“Strengthen it?” repeated the woman, eyes going wide, then narrow. “What’s happened?” she demanded.
“Nothing’s happened,” Sarai lied. “I just worry that it might become less effective, over time.” And she had worried about that, but… it hadn’t become less effective over time. It had stopped working overnight, and that wasn’t something she was prepared to deal with.
“Well, has it? Don’t fib to me. You know I can tell.” Her voice was stern, and as Sarai looked into her eyes, Great Ellen morphed her face into a hawk’s, eyes yellow and severe beneath the sharp slant of feathered brow ridges, a deadly hooked beak where her nose should have been.
“Don’t,” Sarai protested, laughing in spite of herself. “You know I can’t withstand the hawk.”
“Look into my eyes and just try lying.”
It was a game from when they were younger. Great Ellen had never tried forcing or commanding them to behave or obey. That would have gone ill, especially when their gifts were still volatile and not fully under their control. She’d used craftier methods, like this, and gotten better results. It was, in fact, quite difficult to lie to a hawk. “That’s not fair,” said Sarai, covering her eyes. “Can’t you just trust me, and help me?”
“Of course I can, but I ought to know how urgent it is. I’ve wondered when you’d build up a tolerance.” When, not if. “Is it happening?”
Sarai uncovered her eyes and found Great Ellen restored to human form, the excoriating hawk gaze replaced by a piercing but compassionate human one. In answer, she gave her the tiniest of nods, and was grateful when she didn’t probe deeper. “All right, then,” Great Ellen said, all competence, no fuss. “An extra half dose in the morning, and I’ll tinker with the next batch and see what can be done.”
“Thank you,” said Sarai.
Her relief must have been audible, because Great Ellen gave her a look that was hawk even without the transformation. She said, with caution, “It won’t work forever, you know. No matter what we do.”
“Don’t worry about me,” said Sarai with feigned carelessness, but as she went out to the gallery she added, in an undertone only she could hear, “I don’t think we have to worry about forever.”
She saw Sparrow first, kneeling among her orchids, her face dreamy and her hands full of vines, which were visibly growing, slowly cascading out between her fingers to twine through those already in place and fill in gaps where mesarthium still showed through. At the table, Minya and Feral were faced off across the quell board, deep in a game. It was evident from Feral’s glower that he was losing, while Minya looked half bored, and stifled a yawn before moving her piece.
Sarai had never been so glad of the predictable monotony of life in the citadel as she was now. She would even welcome kimril soup in all its comforting dullness.
This evening, however, was to be neither comforting nor dull.
“Poor thing,” she heard Ruby croon, and, turning to look, saw her standing squarely in front of Ari-Eil. Sarai stopped in her tracks. It was jarring, seeing him again after seeing his corpse. Minya had promised to release him, but he was very much still with them, and if he had come to grips with the basic fact of his new existence—that they were alive and he was not—he had in no way softened in his attitude toward them. His confusion was gone, which only left more room in his expression for hostility. Minya had put him in the corner, the way one might lean a broom or umbrella when not using it, and he was, amazingly, still trying to resist her.
Or not so amazingly, perhaps. As Sarai watched, he managed, with incredible effort, to slide his foot a few inches, which could only mean that Minya was still toying with him, holding him imperfectly to allow him false hope.
Ruby was standing in front of him, demure—for her—in a knee-length black slip. Her hands were clasped behind her back, and one foot curled coyly around the ankle of the other. “I know it must be an awful shock,” she was saying to him. “But you’ll see we’re not really so bad. What happened before, none of that was us. We’re not like our parents.” She reached out to touch his cheek.
It was a tender gesture. Ruby was thoughtless, but she wasn’t toying with the ghost as Minya was. Sarai knew she meant to be consoling. The dead man was, however, in no mood for consolation. “Don’t touch me, godspawn,” he snarled, and snapped at her hand like an animal.
Ruby snatched it back. “Rude,” she said, and turned to Minya. “You let him do that.”
“No biting,” Minya told the ghost, though of course Ruby was right: He wouldn’t have been able to do it unless she’d let him. Knowing her, Sarai thought she probably made him do it. She used them like puppets sometimes. Sarai remembered her nightmare, and having no control over her own knife-wielding hand, and shuddered at the thought of being Minya’s toy.
“Minya,” she said, remonstrating. “You promised you’d let him go.”
Minya’s eyebrows shot up. “Did I? That doesn’t sound like me at all.”
Nor did it. Minya was many things—perverse, capricious, and obstinate among them. She was like a wild creature, by turns furtive and barging, ever unwashed, and with the staring lack of empathy that belongs to murderers and small children. Attempts at civilizing her rolled right off her. She was invulnerable to praise, reason, and shame, which meant she couldn’t be coaxed or persuaded, and she was cunning, which made her hard to trick. She was ungovernable, flawlessly selfish, resentful, and sly. One thing she was not—ever—was obliging.
“Well, you did,” Sarai persisted. “So… would you? Please?”
“What, now? But I’m right in the middle of a game.”
“I’m sure you’ll survive the inconvenience.”
Feral had been studying the game board, chin sunk in hand, but he looked up now with just his eyeballs, surprised to hear Sarai arguing with Minya. As a rule, that was something they avoided, but Sarai’s anger made her careless. She was in no mood for tiptoeing around the little girl’s whims right now. After the dream she’d had, the last thing she needed was another baleful ghost glaring at her.
“What’s the matter with you?” Minya asked. “I suppose you’re bleeding.”