***
“Samuel?”
I cracked open bleary eyes to find Mary easing an unfinished tea from my loose fingers.
The others were asleep, Ben in his chair, and Grant on the other side of the divan, his legs hanging over the armrest and his head cushioned on a pillow next to my leg.I had slid down into a slump and my neck ached.
Mary set my cup on the table.“I need to show you something.”
My body was loath to move, but my curiosity won out—particularly when Mary extended her hand out to me, fingers waiting to be held.She had a heavy satchel under her other arm.
I slipped my hand into hers and allowed her to lead me down a corridor to a warm kitchen.The fire was banked, bread rising in covered bowls, and the air smelled of woodsmoke, herbs, char and yeast.
We did not speak again until she set the satchel down on a workspace with a weighty clunk.“I stole this from the prison.”
I cleared my throat.Mary had a habit of theft, but, given the greater crime of freeing Ben and my own recent exploits, I hardly had a leg to stand on.
She opened the satchel.Inside was a muddle of lead shot dotted with colored paint and Mereish talismans on sturdy chains.
A familiar Knowing swept over me, and one brush at the Dark Water told me that each of these items had a signature there—a soft, muddied glow.Some were edged with Magni red, others Stormsinger teal, and still others a Sooth’s forest green.The lead balls were the same, their glow matching the color of dots of paint, though their base glow was an unsettling orange, close to the shade that usually hung about dittama, huden, and similar Otherborn beasts.That orange, twined with reds, greens and teals, looked sickly.
I reached for a talisman with a green glow and slowly took it up.My senses shuddered—I felt as though a pillow had been dragged over my ears, rasping and muffling.The Dark Water vanished along with the glows of the various items.
“This acts like my coin,” I mused and set it back down on the worktop.My sense of the Other promptly returned.“Did you look at these in the Dark Water?”
Mary shook her head.“No, but Tane and I sensed something off about them.”
“So you stole them.”
She shrugged.“It felt like the right thing to do.”
I looked at the Sooth talisman for another long moment then picked it back up again.“Mary, can you please step into the Other while I’m holding this?Tell me what you see.”
She visibly hesitated, but relented after a moment of thought.“All right.”
I closed my hand around the new talisman.The world around me remained solid, and, between one blink and the next, Mary disappeared.
I counted my own breaths, timing her absence.One.Two.Three.Four.
Mary reappeared, looking a little nauseous.She raked in a deep breath and braced on the worktop.
“I couldn’t see anything,” she said once she had reacclimatized.
I drew my brows together.“But you were in the Dark Water.You saw nothing there?No lights?”
She shook her head.“I saw everything but you.”
I stared down at the coin in my hand, my mind whirling.Then, abruptly, I held it out to her.“Will you please hold this?”
Mary slowly accepted the talisman.I slipped into the Dark Water— as easy as breathing, now the talisman was away from my skin.
Mary’s usual glow, her and Tane’s eternal reflection in the Dark Water, was nowhere to be seen.
I slipped back into the human world.“Mary, this suppresses a Sooth’s abilitiesboth ways.”
Her lips parted in shock.“That means we can hide in the Other.All of us.There has to be…” She sifted through her gleanings and came up with another talisman identical to the one on the table.Her face fell.“We only have two.”
I nodded, simultaneously intrigued and unsettled.If the Mereish had magecraft this advanced, what did it mean for the war?How long had they possessed it?
