productive once more, with debates raging about what Paladia should look like in the future, whether it should exist at all or perhaps become a shared territory that Hevgoss and Novis would collaboratively control.
Trials were expected to begin soon. The international community denied any knowledge of the forced labour on the Outpost, or that all the industrially vital lumithium had been extracted by necrothralls for the last several years. However, they couldn’t deny knowledge of the repopulation program, so instead they insisted that as far as they knew, participation had been voluntary.
At some point in the siege or seizure of the city, Stroud had disappeared.
When the women began to be released from the Tower, stories about the program began to emerge—the abuse and torture that Stroud had permitted, and the children born and subjected to experimentation to study early-childhood resonance and how it developed—but they were regarded as too horrifying for print. Most of the focus was on the forced labour on the Outpost and the mines and the malnutrition among the surviving civilian population.
There was pressure for the matter of the repopulation program to be quietly resolved. The women urged to move on rather than be retraumatised in court; hysterical unmarried mothers could hardly be expected to provide admissible testimonies. It was a stain upon the Northern identity that such atrocities had occurred, and so it was treated as some evil and twisted idea that had sprung from the Undying’s regime, as if selective breeding had not been long rooted in guild culture.
No, there would be convents for the mothers and, for the children, an orphanage where they could grow up to become productive members of society. And so it could all be forgotten.
Kaine was the only one who didn’t seem surprised at how things unfolded. Helena was so upset that she was sick for days, and Lila started to disappear, leaving Pol with Helena and Enid for long periods.
After the children were in bed one night, Lila came into the kitchen where Helena was working on a chymiatria project that she hoped might help to manage her heart.
“I need to talk to you,” Lila said. She was very pale; she’d been quiet and withdrawn ever since the Abeyance passed. She sat down and stared at the fire for a long time. “I have to go back.”
Helena had known this day was coming, but her stomach twisted at the announcement. Lila was not made for a quiet life. She was never going to be happy on an island. She’d stayed because of Pol and Helena. But from the moment they’d read the bulletin on the ship, Helena had known that if Lila hadn’t been a mother to a toddler, she probably would have jumped off and joined the Liberation Force.
“I’ve been thinking about it for a while. I can’t let them do this. They’re erasing everything. Everyone. They’ll bury everything that happened. They don’t care; they just want the manufacturing back. It’s like watching vultures close in after they spent all these years watching us die.”
Helena sighed. “What does going back do, Lila?”
“I’m going to kill Morrough,” Lila said. “I’m going to go in, and I’m going to kill him. And then I’m going to make sure that no one ever forgets about the Resistance.” Lila’s throat worked repeatedly, the scar twisting her face. “So I need you to take care of Pol for me. And I need to learn how to fight using vivimancy, and get whatever obsidian’s left. And, Helena, I need you to teach me how to build a bomb.”
“Morrough might be dead in a year.”
“I know. I won’t wait that long. I’m going to go during the winter Abeyance.”
“That’s an incredibly dangerous voyage,” Helena said sharply.
“I have to go!” Lila’s voice rose. “They killed my family, they killed Luc, they killed—everyone. I can’t tell Pol about how brave and wonderful his dad was and know that the person who killed him is still out there. No one cares about the way Luc fought and suffered trying to save us”—she gestured furiously—“because he didn’t win. They’ll forget all about him if I don’t go back.”
“You could die. Don’t leave Pol an orphan.”
Lila was staring at the fire, the expression on her face so intense, so yearning, she looked as if she might slip her hands into it if it would let her touch Luc again.
“I made an oath that I would die before I let Luc come to harm, but he died and I’m still here. I’ve tried to bear it, for Pol, but I can’t. Not anymore.”
HELENA RELUCTANTLY COMPILED HER RESEARCH on bomb-making. The technique used to bomb the West Port Lab had the most potential, especially if they could find the sources of oxygen feeding into the underground.
She’d thought about the design over the years. She’d been in a rush and improvised, using the materials available. With time, and resources, it could be far more effective.
In the meanwhile, Kaine trained Lila in combat vivimancy. To the surprise of no one, Lila had been training in secret. Objectively she was a better fighter, except that Kaine did not follow any rules. He switched from vivimancy to combat alchemy to sheer underhandedness constantly, so that the instant Lila had an advantage, the fight became something different. He was brutal with her, exacting and impatient to a degree that he’d dramatically softened with Helena. He gave Lila no such consideration. He beat her weaknesses out of her.