Page 137 of Alchemised
It startled her, but she dropped her hands immediately, trying not to breathe hard or seem as disoriented as she felt. Had he noticed her resonance? She searched for signs of suspicion or anger in his expression.
His eyes were darker, and he looked significantly less composed with his hair rumpled and falling over his face.
“Well.” He blinked and shook his head. “That was certainly—something.” He ran a gloved thumb across his mouth.
“You are full of surprises,” he added after a moment, voice lower than before.
Helena wasn’t sure what to say to that, so she just said the first thing that popped into her head. “Do you say that to every girl?”
He huffed a laugh and ran his hand through his hair to brush it off his face. “No, I can’t say I do.”
There was a pause.
He’d probably been expecting her to bite him.
Heat rose across her face. She wished she had, but his physiology was so interesting. She couldn’t just encounter something like that and ignore it.
He cleared his throat. “I have something for you.” He reached into his pocket and tossed an object to her.
She caught it reflexively, studying it. It was a tarnished silver ring; she knew it by both sight and resonance, although her silver resonance was minimal, not high enough for her repertoire to be considered noble. However, this ring was hand-forged rather than transmutationally crafted; she could see the hammer marks that had beaten a scaled, almost geometric pattern onto it.
A bizarre thing for an iron alchemist to have.
“A symbol of our relationship,” Ferron said, and when she looked up sharply, he raised his right hand to indicate a matching band on his index finger. “There’s a mirrored entanglement in them. If I do anything to mine, you’ll feel it. I’ll transmute it to warm briefly if I need to meet. Twice if it’s urgent. I’d advise coming very quickly if it ever burns twice.”
She inspected the ring. Mirrored entanglement was the way her call bracelet from the hospital worked. It was a form of transmutation that was incredibly rare. Few alchemists had the ability to manage it. It made the pieces very valuable, but they were only useful as long as the entangled pieces were accounted for.
The Eternal Flame kept a strict tally of everyone who carried one.
She tried slipping it on the forefinger of her left hand since it was her non-dominant transmutation hand but found it too small. She resigned herself, sliding it down her left ring finger.
“My resonance for silver is only passable, but I think I can manage a temperature shift. Do I call you the same way?” she asked.
“No,” he said sharply, his voice startlingly vehement. “You don’t ever summon me. You burn me, ever, and this deal is off. I’m not a fucking dog. If you want me, you can come here and wait or leave a note, and I’ll get around to it when I have time.”
The viciousness was startling after all his mocking calm. Crowther was right: Ferron didn’t want to be ruled by anyone. It was power he craved.
“Well, I can’t always come immediately,” she said. “It could be noticed if I’m going out at odd times. Barring emergencies, it’d be better if we stick to a schedule.”
“Fine.”
“Every Saturnis and Martiday I go out for medical supplies just before daybreak. No one will notice if I come back a little later. Would that work for you? I could do different days, if you’d rather.”
He nodded slowly. “That’s fine. If I can’t make it for some reason, come back again in the evening.”
“What if I can’t?” Helena asked, not understanding why he was so averse to using the rings for more than basic signalling. The trek to the Outpost was hardly short enough to be worth making unnecessarily.
“I’m sure I can figure it out,” he said, lip curling as he looked at her. Then he reached into his coat and pulled out two envelopes, selecting one.
“My first instalment, then,” he said as he held it out.
She took it from him. It was addressed to an Aurelia Ingram.
“Crowther has the cipher already,” Ferron said as she stood, studying the address. “I trust he has the sense not to use everything at once.”
“Your service will be one of the Resistance’s most carefully protected secrets. We’re not going to do anything that might risk compromising you.”
He gave a vague nod. “Then I’ll see you on Martiday. Now get out, and make sure you take a different route when you leave.”
