Page 19 of Alchemised
Helena staggered, trying to find her feet. “Penny.”
Penny was a year older than Helena. One of the few other girls at the Institute to pursue undergraduate studies in alchemy. She’d been among the first to enlist with the Resistance, determined to go to the front lines and fight.
The orderly pushing Penny walked faster, turning the chair to block the exchange.
Helena and Penny both craned their necks, trying to keep sight of each other as they were pushed apart.
“Penny, what are they—” Helena didn’t get the whole question out as she was shoved towards her room.
Penny leaned over the arm of the chair, looking back, her face stricken. “You were right. I’m so sorry. We should have listened to you.”
There was no time to ask what she meant. The orderly sped up, and Penny disappeared.
“I’m delivering you today,” Stroud said, walking in with a stack of files she was immersed in. She’d been increasingly distracted every time Helena saw her. “Get ready.”
“I’m leaving?”
Stroud looked up and gave an irritated, nervous smile. “Yes. Central has other purposes. The High Reeve has been waiting for you. Come. Now.”
There was no readying for Helena to do. She was bundled into the lift with nothing but the clothes on her back and a pair of wool slippers too large for her feet.
The lift descended to the fifth floor, where the Alchemy Tower was connected by skybridges to the surrounding Institute buildings. In a city as vertical as Paladia, skybridges were frequently used to interconnect buildings, some like slender passages, others large enough to hold plazas and gardens dozens of storeys above the rest of the city. As the city had grown, the lower parts saw their sky almost blotted out, creating a damp, darkened underbelly that festered with diseases.
She could see the commons below, grassy patches bisected by geometric footpaths that ran between the dorms and the Tower and the Science Main.
White marble steps led up to the vast Tower doors. Helena’s memory instantly superimposed the wave of blood and gore and bodies that had covered it when she’d seen it last.
She looked away.
She had to focus on the present.
HELENA WAS PUSHED INTO THE back seat of a motorcar, a necrothrall cramming her towards the middle as it seated itself beside her. The smell of rot immediately began to fill the enclosed space.
Her throat convulsed, and she clamped a hand over her nose and mouth.
Stroud climbed in on the other side, seemingly immune to the stench, flipping through her perpetual stack of files.
The motorcar drove down a long tunnel, amber light from the electric lanterns flickering across Helena’s lap, giving way to drab grey when the motorcar emerged from underground. She peered out, taking in the sky. It was dark and overcast, a grey that seemed to leach the world of colour. Looking out at the city, she was shocked by the scars still starkly visible from the war: huge gaps in the skyline, burned-out buildings, and collapsed ruins. It hardly looked as if any rebuilding had begun. The road was the only thing that appeared new.
When the motorcar crossed from the East Island to the West Island, nearly all traces of the war disappeared behind them.
Paladia had been founded on a river delta in the basin of the Novis Mountains. The original island had a high northern plateau which sloped down to the southern tip. The Alchemy Tower had been built on the highest point of the island, and the town—eventually a city—had grown around it until every inch of land had been built on. The island of Paladia, later called the East Island, was home to industry, trade, government, the perihelion cathedrals, and the Alchemy Institute.
The West Island was built centuries later, engineered to accommodate the exploding population. All of it was newer, bigger.
During the war, the Undying held diluted control over the West Island, while the Resistance had headquartered in the Alchemy Institute, giving them an established point of defence on the East Island and splitting the city-state in two. Because the East Island held most of the crucial infrastructure and the main ports, it had borne the brunt of the war as the Undying tried to seize control.
Contrasted with the ruins of the East Island, the West Island looked almost unscathed, its vast interconnected buildings vaulting up towards the sky, gleaming and unmarred.
When Helena had first sailed up the river and seen Paladia, it had looked as if some great deity had laid their crown in the dip of the mountains, the spires and gleam of the city reflecting across the water. She hadn’t thought anywhere on earth could be so beautiful.
The motorcar felt tiny as it sped through the West Island, crossing another bridge towards Paladia’s mainland, which spanned the miles from the river shore to the mountain tree line.
The mainland was mostly mines and agriculture, and the little that wasn’t commercial was owned by the oldest families who’d joined the Institute centuries ago, at the time of its founding.
If she was being taken to the mainland, then the High Reeve must have an estate of some kind. Either one was seized and bestowed post-war, or perhaps he was from one of the wealthy guild families. There had been a number who’d seen their fortunes explode from the industrialisation of the last century.
She leaned forward, looking towards the front window, searching for any signs of their destination.
