Exhausted tears prickled at my eyes.I let out a half-relieved, half-pained sigh, and submerged myself in the water.
Tane slipped from my skin and came to stand over the tub.I will keep watch.She didn’t wait for affirmation—she already knew I agreed—before she glided away through the wall.Her voice still drifted through my mind though, unaffected by the distance.And see what else I can sense.There is something here, something beyond mages and harvested ghisten wood.
Something bad?
I cannot say yet.Perhaps not.Rest, Mary.
A strange absence settled over me.Now I was truly alone, with only the thinnest thread of ghisten flesh to connect me to Tane.
I released the sides of the tub, letting the water close over my face.It stung on my cold-burned cheeks but the silence—interspersed only by the distant slosh of water and the rhythm of my own heart—soothed me.
I surfaced when my lungs began to burn and set to scrubbing.My mind wandered, freed by heat and comfort and Tane’s steady vigil.Memories presented themselves, drifting and muted.The prison guard grabbing me by the throat.Benedict collapsing on shore.Samuel staring at me in the doorway of the farmhouse.
The Mereish Magni I’d shot appeared in my mind, clearer than any of the other memories.His power had been so pitiful compared to Benedict’s.I had hardly felt it in the moment before I pulled the trigger and he crumpled into the snow.
I had dealt violence before.I was—quietly, darkly, in a hidden part of my soul—sure I’d even killed, though I’d never watched the life drain from my enemy’s eyes.I had given my tithe of sleepless nights to that reality.
Now, perhaps, I would tithe more.The Magni mage was probably dead by my hand.I hadn’t shot the Sooth—or the othersoldiers—but I felt just a responsible for her death.She had looked at all four of us with such fear, riddled with Benedict’s magic.I had felt her terror, watery and maddening.
But as I rinsed my hair and dried myself with a towel, it was not the memory of that fear, nor even the probable deaths of the Mereish that perturbed me most.
It was my apathy towards them.
TWENTY-FOUR
The High Cleric
SAMUEL
Mr.Scieran, High Cleric, had a deep, rumbling voice that reminded me of dark-paneled studies, strong whiskey and pipesmoke.His accent was calculated and rounded, and his eyes were so green they were nearly black.
“Twoghiseau, one of which is a Stormsinger, and two amplified mages appear from the forest and beg shelter,” he had observed, holding my gaze across his desk at the back of the infirmary.
I was too tired to be startled by his insight.“How do you know?”
“The Saint.”
“She speaks to you?”
“In a way.”His reply was not cold, but his tone made it clear that I would receive no more clarity on that front.
“You are a High Cleric,” I observed, and he nodded.“Clearly, you know my brother and I were amplified, though imperfectly.Can you help us?”
The healer laced his long, fine fingers together on the top of the desk.“I am bound by my vows to protect and help anyone within these gates.”
A knot of tension inside me loosened a fraction.“For that you have my utmost gratitude.But I meant in terms of our corruption.”
Scieran’s brows drew together.“Corruption?”
I searched for another Mereish word and came up short.“TheBlack Tide Cult attempted to amplify my brother and me.It worked, but… we were left broken too.”
The other man sat straighter in his chair, a new caution coming into his eyes.“Then you were not amplified by the Ess Noti.”
The name hit me like a fist.“No.Aeadine immigrants to Usti, Black Tide cultists, stole my brother and I and performed their rituals.The Ess Noti amplify mages?”
“You knowofthe Ess Noti but not what they do?What are you doing in Mere, Sooth?”
I thought quickly.Telling him anything closer to the truth was a risk, but would I ever find anyone with more answers than he had?
