Chapter Text
“Fine,” he said. His brolly was in his room, along with his physical body, and for some reason he'd hopped, jumped, and skipped merrily along to Squall Industries, in Ylvastad. “What do you want to talk about?”
Ez- Squall looked up from his desk, smiling politely. “Ever heard of knocking?”
“Piss off.”
“Wintersea knows you’re back,” he continued signing… paycheques, by the looks of things. Owain looked at them. “What? I have a company to run, you know.”
“I'd assumed they would. Everyone in the Free State does by now.”
“Yes, how is that PR circus going?”
“Just dandy,” he clenched his jaw. “Why have you asked me here? You said you wanted to show me something, and I don't think it was Angela in marketing's bimonthly wage.”
“Stop looking at my employee records,” he shoved them together, and turned them upside down, as if Owain really did have some strange interest in seeing them. “Wintersea knows you’re back.”
“You said this last time,” he said. “And don’t think I haven’t noticed your little informants skulking around me.”
His eyes flicked upwards, “You’re so dramatic.”
“You’re the one with the entourage,” he whistled lowly, and a hunting dog slid out from underneath the desk. He scratched its ears, “Good girl.”
Squall was so deliberate now. Every movement had a purpose. He didn’t do anything for no reason. There were no little adjustments to his clothes, his mouth barely moved.
“She’s going to come looking for you,” he said. “She wants to talk to you.”
He swallowed, “Why?”
“Same reason she wanted to talk to me,” he said quietly. “A business proposal.”
“She already has one pet wundersmith. She doesn’t need two,” or three, his brain supplied. Morrigan was safe at the hotel, he reminded himself.
“You might disagree with her,” he acquiesced. “But regardless. I thought I would give you a… what would your new friend the good captain call it? A head’s up?”
For a second, a stupid self-indulgent second, he had allowed himself to believe the fantasy. His banter with Ezra was just banter between friends, brothers. Squall was a murder. He had thrown them all under the bridge. He would throw him under a bridge too.
“Why do you want to come back to Nevermoor?” he asked.
He turned to him, his jaw clicking slightly, “Why do you care? You won’t let me back in.”
“No,” he agreed. “I won’t. Not least because the city itself banished you, and I have absolutely no idea how to undo that.”
“You aren’t stupid, I’m sure we could figure it out.”
“And you’re a murderer and failed tyrant, and I’m sure you’re wanted on a thousand charges there, at least. You’re the second most important person in their enemy’s country. You are… our enemy,” it was harder than he thought it might be to say that out loud. He wasn’t sure he believed it even though he knew it was true. An interesting paradox. “I’m not letting you near Nevermoor, and you’re not coming anywhere near Morrigan either.”
“Your new Elodie?” he asked, smirking. “You’re deluding yourself if you think you can train up any wundersmiths like you and I.”
“She’s not a new anything, she’s a person in her own right,” Owain said stubbornly. “Get back to your own life, price gouging poor families because you have a monopoly over wunder in the Republic.”
Something twitched in Squall’s face, “Do you want to know what happened? After you… slipped?”
“You killed them all, and Nevermoor threw you out,” he said.
“In short. Would you like to hear it in long?”
“Not particularly.”
“I don’t care,” he snapped. “You’re going to. I killed them all, or rather my hunt did.”
“You lost control,” something clicked in Owain’s head. reverse that. “You didn’t mean to-”
“I meant to,” Ezra snapped. “Maybe not in that way, I would have made it slower, really. I needed to get things out of them.”
“Information?” he frowned. “About what? From whom?”
“Never you mind, you know as much as I do, which is to say: absolutely nothing.”
“Tell me anyway.”
His jaw clenched, and Owain heard the sound of his teeth grinding at the back of his mouth. He cringed back. He was becoming better at making the sounds he heard drift away to places he couldn’t hear - that he didn’t have to hear, but that was dreadful.
“What are you going to do with me?” he switched tactics, eyeing up the alley space behind Squall. “In the hypothetical where I let you back into Nevermoor, for whatever insane reason I would. Which, for the record will not be happening.”
His lip curled, “You’ll have options.”
“What’s Option A?”
“You help me take over the city, and then the whole of the Free State, and we train Miss Crow together.”
“Pass.”
“Option B has me killing you and teaching Miss Crow by myself. You wouldn’t want that would you.”
“I don’t want you near her, or… any child in general, if I’m being honest. You’ll die in the Republic, Squall, even if I have to make sure of it myself.”
“Squall asked me for a favour,” he said, pouring out a sweet tasting juice into glasses for him and Jupiter.
Jupiter dropped the pile of books he'd been re-shelving, “I'm sorry?”
“Squall asked me for a favour,” he repeated. “Last night.”
“He came to you?”
“No,” he said. “I had to go to him, and at a time I thought he would be awake” he rolled his eyes. “Doesn't respect my sleep schedule, apparently.”
“If only that were the biggest issue with Ezra Squall,” he said, bending down to pick up his fallen books, and smooth the slightly crushed pages. “What does he want?”
“To be let back into Nevermoor,” he said. He drained his glass, and refilled it from a decanter. He had assumed that it was alcohol on first appearance, but Jupiter had pointed out that in jobs which could pull you out of bed at any time, habitual drinking wasn't the greatest idea in the world. “So, the usual.”
“Could you do that?” he asked.
“I don't know,” he said. “Probably. It would be difficult, I think. But technically possible most likely.”
“But you're not going to do it?”
“I don't know,” he rolled his eyes. “What do you think?”
Jupiter stared at him, “I was just checking.”
He came over, taking his own glass, and sipped at it, kicking off his slippers and dangling his feet in the fire.
Owain didn't say anything for a long time, and just stared into it, moving his fingers to change the shapes of the flames, created an ancient chariot race, a historical battle, dragons flying over mountaintops, Courage Square.
“Is that what it looked like?” Jupiter asked quietly.
“From my perspective,” he said. A massed shape, rudimentary except for a weighted element rose up against them. A wave. A tsunami. A monster.
He waved his hands again and the hunt appeared, heading right out of the fire, evaporating into hot air as soon as they reached the limit of the grate, and the flames returned to flames.
“You want to talk to Squall again, don't you?” he asked.
He took a breath, “I shouldn't. I know that.”
“No,” he said. “Personally I can't imagine why you would.”
“I want to know,” he said. “Why he's asking my help. I can't help but think he's in trouble.”
“He wants you to think that. That's why he left without answering any questions, I'd wager. It keeps you on the line, and at some point he's going to reel you in.”
“You're probably right,” he agreed. “I hate him.”
“You have the most obvious reasons to do so,” he finished off his drink. Red dregs hung around in the bottom of his glass.
He had his schedule down to a T now. Brolly rail to Proudfoot House, drink coffee, head to Sub-Nine, teach Morrigan the Wundrous Arts for an hour, and send her on her way for her other classes in the morning. Drink tea in the study chamber, and discuss Morrigan’s timetable and progress with Rook, and check in on the Basement Nerds’ research until Morrigan returned after lunch for her afternoon lesson.
It was nice, regular, and pleasant. He had plenty of free time on his hands to work on other things, and help Morrigan improve her skills where he saw fit. Which currently was everywhere, but she had only been learning for a few months. The Gossamer Spun Garden was growing too, a new plant every day or so from Morrigan, the shape and colour and texture improving with each turn.
He’d made sure to schedule in time after their wunder-heavy lessons to make her eat a bowl of soup and drink cup of tea after cup of tea. It was an interesting return to when he had overdone it as a child, and Brilliance had pressed mugs of hot lemon and honey into his hands, or hot chocolate, or thick porridge, to give him the energy to get up again. Wunder was a muscle sometimes, and it was surprisingly easy to overdo. Especially on the newer skills.
Morrigan frowned, her tongue sticking out slightly, but Owain saw the layers of the brick fly away, bit by bit, separated into parts which were separated into parts which were separated into parts until there was nothing there.
She sat there, for a minute or two, or five, watching the space on the ground where the brick had been. A little bit of clay residue remained, but other than that it was completely gone.
“Well done,” he clapped lightly. “That’s exactly right.”
“Did you ever make anything like the Gossamer Line or Jemmity Park?” Morrigan asked as she was getting back up, brushing a smattering of brick dust off her clothes.
“No,” Owain said. “I wasn’t as showy or obvious as the others. I took part in a few projects, like being consulted on the building of a memorial for Prime Minister Agrippine but otherwise, no.”
He hadn’t minded that too much. Rastaban, when he was having a bad day, always said none of the credit, all of the blame. Every wundersmith knew that that was the fate laid out for them. The wundrous society had been there to support them in their work, but they had turned on them just as easily, perfectly willing to watch them be forgotten in history, in fact, be taken completely out of it with their help.
Owain flicked through the papers. A Review of Wundrous Acts Between the Age of Industry and Age of the East Winds; Flaming or Flagrant Abuse? The Political Influence of Gracious Goldberry; Cultural Apotheosis and the Wundersmith: How Cultural Memory Shaped the View of Nevermoor’s Most Hated Man. “These are all dated to this month.”
“Yes,” Holliday said. “Dreadfully dull, technically speaking, but effective.”
“They’re all heavy academic papers,” he said. “Who’s going to read this? How did you make this happen anyway?”
“Nevermoor University’s Humanities Department is always begging for funding. I gave them some, with caveats.”
“Academically disingenuous,” he said. “But I’m not complaining.”
“You shouldn’t,” she agreed. “And as for your other question: journalists will. Or they’ll scan the title, possibly the abstract and conclusion, and write an article based off of that. Which then will trickle down, to the public consciousness. Eventually.”
“Eventually? How traceable is this, anyway? Because if Laurent St James finds out that the Wundrous Society funded these studies, even incidentally, all hell will break loose.”
“That man is going to result in me having to hire better lawyers,” she said, almost dreamily. It was an odd look, given what he knew about Holliday Wu, but given that he had fantasised also about great violence being done to that man, he could hardly blame her. “But he won’t find out. I’m much too good for that.”
“You’re certainly confident,” he said, trying not to be belligerent about it.
“For starters,” she said. “It would have to involve him opening a newspaper.”
“I don’t see that happening,” he said. “But he might notice that these all very suddenly started getting published. The Wundrous Society is a publicly funded non-profit. Won’t it show up in the tax reports?”
“We supply funding to Nevermoor University every year,” she said. “It’s always in the budget. We just need to move things around a little, and it’ll look just as it should. As for your… date issue, you do realise that academia, as far as I’m aware, I mean, follows public trends as much as anything. They’re also bringing back the historical play about the Romance of the Wundersmiths, and I can assure you that’s got nothing to do with me.”
He cringed, “That thing is a travesty against any decent form of theatre. I see your point, I suppose.”
“You’re the top of the news, every single day, whether you like it or not,” she said, consulting one of her notepads, and running her finger down a column of numbers. “Good Morning Nevermoor has mentioned you every day for the last week and a half, the same can be said for every major newspaper, and radio show. Two parliamentary debates have mentioned you in great detail, and there’s been more than a few well signed petitions about you.”
“That’s… a lot? I suppose.”
“It’s more than when Queen Caledonia was crowned, or when Gideon Steed was elected,” she said. “It’s very possible you’re the most famous person in the realm at the minute. More than, really.”
He shifted in his chair, “I’m not sure that I like that.”
“No,” she said dismissively. “You don’t seem the type. But that’s only part of the reason that I’ve asked you to meet with me today.”
“Oh?” he asked. “Why else?”
“Laurent St James is being a problem.”
“You’re telling me something I already know,” he said. “You could have just said St James, and I would have known that he was going to be a problem.”
“Yes,” she said, seemingly entirely uninterested in his cattier remarks about the St James family. “That’s our premise. We need to counter it.”
“What’s the point of all your funded academic papers and studies and newspieces if not for countering it? You made me go to that farce of a ceremony with Steed for public opinion. And that was dreadful.”
“Actually, you did remarkably well,” she said. “You’re practised in front of a camera, I can tell.” This was probably some kind of compliment, but he wasn’t in the mood. “These things are all quite passive though. Making appearances, not any speeches, having pieces written about you, and wundersmiths, it’s a good start, but we need something shinier. Do you have anything for that?”
“What do you mean?”
“Laurent St James thinks you’re an ally of Squall, or that you’re the Society’s pet attack dog, for whatever reason, or that you don’t exist and we’re making you up as a distraction.”
“So he’s contradicting himself all the time?” Apparently his political aspirations had already been partly realised then.
“I want you to do an interview,” she said. “To start with. And try to think of something you could do otherwise. Non-threatening, preferably, but showy. And useful, if you can. Something to help Nevermoor think, not only was it great to have wundersmiths before, and we have all these papers and studies to back this up, but it would be great to have it again. What do you say?”
“By whom would I be interviewed?”
“Albie Higgins,” she said. “Although, if you don’t like him, we have alternatives.”
“The same show that had St James on twice last week?” He had heard it on the wireless in his bedroom, before deciding that it might be better for his mental well-being if he didn’t have to hear the actual slander being spewed about him in public. Maybe he ought to get a lawyer. “I did one, only the last week. Why do you need me to do another?”
“Yes,” she said. “That’s deliberate, you see. Higgins knows St James, now he’ll know you. And it’s that audience that we’re trying to target. We want your voice, about what you want people to know about wundersmiths. You’re going to get to determine the narrative. With my help, of course.”
“I’ll do it,” he said. “If you can guarantee no surprise questions, and I get to see and approve them all beforehand.”
“Naturally,” she said, rising from her seat, and offering her hand. “Do we have a deal?”
“I believe so,” he shook it firmly. Holliday’s nails scratched against his hands.
“Tell me what Wintersea’s planning,” he said, picking Ezra up by the lapels to shake him.
He hung there loosely, his legs dangling. Owain stared at him. Ezra stared back. There was no anger in his face. Just exhaustion.
Owain dropped him and he crumpled to the ground. Then he kicked him. And kicked him. Something crunched in Squall’s face, but he didn’t stop kicking him. “Tell me,” he said again.
Squall shuffled until he was sitting on the ground, hunched over. He was clutching his nose, blood covering his face, “She wants me to destroy Nevermoor into nothing. Raze it to the ground. If she can't have it, no one can. I need to get out. Can you help me?”
“Help yourself,” he spat on him. “No one’s making you stay here, Ezra. You ran out any of my good will a hundred years ago. There’s nothing left for you.”
“Please,” he said. “She’ll kill me.”
Owain lowered his face to his, so that he could smell the metallic blood coming off of his face, feel Ezra’s breath against his skin, “Then you should die quickly. It’s more than you deserve.”
“I don’t deserve anything,” he said. “It’s what I want. You were my brother once.”
“You were the one who ended that,” he dropped him in a heap on the ground and rushed out of there.
The streets ran past him, more than the other way around. His feet moved in the direction of where the portal was, but his brain couldn’t remember where it was now.
When he stepped into it, he must have stepped falsely, because when he came to, he was on a street in the middle of Nevermoor, and his head felt like a horse had just roundhouse kicked him in the skull.
“My mum sent me this recipe,” Elodie had said, measuring out the powders in their private kitchen. “It's an old family one. She wanted me to have it.”
“Couldn't you just weave it?” Ezra had asked, tilting his head to the side, his eyes narrowed at what she was doing.
Owain remembered sitting at the table, and swearing as his pot of ink overturned onto his jotter. He remembered jumping up, his shirtsleeves stained black, and groaning.
“Here,” Ezra had waved his hand and the ink appeared off the pages, out of the grooves of the table, out of the fibres of his shirt, and the indentations of his skin, and back into the pot.
“Cheers,” he remembered down at his page. It had been completely blank. “You erased my essay?”
“Oops.”
Elodie had snickered. When he looked at her again, her face was fuzzier. He tired to bring her into focus but he could only see Morrigan. He tried to rub his eyes but this had nothing to do with them.
“What are you doing with those?”
Ezra had tried to swipe some of the chocolate she had cut up into a bowl, but Elodie swatted his arm out of the way and he went flying, only catching himself at the last minute.
Owain had screwed the lid back onto his ink pot.
“It's about the process, Ezra,” Elodie had said.
“Weaving is a process,” he had pointed out, wincing as he had shaken out his hands.
“My mum bakes like this,” she had said. “Is it so bad that I want to do something like her?”
Owain didn't reply. He had never had a good answer to this question. Elodie's family, her birth family, had written to her for her whole life, even if she had never met them. His parents had handed him over to the Wundrous Society the second the word Wundersmith had even been suggested. He didn't love them. He didn't know them.
He didn't hate them, or resent them for giving him up. He just had a complete dearth of feelings towards them in general. It was a different thing.
She had pictures of her other brothers pinned up above her desk, alongside photographs of them, all smiling in a line, baby Odbuoy being held by Griselda in the middle, their arms around each other. It was hard not to be resentful of that.
But not to his birth family. He just didn't really care.
He remembered the dark look Ezra had had though. He had always wanted too much. The most power. The most favour from the divinities. The most praise from Brilliance and Rastaban and Decima and Griselda. The most love from him and Elodie.
Ezra Squall had never been one to settle for second place. It had been true then. It was certainly true now.
But boyish tendencies were one thing. The things he had done by now couldn't just be brushed off. They were evil. Ezra was evil. It didn't compute in his head, even when he went back through his memories, went into any ghostly hour he remembered, or found the record of - thanks Onstald - that he was the same person who had brought Nevermoor to a standstill, made it go dark in the middle of a bright day. Like the sun itself had turned its back on them.
Had it been cold or was he misremembering?
“Owain,” Jupiter grasped him by the shoulder, before pulling him away. “You’re bleeding?”
“Huh,” he grasped at the wet material, peeling it away from his skin. “I liked this suit. Ezra always ruins my things. He’s such a child.”
He was vaguely aware that he was blabbering, and also that he definitely had a concussion this time. Everything was moving so slowly, the world canting this way and that, suddenly fast, then at a snail's pace again. Keeping his head up was a challenge. Keeping his body up was more of a challenge.
“Whoa!” Arms caught him before his face met the floor, which was nicer than kissing the pavement, he supposed. He was lowered to the ground, “Do you know where you’ve been hurt?”
“Huh?” he opened his mouth and closed it again. “Who hurt me?”
“Squall did,” Jupiter said patiently. “You came out of the portal blabbering about cursed children, and bleeding apparently.”
“I did?” he blinked, fighting against the sudden desire to crawl up on the street and take a very long nap. It was the middle of the day, and there were people all around them, peering in. “Where’s Morgran. Moregen. Morrigan?”
“Is that Owain Binks?” someone said, but they were very far away. There were flashing noises, and he winced at a bright light.
“Stop that!” Jupiter said. “One of you, go get an ambulance, the rest of you, unless you have medical experience, get on with your lives, thank you.”
The crowd shuffled off, although he spotted the flashes again, getting further away. “Am I dying?” he asked, quite genuinely. “Never done it before.” He hurt a lot, but he wasn’t sure he was dying. Dying was painless, he was pretty sure. At least at the end of it. Or he hoped so, at least.
“No, you are not. Morrigan’s safe, although she’s going to be furious about all this,” he frowned. “What do you remember?”
“Ugrh,” he tried to pull himself up but there was something seriously wrong with the muscles in his body. He could feel everything, which was promising, but the energy to move was just not there.”
“Owain,” Jupiter pushed him down, but kept his head off the pavement. What a sight they must be, him bleeding out in another man’s arms. Oh the tabloids would weep for joy. “Don’t move. You might make it worse.”
“I don’t see how it could be any worse,” he was whining but he had been injured, and the last three months were probably the entire worst of his whole entire existence. “I am tired, Jupiter.”
“Don’t go to sleep,” he said. “I will slap you.”
“But-”
“Concussion,” he said. “No sleeping,” he looked down the street and brightened considerably. “Oh that’s a relief.”
Owain was carried into the ambulance by a medic with biceps the size of his head. He thought about asking for her number later, but only after he stopped being her patient. Or maybe never, depending on if he threw up or died in the small van.
“So,” Elder Quinn stared him down from his hospital bed. “Well done.”
“For what?” he raised an eyebrow.
“Well,” she said. “It’s a little complicated, but Ezra Squall is dead. That’s my biggest relief.”
“He’s- he’s what?” Owain heard his voice crack a little. “When?”
“They mentioned your memory was faulty,” she said, looking at his chart at the bottom of his bed. It was the most uncomfortable thing Owain had been forced to lie on, including the hundred or so years he’d been trapped in a pocket realm, and he couldn’t wait to go anywhere else so he could get a decent night’s sleep. “You did, or so we believe.”
He shook his head, “No I didn’t. I can assure you I didn’t kill him.”
She frowned, the lines on her lips deepening, “What do you mean you know this for sure? You didn’t go there to kill him?”
“I- I mean,” he didn’t really know why he had gone there. Resolution, perhaps. So they, the last two of their generation, could settle things so that Morrigan, and the rest of her generation could start fresh. Maybe he had gone there to kill him, but he hadn’t meant to make it out alive in that case.
But why were his memories so fuzzy? It could just be the concussion, but it was like it was being blocked by something else. He shook his head from side to side, like trying to dislodge water from his ears but it did no good.
Elder Quinn coughed, and he looked up at her. “I didn’t kill him,” he repeated.
Her frown deepened, “If this is true, then someone else did. Someone with the resources, and the power to kill a wundersmith. Do you have any suggestions?”
“A scorpionwun did in Gracious Goldberry,” he offered. “Maybe one got lucky here?”
“Doubtful.”
“I’m not familiar with anyone these days, Elder,” he tried to smile. “I’m sure your research wonks will have a far better time guesstimating who actually killed Ezra Squall, provided it wasn’t himself, of course. How do you know he’s dead anyway?”
“A body,” she said.
“Could be weaved.”
“Wunder levels in the Republic have plummeted everywhere. Their energy crisis has exploded. And Squall Industries has been officially absorbed by the Wintersea Party.”
Owain thought about it for a moment, “Yeah, he’s dead.”
He didn’t know how to feel about that. He’d known for months now, technically probably years, but definitely months, that he would never be able to make up with Squall. He would never have Ezra back. There would be no more days in the woods at Proudfoot House, or lounging on the lawn in summer as Odbuoy tried to do a backflip for the nth time.
They had been nine. They had been two. They were now one. Owain was the only living wundersmith of his generation. He was the last man standing. It had been a possibility he had been aware of, especially recently, but now it was real. Not technically real, but genuinely. It was him, and no one else from the Age of Endings and Age of the East Winds. He would be a stranger to this place forever, forever an outsider.
Owain and Ezra and Elodie. Binks and Squall. Owain Binks.
“Do you need a moment?” she asked, and he remembered that she was in the room with him. This was real. This had actually happened. Something had been done and it could never be taken back.
“I’m fine,” he said. “He’s dead. Got it. Anything else?”
“Not so far,” she said. “But this whole event will have ramifications down the line for everything and everyone even close to it, for years to come, I expect. What are your plans?”
“Teaching Morrigan,” he said.
“Anything else?” she was pressing now. He knew what she wanted. He knew that she knew what he was going to do but he wasn’t going to tell her. Not outright, at least.
“Not so far,” he said tightly. “But we’ll see.”
“Indeed,” she frowned. “I’ll leave you be for the time being, but we’ll speak again soon, most likely in a more formal setting, but before I do, I wanted to thank you, Owain Binks. You have done a service, in some way or another to the Society, and it will never be forgotten.”
He didn’t reply to that. He just looked at her until she nodded to him and walked right out of the room.
“He’s dead,” he wanted to wail. Jupiter nodded. He was almost more angry at this than he had been before. Not really, only the pain was freshest here. He could feel it more. “He’s dead,” he said again.
“I know,” he said.
“I hated him,” he said. “He was evil. Why am I sad, Jove?”
“Long term complicated relationship,” he answered easily. “Love and hate are similar emotions when it comes down to it. odi et amo, and all that.”
He closed his eyes, “Please don’t quote poetry at me right now.”
“Right,” he said. “Sorry. Do you need anything? I can get you whatever you need from the hotel.”
“A discharge,” he said. “I want to leave this place. It’s suffocating.”
It was. Not because it was underground. Owain had never had an issue with that, but it was quiet. He was in a private ward, either as an honour or because no one would share with him, and the sound outside was completely cut off. Not a single scrap of noise, unless the door was open, made its way to him.
Which meant the only things he had to entertain himself with were visitors, books, which he didn’t have the energy to read, nor the motivation, and his own thoughts: terrible.
“I’ll ask your doctor,” he said, standing up. “No promises though. You need to have those bandages regularly cleaned still.”
“I know that,” he said. “It’s my bloody shoulder.”
“Autopsies have come through,” Jupiter said, not looking at his face. “Of Squall.”
Owain sucked in a breath, “What is it?”
He kept seeing Ezra’s body in his head. Broken, where he’d left him on the ground, trying to pick himself up. His face kicked in. By Owain. He’d done that.
“Poison,” he said. “A very concentrated dose. Enough to kill several adults within minutes.”
“Wintersea gave it to him?”
He shook his head, “Unlikely. He had a capsule in his tooth. Unless Wintersea took the time to install it, and then forced him to bite down, which I doubt.”
“He killed himself, is what you’re saying?”
“That’s the theory,” he eyed the door warily. “I mean, we don’t know yet, until we know, but that’s what we think, at the very least. I wanted to tell you before you heard from someone else.”
“Thank you,” he said after swallowing heavily. His teeth hurt. “Anything else.”
“Wintersea’s forces are abandoning the border.”
“Mutiny or by orders?”
“By orders,” he said. “She’s having them regroup around major settlements and cities. Either as a method of creating the idea of an external threat which the civilians will need to be protected against or as a mode of control. That much remains to be seen.”
“Both, potentially.”
“That’s true,” he sighed. “But for the time being, not in the interests of the Wundrous Society,” he almost scoffed. “Nor the Free State.”
He woke in the night after he went home.
Elodie was standing on his balcony, a grey silhouette, lit from the back by the soft yellow streetlight.
He blinked, looking at her again, the soft round outline of her hair, the strong set of her shoulder, standing completely still.
A dog barked in a house twelve miles away, whining for his dinner. It made the image flicker and flash like lightning. He blinked against the harsh light, until it wasn’t just her. Ezra was there too, body bent over, straightening up with every flicker and flash, dancing in front of his eyes.
He looked at them for a minute or two. Or maybe an hour. Or for most of the night.
Then he rolled over in his bed and went to sleep. He needed to let ghosts lie still for now. Maybe forever.
He had lessons with Morrigan in the morning, and he wanted to be fresh for them. So he let sleep take him instead.