Finnegan and Eliza came to see Dellen a week later. They had both managed to bring themselves up to Second Trinity. “We have a new problem,” Eliza said. She looked wild around the eyes.

“Oh?” Dellen said, looking up from his desk. He was awash with papers. Somehow, converting the Northcote Estate into a school required him to approve a great many documents. In the back of his mind, he had thought that it was going to involve little more than refitting a few rooms. The Order had essentially been one large, malevolent, school. He had not spent time in the rooms dedicated to the training of other affinities, but he had assumed they were put together in a way that suited their needs. Some like Umbral Aether, he had trouble imagining how they would train, not that he had to accommodate Umbral Aether, at least not yet.

“What’s the problem?”

“Citizens are going missing,” Eliza said.

“How can we be sure? Surely, some people are just leaving the city.”

“You don’t believe that at all,” Gilgamesh said.

“Some people are leaving the city,” Eliza agreed with him, “But it’s worse than that. Dakkon came for us and showed us the bodies.”

“You went with Dakkon?” Dellen asked, feeling an unreasonable panic clawing at the back of his mind.

Eliza must have been able to hear it, “Calm down, we’re here, and we’re not hurt.”

“Why did he come for you?” Dellen shook his head, trying to organize his thoughts, “What bodies? How many? Where were they? Where are they? Is it what we thought?”

“Slow down,” Gilgamesh said, “You need to breathe.”

Eliza locked eyes with him, “Yes, it’s what we thought it would be. Bodies with their chests split open, organs pulled out.”

Dellen’s mind’s eyes conjured an image of the room with the bodies, the smell of old blood ran its way through his nostrils again. He shuddered. “How many?” Even one was too many, but he had to know.

“Five.”

He did not know whether to be happy that it was only five or horrified that he was able to hear about five people being murdered and attach ‘only’ as a descriptor. “Why did he show you the bodies? Was he showing off? Was he boasting? Did he show you his new affinity?”

Eliza and Finnegan shared an uncertain look. “They weren’t people he’d killed. At least we don’t think so.”

“That doesn’t mean he didn’t kill people, though,” Gilgamesh said.

“If he didn’t kill them, then who did?”

Eliza stepped closer and lowered her voice as though hoping that she could make their discussion even more private, “Miss Thornbrook.”

If Dellen had not been in his chair, he would have fallen over. “What?” He said, his voice coming out weak and quavery. “Miss Thornbrook?” He shook his head in a gesture of negation, “No, there has to be some mistake, an explanation, she came here to help us. To help everyone.”

“Or she came here to help herself,” Eliza said, “Think about it, she said that she stopped forging because it was so difficult to find the materials she needed to advance. You know that people don’t just reach Seventh Trinity because they don’t want power. What better way to make yourself more powerful could there be than acquiring a second affinity? She didn’t even need to go far, just a few days on an airship, and then she was introduced like a savior to the city. She’s an almost mythic figure here right now.”

“No,” Dellen said, voice still shaky.

“She stuck around until you confirmed that the Order was using the unforged to acquire affinities, then she brought us here, fast, and let you and Lady Lockridge establish her as a paragon of goodwill.”

“But she’s here discouraging other aetherforged from coming to the city.”

Finnegan spoke, his voice sounding defeated, “Maybe it’s not about protecting the city, or the people, maybe it’s about making sure that other high Trinity Aetherforged don’t get the chance to acquire a second affinity. How much stronger do you think a second affinity might make her?”

Still reeling, Dellen tried to think it through, he knew he had spent decades pursuing a second affinity, and he was not sure how much stronger it made him, directly, but if instead of Chronometric Aether, he wielded something like Umbral, Terra, Kinematic, Lumino, he could see himself becoming much more dangerous in combat. In Copperopolis she would be able to find a Spark Core, a Steam Core, or a Kinetic Core. He would guess that she would want a Kinetic Core to augment her speed. “A lot stronger, a second affinity could give her an incredible level of versatility.” He shook his head again, “You haven’t told me why you think it was her. You’ve just said you saw… Bodies.” Blood crossed his nostrils again.

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“He,” Finnegan began and trailed off.

“He wrapped us in shadows, gagged us with shadows so thick we couldn’t talk through them, then we watched her experiment.” Eliza swallowed before continuing. “They were dead when we arrived, we didn’t have to see her… Extract the cores, but we saw her work with them, she had flasks of mercury, the cores bobbed in them, just under the surface.”

A fresh chill ran through Dellen, “Mercury,” he asked, waiting for a nod of confirmation. Lady Katherine had also used mercury. “You saw her?” He did not need to wait, he knew they had, he had wanted to protect the city, and instead, he had brought a snake home himself. “What do we do?” He asked quietly.

“You carry on as though you don’t know anything, and you help her in every way that you can,” Gilgamesh said.

Dellen’s eyes widened, he could not help but stare at the floating enigma that was his friend.

“I think we have to ignore it,” Eliza said.

“What? Why?” Asked Finnegan, he backed away from Eliza as though staring at a dangerous stranger.

“Because we still need her.”

“That’s a bit like a lamb cozying up to a wolf in the hopes the wolf will eat them last, isn’t it?” Dellen asked.

Eliza took a seat in front of him, “No, it’s a bit like wolf pups cozying up to a rabid wolf until they’re big enough to bite on their own.” She tried to give Finnegan a look of calming reassurance, “Her name is on every set of lips in the city, she has forged over a thousand people since she arrived. Like it or not, even with these,” Eliza shut her eyes and visibly steeled herself to continue, “Murders, she has still protected more people than we have.”

“But she’s killing people!” Finnegan exploded.

“Technically, she isn’t killing people, she has already killed people and is just experimenting on them,” Gilgamesh said in a tone that suggested he was ruminating on the matter.

“What do you want me to do?” Dellen asked Finnegan.

“I want you to stop her, I want you to make her leave the city!”

“How?”

“Well…” Finnegan trailed off, the fire going out of his voice, “I don’t know.”

Dellen could not imagine any way that he could force Miss Thornbrook to do anything she did not want to do. If he came upon her sleeping form and tried to feed her Electrical Aether, he was not sure that he would be able to do so much as interrupt her sleep. Even without active resistance, it would be difficult to harm her in any way. Her steelskin had been forged in at least twenty-one materials, twenty-one. It was much further removed from skin than his own. He suspected that if he stabbed her as hard as he could, he would succeed at little more than breaking a dagger.

“What could we have done differently?” Dellen wondered aloud, he could reset the time loop, take them back to Ravenport, lie to Miss Thornbrook about the efficacy of Lady Katherine’s efforts. Perhaps she was ruthless, but if she was told that stealing a core would fail, she might still come to Copperopolis to protect it.

Decision made, he put both hands on his desk and stood. “I know what I’m going to do.”

“Are you going to confront her?” Finnegan asked.

“First I need to see her, I’ll make my decision from there, but I would like both of you to stay away, just in case this ends up being ugly.”

“Careful,” Eliza said, “I know you’re Second Trinity, but I don’t think that would matter to her at all.”

“She’s like a walking volcano,” Dellen said, “If she decided to, she could melt a hole through a cog, and throw me through it so fast that I couldn’t catch myself with magnetism. Then I’d either hit one of the support beams or fall until I found the bottom.”

Eliza’s eyes had grown subtly wider as he spoke, “What are you trying to accomplish by talking to her?”

Dellen was not going to try to talk to her at all. “I can still be of use to her, as can both of you, from well-written articles in the broadsheets, to introducing her to the unforged and making her less intimidating so that more people will flock to her. My use is that I give her respectability in the eyes of the nobles. She might even want to join their ranks. Perhaps she would like to be Lady Thornbrook, rather than Miss. It doesn’t matter, will both of you wait for me here? I should be back in a few hours.”

Finnegan looked doubtful, and Eliza looked concerned. “Maybe I should go with you,” she said.

Dellen put a hand on her arm, “This is something I need to do on my own.”

He left the room, Gilgamesh was helpfully quiet until they were far away enough that it was unlikely that Dellen’s side of the conversation would be overheard. “You’re going to reset the time loop and take us back to Ravenport, aren’t you.”

“Yes.”

Gilgamesh groaned, “Any chance of talking you out of this?”

“No.”

“How are you going to kill yourself?”

Dellen had been trying to think of what he might do, all of the options open to him seemed gruesome. He could have a smelting accident at Northcote Industries, but that sounded painful. He could bleed out again, the idea of cutting himself on purpose was loathsome. He could just pick a fight with Miss Thornbrook, but there was a remote chance that she would just cripple him or do something else unpleasant while leaving him alive and helpless. An airship crash had some possibilities, but that would require stealing an airship, and that was not something he wanted to do. He just felt tired.

Walking out of the main entrance to the estate, he said, “I’m going to jump off of the cog.”

“Well, that sounds dramatic,” Gilgamesh said, still not sounding enthusiastic.

“You could come with me.”

“No,” Gilgamesh sounded tired too, “I’ll see you in a minute in Ravenport.

Together they marched to the edge of the cog. Dellen looked down at the inky black. He had been down deeper into the chasm than most, and he still thought it looked friendlier than Dakkon’s shadows. He willed himself to take the next step forward, but reluctance held him back. He did not really want to jump.

“What’s the matter?”

“This goes against all of my instincts. There’s always the chance that this time I won’t come back.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t do it.”

“If there’s a chance that it means I can stop more citizens from being cut open, I think I have to.”

“You know you’re not responsible for everyone in Copperopolis.”

“I’m the one who stopped the city from spinning, I feel at least slightly responsible.” Dellen flexed his legs, forcing himself to move forward, “See you soon.”

Dellen jumped.