I took the mortar. Inside, the bleached finger-bones of a traitorous Hearthcrafter I’d dealt with years ago were already brittle. I began to grind them, thecrunch-snap-grindechoing in the silent cellar.
“The girl will return,” I told Vesper, sprinkling iron filings into the bone dust. “She has a martyr’s heart. It’s a fatalcondition. She thinks she left to save him, but guilt is a powerful tether. She’ll come back to try one last desperate act of healing.”
I knelt by the old ritual circle etched into the stone floor. It was a standard containment array: boring, defensive, Stormgarde work. It was designed to push forces out. I dipped my finger into the mixture of bone and iron. “We need to invite the powerin.”
With sharp strokes, I began to alter the runes. I drew a line through the symbol forBarrierand redrew it asConduit. I twisted the sigil forEarthuntil it warped intoHunger.
“Lysa Emberlin is a Transmuter,” I explained to Vesper, who stood still, watching me with blank, adoring eyes. “She doesn’t just stop magic; she reorganizes chaos into order. When she comes back, she will try to pull the entropy out of Fenrik. She’ll try to heal the breach.”
I pressed my hand to the cold stone, imagining the surge.
“And when she does... when she pours all that golden light of hers into the dragon to break the curse...” I dragged a jagged line of grey dust to the center of the circle, directly to where I would stand. “...this array will catch it. I won’t just contain the collapse, Vesper. I will drink it.”
I stood up, wiping the dust from my hands onto Vesper’s spectral dress. She didn’t flinch. I liked that about her. People flinched and people judged. Vesper understood that greatness required messy work.
“They will be the fuel,” I said, looking at the altered circle. “Fenrik the vessel, Lysa the spark, and I will be the engine.”
“Am I beautiful, Vesper?” I asked, turning to my shadow-maid.
Vesper nodded slowly, her smoky form undulating.
“Liar,” I said affectionately, and with a wave of my hand, I unraveled her. She dissolved into grey mist, screaming silently as she faded back into nothingness.
twenty
Lysa
The walk to the Apothecarium usually took ten minutes, but since last night, the world outside Maren’s shop had twisted into something from a fever dream. I kept my head down, but I couldn’t block out the smell. The river, our beautiful Silver River that sang over the stones, didn’t smell like water anymore. It stank of what I could only describe as wet ash. When I dared to look at it, my stomach rolled. The water had thickened, sluggish and heavy, moving slow. It didn’t splash against the bank; it just slithered.
A tremor shuddered through the soles of my boots, a deep thrumming from the earth, as if the ley-line beneath us was groaning in agony. Above me, the iron lantern bracket on the baker’s shop rattled, shaking a fine dust of mortar onto the cobblestones.
“Easy,” I said, stepping around a pile of debris.
A flash of movement in the brush near the water caught my eye. I stopped, crouching instinctively. A red fox lay in the mud, its body seizing in unnatural spasms. I reached out, then snatched my hand back. Weeping from the creature’s eyes and mouth were fine, silver-black metallic threads. It was the same dark geometry that I’d seen writhing under Fenrik’s skin. The manor’s sickness seemed to bleed out.
“Damn Stormgardes,” a voice grumbled nearby.
I straightened, pressing myself into the shadow of an awning as two dockworkers hurried past, hauling crates away from the water.
“Fenrik’s father chose the manor over the town thirteen years ago,” the older man spat, hiking the crate higher. “Drained the local lines to save his precious pile of rocks. We never recovered from the last collapse, and now the son’s finishing the job.”
“Reckon we should leave?” the younger one asked, eyeing the river.
“And go where? The roads are shifting, lad. Just keep your head down.”
I patted the pocket of my coat, feeling the cold glass of the vial Kelda had pressed into my hand.This will ease his pain.
I needed to know what kind of ease she was offering, so I turned down a narrow alleyway, slipping away from the river into the crooked cluster of shops known as the Alchemist’s Quarter. I bypassed the respectable establishments and headed for a door painted a garish, peeling purple. A sign hung askew above it:Barnaby’s Brews & Bothers.
You didn’t knock at Barnaby’s, people with the right reputation shoved the door open.
A wave of scented smoke, lavender and burnt toast, hit me instantly.
“Don’t come in! It’s unstable!” a voice squeaked from behind a counter stacked high with bubbling glassware.
Barnaby, a man who looked like a startled owl with his round spectacles and tufts of white hair standing on end, was presently holding a lid down on a cauldron that was vibrating aggressively.
“Barnaby,” I said, stepping over a puddle of glowing green slime.
