own. And you spend all your time searching for the one who can end your life.”
“Those who thirst for immortality have no comprehension of it.” He walked to the drink cart that stood next to the doorway and poured whiskey into a clean tumbler. “For the first two hundred years, it is intoxicating, yes.” The cut crystal of the tumbler caught the light of one of the orbs and sent it scattering across the floor. “But then everything becomes more and more meaningless. A life, a nation, an entire universe—their triumphs, their squabbles, their pathetic grasping at power, it is all the same, no matter where I go, no matter what I do.” He sipped his whiskey, the spice of it stinging his throat. “I am tired.”
Aelia glanced at him. She was not as afraid of him now as she had been when he first told her what he was and invited her to kill him. He had known she was the right one to tell because she actually tried to do it—tried half a dozen workings that had taken his breath, stopped his heart, and even attempted to sever his head. He had allowed it, though it was no more than he himself had tried. He had also tied weights to his ankles and jumped into the ocean; self-administered the venom of the most venomous snake on Earth, the inland taipan; and, in one universe, hurled himself into an active volcano. All the attempts—his and Aelia’s—had failed, as his magic defended and preserved him.
Still, she sometimes betrayed fear. Like now, her eyebrows knit together, her expression haunted. “And this boy, you believe he will be able to do it?” she said.
“I have been in dozens of universes with dozens of Chosen Ones and warriors and magicians of renown,” he said. “None have had the raw power of this boy. He may not have the skill or the focus, but I don’t require him to. He is a blunt instrument only.”
Aelia nodded. “But his desire to do so must be cultivated,” she said distantly. “And desire cannot be forced.”
Nero drained his glass. “Precisely what I need your help with.”
The glow of an orb was what remained.
The door to the workshop shuddered as he flung it open with his siphon and then slammed it behind him. He was trembling. He cursed and shook out his hands. One would think that hundreds of years of life would eradicate this kind of weakness, but still it lingered.
He filled the air with whistles, one to lock the door behind him, one to set up a sound barrier around the circumference of the workshop, one to summon his notebook to the table before him, and the last to ready his pen to take down his dictation. He sank into a chair next to a stack of books and used his handkerchief to wipe his forehead of sweat. He tasted salt from his upper lip.
The pen stood upright, shivering in anticipation of his voice.
“It is done,” he said. “The Army of Flickering is dead.”
The pen began to move. He ran his hands down his legs to wipe the moisture from his palms.
“He will want to kill me now,” he added, with some relief.
Sloane felt the hunger of the Dark One and, above all, the weariness. They felt both together.
He thought of Micah and his wry smile. Strange, he had always thought, that such an extraordinary child came from such ordinary parents. Nancy, host of a weekly knitting circle, last year’s winner of the chili contest at the town fair. Phil, thinning on top, thickening on the bottom, manager of the local bank. They had eyed Nero’s siphon uneasily when he shook their hands, and they hadn’t fought him when he took their son away from them.
Micah didn’t need a siphon to do magic. He hardly even needed intent. His desires simply manifested when provoked. He had lit his first bedroom in the Camel on fire. He had broken every single plate in the cafeteria at once. He had made flowers grow out of the stone floor in the Hall of Summons.
Now he sat on top of the siphon fortis in the Hall of Summons, looking small despite his early lankiness. It was the ears poking out of his hair, maybe, that made him look so young.
There was a cassette player in front of him, and Sibyl’s voice, raspy and dry, played for the third time that morning: It will be the end of Genetrix, the unmaking