Abbee lay there while arterial blood pumped out of the massive wound in her neck.
“What an absolute waste,” the innkeeper said.
“I should’ve killed her the moment you opened the door and found her standing there,” Marin said, her voice sounding far away. “A whole bottle of that sedative is lethal. The only way she could—”
Somewhere in the avalanche of pain, Abbee felt glimmermote explode from her wrists. She heard a thunderous crack in the room as the real pain started. She felt the bones at the top of her spine reassemble. All the little bone chips wormed through her flesh back into place. Her muscle fibers snapped out and reattached. Veins and tendons grew back. Abbee tried to breathe, but something was in the way. Her lungs starved for air. Maybe this was it. The time when she couldn’t heal an injury, and she was going to die.
The two halves of Abbee’s severed windpipe joined. She sucked in a breath. Something stuck in her throat. She coughed, trying to clear it. Pain ripped through her half-healed neck. She choked out a racking, wet hack and half coughed, half threw up. A bloody wet glob smacked onto the floor. Abbee felt her muscle fibers regrowing. She croaked and coughed. Every breath, every rasp, was agony.
“Well, that was exciting,” the innkeeper said. He sounded far away. Abbee heard footsteps on the stairs outside the room.
“Don’t go down there, you idiot,” Marin said. “It felt like standing too close to a golem. You don’t have much time left to lose.”
“I’ll be fine,” the innkeeper said.
Abbee recovered enough to realize she was alone in the room. The explosion. The two wizards had warped away from her. She coughed again and spat more blood. It still hurt to breathe, but the pain was fading as her gift did its work. Abbee turned her head toward the doorway as the innkeeper appeared on the bottom step.
He gawked at Abbee. “She’s still alive.”
Marin leaned past him and stared. Her dark eyes were astonished. “What the …? That’s—”
Abbee remembered everything now. The wizard that time in the Yard District Precinct, the night of the Three Points Massacre. The one in the black robes. The one with the crooked nose. A wizard. Not just any wizard—a White Ringer.
“Ilo,” Marin said. “Ilo, she’s … This is impossible. She’s not Forged, we already ruled that out. What is this?”
The innkeeper, Ilo, stepped down onto the floor. He pressed his hands against his stomach and squinted at Abbee. He looked around the basement. Back at Abbee. “Hmm.” He stepped out of view.
“What are you doing?” Marin asked.
Ilo appeared in the doorway again, carrying a small cask. He held it out to Marin. “Here, hold this.”
“What for?” Marin took the cask, bracing herself for a heavy object. She looked surprised when Ilo handed it to her. Shook it. “This is empty.”
Abbee coughed again. The pain was nearly gone. She inhaled deep, full breaths. The back of her head felt wet. She knew she was in a pool of her own blood, but all she could do was lay there and breathe. She felt like she’d just sprinted all day long.
Ilo’s face appeared overhead. “Incredible. Complete tissue regeneration.”
“Makes me wonder what would happen if I completely severed her neck,” Marin said.
“Please don’t,” Ilo said. “That could be truly fatal, and then I wouldn’t get to talk to her.”
Marin searched Abbee’s face. “You’re the one from Akken. Annie or something. The one people say can heal her own injuries. I always thought you were a charlatan. Not real.”
“I thought the same,” Ilo said. “Had to have someone in the crowd doing the healing for her, right?” He chuckled. “I was half-right. She does have someone in the crowd. The crowd. But there isn’t anybody around now, after we warped away. She used the next best thing.” He gestured at the basement. “I’ll have to check to see how many barrels are empty now. Probably a lot.” He swore. “The best stuff is over where we tied her up. Damn it, some of that is irreplaceable. I had a Morat red that you can’t get anymore.” He pursed his lips. “I wonder what would happen if we tried to kill her in the middle of a desert. How far can she reach?”
“Maybe later,” Marin said. She glanced down. “Look at the mote on her. It taxed her quite a bit.”
“I would assume so,” Ilo observed. “A spike through the neck is fatal.” He plucked at his coat. “Well, this is ruined. You know I go through a lot of effort to make these look worn out, right?”
“And you can make more,” Marin said. “I thought that she might be the wizard helping the hunters.”
Ilo snorted. “I would’ve thought the fact that she kept grabbing for the sliver would’ve tipped you off that she wasn’t a wizard. She had no idea what it was.”
“Well, somebody’s making them these fancy bolt throwers.” She nudged Abbee’s leg. “I want to know where you got this one.”
“And how you know Ipsu,” Ilo added. “Along with where he’s been all these years.”
Abbee found her voice. “All … all these years? You mean he hasn’t been with you?”
“What? No. I’ve not seen him for almost twenty years.”
“We stayed in this very inn about fifteen years ago,” Abbee said. “You weren’t here back then?”
Ilo shook his head. “My ownership is a little more recent.”
“So me running into you here is luck?”
“Well, no,” Ilo said. “Let’s just say I have a vested interest in this establishment. We’ll leave it at that. And we were talking about you, not me. Where did you get this bolt thrower?”
Abbee pushed herself to her feet. Her own blood slicked her face and her clothes. “I got it off a dead hunter.” She looked around. “Do you have a chair or anything? This always wears me out. And maybe a towel or something. And my name is Abbee. Not Annie. Abbee.”
Marin grunted. “We’d have heard if someone had killed a hunter. That’s big news.”
“It was in the slate quarry,” Abbee said. “In Akken.”
“So?”
“That’s the Golem Guild. They wouldn’t want the attention. They probably buried the bodies in unmarked graves out in the woods.”
“Bodies?” Ilo asked. “Plural?”
Abbee nodded. “Two of them.”
“You killed two hunters? By yourself?”
“They got stepped on by a golem,” Abbee said. “I managed to pull a bolt thrower off one.”
Marin gave her a considering look. She glanced at Ilo, who shrugged.
“She’s not lying that I can tell,” he said.
“But she’s being evasive for some reason,” Marin said. “I don’t like it.”
“I recognize you,” Abbee said to Marin. “Not him. You.”
Marin squinted. “I’ve not seen you before.”
“You didn’t see me,” Abbee said. “And I was little. I saw you the night of the Three Points Massacre, in the Yard District Precinct. I was their gofer. You came to fetch the first constable. Well, before he got promoted and turned into a bastard. You’ve fixed your nose since then. You’re a wizard. A Ringer.”
Marin’s frown deepened. “If you want to keep your neck attached to your body, don’t ever say Ringer again.”
“We’re not anymore,” Ilo said.
“You too?” Abbee asked. “You’re a Ri—one of them?”
“I was,” Ilo said. He flexed his knobby fingers and held them up in front of his face. “I had straight fingers back then, and they didn’t ache in bad weather.”
“Why were there two hunters in the quarry?” Marin asked.
“They were chasing Ipsu,” Abbee said.
“How do you know?”
“Because he was there.”
Marin snarled. Another beige sliver appeared out of thin air in front of Abbee’s face. Abbee turned her head and saw two more on either side of her.
“Be straight with us,” Marin said, “and tell us the whole story. None of this evasion and four-word answers. Tell us what we want to know, or I’ll drive these through your face and neck until there’s nothing left for your gift to heal.”
“Glad to see you still live up to your reputation,” Abbee said.
The slivers around her head trembled.
“Okay, okay.” She sighed. “Ipsu took care of me after Towerfall. He got me out of the city. He—”
“Who else did Ipsu save that night?”
“Just me. I mean, I didn’t see anyone else. Ah, except a wizard. I never caught her name. She had a staff. Something floated on the top of it. I never got a good look at it. She and Ipsu seemed to know each other. I only saw her that one night. Never again. Which is okay. I think her staff made me sick.”
Ilo folded his arms and looked at Marin. “That’s concerning.”
“We’ll have to figure out why he’d associate with a sentinel later,” Marin said. “Why would Ipsu pick you out of an entire city to save?”
“I think he found me by accident,” Abbee said, remembering Ipsu’s dark shape at the top of the mover pit all those years ago. She wanted to know what they meant by “sentinel,” but it sounded like wizard business, and so far they hadn’t been all that forthcoming. “I think he was looking for someone else. He never said, and I never asked. I was just happy to be away from that place. He taught me to hunt, to track, to fight. We traveled all over the continent together. Then he left. When I needed him most, too. He up and vanished.” She almost added for no reason, but that would’ve been a lie. “He left me near Akken. I went into the city to look for him. Never found him. No letter, no contact, nothing, and then he shows up over a decade later and bleeds to death in my kitchen. The hunters tracked him there. They weren’t interested in talking. I ran.” Abbee gestured at the pile on the table. “Almost all of that is his.”
Ilo picked up the quartz-tipped rod. “And this?”
Abbee nodded. “He had it when I was little. I’ve no idea what it’s for. I wasn’t allowed to touch it.”
Ilo nudged the silver ring. “What about this?”
Marin folded her arms, and her face somehow became even more standoffish.
“He had that on him when he died,” Abbee said. “Hidden in a sock. I’d not seen it before. Nor the thumb light.”
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Marin and Ilo exchanged a long look. “Why did you come to Kiva?” Marin asked.
“Besides Akken being unsafe,” Abbee said, “I figured this was the best place to ask about the thumb light. Seemed like Kivan lamp sellers might know something. Never got to ask, though. Ran into you first. Did you make that lamp?”
Marin shook her head. “We know better than to advertise our presence with something like this.” She picked up the lamp. Flicked it open. Light stabbed the ceiling. Marin closed the lamp and turned it over in her fingers. “It’s new. Less than a year old.”
“Who could’ve made it if not you?” Abbee asked.
“We’re not the only wizards left in the world,” Ilo said. “The Veronna network has someone working for them. At least one wizard, maybe more.” He picked up the bolt thrower. “This is finely made. I know of several people from the old days who could’ve made this. It would be bad if any of them were working with the network.”
“Who? Does one of them own that ring?” When Ilo’s eyebrows shot up, she added, “I overheard you talking. You know whose it is. Something about you’ve not heard any word for years.”
Ilo harrumphed. He picked up the message rod with the impervious cork. “I’m assuming you can’t open this either.”
“You can’t?” Abbee asked.
“No,” Ilo said, shaking his head. “There’s a ward on it, keyed to a certain individual, and only they can remove the cork. We both tried. If I try to force it, the whole thing will disintegrate. So, Ipsu had a warded message rod, a fortune in gems, a brand-new thumb light, this weird quartz thing, and my … this ring.” He grimaced at Marin. “You know what this means.”
Marin glowered at him. “No.”
“You were about to call that ring something,” Abbee said.
“It doesn’t matter,” Marin snapped. “We’re not, Ilo. You’re not.”
“He’s not what?” Abbee asked. She gestured at the floating slivers around her head. They were all very pointy. “Look, can we drop these?”
“I’ve still not decided whether to let you live,” Marin said. “So no.”
“If I can’t,” Ilo said, “and you definitely won’t, how about we send her?” He nodded at Abbee. “She seems durable, and the hunters don’t like her. She’s not on their side, so she’s on our side.”
“I’m not on anybody’s side,” Abbee said. “And send me where?”
“We don’t even know what she is,” Marin said. “Don’t you think we should figure that out first?”
Abbee felt dizzy. “I’m going to be passed out on the floor soon if you don’t get me a chair and something to eat,” she warned.
Ilo snapped his fingers. Abbee jumped, given what had happened the last time a wizard had snapped their fingers in her presence. Something thumped onto the floor behind her. She looked and saw a plain wooden chair. One of the chairs from upstairs.
“Thank you,” Abbee said, sitting down.
“Hold out your hands,” Ilo said.
“What for?” Abbee asked.
Ilo nodded at her, and she did as she was told. He gestured, and a small bubble of warm yellow light enveloped her hands. The light vanished, and a plate replaced it. Abbee saw a big fish filet and roasted vegetables. Or what was left of them. The filet was withered and dry. The vegetables looked like all the moisture had been squeezed out of them. The memory of a dark room and withered bodies invaded Abbee’s mind. She gagged, set the plate on the table, and pushed it away.
“You don’t like fish?” Ilo asked. He leaned over and inspected the plate. “Oh.” He looked up. “The kitchen is directly overhead. You … oh, for crying out loud. That means my apple pie is probably ruined.” His face fell. “I was looking forward to a late night snack.”
“So, people,” Marin said, “then food. Probably plants. But water, too?”
“Organic material first,” Ilo said, nodding. “Liquids after that, I’m guessing. If she’s like a golem, that is. Remember the golems that all stopped in the Charrin during Towerfall? Ruining our wine cellar tracks with that behavior.”
“We’re lucky we have that wine cellar,” Marin said. “Otherwise, we might not have warped away far enough.”
“What are you?” Ilo asked Abbee. “Your talent, I mean. We’ve never seen anything like it. Healers can’t heal themselves, but you can.” He gave her a penetrating look. “You presented during Towerfall, didn’t you? During the golems.”
“That’s right,” Abbee said. “Someone once called me a backward healer. I can’t heal anyone else but myself. And I don’t do it on purpose.”
“What do you mean?” Marin asked.
“I can’t control it. I’ve seen movers and torches direct their gifts. They can’t do anything if they’re unconscious. Mine doesn’t work like that. Anytime I get injured, I heal. Even if I’m out cold.”
“What’s the worst injury you’ve suffered?” Ilo asked.
Abbee glanced at the thickening blood pool on the floor. “That was one of them.”
“What about the others?” Ilo asked. “What other types of injuries have you sustained?”
“Aside from getting stabbed through the neck?” Abbee asked. “I’ve survived getting thrown off a moving continental. Twice. Hit a tree the last time, and I’m pretty sure I broke my neck. I’ve fallen into a mover pit and lived. Hit the bottom with my face.” She ticked her fingers. “I’ve been drowned, crushed, mauled, impaled, set on fire, poisoned, shot with more arrows than I can count—not all at once, mind you. I’ve broken almost all the bones in my body. Again, not all at once. And, um … a few weeks ago, I, uh … I drove a dry golem, and I didn’t die. I didn’t age either.”
Ilo looked flabbergasted. “You … what? A golem?”
“I’m still pretty sure there was water left in the tanks, but I was told it was dry. So maybe that wasn’t one of the times I’ve healed.” She remembered the squeezing feeling and her mote. “But something happened when I drove it.”
“Do you feel pain?” Marin asked.
“All of it,” Abbee said. “I feel everything. And anything you might give me to block the pain doesn’t work.” She got jealous anytime she watched someone else receive healing. She pointed at her neck and looked at Marin and her floating slivers. “I felt all of that. It’d be nice to not go through it again.”
Marin gave a small shrug. “Keep telling us the truth, then.”
“Your gift ate my body lock,” Ilo said.
“Right,” Abbee said. “I’ve never broken free of a mover, so I don’t know why you were different.”
“Body locks aren’t the same as the movers’ method,” Ilo said. He gestured at her. “Movers grab you on the outside. A body lock affects your muscles. Locks them all in place. I’m guessing your gift treated it like an injury and healed the stasis effect.” His eyebrows shot up. “Then there’s the snuffer. I gave you enough to block your gift for hours. And I apparently poisoned you with the sedative.”
“That’s not the first time I’ve been given snuffer,” Abbee said.
“It’s not?”
“Would it help if I told you that I can’t get drunk?” Abbee asked. It felt good to talk about her gift with someone. She felt like she was having a nice conversation with Ilo. The floating slivers and a glowering Marin ruined the feeling, though. “Jaara dust does nothing. I get a little oomph, and then it’s gone. Draat smoke just makes me hungry.” She smiled. “If you give me poison, or enough sedative that would kill somebody else, I’ll fall asleep for a little while, but that’s it.”
“Fascinating,” Ilo said. “Do you eat like a normal person?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you eat more per sitting than anybody else?” Marin asked.
Abbee shrugged. “Only after a healing.” She looked at the discarded plate. “I’m really hungry.”
“So her metabolism isn’t sped up all the time,” Marin said to Ilo. “Just when she uses her gift.”
“My what?” Abbee asked. “Metabo-what?”
“It’s a word to describe the chemical reactions happening inside your body,” Ilo explained.
“Chemicals? In my body?”
“Sure,” Ilo said. “All of us have the same ones. Well, most of us. Talented and wizards have some different things going on. I’d explain it, but we don’t have time.” He cocked his head at her. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I want to behead you to see what happens.”
Abbee tensed. “Please don’t.”
“She’s obviously a conduit,” Marin said. “Well, and backward.”
“Inverted?” Ilo offered.
Marin gave the first smile Abbee had ever seen on her face. The wizard nodded. “An inverted conduit. I like it.”
“I don’t understand,” Abbee said. “What’s a conduit?”
“Healers are conduits,” Ilo said. “They take energy from themselves and pipe it through another person. The process heals injuries. We’re not sure how it works, but it does. You seem to turn that on its head. You take energy from your environment and pipe it through yourself instead. Hence the inverted part, and probably the reason you survived a golem. You did what they do. Sort of.”
Abbee knew he was right. She remembered the dark basement and the sightless man. The pit in Graywall. Remembered the long line of dead she’d left in her wake. The ruined vegetation after being thrown from the continentals. The overwhelming weakness she inflicted on others whenever she let her emotions run rampant. It still didn’t help the growing pit in her stomach. Golems stole life indiscriminately.
Ilo tapped his lips with his finger. “I don’t have any others to compare you to, but I’m guessing you’re a Class Five if you can heal fatal injuries. Class Five Healers can theoretically do that for others, not themselves, but I don’t know of any Class Five Healers who’ve ever existed. Have you ever lost a limb? Your arm or something?”
Abbee reflexively rubbed her pinky finger. She saw Ilo notice the movement and stilled her hand. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Did you regrow it?”
“I said I don’t want to talk about it,” Abbee snapped. “But yes.”
“Incredible.” Ilo snapped his fingers, and two more bubbles of yellow light appeared at the table. Chairs popped into the air, and the bubbles vanished. Ilo sat down. “Incredible.”
“How old were you when your talent presented?” Marin asked, sitting in the other chair. The floating slivers around Abbee’s neck trembled when Marin moved. The old wizard crossed her legs and arranged her dress over her knee.
“Twelve,” Abbee said.
“Late,” Ilo said, nodding. “Vani Brattle presented at twelve, if I remember correctly.”
“She did?” Abbee asked.
“It’s a common pattern for Fives,” Marin said. “How did you present? Describe the moment for me.”
Abbee folded her arms and waited.
Marin tsked. “I said—”
“She knows what you said,” Ilo advised. “I think you can drop the slivers.”
“Not until I know for sure that she’s not working for the hunters.”
“I’m not working for the hunters,” Abbee said. “Or the network. Or anybody.”
Ilo glanced at Marin. “She’s not lying.”
Marin pursed her lips. “Fine.” She pointed at Abbee. “If you make a move I don’t like, we’re going to find out the answer to the beheading question.” She gestured, and the slivers vanished with a pop. “Describe the moment you presented, please.”
Abbee felt a little mollified by the please. “I fell into a mover pit. I think I presented when I hit the bottom. I mean, I landed on my face and lived.”
“Was this the mover pit Ipsu found you in?” Marin asked.
“Yes.”
“The one in the Yard District Precinct.”
“That’s right. It was the night the Tower fell. I fell in while the precinct was being evacuated. I know a golem walked past at some point, but I’m guessing I was in the mover pit by then. I dunno. It was very dark and I couldn’t see.”
“How did you get into that pit?” Marin asked. “If you were the precinct gofer, why were you not evacuating with the rest of them? The mover pit is down on the lowest level, if I recall correctly. You’d have to have gone down there on purpose.”
Abbee thought about her father dragging her down to the pit. Calling her Rat. Happy about murdering his own daughter. Abbee felt jealous every time she watched another man with children. Teaching them how to tie their shoes, protecting them while crossing a street, or letting them ride on his shoulders. She never had that from her father.
“My father tried to kill me,” Abbee said in a toneless voice. “He was in the holding cells for assaulting a constable. I think he was drunk. I let him out, thinking I was doing a good thing. He beat me. I was twelve and little, and he was built like a bear. He broke both my arms and dragged me down to the pit. I think he was going to throw me in, but he tripped, and we both fell.”
“That sounds horrible,” Ilo said. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”
Abbee shrugged. “It was a long time ago, and he was an evil man. He used to beat my mother when he was drunk, which was often. One day she didn’t come home. I never found out what happened to her, but I know he did it. He killed her. I ran away after she disappeared. It was pure chance that he ended up in the Yards. But still, he might have saved my life. I heard a lot of people didn’t outrun the golems. Maybe he did one good thing there at the end.”
Ilo’s brows shot up. “Marin, remember Pyl’s deposition? The part about Brattle’s father. He was an empath, remember? He was amplifying Vani’s emotions for months before she presented. Maybe even the very moment when it happened. She turned out to be a Class Five. Mental duress at the moment of presentation is a component of overall strength.”
Marin looked unconvinced. “Your sample size is two.”
“Two Class Fives.” Ilo’s eyes widened. “The golems … What if the environment stressors are also a component of how the talent presents? What if a person’s environment influences what talent they’ll have?”
“Bah, if that were true, where are all the Class Fives? We’d be swimming in them by now, not finding one or two every fifty years. I remember the deposition too, Ilo, and it wasn’t Pyl’s theory. She learned it from … him. She said it wasn’t his either, that he said he’d learned it from ancient texts. From Temmit.” Marin waved her hand and turned back to Abbee. “I’m not buying it. You’re telling me that you just happened to be in the mover pit at the right time? You just happened to present during Towerfall, and it was a complete accident that Ipsu found you there? Ilo, no. There’s no way. Ipsu didn’t form attachments. With anyone. His isolation was his thing. So, out of the blue, he shows up the same night, pulls her out of a mover pit, and then takes her with him? Takes care of her? Trains her? For years?”
Ilo rubbed his chin. “That is a bit out of character for the Ipsu I knew.”
“If I were a betting woman,” Marin said, “which I’m not, I’d wager that he was keeping her from someone. Or something.” She looked at Abbee. “He was hiding you.”
“How did he know to look for me in the precinct?” Abbee demanded. “You make it sound like he was clairvoyant or something. He was a refractor, and he didn’t get to choose the magical effect either. He was a Class Three. He couldn’t choose.”
“You said he was there with a wizard,” Ilo said. “One with a very particular staff.”
“I never saw her again. Are you saying the staff … led them to me?” Abbee remembered Ipsu’s conversation with the wizard while Abbee was in the pit. “The wizard didn’t think I was important. She wasn’t looking for me. And I don’t buy that Ipsu was hiding me. He just didn’t like cities.”
“How did you end up back in Akken?” Marin asked.
Abbee grunted. “It’s where he abandoned me. Nearby, anyway. I waited for three days, but he never returned. I left a sign pointing to Akken and went into the city. I looked for him but never found him, and he never came back. I stayed. Found work. Found a life.” She remembered the big thick door to Graywall. The dark things that had happened there. “Sort of. Look, I’ve been living in Akken for over a decade now. Nobody has come looking for me there. The only reason people were chasing me is because Ipsu came to my apartment.”
“Chasing you?” Ilo echoed. “As in they’re still chasing you?”
“Someone attacked me on the train outside Akken,” Abbee said. “Telepath. I caught a glimpse of House soldier armor and a blue sash. Everybody knows House Togrim is tight with the network. He stabbed me with red blades and pushed me off the train while it was moving.”
“That sounds a lot like they think you’re dead,” Ilo said.
“Hope so,” Abbee said.
However much she hoped that was the case, and the telepath thought her dead, she knew the network was thorough. They would have sent someone to find the body. If they searched along the train route, they’d find memories of her in Ellerton. Another disturbing thought occurred to Abbee. She knew about two wizards. If a telepath scanned her, any telepath, they’d find out about these two. Still, Ilo wanted to send her somewhere. He didn’t strike Abbee as someone who’d take that risk. He was old, though, and old people forgot things.
“I can’t leave, can I?” Abbee asked. “I know about you now.”
Ilo waved his hand. “Don’t worry about that. I’ll take care of that before you go.”
“You have something that will block a telepath?” Abbee felt her jaw drop. “Do you have artifact chips? Can you still make them?”
“What?” Ilo laughed. “No, nobody can make those anymore. I’m going to erase your memory. You won’t remember us, this inn, or this conversation we’ve been having.”