“You want me to fake his death?” Ysira narrowed her eyes. “What next? Have you thought that far ahead?”
“If we do nothing, he’ll die.” Seth’s voice drowned hers out, enough that she stopped trying to talk over him. “If not from this, from the Harvest. If Ged’s figured out what he is, before long, so will the Church. I know you’re not a part of his life, and I respect that. But we were friends once. And I love that boy as if he were my own son. Please, Ysira. Please trust that this is our last, best option.”
Ysira had some difficulty seeing herself as Neri’s mother, but as
one of the two people responsible for bringing him into this world, she owed him. She would always owe him.
She heard herself say, “I’ll do it.”
Seth’s shoulders sagged. “Thank the gods.”
“Thankme,”said Ysira, struggling to pull herself together. “But I have one condition.”
“I’ll pay you. Whatever you ask.”
“I don’t want your coin. I’ll help you on the condition that you do not tell Neri—” She stumbled over the name she’d given him. “He can’t know who I am.”
She could not make him hate her. “You have my word,” Seth said.
Jacen’s gaze, meanwhile, never left hers. Ysira lifted her chin, matching that intensity, and asked him, “What does Ged mean to do, should he obtain this . . . weapon?”
Jacen’s throat bobbed. With a sideways glance at his friend, Seth answered for him. “He means to use it in a coup. He thinks it could kill a god.”
He said it rather dismissively, and Ysira would not have believed it either—if not for the expression on Jacen’s face. What manner of horror had they stumbled upon?
She said, “I’ll leave at nightfall.”
“Thank you,” Seth said again, but Jacen remained silent.
He must have fallen far. Long after Ysira left the Citadel, she’d gotten acquainted with his novitiate, Elyas. What happened to Elyas would damage anyone, and Ysira was unsure she’d be able to live with herself, had it been her fault. Based on Jacen’s drawn complexion and the way his hands shook, she would hazard that he started his day with a drink. Or several.
Ysira had had her dealings with exorcists and their demons, but there was always something different about Jacen.Something dangerous, made more so by his brokenness. He had edges now, where a careless person might get cut. Maybe he wasn’t even aware of it—or maybe he was, and he thought this would help. One small act of defiance to bridge the unbearable chasm between who he should have been and what he had become instead.
She hated how deeply she understood.
7
EXODUS
YSIRA
Following a rushed and unceremonious release from jail, Ysira returned to Ogden’s clinic. It was one of the few buildings in the Knots with multiple stories, one of them—off-limits to everyone but the healer himself—underground. Ysira had a room on the upper level, her home for the last ten years. Through a window overlooking the empty desert she could see the twin spires of the old city of Zal Fel. The black sun sank between them as it set.
She gathered a satchel of provisions and her vast assortment of knives. She slung her glaive across her back, wrapped a thin scarf around her head and face to keep out the dust, and crept toward the back door. She’d meant to avoid Ogden—and his questions—but his low, acerbic Dalish accent called after her, “Ysira.”
The healer was grey-haired and bearded, with deep-set hazel eyes. He’d always been circumspect about his age, but had to be over seventy. He motioned for her to follow him to a curtained treatment area. He changed his dark gloves with his back to her,from one of his many stashes throughout the clinic. Ysira had never seen him without them.
He sat beside the cot, occupied by a comatose young man in threadbare clothes.
“Still can’t wake him?” Ysira asked. “How long has it been?” Ogden frowned at the patient. “Three days.”
“This is the one who said something crawled inside his head? I’d think whatever drugs he took would have worn off by now.”
“So one would think.”
Ysira leaned over to examine the patient. He was obviously quite unwell, with clammy skin and breath so faint, it was easy to imagine he’d died—if not for the occasional twitches and grimaces that suggested intense pain.
“If it was me,” she said, “I’d want to be put out of my misery.”
