“You told me the opposite on theAstuto: that this magicis burning the Mechtlands. That making permanent magic will encourage greater threats. What changed?”
Gunnar’s face was soft, his head bobbing. “Permanent magic is a powerful weapon. Creating it invites threats. But your father is already a threat. I did not know him before. We must create a weapon powerful enough to match him.”
“But you heard Elazar in the villages.” To Lu, Ben explained, “He spoke of a coming light that will bless those who surrender to him and destroy the ones who fight back. He has a plan that he believes will be enough of a sacrifice to make the Pious God grant him unchallenged power—which means people willdie.What if permanent magic is the final piece of his plan?”
“We already know that permanent magic is the final piece to his plan,” Lu shot back. “He wants to make his soldiers unstoppable as they force Grace Loray to submit.There’shis coming light. But if I have permanent magic first? I will be unchallenged. Not him. This was his plan and ours when we were still on your father’s ship. Why would you think it’s changed?”
Ben shook his head, unable to process the level of pain in her eyes. Perhaps she was right. With everything that had happened, Ben had lost sight of the details. Elazar himself had told Ben his great plan in the Grace Neus Cathedral, to create unstoppable defensors.
Still, Ben couldn’t soothe the itch that Elazar had not told him about every facet of his final triumph.
Lu tapped her fingers on her knee. “We can’t get Visjorn blood without Elazar’s knowledge. But we can work on other things once he gives us magic. Maybe it’s temperature, like you said. Or method.”
Ben jerked back, his fire wearing off, leaving him exhausted to his bones.
“We must try,” Gunnar said. “To fight this way. What would you rather do?”
All Ben had was the image of Lu’s bloodstained shirt. The memory of Gunnar’s whimper after his beating. The cheers of the people whose loved ones Elazar had healed in the villages.
Hopelessness beat an empty laugh from Ben’s chest.
Everyone except Ben wanted to use magic in this war. How could he be the only one who sensed how futile it would be? Using magic against Elazar was like tossing buckets of water into a flood—it would add more of the danger that would destroy them.
Monxes brought Lu and Ben the crudest of laboratory supplies. A table, mortars, pestles, and vials of the most harmless plants: some for healing, some for strength, some for movement. They left a book as well—Lu’s worn copy ofBotanical Wonders of the Grace Loray Colony, the bullet hole in its cover an oddly calming link to her life outside this prison.
But she had no use for this book now, knowing how incomplete its information on Grace Loray’s magic trulywas. She knew about reducing plants to increase their potency from what Fatemah had done with Budwig Beans. To cure Shaking Sickness, which was caused by taking too much botanical magic, one needed to take the plants that countered what they had ingested—a realization Lu had come to on her own. Ben had explained on theAstutowhat plants had gone into his healing potion. Gunnar had given them the piece about Visjorn blood, and the notion of specific heat, or the addition of nonplant ingredients, or length of cooking.
Tom couldn’t have learned any of that, even with her slipup in mentioning the Tuncians. So he couldn’t be that close to making permanent magic.
Could the secret lie in the cause and cure of Shaking Sickness? To take, at once, both a concentrated version of a plant and its counterpart with no delay between the absorption of one over the other. Aerated Blossom, a plant that gave levity and flight, counteracted Powersage, a strength-enhancing plant—could distilled versions of both in one tonic balance their effects and give extended, permanent strength and flight?
Monxes provided a pair of tongs similar to what Lu had used to pick the cell’s lock. The curved metal glinting on the table was as if Milo were outside the bars, unlocking the door and ushering her out. He wanted her to try to escape again.
Ben and Gunnar were here, though. This time would bedifferent. They would get out, but they would have to be strategic—and they would need permanent magic.
Lu worked.
At some point, monxes returned with defensors. Maybe a day later, maybe longer, time was impossible to tell. They asked what progress had been made.
“None,” Lu said. Before she could regret it, defensors chained Gunnar and whipped him forty-two times while the monxes prayed to the Pious God for understanding.
“Lu.” Ben was next to her, his voice rough with tears, his matted hair falling around his face. Behind him, Gunnar moaned as he was let down from his chains.
“Some plants are already permanent, in a way,” Lu whispered to a vial of Cleanse Root. She had used Healica to mend her own wounds, but they wouldn’t be able to reach Gunnar, across the hall. “Permanent in that when you ingest a healing plant, your injury does not return. Or—”With Menesia, your memories do not resurface.Lu blocked the discussion Milo had had with her father. “What we want is similar, but to make it so plants continue to work. For them to lie dormant in the body until called upon. That’s right, isn’t it?”
Gunnar cried out and Ben’s eyes snapped shut.
They were all stretched so thin, Lu thought she must be translucent.
Ben dropped onto the cot next to the table. “What do you want me to do?”
She and Ben tried to make Powersage and Aerated Blossom permanent. The difficulty lay in the application—Powersage gave increased strength when absorbed through the skin; Aerated Blossom gave a few seconds of flight when inhaled. They infused Powersage with Aerated Blossom smoke and cooked it over a burner on high, high heat until they had a single dose—but how to apply it? To rub it on the skin? To eat it?
Lu dreamed of Tom. Of him arguing with Kari in their sunlit apartment. Of him working on magic in his own laboratory and making discoveries Lu hadn’t yet realized.
He never came to see her. Whether by Elazar’s choice or his own, it didn’t matter.
Milo and Elazar came. Ben choked out the excuse that he and Lu had ruined their latest batches of magic—but Lu had a vial of mixed Powersage and Aerated Blossom in her boot.
