overwhelmed him was gone, but its memory still burned.
“Now, since dear Fairfax refuses to cooperate, we shall have a chat, you and I, Your Highness.”
There was something extraordinarily smug about the Bane’s tone. Dread crawled over Titus with feet like those of a hundred millipedes.
“Let me ask you something. Why did Gaia Archimedes betray me?”
It took Titus a moment to recognize Mrs. Hancock’s real name. “Because you murdered her sister to prolong your own life.”
“And how would she have known it?”
Titus hesitated. “She and your old oracle met and fell in love. And they exchanged enough information for that to come up.”
The more truth he told, the greater the chance he would not be interrogated under truth serum.
“You mean Icarus Khalkedon? But he never remembered anything from his oracular sessions.”
“That is what he wanted you to believe.”
The Bane’s eyes narrowed. After a moment he said, “I see. What else didn’t I know about him?”
“That he was not in a true trance when he told you that I should be sent to a nonmage school and that Mrs. Hancock should be placed on site to keep an eye on me.”
“Why you?”
“Because my mother was pregnant with me at the time, and you always saw the Domain as a potential threat.”
“Was that the only instance in which Icarus lied to me during an oracular session?”
“It is the only one I know of. Mrs. Hancock said he planned to give several more correct answers and then kill himself.”
“Such treachery. Which makes it even more heartwarming, I assure you, when it is one of his final answers that led me to this body.” The Bane gestured at himself. “A fine specimen, is it not?
“I obtained this body almost eighteen years ago at the Sheikha Manāt Interrealm Hub in the United Bedouin Realms. It was exactly where Icarus said it would be, waiting for a connecting translocator.”
Premonition sank its cold claws into Titus. Almost eighteen years ago. A young traveler. A disappearance no one could explain.
The Bane smiled. “I do not enjoy the process of taking over another body. It is necessary, but never pleasant. In Wintervale’s case I had to allow myself to be surrounded by his memories for some time, so that I would be able to recognize the people around him and imitate him to a creditable extent. I did the bare minimum, which proved to be a mistake—it was just like that stupid, shallow boy to never think about his one fatal weakness. No, it was all cricket, his mother, Mrs. Dawlish’s boys, and his old home in the Domain.”
Titus wished his fist could connect with the Bane’s nose and shove it straight to the back of his skull. “Wintervale was worth a hundred of you. A thousand.”
The Bane shook his head. “You are a young, foolish boy, full of maudlin sentiments. You should have had some of your grandfather’s pragmatism. He killed his own daughter to keep his throne. All you had to do was hand me the elemental mage and you could have reigned in peace for the remainder of your natural life.”
“My grandfather was but an instrument you wielded. You were the one who killed my mother. I will set fire to the Citadel myself before I become your willing collaborator. And I will gladly be the last heir of the House of Elberon if it hastens the hour of your demise.”
The Bane smiled again, but this time with a harder edge. “We digress. Now where was I? Yes, my failure to learn enough about Wintervale. After Wintervale died, when my consciousness traveled back, what should I find but that the body I’d been using since June, after Fairfax electrocuted its predecessor, had died during my absence, of an aneurysm of the brain, of all things.
“So it was on to the next body, this one. And with the dire example of Wintervale before him, I deemed it prudent to dig a little deeper into this one’s mind. He seemed to be of a simple enough background. Before he was brought here, he’d been a student in the capital city of your great realm, a nice boy who enjoyed helping customers at his father’s bookshop. He hiked in the Serpentine Hills and sailed off the coast—a cliché, almost, if one didn’t account for his Sihar ancestry.”
Titus fell back against the far wall of the containment cell—and slid to the floor.
“Does that sound familiar to you? It was so ordinary and colorless I was convinced there was no need to