They passed a maze of gray limestone and barred cells, descending to the underground levels of the prison, and stopped before a studded iron door.
“We had to isolate him before he infected anyone else, so don’t get indignant,” Ythras muttered while officers unbolted the cell. “Even he knows it was for the greater good.”
Ducking her head, she entered the squalid room and found a man on a pallet, his frame gone to seed. She held back a flinch at his left eye, pus-soaked and eaten through.
He raised a hand as she approached, opening his mouth to show her the nub of his tongue, then wrote on the slate beside him. He held it up.I’m infected.
“That’s alright. I’m a Petitor. I’m here to see the swarm you saw that day.”
He nodded dully.Will it hurt?
“No, I’ll just need to touch your head.” She crouched beside him and pulled back the sleeves of her robes to display her armilla. “May I?”
At his nod, she withdrew the pin slotted into her armilla and pricked her thumb.Tasumfor the Fourth Threshold’s steady stream of power, andzostafor Examination were already alight. She pressed her bleeding thumb into two more runes:herarfor Probing andastomandfor Materialization, pulling out memories for public view. Silver flared in the grooves of the runes, a weak light in the cell’s gloom.
She gently gripped the farmer’s head and closed her eyes. The world faded, Ythras and his men replaced by an unrelenting quiet.
She opened her eyes.
Every mind reflected its owner’s temperament. She wondered what the farmer’s must have looked like when it had been whole. She stood in a dilapidated barn. A series of stalls extended out on either side. The wood crumbled at a touch, rotted from the inside. Occasional rumbles shook the floor, likely a result of beetles gnawing at the man’s brain.
Wrath and Ruin. She went for the closest stalls, gripping and releasing latches upon glimpsing flashes of unrelated memory. A score of doors later, she paused at a vision of a black, seething cloud.Found you.She undid the latch and stepped inside.
Sunlight stabbed his eyes as he emerged from the barn. He was going to have to kill the cow. The beetles had stuck in her well and good, and it wasn’t like the healers would get them out when they had to prioritize people.
“Fucking gods don’t give a shit,” he spat. A cloud passed over the sun as he said it. He snorted. “Don’t tell me you’re actually listening.”
He looked up and froze.
A roiling crimson mass swept past, arrowing into the eastern fields with furious determination.
Ruin’s damned tits. No! He opened his mouth to yell for help. A buzz and an impact at the back of his throat. The acidic burst of a venom sac. Then, half the cloud descended on his field.
Sarai wrenched herself out of the farmer’s head, swallowing hard. “I have it. Give me a moment.”
With a deep inhale, she dove back in and prepared to Materialize the memory when a violent bang sounded behind her.
What in havïd?Clutching her pounding heart, she stared at the lone stall door flapping on its hinges yards away. The latch seemed to have burst open.Perhaps it wasn’t a good idea to enter a brain actively being eaten alive.But she’d been in the heads of dying men before—former Metals Guildmaster Helvus for one—and never seen a mind start acting up on its own.
Hesitantly approaching the swinging door, she reached out, then pulled her hand back in.Best not to meddle—the door hit her palm on its way out. Her stomach gave a violent lurch just as the floor dissolved.Ohshit.
A riot of color bloomed behind her eyelids. The barn and its stall doors vanished. Sights, sounds, and smells warped in a frenzied scream before her knees suddenly hit cobblestone.
What in all ten hells is this?Standing up, she dusted her palms and jumped when a raeda whizzed by, narrowly avoiding running her over.
“Watch where you’re—” the words stuck in her throat as she took in her surroundings, “going.”
She stood in the middle of a bustling street, somewhere in Komis. Raedas trundled in both directions on the wide road lined with sellers of every good under the sun—bladesmiths, jewelers, potters. The women behind her were selling roast duck, their weathered faces breaking into identical grins as a customer approached. Crisp morning air whistled between the marketgoers.
It was lovely. And entirely wrong.
Panic wove through her ribs.This isn’t a mind.Minds were stationary places, receptables for information. Their owners may unconsciously express them as bookshelves or museums or wine casks, but the basic underpinning of storage never changed.But it isn’t exactly a memoryeither.To Probe someone was to see their memories fromtheirperspective. It was the worst part of the job, having to relive exactly what had gone through a defendant’s head as they committed an atrocity. Sarai stared at her crooked quivering fingers and thin scars webbing all over her skin.Why am I myself?
She stood on her toes to peer above the crowd and gasped when a figure emergedthroughher. The pedestrian continued walking without concern. She stared at her chest, then at the people passing through parts of her as though she didn’t exist. Because she didn’t. Not here.
SHIT.Fear banded cold arms around her chest. The air suddenly felt too thick.Don’t panic. Don’t you dare. She coerced in a breath. This was going to be fine. She simply had to understand whatthiswas. It felt like the blurry dreams she’d been having since the deaths in Edessa had begun. Glimpses of two abused boys plotting freedom. But this felt infinitely more solid.
She inched down the street and spotted the farmer chatting with a fruit seller. This was his memory then. Why did he seem a stranger to it? Telmar had spoken of similar cases where Petitors had Probed folk who were losing their memory to age. Had the beetles done the same damage here?
