“Don’t know what you mean,” he rambled, hearing his voice grow high and fast as if from a great distance. “And anyway I’d rather stay out here and take in the view. It is lovely, don’t you think?”
Callia’s narrow shoulders tensed at mention of the view, the muscles of her neck standing out sharp above the crisp collar of her clean, white coat.
They always started out so very, very clean.
Callia’s gaze flicked to her attendant’s, scarcely registering Detan as an autonomous human being. To her, he was just another specimen. An unruly one, though, which he hoped was irritating her at least a little.
Pain lanced through his back. He stumbled forward in a blind panic, thrusting weight upon his arrow-skewered leg. Before he could even get a proper curse out the floor rose up and gave him a hearty slap on the cheek, shocking his senses back into sharp awareness. It didn’t last.
The attendant grabbed him by the short chain between his wrists and hauled him half to his feet. Detan grunted as the world went hazy at the edges; what little blood was left in his veins failed to keep up the flow while he was being yanked about.
He was dragged down a dark hallway, the tops of his feet rubbed hot and raw over a plush rug. Funny, he thought. Got a hole in my leg bigger than the Smokestack’s maw, but it’s a little rugburn that wrecks my damned day.
The world tipped on its side and blackness crept to the corners of his vision as his feet left the ground. Detan steeled himself, clinging to consciousness, and felt an unforgiving slab of a hardwood table beneath him, firm and cold. He squirmed, trying to orient himself, and got a flash of directed lantern light in his eyes for his trouble. Detan squeezed his eyes shut and prayed to the blue skies for the blessed fumes of golden needle tea to drag him under soon.
He wished he’d taken unconsciousness up on its offer when he’d had the chance.
“Aren’t you going to knock me out?” he croaked as the attendant wrenched his arms above his head and strapped them down. His legs were already secured. He hadn’t even noticed.
“Not this time,” Callia said. “I will need you conscious to record accurate results.”
Detan bucked against the weight of his chains, wishing for once in his life that he’d eaten anywhere near the same amount Tibal did. If he were just a little bit stronger, a little heavier, then maybe…
A thick leather strap was hauled over his chest, buckled down so tight it compressed his ability to breathe. His breath came in short gasps, his lungs working rapidly against panic and constriction to fuel the rising demands of his body.
Standing beside him, Callia clucked her tongue and laid a cold hand on his forehead.
“You are embarrassing yourself. Settle, and I will loosen the strap.”
He went limp. There was no other option.
The strap eased up a notch, and he filled his lungs with blessedly cool air.
“Golden needle, please,” he begged. Heat rose in his cheeks, but he ignored it. Shame could be handled later. Now, now he just needed to make it through what was coming.
“I said no.” She tapped his forehead once with the tip of her finger and stepped away.
He clenched his fists, counting backwards from ten. Then from twenty. Oh, fuck it, he thought. Without access to selium, his temper was no danger. At least the anger made the pain less.
“You see,” she said over the soft sounds of glass and metal clinking. “Though I have never had the pleasure to work on you personally, Lord Honding, I have read my colleagues’ extensive notes on the matter.”
“Oh good, you can read.” He bit his lip, cursing himself in silence.
“Be quiet. As I was saying, before your rather uncouth escape from the Bone Tower, my colleagues were having a difficult time regulating the intensity of your particular skill.”
Bone Tower? He’d never even known that pit-cursed place had a name. Callia appeared at his side, a long syringe filled with a murky pink-red solution in one hand. The mixture swirled as she gestured, the pale red shot through with opalescent wisps, lightning mixed with smoke. It was a fine syringe, by his estimation. Rare, quality work. The thought didn’t soothe his nerves any.
Detan pressed his lips together to keep his retorts to himself and glanced around the room, trying to find something, anything he could use. There was too much light in his eyes to make out any of his surroundings. Lamps had been shuttered and directed at him, presumably so Callia could see what she was doing. He doubted she was unaware of the isolating effect on him.
She didn’t seem like the type of woman to be unaware of anything at all.
When he had been quiet for a few heartbeats, she continued: “My research, however, has led me in a different direction. This–” she tapped the side of the syringe with the back of a fingernail, “–is my own special mix. Selium blended with the blood of some of our strongest diviners along with some extra little goodies to keep your body from rejecting it. The theory is quite simple. I put forth that combining the diviner’s art of locating even the tiniest pockets of selium, no matter how long dormant the firemount, is an essential skill for the refinement of any deviant talent. With the ability for finesse in place, the deviants will grow.”
He shook with a mixture of laughter and fear. “You want me to become stronger? You trip and stick yourself with that thing? Get a little sel on the brain?”
She sighed. “No, I want you to become more refined. There is a difference. Please do try to pay attention. The treatments, it seems, have the added benefit of increasing the deviant’s desire to be near selium to comfort the mind. Which is why we will begin now. Our path back to Valathea will take us through sel-dry settlements only. Understand?”
He nodded, not trusting his voice.
“Good.” Callia snapped her fingers at her attendant. “Go and fetch Aella.”
The attendant shuffled out of the room, and Callia turned back to her preparations. Detan’s heart hammered as he tipped his head this way and that, struggling to see anything in the room that wasn’t light. He failed, so he fell back to his next best tool. Conversation.
“Afraid to give it a try without the kid around to keep you covered, eh?”
“Hardly. She is an added safety precaution. I can assure you that I can handle anything you attempt myself.”
Detan felt cold, right down to his fingertips. “You telling me you’re deviant too? You’re doing this to your own people?”
She appeared at his side once more, a frown on her delicate, dark face. A face that had never seen more than a candlemark in the sun at a time. “We all have our talents, Honding. And despite what you believe, I am trying to help these creatures.”
“Help? This is–”
The door clanged open and Callia looked up, a pleased smile on her cushy lips. Detan shook his head and scowled. He shouldn’t be giving her any compliments, even if they were just in his own head.
“Aella, sit there.”
There was a soft shuffling of feet to his right side, where he suspected the door must be, and then the creak of wood. Callia nodded.
“The subject may react strongly at first. Be prepared to increase dampening.”
“Yes, mistress.”
Detan clenched his fists. He clenched his jaw. He strained with all his might against the bonds.
The needle found him anyway.
Liquid fire filled his veins, searing him from the inside out. With a roar he lurched against the chains and the leather, heedless to the groan of his ribs under the strap. His eyes flew wide, wider than they’d ever been in his life, taking in every last detail of the room beyond his prison of light.