by Rachel Caine
If she believed anything else, even for a moment, she’d have to throw it into Thomas’s forge to be melted down forever.
But despite the dream, she couldn’t argue that the ring seemed to have helped her. She felt better. Stronger. More in control of herself and her power than she had in a long time. And though the opportunity to sleep had been welcome, she doubted that simple rest had worked that much magic.
When she consulted the view from the garden’s windows, she was surprised to find it was still dark. The clock showed just after midnight. Odd. She felt she’d slept the day away.
The ring sat heavy and warm on her finger, and she lifted it up to the light to admire it as she brushed tangles out of her hair. The red spot moved slowly from one side to the other—not responding to the action of her hand, but traveling on its own. Sorcery, she thought again, and shivered a little. There had always been, in her mind at least, a hard wall between the ideas of magic and the rational, logical, reproducible effects of alchemy that drove the seeming magic of the Great Library. She could quote every philosopher and researcher on the similarity of all matter, on the transfer of energy, on every principle that allowed an automaton to follow coded instructions, or a Blank to fill with the contents of a recorded book. She understood these things. She understood why they worked.
But this ring felt . . . different. As if it was grounded in the same principles but it went farther, deeper, stranger, than anything she knew. It was terrifying. And intriguing. She knew of the legendary Gargi, of course; she was a woman who’d risen so far above other Scholars that no one, not even the most repressive of kings, could erase her brilliance. And I am decidedly not her, Morgan thought. So why is this ring on my hand?
Because it’s needed.
She didn’t know where that thought came from, but she accepted it as true without question. She felt healthy, steady, focused.
She also badly needed a bathroom, and her mouth tasted foul. Her hair was hopelessly tangled. Still the middle of the night, but she could at least try to seem presentable.
Morgan went back to her room and used the toilet, dressed, brushed out her hair. It was undeniable. She even looked better than she had in months.
As she readied herself to leave, there was a hard volley of knocks on the door. Agitated, frantic knocks, and she quickly threw it open.
Red-haired Annis stood there, mouth open, breathing hard. There were fierce spots of crimson in her cheeks, as if she’d taken several flights of stairs to reach her. “What is it?” Morgan asked. She was honestly afraid that something had happened to Eskander, as alarmed as the other woman seemed to be. Annis was fond of Eskander, always had been. She couldn’t think what else might spark this kind of emergency.
But it wasn’t Eskander. Standing behind Annis was Scholar Wolfe, looking tired and drawn. “Your friend is hurt,” Annis said.
“You’re hurt?” she asked Wolfe directly.
“Not me,” Wolfe replied. “Glain was shot. The doctor with her has done the best they could, but Glain needs more,” he said. “She’s losing too much blood. She doesn’t have long. I need you to come with me.”
Morgan didn’t hesitate. She stepped out of her room, shut the door, and said, “I’m ready.”
* * *
—
If anything, Wolfe had understated the problem; Morgan knew that the second she saw Glain lying so still and quiet in the bed. The physician sitting with her rose when they entered and came to meet them.
“Any change?” Wolfe asked.
“None. She’s bleeding internally, and I don’t have the facilities here to open her and find the torn vessels. She’ll die of shock if I try.” The doctor seemed extraordinarily competent; Morgan took the diagnosis as complete truth. She moved to stand next to Glain’s bedside and looked down on her. She’d never seen Glain this still, not even sleeping; the young Welshwoman was always in motion, eyes darting behind her lids if nothing else. But now she seemed pale and unmoving as her own funerary statue.
Glain’s skin felt cold, as if the essential fluids of life had withdrawn into the core of her; Morgan called on a tiny trickle of power, and her friend’s body came to shimmering life in front of her, mapped in flows of reds, blues, golds . . . and a steadily expanding darkness deep inside her.
Glain was dying. Fighting it, the way Glain fought all her battles—an absolute, unyielding struggle. But she was on the losing side of this one, resources depleted, allies gone. She fought alone.
No. Not alone. Not anymore.
But a little chill went through her, a vibration, a discord. And another voice whispered, The damage is too great. You should not do this. Sometimes, death is inevitable.
I can, she thought. I will.
Morgan looked at Wolfe, who stood nearby. “A chair,” she said. “This will take time.”
“Can you save her?” The physician seemed curious. “How?”
“I can’t really explain if you can’t see what I see,” she said. “But I may be able to help her save herself.” She smiled at Wolfe. “Don’t worry, Scholar. Have you ever known Glain to give up?”
“Never,” he said. “I’ll get the chair.”
She was settled in just a moment, and put her hands directly on Glain’s bare shoulders. Took a deep breath and let herself feel.
The shock of pain nearly drove her back. The damage done inside of Glain was considerable, and growing worse as free fluid inside her crowded her heart and lungs. Her body was working too hard to survive, let alone heal. Glain’s army needed reinforcements.
Morgan began by concentrating on the tears within two of the major vessels damaged by the bullet’s strike; one was small enough to be closed with a relatively minor amount of urging. But the other was a gaping hole, half the vein torn away, and that was going to be difficult. Morgan tapped the vital energy flowing all around her and channeled it through the matrix of the ring; tiny amounts of quintessence were trapped in every cell of every creature, even in inanimate objects. Anything that came from the earth held quintessence. She felt the ring feeding her in a thick amber flow . . . and then guiding her to extract more from the human bodies standing in the room, and then the ones outside of it. Careful draws, light ones, nothing that would damage them in the least.
But it wasn’t enough. She had fixed some of the damage, but it only slowed Glain’s defeat; it couldn’t prevent it. She sculpted the power, manipulated it into a tiny structural matrix and guided the tissues to build around it. The torn vein sealed. Morgan began breaking down the blood that had leaked into Glain’s chest cavity, burning it into energy and feeding that energy back into the ring. Once that was done, and Morgan could see that Glain’s heart was laboring strongly again, she went to the next challenge.
The damage to Glain’s liver and lungs seemed grave, and so she set to work again, bit by bit. She hardly felt it when her own connections began to fail, when the energy she pulled began to flow more slowly. When its character began to shift. She did feel the ring pulsing on her left hand, a steady warning that grew in intensity as she ignored it and kept working, had to keep working because she could feel Glain’s body sliding into shock from the effort to heal.
Morgan had a strong flash of her nightmare, of drowning, of darkness blotting out the sun, and she poured reckless amounts of energy through the ring, accelerating the knitting together of Glain’s wounded organs, until she felt a sharp, agonizing stab of pain lance up her arm and into her brain, and broke free with a cry.
She was shaking so badly she almost pitched off the chair to the floor—would have done, if Scholar Wolfe hadn’t been there to catch her. And she was cold, so cold, and his brightness shone like a torch to her.
She put her hands on his face and breathed him in like a gasp of pure, fresh air.
She took life.
You will not.
The ring caught fire on her h
and, burned so painfully that she flung herself away and hit the wall. She sank down to a slumped sitting position, unable to do anything to prevent it. Wolfe had stumbled, too, and was now clinging to the bedpost for support. He looked wide-eyed and wild. Terrified in a way she couldn’t remember ever seeing him. “Morgan, stop!”
She was still reaching for his brilliant energy, even at this distance. Trying to consume it. And the ring was preventing her from doing any more damage.
She forced herself to stop, though it felt like falling into the deepest pit in the world, and leaned back against the wall to sob. She cried for the sin she’d just committed, or tried to commit, because now that she came back to herself she knew it was a wrong as great as anything she could have ever done. As the ring had warned her.
On the bed next to her, Glain let out a low, soft groan, opened her eyes, and whispered, “What happened?”
For a moment no one moved, and then Morgan stumbled to her feet. She looked down at the ring she wore. She could tell the glow was dim, the blood spot darkened. It needed recharging. It needed more than she could give.
Calm down, the ring whispered. Breathe. Power flows around you. Power will come. Do not demand it.
“I have to go,” she told Wolfe. She felt sick and weak, but she didn’t want to stay here. There was something about Wolfe, something shimmering inside him that wakened a hunger inside she didn’t like. He was the child of two powerful Obscurists, and though he’d never manifested power of his own, there was a potential energy inside him that she could almost taste. It made her thirsty for the relief of it. “Thomas needs me today. I can’t keep doing this, Scholar. Don’t ask again.”
“If I hadn’t, she’d be dead,” he said. “But you’re right. Best you go, then,” he agreed. “Morgan. Thank you.”
She moved to Glain’s bedside and clasped her friend’s hand. Glain’s color was better, and there was a shadow of strength in the way her fingers tightened. “Thanks,” she said. “Apparently that was dramatic.”
“A little,” Morgan said. “You’ll be all right now. Just don’t—”
“Get in the way of another bullet? I’ll try.” Glain’s eyes focused and searched Morgan’s expression. “You’re as bad as Jess, you know. Courting death when it doesn’t come calling.”
“It always comes calling. I’m popular that way.” Smiling felt empty, but at the same time, it helped. “Take care, Glain.”
“And you, Morgan.”
Glain was already falling asleep when Morgan fled the room, away from Scholar Wolfe’s too-bright presence and into the atrium of the house. There was a garden through the central door, and she went that way. Waterfalls splashed into a cleverly designed pond, and sleek, shimmering fish glided under the surface. She sat down on the edge and closed her eyes. Around her, the room was glowing in lines and surfaces; the fish were individual moving lights. Quintessence all around her, as the ring had promised. She opened herself and waited, and the power began to flow toward her. Don’t pull, the ring whispered. Allow nature to balance itself.
It takes too long, she argued. The ring seemed utterly unmoved by the concept of time. I have to hurry! I’m needed.
You are unique. But not alone. And demands are not needs. I entered this ring as a frightened soul to escape my death, only to discover that death is hardly even the beginning of anything at all. We are so much more than flesh, Morgan. Allow yourself to feel this.
“I’m arguing philosophy with a ring,” she said out loud, and surprised herself into a laugh. Her fingers were in the water, drifting like pale weeds, and a fish nibbled gently at them, then swam away when she moved. There was peace in this place. Maybe there was peace everywhere, if she’d slow down to look.
There was a sound of footsteps from the doorway.
It was Jess.
She rose to her feet when she saw him because for a startling moment she thought he was a ghost. His own brother’s ghost. He looked starkly pale, changed somehow. And she could sense the damage from here. No. No, not Jess . . .
“Morgan,” he said, and came toward her. The closer he came, the more she felt the sickness that had rooted itself deep into him. He was bleeding quintessence; she could see it like a cloud floating away from him.
And then he was embracing her, and she felt the ring taking his fog of escaping life. It wouldn’t harvest from inside him, but this . . . this was different. The quintessence he was losing was being wasted. The ring was simply absorbing it.
Jess was broken. Cracked like a glass. It took her breath away, and she wanted desperately to help him. She reached for power.
Hit an unyielding wall.
No, the ring said. Not for this.
She’d healed Glain. She could heal Jess, too. Surely, she must. Because she loved him.
Jess’s fate is his own. No one can change it. He lives or dies because of his own actions, not yours.
It felt breathlessly true. She had tears in her eyes, and they burned with that truth. Glain’s wound had been inflicted on her. Jess’s had been a conscious choice.
She couldn’t take that from him.
“You’re hurt,” she whispered. She buried her face in his shoulder, and his arms tightened around her. “Oh, Jess. Why?”
“I’ll be all right,” he told her. “I’ve seen the Medica. Got treatments. I’m instructed to take it easy for a while.”
“And will you?”
He laughed. It sounded grim. “Now? With all that’s going on? How can I?”
“No!” She shoved him backward, which surprised him, and he caught himself as he staggered. “No, you don’t get to kill yourself like this! You will not!”
“Hey! Hey, easy!” He held up both hands in surrender. “All right! I won’t. I’ll rest. I promise.”
“Don’t coddle me!”
“I’m just—”
“You’re just humoring me and we both know it.” She took in a deep breath. “How bad is it?”
He didn’t answer. He slowly lowered his hands. Watched her.
“That bad?” She knew it already, but the fact that he knew . . . it hurt. “Jess.”
“I had to do it,” he said. “Wolfe would have killed himself trying. I had a better chance. I’m not sorry I did it. Wolfe said it was important.”
She despised Wolfe in that moment, but she couldn’t deny that it had been important. She and Thomas had found what they needed from it. “Do you want me to tell you what they really said?”
“No.” He shrugged. “I have a chance. That’s better odds than Brendan got.”
Brendan. The brothers had been two stars circling each other in an orbit, and now that one was gone, the other had lost its anchor. Spinning wildly out of control. “I’m sorry about him,” she said. “So sorry, love. He didn’t deserve that.” You didn’t.
“He’d have never guessed he’d go out a hero.”
“Well, you don’t have to follow him. Rest. Please?”
“I will,” he said. “You—why are you here? I thought you’d be at the Iron Tower.”
“I was. Eskander set me to work with Thomas, but we both were so tired. Then Glain—”
“You came for Glain. Yes, of course you would have. You always come when we’re in trouble.” He stepped toward her again, and this time he kissed her, and she melted into it. His lips were firm and soft and sweet and she loved the way he held her, but it still felt . . . wrong. Empty, in a way, as if the bridge that had once connected them had fallen away.
He broke the kiss and pressed his forehead to hers. “I’m sorry.” He whispered it, as intimate as the kiss. “I wish we were . . . you know.”
“I—” She didn’t know what to say. What to do. She knew in her heart that the two of them fit, and yet they didn’t; they loved, and yet it was a patchwork kind of love with holes and gaps. He was what she should want; she knew tha
t. But she also knew it wasn’t enough for her. Or for him. “I wish we were, too. I’m sorry, Jess. I think we were right for a while.”
“But not forever.”
“No. Not forever.”
The laugh he managed sounded mangled and rusty. “Aren’t we supposed to be in love forever? Isn’t that how it works?”
“I don’t know how it works,” she said, and she meant it. “Are you going to be all right?”
He stepped back, and she could see the armor go on. It wasn’t his own; this had a brassy, brash edge that was all his brother’s. “Me? I’m always all right,” he said. “Take care of yourself, Morgan. I do care. I always will.”
She nodded. She wasn’t sure she could speak. There was a panic whirling inside her, a wild, off-balance need to make this right, to fix it and go back to the way things were, to safety and comfort, and what was wrong with craving those things even if there wasn’t love along with them . . . ?
She forced a smile and said, “Good night, Jess.”
There were tears burning in her eyes as he walked away, and she wanted to stop him. She wanted to save him.
But she knew that wasn’t right, and she didn’t need the ring to remind her of it.
“Good-bye,” she whispered.
But he was already gone.
EPHEMERA
Text of a handwritten letter from Obscurist Vanya Nikolin, smuggled from the Iron Tower and delivered by courier to the Archivist in Exile. Indexed later to the Codex as historical record.
I have succeeded in your requests to a point, Archivist, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to make the changes necessary without attracting the notice of the Hermit himself or his apprentice. I am working as quickly as I can, but I must be cautious. One mistake and I will be removed from the Iron Tower completely, possibly even imprisoned. I think I can avoid that by shifting the blame to one of my assistants, and I have seeded some damning evidence in their journals should this occur, but please understand that we must go carefully.