able to put him back together this time. He tried to gather as much of himself as he could.
He must have done a decent job because her breathing slowed, and the terror faded from her eyes. “I saw your friend in your head,” she said. “I saw him kill himself. You just sat and watched. How could you just sit and watch?”
“Derie took his power away. He was already dead.”
He could smell her puzzlement like smoke. Then she understood, and the smoke vanished. To Nate’s great relief she came forward, onto her knees, and slid away from the terrifying drop—came close to him, and took his hand. Her hand felt dry and cold, her touch tentative. “I’m sorry I hurt you, magus. And I’m sorry for your friend. You loved him.”
“I did,” he said. Her eyes were as black as the icy dagger she’d sent into his chest, and all of the many fractured parts of him were sure that if he kissed her now she would let him, if he did anything she would let him. Some of the fragments inside his head were already kissing her, already doing much more, but the lump of his real body in the tower was sluggish and hard to control. And wouldn’t Derie be angry. Wouldn’t she use her cane on him then.
As if in answer, he heard his old teacher’s voice—real or imagined, he didn’t know, those lines were fractured, too—as cutting as the mountain wind. She’s not yours, boy.
He flinched away. Judah frowned. Before he could say anything she reached out one of her cool, dry hands and touched his cheek. He would have flinched back from that, too—but the coolness spread over him, like floating in a pond in the warm sun. It was better than a kiss. It was better than anything he’d ever felt. The pieces of him weren’t joined, but they were soothed. He was a great tree surrounded by a pond and all the fluttering leaves of him were useful, all grew from the same place. He could stay like this forever. He never wanted to move again. And she hadn’t even cut him first—even that faint delicious pain was absent—
She hadn’t even cut him first. His eyes flew open in amazement. “What are you doing? How are you—”
Judah pulled her hand back. He was still cracked and broken, but the lovely peace remained. “I do it for Gavin when he’s upset. You seemed so miserable.”
“You can just...do that,” he said.
She shrugged. “It’s not the same as what you do.”
No, it wasn’t. It was much, much stronger. This was why it had to be her, Nate realized. This was the Work the Slonimi had wrought, all of them together, over all these years. She wasn’t like him or Caterina or Derie; she wasn’t even like Maia or Tobin. She was something else entirely. He could see her slipping already back into the docility that he and the tower wove around her. Her jaw and cheekbones stood out more now. She wasn’t eating enough and she probably didn’t even know it, the Work he and the tower did on her when she was asleep kept her from feeling hungry. Or cold—he had felt her touch, he knew her body was cold. She was dying in this barren tower, isolated from everyone she knew, and it all probably felt completely normal to her. It probably seemed a perfectly reasonable way to live.
Sometimes, as the Slonimi traveled, they found a villager so powerful they could not be left behind, whether the villager would come willingly or not. It was hard. They always yelled and fought, and had to be chained until they accepted their new life. Caterina hated it. It’s for the best, she’d say, though, and she was right. Caterina’s own mother had been one of the Unwilling. Charles’s father, too. What the Seneschal had told Nate in Elban’s study was true: people didn’t always know what was good for them, and they rarely considered what was good for the world. Sometimes you had to force them. Sometimes they had to be tricked.
“You’re getting very good,” he said.
“Yes,” Judah said. Her voice sounded drowsy. She pushed his knife toward him. “If there were a contest for the person who was the very best at digging through your head, I’d win.”
No, he thought, wryly. Derie would. “You’re finding truths that I don’t even know are inside me. Soon you’ll be able to manipulate them.”