The magus aimed a nasty kick at Gavin’s thigh. It landed with a meaty thud. Judah felt the big muscle seize painfully. Gavin didn’t move.
* * *
Theron wasn’t in the solarium, the chapel or the kitchen; when Elly called his name down the catacomb stairs in the pantry, there was no response. Finally, much as she hated it, she gave up. She had to get to the courtyard before the Seneschal came through the Passage. Panting, she made it there just in time to hear the guards approaching, their broad Highfall accents echoing through the winding passage.
She gripped the match in her fingers and waited.
Then the door opened and they were there, with the Seneschal on point, holding a lantern. She couldn’t see how many guards were behind him. He saw her, but didn’t slow or stop. Eleanor knew this trick; her brothers had pulled it on her often enough. She was supposed to quail and shrink back out of the way. Instead, she squared her shoulders, and didn’t move. If he wanted her out of his way, he could do what Gavin had said: pick her up and move her like a doll.
He didn’t. She wasn’t surprised. With all of his men watching, he would want to move her with the sheer force of his will. To resort to physical force with a mere woman would be beneath him. “Well, Eleanor,” he said.
“Seneschal.”
“Have you seen the magus?” he said conversationally.
“Up in the tower.” They might have been in the rose garden, discussing the previous night’s dinner.
“And Gavin?”
“With him, I assume.”
“Excellent.” He paused. “We have business inside, Eleanor. Kindly step aside.”
“What business is that, Seneschal?”
“Judah needs to come down from the tower. I’ve been very patient.”
The guards behind him were carrying some sort of bundles. Boards and rope, she suspected. “Patient?” she said. “Stuck in the tower or stuck in the parlor, she’s still behind the Wall. I don’t see how it matters.”
“It matters,” he said, “because I can’t get to her in the tower.”
Eleanor laughed. “You can’t get to her anyway, Seneschal. Your guards can’t make her marry you.”
Contempt filled his face. “I don’t care if she marries me,” he said, and remembering how she’d told Judah to do exactly that, Elly felt faintly sick. “It would have made things easier, but it doesn’t—to use your word—matter. You’re all leaving here today, anyway.”
“No,” Eleanor said.
He blinked. “Excuse me?”
“No. This is our House. We’re not leaving. I haven’t done the rushes in months, but the oil still smells rather strongly, don’t you think?” she said, and held up the match.
* * *
“Like magnets,” the magus said. “One side pulls, the other pushes. One side takes, the other gives. His side takes. His entire line takes. They have taken and taken and taken for generations. They took the world. They took the life out of it, the power.” He pointed at himself, then at her. Whenever his eyes fell on Gavin, they burned with derision, but on her, they just burned. “We’re the givers, the ones who would give everything back. Your line. Your family. And mine. His ancestors left us nothing but the thinnest trickles of power, faint shreds of what used to be—but we’ve learned to use them. Like starving peasants who’ve learned to eat grass and bark and dirt because people like him take everything else. We used them to create you, Judah. To bring you here, to put you here with him, now. You can open the world. You can fix it. You can make it live again. Only you.” Something anguished came into his voice. “We worked so long to make you. So long.”
“To make me,” Judah said.
He nodded wearily. “You’re the end product of five generations of the most powerful Workers we could find. Their lines end in you just as Elban’s ends in him.” He stood up. Still holding the knife, he used it to point at Gavin. “Like a crystal, focusing the light. And you’re bound to him.” He flipped the knife over and extended it toward her, hilt out. “Take it,” he said when she did nothing. “Derie and Caterina are helping me but I can’t hold him much longer.”
She stared at the blade. “What do you expect me to do with that?” Her voice was high and nervous.
“Let his blood,” Nate said. “You’ll need all of it.”
Judah took a stumbling step back. She put her hands behind her, as if they might take the knife of their