She shook her head. “God, you’re stupid, Nathaniel Clare,” she said. “Not that you had any hope of turning out otherwise, with Caterina fawning all over you like some precious little prince instead of the disappointing cross of two lines that weren’t more than decent to begin with. Tried like hell to beat it out of you, but small hope of that when she was always there to pat your little head afterward and tell you how special you were.” She thumped the end of her cane on the floor. “Hear me now, Nathaniel: you are not special. You are not important. Live or die, you don’t matter. All that matters is the Unbinding.”
Nate’s mouth was dry. “I’m not going to fail.”
Derie rolled her eyes. “Oh, for—give me your arm, you sad little wretch.”
He wanted to say no, but there was no point. He had never said no to Derie. He wasn’t sure he could. He gave her his arm. She no longer made any attempt to be gentle, but the knife didn’t bother him. What did bother him was the way she shuffled his brain, pushing everything in it further away than she ever had. Normally, things that mattered reasserted themselves after a while, but this was different. Nate could only watch as she tore at his most precious memories one by one, shoving them behind a veil where he could barely even see them. Caterina, Anneka, everything. Charles. His whole history. The stars over the Barriers, the sea by the Temple Argent. The dirty skin of Judah’s hand pressed against his lips. All meant nothing. He clung to Bindy for as long as he could, but Derie snatched her away like everything else, and soon after that nothing bothered him anymore. It was all gone.
When it was over, he didn’t feel sick. There was a pounding in his head, but he felt clearer than he had in a long time. The great city around him had been pared away; only one wide avenue led forward, lit to daylight.
Across the table, Derie wound a cloth around her bleeding arm. “Well, Nathaniel Clare,” she said, “what are you, now?”
“Nothing,” he said.
“And you know what to do.”
“Yes.” The pounding wasn’t in his head, but outside of it. The door.
“You fail,” Derie said, “come back here. I’ll send you off like I did Charles.” He could feel her contempt as clearly as he could hear it. “Now go open the door before the wenchlet breaks it down.”
So, as Derie left out the back, he went to the front door and unlocked it. Bindy burst in breathless, eyes scanning the front hall as if expecting it to be full of bandits. “Magus,” she said, “are you all right? I heard screaming.”
“Did you? Must have been somebody next door.”
“But you’re bleeding.”
She pointed to his arm. Her concern was meaningless. “I cut myself,” he said. “It’s nothing.”
* * *
He found the Seneschal outside the Wall, waiting with a half-dozen guards. Some carried bundles of wood and rope; others, knives and swords. “She comes down today,” the Seneschal said.
The tower wasn’t visible through the Wall—it wouldn’t be from the inside, either—but Nate could feel it even if he couldn’t see it. The avenue in his head led there. “Give me two hours,” he said.
“No.”
“One, then.”
The Seneschal shook his head. “I expect the builders in less than an hour,” he said. “You have until they arrive.”
Only one guard accompanied them through the Passage; the others remained outside. To go from the relative clamor of the Square to the silence of the courtyard was like entering a tomb, it always was, but this time Nate barely noticed. He noticed his failure to notice, but it meant nothing.
At the last door, the Seneschal said, “See you soon, magus,” and went back through to the Square, locking the doors behind him. Nate followed the glowing path. It led down to the mildewed kitchen, and from there to the pantry, where he found a lantern. He lit it with a match and continued down, along the damp stone passages to the aquifer. He had never been there before, but whatever Derie had done to his head, whatever she’d cleared away... He no longer remembered what was missing, but its absence left a great deal of space. He could feel things he had never felt before. The tower; Judah within it, like the heart of a candle flame; and the object of his current search, a mess that