Page 148 of Alchemised
“Not like what?”
“I don’t—have an issued weapon. They pulled me from combat before I qualified. When you only work in Headquarters, you don’t—” She gestured at her clothes. “I forage as a civilian.”
His eyebrows rose. “You’re travelling through the city and out into the barrens alone and unarmed?”
Helena squirmed. It sounded much worse than it was. She had vivimancy, but she couldn’t tell him that. It also didn’t help that her trips weren’t officially sanctioned.
Pace knew. Crowther knew. Matias, her actual superior, did not. Helena didn’t want to give him the chance to forbid her from making medicine for some reason.
She tried to make it sound more reasonable. “If I had an issued weapon, that would put me in even more danger if I were apprehended.”
“You can’t be serious,” he said in flat disbelief.
“I have a harvesting knife.” She held it up.
He blinked slowly. “And what could you do with that thing?”
She lifted her chin. “We all did the basic combat training at the Institute. I still know the forms; they work with or without transmutation.”
He looked her up and down. “And when did you last practise them?”
She averted her eyes. “I don’t know, I don’t keep track of things like that.” She shoved the knife back into her satchel; her fingers stayed wrapped around the handle, its varnish worn away but the wood smooth from use. “I’m rather busy.”
“Well, now I know what I’m doing with you next,” he said with a sigh. “I thought your mind would be the biggest danger to me, but it turns out you’re somehow still a walking liability. I’m not wasting my time training a new contact after all the time I’ve wasted on you.”
Helena sighed. “It’s not necessary. No one’s ever bothered me.”
Ferron raised an eyebrow. “You think there’s only going to be one chimaera out there? Bennet’s been working on this project for years. Now that he’s cracked it, he’ll have the barrens and low districts overrun with the creatures. What you saw is one of the early prototypes.”
“Tell us how to kill them, then,” she said sharply. “We’re not going to give up food and medicine because you psychopaths decided to set monsters loose everywhere.”
She was already being pulled in so many directions, she couldn’t stand to think about having to add combat training.
“Obviously, I’ll be working on that,” he said through gritted teeth. “That’s why I called you here, to let you know to be alert for them. If you’re going out there, you have to be trained.”
Helena gave an exasperated huff, turning towards the door. “Then I’ll drill at Headquarters.”
She unlocked the door as he spoke again.
“You don’t want me to train you?” His voice had turned slippery and dangerous. “Why not? I’d have thought you’d prefer to fill our time with training rather than with some of the other activities I could demand.”
Helena stopped short and looked back. He was cornering her.
He must have realised that she was supposed to seduce him, even if he didn’t have any idea of her vivimancy. Damn it all.
“Fine,” she snapped. “You can train me.”
She knew already that whatever physical training he chose would probably be even worse than the mental training he’d already subjected her to. Combat training hardly seemed the context in which to evoke a sense of obsessive want.
Violent want was more likely.
There was a dull pounding in her head. She could feel Luc being pulled further and further from reach. All light in her life disappearing.
“You look so bitter.” Ferron’s mocking voice drew her back. His eyes glittered. “You’d think I just demanded you fuck me rather than not. Disappointed?”
Slow rage was seeping through her. “Do you always buy your company?”
It was only a guess, but Ferron seemed the type. Guild families with a tradition of resonance-based marriages had reputations for wandering into the beds of others. Marriage among the guilds was as much a business arrangement as the silk entertainment houses on the West Island.
