“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—”