“So it’s fine?”
“Apart from the fact that it’s replacing your arm one part at a time, yes. I would not consider that ‘fine.’”
“Fair point,” I said, getting to my feet. “How fast is it spreading?”
“At exactly the same rate as before.”
“So that spell you tried didn’t help.”
Klara shook her head. “No effect whatsoever. At this point, the only treatments I can think of carry the risk of so much potential damage that I am hesitant even to try.”
I pulled my shirt over my head and tucked it in. “Well, I appreciate the help.”
“I don’t know why you’re thanking me. I have done nothing.” Klara looked at me. “Once again, I recommend that you seek treatment at a dedicated facility. I believe it would still be possible to remove this item with further study.”
“I understand, but that’s not an option.”
“Is being dead an option?”
I paused. “How long?”
“Half a year at the maximum. Probably no more than three months.” Klara nodded at my arm. “The item is overwriting your pattern incrementally, replacing your skin, flesh, bones, and nerves with synthetic material. You are extremely lucky that these materials have so far proven compatible with your physiology. For now at least, your body and your new arm are functioning in symbiosis. The problems will come once it finishes with your arm and starts on your torso.”
“So you think it’ll keep going.”
“There are some indications of negative feedback,” Klara said. “I think it may not spread to replace your entire body. But it will almost certainly spread through your shoulder to your head and chest.”
“What happens if it starts replacing my brain?”
“That is an excellent question. It is also irrelevant.”
“Why?”
“The item has successfully transmuted your arm,” Klara said. “Somehow, your body has managed to integrate these changes into your physiology. However, the more of your body that is replaced, the greater the strain. Your transmuted arm is fully functional, and will remain so. For various reasons, I can predict almost certainly that the same will not be true for your internal organs.”
“So you’re saying . . .”
“Your right lung will be transmuted, followed by your heart,” Klara said. “This will cause them both to shut down. The process is permanent, and once started, irreversible. Your only chance of survival is to have the growth halted before that happens.”
“Which would mean losing access to the fateweaver.”
“Yes. In fact, you should be doing that anyway. I strongly suspect that use of that item’s powers is accelerating the material’s spread.”
“Those powers are the only reason I’m still alive,” I said. “I understand what you’re saying, but right now, I need them.”
“Yes, well, the thing that’s keeping you alive is also killing you,” Klara said. “You will have to choose.”
Once Klara was gone, I sat at my desk for some time, staring down at my new arm. Klara hadn’t told me anything that I hadn’t already suspected. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much I could do about it. I needed the fateweaver, and that was that.
I hoped I’d be able to finish things before the clock ran out. At the fateweaver’s current rate of spread, I should have at least a month. One way or another, that ought to be enough.
—
And have you seen Verus since then?” the Keeper asked.
“I already told you I haven’t,” Luna said.
“Has he contacted you in any way? Items, letters, e-mail?”
“No.”
“Have you contacted him?”
“No.”
“Did he leave you any instructions to contact you?”
“No.”
It was late afternoon on the same day. Morden hadn’t contacted me—I wasn’t expecting to hear from him until the following morning—so I’d been free to spend the day focusing on the Council. It was just as well I had.
The Council were hunting me in several ways. The first and the most basic was by using divination and tracking spells to pinpoint my location directly, at which point they’d send a team to capture or kill me. I’d used a combination of anti-surveillance measures and the fateweaver’s magic to screw up their tracking spells, but with each failure, they were improving. I’d had to spend a good couple of hours today just on blocking their attempts, and it was rapidly approaching the point where avoiding them was going to prevent me from doing anything else. I’d have to do something about it soon.
But while the Council was doing that, they were also hunting me the old-fashioned way. Ever since I’d gone on the run, Keepers had been staking out my old haunts and questioning my known associates. One name was at the top of their list.
“Seems a bit strange,” one of the Keepers said. “You were his apprentice for what, five years?”
“Three,” Luna said.
“And he hasn’t got in touch?”
“No.”
“What, you don’t get on?”
Luna shrugged.
“Answer the question,” the other Keeper said.
“Like I said, I haven’t seen him.”
I was crouched in the window of a first-floor flat across the street from the Arcana Emporium. From my position, I could look down across the street through the shop windows to see the backs of the two Keepers questioning Luna. Luna was behind the counter, my view of her head blocked by the ceiling, but I could see enough to read her body language. No one else was in the shop: the Keepers had flashed badges and shooed all the customers out. A couple were lingering outside, shooting curious looks through the glass.
I was listening in on the conversation through a small speaker unit resting on the floor. The speaker was connected wirelessly to a pair of microphones hidden in the shop. I’d installed them after the Keepers had made their first visit. This was their fourth.
“Where do you think Verus might be right now?” the first Keeper said. Her name was Saffron and she was a mind mage.
“I don’t know,” Luna said.
“When was the last time you saw him?”
“I’ve already told you,” Luna said. “It was before he was outlawed, here at this shop.”
“You haven’t seen him since then?”
“No.”
Mind magic isn’t a lie detector. A mind mage can read surface thoughts without being obvious about it, but to search memories they have to break through their target’s mental defences first. Officially, Saffron wasn’t allowed to do either of those things to Luna without formally charging her with a crime. Unofficially, I was quite sure she’d been reading Luna’s thoughts since the first visit. I’m quite familiar with mind magic, and I’d made sure to teach Luna as much as I could, which meant that, right now, Luna was carefully schooling her thoughts to make sure Saffron could learn nothing useful whatsoever.
Of course, at any point Saffron and her partner Avenor could just decide screw it and drag Luna off to a cell to rip out the contents of her head by brute force. So far, they hadn’t, mainly because they had no evidence linking her to me, but it wouldn’t take much to change their minds.
“Verus is facing the death penalty,” Avenor said. “Once we catch him, he’ll be interrogated. Fully interrogated. Anyone who helped him, they’re getting the same sentence. You understand?”
“Yes,” said Luna flatly.
“You hear anything, you let us know,” Saffron said. “The Council won’t wait forever.”
“Okay.”
Footsteps sounded through the speakers, and across the street, I saw Saffron and Avenor open the door and walk out, leaving Luna alone. Through the speakers, I heard Luna exhale. She stood behind the counter for nearly a minute, then walked to the door, flipped the sign from CLOSED to OPEN, and went back to minding the shop.