“That will be the last one,” he said before he left.
Helena resolved to explore the remainder of the house. She’d yet to venture into the east wing, and after such a large party there was a chance that something useful to her might have been left out.
She slipped through the house, listening carefully for the sound of Aurelia’s heels on the wood floor, starting on the top storey and making her way down. The east wing was not a mirror of the west wing but similar enough that Helena almost felt as though she’d already explored it.
The servant from the previous night was following her once again.
As Helena explored the main floor, the servant paused to close the door, and Helena noticed that a large door across the way had been left ajar.
That was unusual. Locked or unlocked, the doors were almost always closed.
On impulse, Helena made a lunge, darting through the door and slamming it behind her. There was a lock on the inside, and she twisted it an instant before the knob rattled.
If she weren’t drugged, her heart would be racing.
She knew she had minutes at best before the key would be retrieved, so she turned away, eager to experience the freedom of exploring on her own and hopefully finding something she wasn’t intended to.
There was a switch on the wall. A dusty chandelier overhead came to life, the bulbs humming, barely illuminating the room. The lights flickered unsteadily, casting shadows that scrabbled across the floor like rats.
She was standing in a large drawing room. The windows were covered, not merely curtained but boarded up, and the smell of dust and metal and something uncomfortably organic lingered in the air. There was a pungent metallic ozone scent that she could taste on her tongue, a thick sensation caused by heavy alchemy use. When resonance was channelled deeply, the air itself was left with traces of the transmutation.
It had been a long time since she’d encountered a smell like that.
She couldn’t help but feel that the heaviness about the house was stronger in that room.
There was a large cage welded into the floor, gleaming when the light flickered; the bulb filaments gave soft buzzing clicks each time.
She approached cautiously. The cage was too narrow for an animal but slightly shorter than Helena. A prisoner would be forced to huddle inside it.
It was iron, but roughly wrought, made with manual smithing not alchemy, which meant the iron was probably inert, not transmutable at all. She touched it, feeling the rough telltale traits that no alchemist would leave behind.
A pattern on the floor beyond caught her attention.
There was an alchemical array carved into the wood. The largest Helena had ever seen.
Transmutational arrays were often simply illustrative, to record processes, but they were also used for transmutation when the process was too complex for simple resonance manipulation. Alchemisation always required the stabilisation of an array. Proprietary arrays were what allowed the guilds to produce alchemical products inside industrial-sized forges.
Helena had never seen anything as elaborate as what was carved into the floor of Spirefell. Within the containment circle were nine smaller arrays which met to form the nine points, rather than a celestial eight or an elemental five.
Each inner array was marked with numerous symbols, and they all channelled towards a series of concentric circles in the centre.
It was not an iron forge array. The symbols and lines were all wrong for any kind of ironwork.
The light in the room kept cutting out. She knelt, trying to see more clearly.
Alchemists often used unique symbols to protect their discoveries from anyone without proper training and devotion to the subtle arts, but alchemical energy favoured certain patterns. A scholar with a wide repertoire and sufficient experience could usually parse them. It was like reading shorthand: If the fundamentals were there, an educated alchemist could divine the meaning through reason.
She traced her fingers along the lines, trying to envision the resonance flow.
There was a click and grind behind her.
She glanced back to see Ferron’s silhouette filling the doorway.
CHAPTER 11
HELENA KNEW SHE WAS ABOUT TO BE dragged out of the room, but rather than stand, she turned back to the array, wanting to unravel at least a fragment of it.
Her life was an incomprehensible mystery enough.
Rather than pull her from the room, Ferron came and stood watching as she tried to make sense of the symbols on the floor. After failing at one, she tried the next, and then another. It took a minute before she realised that they’d all been meticulously defaced to obscure any trace of what they’d originally been.
Unsolvable puzzles seemed fated to be her primary occupation.
She looked up at Ferron in resignation.
He was glaring at her. “It’s impressive how determined you are to be difficult.”
“Were you expecting something else?” she asked with a loose shrug.
He didn’t answer, but there was a hardening fury visible around his eyes.
She stared at him, calm enough to glimpse at what was beneath: a sea of seething rage. There was something about this room that he seemed particularly averse to. If she was lucky, maybe he’d snap her neck.
She looked over towards the cage. “Keep a lot of people in cages, Ferron?”
His jaw clenched, throat dipping as he swallowed.
“Only you,” he said, glancing around at the intricate, iron interior of his ancestral home. “Haven’t you noticed?”
Helena’s lip curled and she stood. She’d hoped to needle him, but he’d already seen through it. Better to behave so he’d leave her alone.
She walked out into the main hall, expecting to find the necrothrall waiting, placid as always. Instead, the woman was all the way across the room, clouded eyes wide as if in fear. The necrothrall’s lips moved, mouthing something silently as she looked at Ferron.
Kaine, Helena realised. The woman was saying Ferron’s name over and over.
Ferron gave a sharp flick of his hand, and the woman fled.
Helena watched her disappear, feeling a vague sense of guilt. “Don’t hurt her.”
“She’s dead,” Ferron said coolly as he closed the door. She heard it lock from within, and then the iron in the wall screeched, warping. The door would not reopen for anyone without iron resonance. “She can’t be hurt.”
He said it almost glibly, but Helena suspected he was not as indifferent as he tried to appear.
Helena rounded on him. “Why keep them?”
He shrugged. “It’s hard to find good staff nowadays.”
Her eyes narrowed. “How long have you had them?”
His mouth split into a grin. “Interested in keeping a few of your own? I doubt necromancy would agree with you.”
She lifted her chin, watching him archly. “You’re avoiding the question.”
His eyes flickered, but he shook his head. “I’ve reanimated so many, I don’t keep track anymore. Now, are you done in this wing, or are you still holding out hope that there are weapons lying around for you to find?”
She refused to rise to his baiting; a trick like that didn’t work when she was drugged. He was usually so direct, it was interesting to catch him being evasive.
“I assumed I was allowed in any rooms I found unlocked. Aurelia never said I shouldn’t go anywhere, just to keep out of sight.”
“Well,” he said, fingers spanning her lower back as he pushed her firmly away from the now warped door. “I doubt Aurelia would feel much disappointment if you met an unfortunate end. It might spell my demise as well, and then she’d be a wealthy widow, free to conduct her tawdry affairs even more publicly than she already does.”