its first check when the witch-woman had given the pistol her approval after Reading it. He had been afraid she would divine the weapon’s true purpose.
Awakened objects were complex to Read, and it took time to get to know them. A cursory inspection usually wouldn’t reveal much about its capabilities or nature.
He had been counting on it.
Wells dashed out of the room, leaving Foster to hobble along in his wake.
The workshop doors crashed open, leading directly onto a well-furnished living room in the Capital style. The ceiling was high overhead, lit by a chandelier of a dozen tiny quicklamps that required a servant to maintain. The carpets were expensive and imported, various firearms hung in display cases or racks on the walls, and an intricately decorated piano sat in the corner. The furniture was plush, comfortable, and lined in threads of gold. In between the guns mounted on the walls sat paintings, mostly originals, that Foster had once collected.
The room, and really the entire house, was a monument to what Foster had valued in his younger years. He was known as the greatest gunsmith in the world, his creations sought after from Dylia to Axciss, and he had built himself this home as tribute. He had bought everything money could.
It had cost him only all his time, his marriage, and his relationship with his children.
He had not been welcome in his home for years.
Now, those already-bad memories were polluted with a true nightmare. If he made it out of here alive, he’d burn this house to the ground.
At Wells’ command, the brigands all over the house scurried into action. Some admired their leader’s new weapon—Harriford Wells would be the only person in the world with an Awakened gun. A true legend.
He might even become Soulbound one day, which made him straighten up like he was being awarded by the Emperor himself.
Some of the other bandits dragged in Foster’s family.
His ex-wife was a dignified person in all other scenarios. Now, her gray hair was frizzy and loose, her days-old makeup streaked with tears and bruises. She wept and begged, pulling against them with her whole body as they dragged her in. Her dress was torn and spattered with blood. Her hands were covered in bandages so that they looked like thick mittens.
She only had five whole fingers left.
Not all on the same hand.
Foster had come home three weeks before, taking a leave of absence from his Navigator crew to follow up on a hunch given him by a Great Elder. He was supposed to spend two weeks ashore, then hire a local crew for a brief trip into the shallow Aion, where The Testament would pick him up.
He was now a week overdue.
When he had arrived, he was confronted by Wells, who demanded a Dalton Foster original of his very own.
When Foster refused, Wells had tracked down his ex-wife.
Foster had begun to work after the first threat. But not fast enough for Wells.
Every day that Foster worked, Wells trotted out another family member. Foster still didn’t know if the man had captured them all at once and only revealed them one day at a time or if he had been hunting down Foster’s family, picking them off one by one like a wolf pack taking down deer.
Only a week ago, Wells had decided that Foster wasn’t motivated enough. He had taken a box and cut a small piece off one of Foster’s relatives every day. The box was now almost full, but Wells had assured him that they could find more boxes.
Foster’s twin sons, each more than thirty years old, were bound as his wife was not. One had a bandage covering his missing ear, and they both kept their blood-caked mouths shut. The tip of their tongues had been removed.
Foster was forced to watch every one of the removals. Fortunately, the wives and children of his boys hadn’t yet been touched. If Wells had brought Foster the tiny finger of one of his grandchildren, Foster wouldn’t have been able to stop himself from lunging at the man and trying to bite out his throat.
He stared at his family with pleading, but they didn’t look at him. No, it was worse—their gazes cut away after looking at him, as though they found him too difficult to see directly.
They blamed him for this. That had been clear from what little interaction he had been allowed.
That was okay. Foster blamed himself too.
“Please…please…let us go,” Terisia said. Foster’s ex-wife was not the kind of