CHAPTER 10
H ELENA SAT BY THE WINDOW IN HER room, trying and failing to make out any sense of resonance in her fingers. If she focused very intensely, sometimes she thought there was still a glimmer of it.
She stood and went to the window. The days were short and terribly dark, sunsets at midday.
She closed her hand into a fist, eyes shut, concentrating, and then flexed her fingers, pressing them against the window’s icy iron lattice, straining until her eyes blurred.
Nothing.
She fidgeted with the manacle around her wrist until the spike between her wrist bones twinged in warning.
Despite centuries of alchemical study, there was still much unknown about resonance.
Prior to the Faith, there had been a cult of alchemy devoted to a masculine version of Lumithia.
The cult claimed that mankind itself was the first product of the alchemy, created by Sol at the beginning of time and scattered across the earth.
However, the human beings created were lowly and corruptible, much like the most ignoble of metals, and Sol for all his power could not make them better.
Then came Lumen, whose alchemical processes were much harsher.
Lumen joined together the other four elements of fire, earth, water, and air, using the entire earth as an alembic, with the creatures of earth as the prima materia.
The Great Disaster, two millennia past, which nearly shattered both earth and humanity, had been the processes of alchemisation itself.
First the fires that rained upon the earth: the calcination.
The rising tides that swallowed the great cities were the dissolution.
The earthquakes that shattered even the mountains were the separation.
The aftermath as the survivors emerged from the destruction: the conjunction.
The plagues and sickness and starvation that followed: the fermentation.
The death toll, so immense that humanity nearly blinked from existence: the distillation.
And finally in culmination, the result of Lumen’s great experiment, mankind itself manifesting alchemical resonance was the coagulation.
This process was the method of alchemisation that Cetus’s early writings referred to.
The Faith and the Institute both rejected the cult almost entirely, although they did accept Lumen as Lumithia, and acknowledge her as one of the elemental deities in the Quintessence.
However, the Faith held a strict view that resonance was not a reflection of spiritual purity but merely an expression of it.
All humans were flawed, alchemist or not, and therefore all humans must strive towards purification.
A step which Cetus conveniently left out of his alchemical process.
Additionally, it wasn’t difficult to predict where large numbers of alchemists would appear.
It was correlated with regions that had large lumithium deposits.
The Northern continent’s largest mine was in the mountains, upriver from Paladia, and the number of children with measurable resonance born in the city was more than double the rates of neighbouring countries.
Paladia’s lumithium mines had made for complicated politics.
Lumithium could only be safely excavated by those without resonance; otherwise the symptoms and wasting sickness came quickly.
But the work was limited to a single generation.
Miners’ children were almost always born with measurable resonance.
Paladia was constantly bringing in new labourers to work the mines, resulting in a perpetual population explosion.
That was the reason for the city-state’s incredible density.
The guilds depended on lumithium for processing, but they disliked the competition that mining created.
The Alchemy Institute had been at maximum capacity for decades, which functioned as a limit on the number of alchemy certificates in any given year.
Without certification, people could not professionally call themselves alchemists or use their resonance without a credentialled supervisor.
The guilds wanted the certification and admissions of the Alchemy Institute to remain limited, both because it increased the value of their credentials, and because those without formal certification were cheap to hire for alchemical factory work.
However, the guilds also wanted assurance that their heirs would be the ones entering the Institute, no matter whose resonance or aptitude was greater.
It had created a perpetual cycle of grievances in which everyone found the current circumstances unfair, but no one would agree to a solution. Principate Helios had tried for decades, and it had resulted in mass riots and labour strikes.
The Undying had seemingly solved the mining issue by using necrothralls, avoiding both lumithium shortages and exponential competition, which made for bitter irony: The war had so decimated the alchemist population that now they needed a breeding program to revive it.
She squinted, trying to see the tube running through her wrist more clearly, to work out what it was. It appeared to be encased in ceramic. Which might mean it was breakable, although more likely it meant the metal was corrosive.
Lumithium wasn’t corrosive, though. It was categorically noble, an incorruptible metal, less perfect than gold but superior to silver, which tarnished. Perhaps a lumithium alloy?
She couldn’t think of many lumithium alloys, though, as it was predominantly used in the emanations needed to increase or stabilise the resonance of other metals.
She suspected that the resonance suppression was some kind of Eastern alchemy. The Eastern Empire was very secretive of their alchemy, and Shiseo had been the one who’d put the manacles on her.
While she was still scrutinising, the door opened. She glanced over, expecting Ferron, but found a stranger staring at her, his face alight.
He slipped in, shutting the door softly, looking around, as if he expected to be immediately stopped. When nothing happened, a slow smile spread across his face.
He came towards Helena on quick, quiet steps.
He was solidly built, with wheat-coloured hair and a square face. He was dressed in a deep-blue frock coat and cape that had geometric embroidery decorating it, and a deep-burgundy cravat at his throat.
Helena’s instinctive response to the sight of him was absolute terror.
It had never occurred to her that a stranger might one day walk into the room. Her hands spasmed, sending a shock of pain up her arms.
He paused.
“You don’t remember me,” he said in disbelief. There was a hint of offence in the way he said it, as if she should know him instantly.
Helena studied him wildly, trying to guess at who he could be. His voice was vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t place where she’d heard it.
His expression grew eager, triumphant as he got closer. His hand extended, fingers curved and grasping.
The door slammed open so abruptly the room seemed to jolt.
“Lose your way, Lancaster?” Ferron said as he entered, his eyes burning an irate silver.
A flood of relief rushed through Helena.
Lancaster straightened instantly, the hurried shiftiness falling away as he pivoted to face Ferron, giving a careless shrug. Ferron passed him without a glance.
“Just exploring this mansion of yours,” he said. “Got curious when I saw her.”
He nodded towards Helena just as Ferron stepped between them. Helena shrank towards Ferron without thinking, so close she could smell the scent of juniper on his clothes.
“She’s not available for entertainment,” Ferron said, his voice chilly. “You’ll have to find someone else to amuse yourself with. I’m sure you’ll manage.”
Lancaster laughed. “But you got her in the papers and everything.” He pouted. “Surely you allow her visitors?”
“No, I don’t,” Ferron said after giving Helena a perfunctory glance. “And in the future, if you’re curious about something of mine, you may ask. We should return to the party. I imagine Aurelia misses us.”
He rested a gloved hand on Lancaster’s shoulder and steered him firmly towards the door. Lancaster glanced back at Helena, the intensity returning to his eyes, as if there was something he was trying desperately to communicate to her.
Helena watched him vanish through the doorway, trying to place the name.
Lancaster.
A guild name. Nickel. Yes, the nickel guild. There’d been a Lancaster in her year, or perhaps the year above? Erik Lancaster.
Why would he expect Helena to recognise him?
As she stood wondering over this, the faint sound of music drifted through the closed door.
It dawned on her then why there was someone in the house. The Ferrons were hosting a solstice eve party.
She had no idea they hosted anything. The parts of the house she’d seen were so dirty, she’d be embarrassed to admit guests.
However, the hibernal solstice was one of Paladia’s most significant holidays, and given how closely the summer solstice was tied to the Holdfasts, it was probably the only major holiday the Undying were still allowed to celebrate.
She went to the door. Despite the danger, she was burning with curiosity. She knew there’d be Undying and liches present. Anyone invited would be an Aspirant or at least supportive of the regime.
It might be her best chance to get herself killed. She gripped the knob, then paused; it was more likely that they’d just torture her. She wavered. In that case, unless Ferron intervened, there’d be little she could do to protect herself.
Her instinctive relief at his appearance unsettled her in more ways than she wanted to think about, and she would think about it if she spent the entire evening in her room.
She opened the door.
Even though her exploration of the house while drugged by that tablet had made it possible for her to pass the hallway shadows without panicking, she still had to take several steadying breaths before she could make herself cross the threshold.
She went towards the main wing.