“Sir Cameron is his sister?” The bearded knight sounded astonished.
Elder Beth pursed her lips, wrinkles appearing in fine webs, and exchanged a glance with Glenda.
“No, you fool, he’s been transformed again.” Glenda’s tolerance for the bulky men filling the tent was waning.
“I almost kissed a man?”
What in the world had Cameron been doing?
“More importantly, we’ll need a description of the disguised sorcerer,” said the Elder, pointedly ignoring the knight’s distress. She wiped sweat from her brow with an age-withered hand. “Where he went in the town. Which merchants he visited. Whether this was a first-time visit, or one with established relationships. Doubtless he’ll be spooked now, he’s unlikely to return, but if some need was being met?” The elation in Elder Beth’s smile made her look decades younger. “He’ll have to meet it elsewhere.”
Glenda caught on to her meaning. If she’d been on Passionweed, no doubt this would have brought a rush of giddiness, but as it was, she felt only cold satisfaction. They’d have to withdraw troops from their constant attrition with constructs in the foggy borderlands to free up enough men to patrol the surrounding towns—but learning the movementsof the sorcerer, and most importantlywhenhe left his stronghold, could greatly accelerate their plans.
Even without the Passionweed, Glenda managed a small smile of her own.See you soon, Cameron.
CHAPTER 13
In Which I Have a Blinding Headache, and Cannot Bear to See Light or Hear Noise or Basically Experience Any of My Five Senses. In Which My Throat Is Dry and Furry and Tastes of Vomit, and In Which I Am Regretting Every Decision and Non-Decision that Has Brought Me to This Point.
Never trust a mad sorcerer, they don’t actually care about you.
Also, never trust yourself to act rationally while sloppy drunk. It made me wince to remember. The plan had been a success, and I’d blown it! I’d wriggled into the sorcerer’s affections, even squeezed a drop of sympathy from the man, and then thrown it all away. What, because it hadn’t been genuine enough? Of course it wasn’t genuine; none of this was. When had it stopped being about escaping death and regaining my original body?
At least it had gotten the sorcerer to dispense with the needle. After I staggered through the portal, woozy and tired, he had mumbled out a spell that had me fearing the worst. Instead, in a shattering of small pretty lights, the chain fell topieces. I felt a tiny implosion where the needle had lain buried. “There!” he shouted, and that was the last we’d spoken for three days.
In addition to groceries, Merulo had purchased for me cleaning supplies, a comb, a change of clothing, and bedding for my wooden cot, which was nice, as I’d been sleeping wrapped in a moth-eaten curtain. The curtains were soft and thick, which probably meant expensive material, so I made a reconciliatory effort to restring them in their original position downstairs.
(Later that night, I crept out to retrieve the curtains, missing their familiarity. The sorcerer had scarcely missed them the first time, so why not?)
No instruction arrived as to how the cleaning should be attempted, leaving me to experiment. The wooden bucket, I filled at the pump in the kitchen, and with brushes, lard soap, and washcloths, I set to work tackling the accumulated grime. The sheer volume of vulture dung I scraped off the stone floors filled me with annoyance at my former self. Only passingly, though.
I developed a peevish relationship with the constructs, which mindlessly tracked in all manner of filth with their comings and goings. If the sorcerer and I had been on speaking terms, I’d have nagged him about the necessity ofindoorconstructs andoutdoorconstructs. Instead, I took to tackling their legs and forcing their feet up to be scrubbed, much as I’d mucked out the hooves of the Order’s unicorn mounts.
Sometimes, their eye-flames would flash brighter, and I could almost feel the sorcerer peering through their sockets. Their heads turned eerily at these times, trackingmy movements, so I tried to give a performance of blissful domesticity. I even whistled as I scrubbed; it sounded pretty shit even to my ears, though, so I gave up after a while.
My suspicion was that Merulo tracked my position in the castle to ensure we never ran into one another. Every time I plundered the kitchen, it contained only his little gnome-like constructs. Once, I even found his hastily abandoned breakfast, a cooked egg with a serving of meat, which I ate to teach him a lesson. The lesson being: if you’re a coward I’ll eat your breakfast.
My greatest joy came from discovering that the pits beneath the garderobes were magicked—our leavings disappeared down a portal into God knows where, meaning I wouldn’t be expected to clean human waste.
On the evening of the third day, the agony of boredom became too much. Half jogging, so that the sorcerer wouldn’t have time to spy me through the constructs, I flung open doors, hunting, until a little out of breath, I slammed through into the library and found Merulo perched on a cushioned chair with a textbook on his lap. Grimly satisfied, I pulled over a second chair and sat cross-legged in it, waiting.
The sorcerer didn’t look up from his book. “You are a chaos entity, not a human being. And I liked you better as a vulture.”
“Well la de da, good evening to you, too.” Truthfully, I also missed being a vulture; it had been less work. After more silence, I tried again: “What are you reading?”
“You wouldn’t understand it.” The sorcerer licked a finger to turn the page. Above his head hovered an orb of witch-light, painful to look at directly.
“You know . . .” I grimaced, searching for a way tojustify my presence. “I heard that to demonstrate a proper understanding of a subject, you should be able to simplify it enough for a child to understand. Or if not a child, maybe me. Besides, I want to hear more about this ‘Death to God’ business. You’re going to end the world, right?”
“Of course not.” At last, the sorcerer met my eye, which I counted as a success despite his affronted expression. “The Descent perverted the world. I am going to restore it.”
I blinked at his blasphemy. The time before the Descent was widely understood to have been a waking nightmare. “What about the things they say? That the air used to be unbreathable. That in the daytime, it got hot enough to kill a man?”
“We could have fixed it,” Merulo insisted, book forgotten on his black-robed lap. “Given enough time. If it hadn’t been for theoutside interference.” He paused, as if searching for words. “We have the world back, that’s true, with blue skies and fruitful lands restored. But we used to have the entire universe.”
I frowned, not following. In answer, the sorcerer sprang from his chair in a flurry of black fabric, nearly sending his precious book flying. He strode down the aisle of shelves, tracking his fingers along spines. Finding the object of his hunt, Merulo made a small sound of triumph, and withdrew the book with a flourish. Almost reverently, he placed the tome on the floor, and crouching, flipped it open to a double page spread.
I leaned forward, peeking at the diagrams, but before I could properly make out all their odd rings and orbs, Merulo snapped his fingers, and the witch-light was extinguished.
