His mind felt too cloudy now to be open to a reading. He wanted to tell Kreya that, but she was looking at him again the same way she always did, as if she trusted him absolutely. How could she, when he’d failed her so badly, when his mistake had cost her Jentt?
Except Jentt was here, not lost. And Marso didn’t understand that at all. He’d seen him fall. Seen him die. He knew it was no nightmare, even though he’d relived that moment night after night for months after.
Nothing made sense—nothing but the fact that Kreya was asking him to do something. And even though he didn’t want to—wasn’t even sure hecould—he knew he had to try.
“Mint tea?” he requested.
If he could clear his head, he might be able to understand.
He felt a mug in his hands, though he hadn’t thought enough time had passed for water to boil and tea to steep. Lately, he had been losing moments. He knew why, of course.
“Might not work,” Marso said. In fact, it shouldn’t. As confidently as Kreya looked at him, her faith in him couldn’t fix a broken brain. “Broke myself.”
“I told you,” Kreya began. “You—”
“Read so much I broke myself. On purpose.”She needs to know that,he thought. So she wouldn’t be disappointed when he failed. He’d tried to drive the voices out of his head by allowing them all inside at once. The psychic equivalent of blowing out one’s eardrums. It had mostly worked. And for the ones that still persisted, he’d drowned out the worst of them with the sound of the fountain.
He’d liked that fountain.
Nicetrickle, trickle.
He felt a hand on his shoulder. “Marso, you still with us, my friend?” Stran asked.
“You’re a father,” Marso said. He’d seen that sometime, a long time ago. Stran liked to take care of people. That was one truth he was happy he’d seen. “Four children.”
“Three, but yes, I am,” Stran said. “You met my kids when you came in, though you weren’t quite alert. You can meet them again in the morning.”
Marso looked down at his hands and wondered why he was holding a bone. He didn’t want to be holding one. He flung it across the room. And then his hands felt empty and sad. “I’m sorry,” he said to his hands.
“Read it,” Kreya said quietly.
He looked up, surprised.
“Just try,” Jentt told him.
“You don’t have to,” Stran put in. “If it’s too much—”
“Read it,” Kreya said.
“Prynato,” Marso said. And across the room, the bone vibrated and spun. Mist arose, like smoke from a just-lit fire. Heclosed his eyes and continued to see the spinning. He knew how it was done. Open yourself. And the bone would reveal an answer. But to what question? He couldn’t focus his mind to ask. It was so difficult to hold on to where he was, what was happening, even who he was.
But Kreya asked for him, the one question he never wanted to ask yet was always asking:
“Is Eklor alive?”
The bone showed him, both within the mist that had risen above the bone and within the mist in his mind, and he was screaming again.
Chapter Twelve
Joining the others for breakfast in the morning, Zera was wholly unsurprised to hear Kreya confirm that Eklor had appeared in the mist of Marso’s reading. She was also unsurprised to hear Stran deny that it meant what they thought it meant. Readings were subject to interpretation, which was why you needed a fully functioning bone reader who could feel the intent of the bones as well as see the image. Without that, it wasn’t proof of anything. They could have seen the past, Stran said. Not the present. Certainly not the future.
Waving Stran’s objections aside, Zera told the others, “I need to take care of a few things at home if we’re going to go off and save the world again.”
Stran frowned at her, and she smiled sunnily back at him. He was spoon-feeding mashed peas to little Nugget, and the baby used his moment of inattention to grab the spoon and catapult the green mush onto the floor. They were all having breakfast in the kitchen, while Marso tried to sleep for more than five seconds at a time in the other room. Cleaning up the mush, Stran said, “We don’t need to save the world again. It’s already saved. Eklor is dead. Marso... He’s caught in the past. That’s why the reading showed what it did. He needs to let go and move on.”
“There’s no moving on while Eklor lives,” Kreya said. She’d chewed her way through her breakfast as if it had personally wronged her. She was a bit on edge.
“Mightlive,” Jentt said, correcting her.
