Page 11 of Alchemised
His fingers pressed deftly along her arm, finding the dip just below her wrist between the two bones of her forearm.
Her pulse beat against his fingers. He felt it for a moment and moved his fingers away from it, squeezing briefly before he turned to Stroud. “Just here.”
Stroud’s dry, hard fingers wrapped around her wrist. Helena felt a brief tingle of Stroud’s resonance before all sensation from hand to elbow vanished and her body went limp with paralysis. Without explanation or warning, Stroud plucked something out of the case. It gleamed in the light, revealing the bulbous handle and long pointed spike of an awl.
With practised ease, Stroud drove the tip straight through Helena’s wrist. Helena felt nothing, but her throat closed, stomach inverting as she watched Stroud work the awl in slow circles as it sank between the bones, the tip emerging on the other side.
When Stroud pulled it out, there was a drop of blood on the tip and a hole running straight through Helena’s wrist. The wound was bloodless, all the torn skin, muscle, and broken vessels instantly closing in the process.
Setting the awl aside, Stroud manipulated Helena’s hand, bending and arching it back, checking for range of motion. Sensation returned, but the paralysis lingered.
“Nerves and veins are all intact,” Stroud said, letting go.
Helena could do nothing but watch as Shiseo stepped over and pushed a tiny, notched tube through the hole now running through her wrist until the ends protruded on each side. The moment the tube slipped into place, the blurred sense of resonance in Helena’s left hand vanished completely.
It was as if one of her senses had been ripped out.
She could feel the tube inside her, a deadening sense of inertia emanating from it.
Shiseo pulled out a ribbon of metal. It was smooth and shining on one side, grooved on the other. He slid the groove over one notched end of the tube before wrapping the ribbon around her wrist and sliding it over the other, locking the tube in place before he wrapped the rest of the metal ribbon around and around.
He inspected the tension and fit, lined up all the layers, and with little more than a flick of his fingers, the layers morphed into a solid ring of metal, perfectly fitted.
No lock, no way to open it without resonance.
Shiseo slid a strangely shaped wire into a tiny opening on the old cuff. A mechanism inside clicked, and it fell off.
He picked it up as if it were a curious antique and put it in his case before moving around to Helena’s right side.
Helena grasped desperately at her dim sense of remaining resonance, trying to focus, to remember the sensation of who and what she was, knowing it would be gone in minutes.
Shiseo was just removing the second old manacle when the door opened and a guard entered.
“Warden Mandl.”
A woman in uniform strode into the room with a quick, confident step that faltered when her eyes landed on Helena.
She had a wide mouth, and it dropped open in shock.
“What did you do to this prisoner, Mandl?” Morrough asked. He had disappeared back into the shadows, but his voice emerged, even more dangerous now.
Mandl flung herself prostrate, disappearing from Helena’s range of vision.
“Your Eminence …” Her pleading voice rose from the floor.
“I saved you from the Holdfasts and the Faith. Saved all the necromancers and vivimancers like you who lived like rats fearing the Eternal Flame’s punishment for your ‘unnatural gifts.’ I let you ascend above those who had sought to subdue you. Now I learn you betrayed me?”
“No! It was not a betrayal! I am loyal. Loyal to our cause, and loyal to you! It was my foolish desire for vengeance—I confess it. I wanted her to suffer. But I would never betray you.”
“Explain yourself.”
Mandl pushed herself up, still kneeling, her head bowed but her voice shaking with emotion. “She is a traitor to vivimancers! She tormented me! Thought herself better than me for having been a part of the Holdfasts’ Institute, her vivimancy blessed by the Eternal Flame. She had to be punished!”
Helena stared at the woman in dazed bewilderment.
“You tampered with a prisoner and her records out of—jealousy?” Stroud looked astonished. “Why didn’t you report her abilities?”
Mandl shrank back. “I feared that she would be favoured if it was known. That you might find her useful and not punish her as she deserved to be punished.”
