“Humans are less easily discouraged,” said Grandfather. “Someone will read to her, write for her. She’ll only become more determined to break through the mysteries that have scarred her.”
“Perhaps,” said Chulzh’th. “They claimed her as their secretary. They may not want to admit the importance of her lost skills. It takes a man of imagination and confidence to acknowledge such genius in a servant.”
“Mr. Barlow has more imagination than you might expect,” said Spector.
Grandfather leaned forward, long fingers steepled. His talons clicked gently. “His team’s experiments are not blasphemous, merely foolish. But people are likely to die of their foolishness, and the question becomes how many they’ll destroy alongside themselves. Or how many can be saved, if we stop them quickly.”
“We’ll not start another war with the surface over this,” said Archpriest Ngalthr. “Opening the outer gates is dangerous, but it isn’t the only way to destroy at such a scale.”
“They endanger the spawning grounds,” said Grandfather.
“So would a war.”
“It certainly would,” said Spector. “Much as they annoy me, you may not try to kill my colleagues. I have been doing my very best to argue for a more cooperative relationship with the Aeonist communities, Deep Ones included.”
“We’re supposed to be cooperating to stop dangerous cults,” I said. “Whatever they do or don’t worship, right now Barlow’s group fits that description. Why haven’t you sent me to infiltrate them?” I said it sarcastically, even as it occurred to me that he’d done precisely that. “Never mind. I won’t make you say it. Grandfather, we have a more immediate problem. The outsider that the Yith banished left something behind. There’s a piece of it in Audrey, and another in Sally—and it’s reaching into me. I don’t know how to get rid of it.”
Ngalthr scowled. “That is the risk of a panicked banishment. Let me see. Aphra Yukhl, I can examine them most safely through you.”
Audrey sat very still as I held out my arm, let Ngalthr cut another stinging sigil. My awareness was shallow this time, but grew sharper as I sensed the expanding core of ice within Sally, the cold and dark battling within Audrey. And realized that I ought to have warned him …
Ngalthr sniffed deeply and then leapt up, hissing at Audrey. She leaned back, baring her throat. “Well, go on then.”
Neko pushed herself between them. “Ngalthr-sama, don’t. She’s no more a monster than the rest of us.”
“When did you learn?” Ngalthr asked me.
“The Yith figured it out a few days ago—after our last visit. She said the madness wasn’t heritable.” Ngalthr visibly relaxed.
Audrey drooped. “It is now,” she said. Neko put a hand on her shoulder.
“Do you recognize the thing in her blood?” I asked.
“I’ve only dealt with the Mad Ones once,” said Ngalthr. He shuddered, a ripple of light against crest and scales. “Not enough to recognize the scent on your last visit, but it’s grown stronger. I’ve never looked directly at their blood.” He flexed his claws. “Not with my inner sight.” He put his skin once more against mine, and I felt his minute examination as he probed through our shared connection. Chulzh’th crept close and placed her smaller hand beside his. Together they covered my entire forearm. Their scent, salt and fish and cool musk, mingled with burnt wood and the crackling immediacy of the stormy air.
At last they sat back. “I’ve never seen anything like the way your blood is fighting,” said Ngalthr to Audrey. “But the outsider, that is a known danger. And, unfortunately, a tenacious one.”
“Is it a risk to the rest of the confluence?” asked Audrey. Her voice shook.
“Perhaps. But except for what’s come into Aphra from Sally, the outsider hasn’t truly spilled over yet. Should it defeat you, it might attempt to use your body for its purposes, for whatever time it could maintain your living form. It could not do so for long: they are blind, probing things, trying to manipulate laws and senses that they cannot comprehend.”
“Can you do anything about it?” she asked.
“I know what to do for a man of the water,” said Ngalthr. “Unfortunately it is a dangerous process, and depends on the sufferer having both finely developed magical skill, and great endurance of the body. Two scarcely-trained children of the air—or of the air and rock—are unlikely to survive.”
“I don’t care,” said Audrey. “I’d rather die than have either of those things take me over. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
Ngalthr crouched before her. He touched a claw to her forehead. “I am not in the habit of torturing young girls to death.”
She took the claw between her fingers and moved it down to her neck. “No need. Aphra has a knife, if you’re squeamish.”
“No!” I said. I checked my waist to confirm the blade still securely sheathed there. “Stop doing that—if the archpriest doesn’t have an answer, we’ll come up with something, but we’re not giving up on you.”
Ngalthr retrieved his claw. “I know this is hard, child,” he told her. “You have a few hours yet, before you must choose between death and surrender.”
Grandfather turned to me. “You carry a less personal link, however.” He took my arm, and I pulled it back. “Aphra Yukhl, we need no longer fear that she’ll betray us.”
“Without me, she’ll fall to the cold.”
“Then let her! You risk more than just yourself.”
“We have a few hours yet to choose between death and surrender.” I stood. “Give me the time to think this through. I’m going for a walk, and no one is killing anyone before I get back.”
Away from the heat and light, I looked back to check on them. I heard murmurs, but the fragile peace appeared to hold for the moment. That was good. Though the cold inside reached eagerly to meet the lesser chill without, I needed to be away from the fire’s complexities, alone with the ocean and the storm and my own confusion and fear.
I’d seen for myself, over and over, that there are pains and ends that cannot be avoided. There should be no shock here. And yet I’d known too, when I said that I’d mourned too much to risk children, that I’d never grown inured to the pain.
As much decision as there was to make, it wasn’t even mine. It was Audrey’s and Sally’s to deny or accept, to surrender or fight to a more dreadful and protracted defeat. But Audrey still looked to me. And I had no answer to give her.
I knelt and dug my fingers into wet sand, felt the granularity of shells and stones ground fine by the relentless waves. I traced lines that added up to no spell, and sifted foolish ideas. Draw the cold thing into me (somehow, miraculously) and endure the treatment that Audrey and Sally could not. Find some other Yith (tonight, on whatever continent they made their current abode) and demand access to magic that no human had ever been permitted. Pray, and receive an answer.