tilted his head as he looked at her. “Did it not occur to you that we also make medicine on Genetrix?”
Sloane laughed a little. “I guess it hadn’t. Do you guys have benzodiazepines?”
“Like Valium?” Nero said.
“I guess that would work,” she said.
“I will request some for you,” Nero said. “I know how frustrating it is to not get enough sleep on a regular basis.”
Sloane hadn’t realized it would be that simple. “Well . . . thanks.”
“Of course.” Nero nudged her book so he could see what was on the cover. It was a sketch of the baleen whale Kyros had mentioned, adrift in the clouds above Challenger Deep.
“History,” Nero said. “I suppose that makes it easier to sleep.”
“You don’t like history?”
“Not particularly, no.” Nero shrugged. “On a grand scale, perhaps—the birth of the world, the first living organisms, the beginning of humanity. But the details of squabbling between nations—That’s my land; No, it’s mine; Let’s kill each other over it—no. That does not interest me.”
“Without those little squabbles, you wouldn’t have magic,” Sloane said. “There wouldn’t have been a ballistic missile to accidentally fire into the Mariana Trench.”
“And magic for magic’s sake, that’s such a good thing?”
“No,” Sloane said. “But—don’t you like magic? You work here, after all.”
“Sometimes I like it,” he said. “It’s given me knowledge of the universe beyond anything my ancestors would have dreamed. But that knowledge is never enough to prevent catastrophe, it seems.”
“It’s not your responsibility to stop all bad things from happening.”
“Only some things. I know.” He smiled a little. “But I bear the weight of them.”
She wondered if he was thinking of his sister, lured into the Resurrectionist’s clutches. The horror of her death, her body suspended above the Camel, stiff and cold. Sometimes Sloane thought of Cameron that way too, lying dead in his casket, dusted with powder from the mortician that made him look plastic, like a doll. She had been young when he joined the fight against the Dark One. Too young to stop him, probably, but she hadn’t even tried.
“I understand that, I think,” she said.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt your reading with my moroseness,” Nero said. “I hear that your siphon efforts have been considerable.”
“But fruitless.”
Nero acknowledged that with a nod. “There’s a book that may help you to understand more about magical theory. It’s called The Manifestation of Impossible—”
“—Wants. Yeah, I read that one,” she said. Maybe she was flattering herself, but she thought he looked a little impressed. “Magic is all about desire, not just intent, blah-blah. Didn’t do me much good—you can’t make yourself want something.”
Nero cocked his head to the side again. “Can’t you?”
She had never considered that before. She had lived half her life wanting only one thing—to save the world—and the other half wanting to be left alone, which was almost the same thing as wanting nothing at all. She didn’t know what it was like to desire something between those two extremes. She wasn’t sure she was even capable of it.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Well, then, that’s the central question,” Nero said. “You will never be able to do magic unless you find a way to want to.” He got to his feet with a groan, his knees creaking. “I’m a little too old to sit on the floor, I’m afraid. I’ll talk to a doctor about your medicine once the world is awake.”
“Thanks again,” she said.
Nero walked down the hallway, humming.
25
SLOANE STOPPED on the corner and looked up, trying to see the corkscrew spire on top of the tallest building in Genetrix’s Chicago, Warner Tower. It was the one with two faces, one flat, the other undulating. It had been made, according to Cyrielle, “without magic, but influenced by the Unrealist school nonetheless.”
If Sloane had believed in souls, she would have hoped that Cameron’s existed in Genetrix, that he was an architect building houses that defied logic and sense. But she didn’t.
Sometimes she still hoped anyway.
Cyrielle was walking with Matt at the front of the group. Esther was teaching Edda and their third chaperone, Perun, how to say something in Korean. Kyros saw Sloane lingering by Warner Tower and stayed behind to wait for her, his hands in his coat pockets.
“Did you have any luck today?” he asked.
“As far as I’m concerned, my siphon is just a really expensive paperweight,” Sloane said. She glanced over her shoulder, sure she had just heard something buzzing. But the street behind her was empty.
Kyros smiled grimly. “Well, at least you know you can