I just stared. Nullified? But Baffin’s intent was to amplify magicless humanity. The Guild’s was to amplify already powerful Entwined. Could there be a third purpose?
If there was, Wake had lied to me. Or did he not know?
The woman carried on, “Your threads no longer respond to faux twilight, which is promising. But that may be a temporary effect, of course. We will need to observe you in true twilight before I can draw any conclusions. Now, one deep breath, here we are…”
She crouched and reached to clamp the cloth over my face.
I grabbed her wrist and pulled. She toppled forward, smashing her face on the carved wood of the divan.
I staggered to my feet, jerked the cloth from her grasp and pinned it over her own, disoriented face. She writhed and tried to scream—I clamped her to my legs and held the cloth fast, ignoring how her nails gored my hands and forearms, and how rapidly my body began to quiver with fatigue.
The woman convulsed, scrabbling more weakly, then stilled.
As she fell away from me, I realized my clothing had been changed. I wore something like a sleeping gown, simple and of grey fabric, with buttons all the way down the front. My own clothing, from corset to stockings, was nowhere to be seen.
A sickly, constricting feeling of violation wrapped around me. I furiously tossed the drugged cloth aside and hobbled to the desk, desperate to see what the woman had been looking at when I awoke.
Somehow, I suspected what I would see there. Amid inkwell, notebooks, and bottles was a fresh sheet of paper, newly inked with a diagram of threads on a simplistic but nude female form. The pattern of the threads from her temples to collarbones was unmistakably familiar.
I tore the sheet apart, hands shaking. Beneath was another sheet with the same figure—me—but this time marked with fewer threads, only on her throat. Belatedly, I noticed a time and date in the corner.
I flicked my gaze to the clock on the wall. Five hours ago.
I tossed that diagram aside and looked at the final one. No threads, with the time of notation less than half an hour ago.
I reached up to touch my throat. I felt nothing there. But the lamplight was bright. I would not expect my threads to awaken under these circumstances.
Strengthening, I returned to the woman and put a hand on her bare head. Memories trickled into my mind, but they were gossamer and mist, indistinct in shape and devoid of sound or sensations. That did not bode well. Throat thick, I glanced around and noted the mechanism for the oil lamps, beside the door.
I turned the lamps lower. The sound of my movements, the hiss of flame, and the ticking of the clock were the only sounds. The latter itched at the back of my mind, warning I hadn’t much time, that someone would come along soon, or the woman would wake up—though the last seemed doubtful, given how limp she was.
When I was wrapped in faux twilight, I stood over the Kessan woman. Crouching down, I took both sides of her head in my hands, hard enough to bruise—I hoped—and focused.
More memories swam towards me. I saw myself from her perspective, clothing unbuttoned, cold and exposed. I dug my nails into her skin in vengeance. I saw her writing, a stream of notes and diagrams. Then, finally, Lewis, on a familiar cot. He had still been in the cell when this memory was formed. I could not see back far—this was hours ago, at most.
I dropped the woman’s head roughly and set to ransackingher pockets. I would have taken her clothing, but there was not enough time for that. What I needed were keys.
I found none on her. I returned to the desk and searched the drawers. A clatter. I triumphantly took up a ring of keys, and caught my breath at what lay beneath. A Guild medallion. Lewis’s Guild medallion.
I pocketed both and glanced around the room again.
My gaze slowed on a case against the far wall, glass-fronted and small. Above it was a plaque readingLandsdown Relics, and inside, two pieces of unmistakable blue stone. One was a dodecahedron, though it was not the one Lewis and I had found. The patterns in the stone were signature—just like threads. The other was a palm-sized pendant, covered with small, neat rows of Old Sarren script.
I stormed across the room, snatching up a fire poker as I went. I smashed the case with a single, brutal blow. My strength was truly returning now, and with it my ire.
I shook the artifacts free of glass, clasped them to me, and smashed as many instruments as I could on my way to the door. Their proximity made my altered power hum and my head feel light, but I kept my focus on the task at hand.
A woman’s coat hung beside the door, along with a neat bowler.
I took a moment to twirl up my hair, stuffed it under the hat, and pulled on the coat. I settled my shoulders and attacked the buttons, tightening my resolve with each brass fitting. I shoved the artifacts into the pockets and returned to the desk for more destruction—I threw every notebook and paper that would not fit into my pockets into the fire, and gave it a good stoking.
Then, poker in hand, I stalked into a stone hallway.
I immediately turned my head, letting my hat hide my face, and tucked the poker into the folds of my skirts. A man, just about to turn a corner up ahead, called back, “Miss Thera! The riots have passed Communion Square!”
I gave an affirmative gesture, taken aback though I was, and the man hurried on. Well, riots in the city were no good thing, but they would at least serve as a distraction.
I paused for an instant, looking both ways and trying to decide which direction led to Lewis’s and my cell. One way was grey stone. The other, red.
