offended his sense of order and must be tidied before he could proceed. If only he had been like this from the beginning. If his brain had been this cool and uncluttered, perhaps he could have developed some real skill. Perhaps he wouldn’t have been quite so nothing. He would have liked to be powerful like Derie. To be smart like her, capable; to make decisions, to make things happen. To be of consequence. To matter.
No point thinking about it now. Everyone was what they were meant to be and he was nothing. He was not sure if that was his thought or Derie’s, because he knew she was with him; he couldn’t be trusted alone. When he came to the aquifer, he could feel all that water, reaching into the caverns, filling deep wells of rock that no human had ever seen. He stood at its edge for a moment and then turned toward a particular dark place. Where the mess was.
The darkness moved. Theron stepped into the light.
For a breath, he and Nate stood in silence. The boy really was mangled inside, Nate saw. A hopeless, disordered jumble. “How did you know I was down here?” the boy said. Even his voice was only half there.
“Eleanor told me.”
“You’re lying.” Theron didn’t sound like it mattered much.
“All right, then. I could feel you.” Nate paused, and then added, “I’m not going to hurt you.”
Theron sighed. “More lies. It’s now, isn’t it?”
Nate could feel his own heartbeat, hear his own breath. “Yes. I’m sorry,” he said, and he was. But it was a distant sort of sorry, like a memory of sorry. He could feel Derie scoff at it all the same.
In the dim lantern light, the boy’s gaze drifted. Maybe Nate was boring him. “Don’t be. It’s frustrating not to be—whole. I used to be—” He stopped, let out a long breath. “I’d actually rather you get it over with. Is Judah going to die, too?”
“I hope not,” Nate said, and realized that he did. Faintly. Derie had left him that; just a touch of it. “But I don’t know.”
“If it could be me, I’d do it. But you need him, don’t you?”
“I need Elban’s heir.”
Theron nodded. “That’s Gavin. I was always an afterthought.” His eyes were bright with clarity. “You don’t have to do this, you know. You believe you do, but you don’t. Nothing you’ve been told is true.”
“All of this was drawn long before you or I were even born.”
Theron shook his head. He seemed as unafraid as Nate himself. “I’m not strong enough to stop you. I’m sad for Elly, though. I’ve tried to help her as much as I can. It doesn’t feel as though there’s much of me here these days.” Thoughtfully, he added, “There’s not much of you, either.”
Nate stepped close to him. “I have opium. For the pain.”
“Oh,” Theron said, “I don’t think it will hurt. You know how to get to the tower from here?”
“I can find it,” Nate said. Then he took a fistful of Theron’s hair, flicked out his springknife and plunged it into the big vein in the boy’s throat. Theron’s eyes went wide, but he didn’t make a sound. Nate had a vial in his pocket and he filled it at the wound with blood, like water from a spigot. When the blood slowed, he let go. The body slumped to the ground and Nate kicked it into the aquifer. No bubbles rose from the boy’s white face. It blurred and wavered; sank into the depths and was gone.
* * *
Judah lay on the tower floor, motionless.
Every part of her hurt. Her arms and legs might as well have been fused to the floor, for all that she could move them. The light playing on the arched stone was the limpid blue of morning, which meant she’d slept. Which meant it was time to start over: force herself to move, to eat, to go back into the Work and rip out the stitches the magus had woven into her. Pass out. Wake up. Do it again. She had lost count of how many times the cycle had repeated. Every stitch she destroyed lessened the tower’s hold on her, but ripping out the weaving hurt so much, and she just wanted to sleep. She wanted her fingers not to be cold and her stomach not to be empty. Even now she could feel the tower wrapping itself around her, coddling her in soothing waves of numbness.