Tatterdemalion

which book, but it was enough to keep Lindsay from falling into the pit of grief that yawned open with

every breath.

Taniel had four books of Anglo-Saxon mage lines open in front of him and he was squinting at the

pages, trying to work out where Lindsay’s family might have branched off, when he straightened and shook

his head. “Might I take a little of your blood?” he asked, focusing on Lindsay, who had given up on

pretending he was fine and had curled up in the chair, watching the mosaic move. “Just a pinprick is all I

need. I will go and get a needle from Izia.” Taniel closed the books and got up, smoothing out his robes.

Lindsay swallowed hard. He hated needles. “There isn’t another way to get the information you

need?”

“I could try another way.” Taniel looked at Lindsay thoughtfully, and collected the book in which

he’d been taking notes. “I will consult with Ezqel, then I must find the correct tools. If you grow weary, I suggest you rest. There is food in the kitchen if you are hungry. I will be some time, if I am to do it without your blood.” He flashed Lindsay a small smile. “You are wise. Most surrender such precious things too

easily. I will return.” He gave Lindsay a bow and hurried out of the library, closing the doors behind him

and leaving Lindsay alone in the dusty silence.

Distractions gone, the silence ate at Lindsay’s control. He bowed his head over the table and took

slow, deep breaths, trying to delay the inevitable thoughts. He had no luck. He could see it all in his mind, the way Dane had thrown him aside, the way Jonas had borne him down the hill, the sounds Dane had

made when Jonas’s claws tore into him. Lindsay wished he’d done something sooner, wished he’d done

something differently, to save Dane. It was all too late. He gave in to the tears, to the wracking sobs,

curling in on himself for whatever small amount of comfort it would bring.

The last thing Dane saw was his own hand clutched around Jonas’s ankle. The last thing he heard was

Lindsay’s desperate cry. His name.

Where he went, he had no name. The rising dark was familiar, he had seen it so many times before

and always it had faded in the face of his healing. He could feel his heart stutter. With too much to heal, his throat torn open and every organ shredded, his magic couldn’t stay ahead of the darkness.

This time, the darkness never waned.

Out of the darkness, pain. It wasn’t any pain he’d ever felt before, it was a pain that encompassed his

entire awareness, his whole self. It was all his failure, distilled. In the dark, he was nothing but agony. It went on forever. Hell. He was in hell. He’d never believed in it, but he was in it now, and it had no ending.

Dane.

He knew that voice. It carried with it the smell of honeysuckle and hibiscus and magic. Crushed grass

under his skin, the salt of the sea in his hair, the sun flowing into his bones. Something in him tried to push it away, a dying reflex, but it persisted. The pain was worse, almost enough to erase him entirely.

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Stop fighting me. The words snapped through his pain. Now is not the time for your pride.

Pride. He had no pride. He had nothing but pain and a fading sense that he had once been more than

that.

That’s better.

It was as though he were being gathered up in someone’s hands, cradled and lifted out of the dark.

Memory rushed through him. Dirt roads, a split-rail fence, a well, chickens scratching in the dust, a dog

barking, hooves on packed soil. He could smell a wood stove and evergreens and a cold wind out of the

north. His hands were warm in a pair of woolen mittens. The years went by like snowflakes. Sometimes

they caught in the wool of his mittens and he could see them, each different than the last, gleaming and

perfect.

There was so much he had forgotten, so much he’d wanted to forget. The smell of latrines and mud

and blood and gunpowder. Wet wool on his skin and gangrene stench overwhelming every other scent.

Starvation and the weight of an iron collar, the cold bars of a cage. Laughter. His blood splashing into a basin.

Cyrus, his hair as black as a raven’s wing and his skin unlined, laughing. The wind sweeping across a

field and gathering up a storm of flowers. Vivian with her hair bound up in the ofuku style, like a souvenir doll in her kimono. Not Vivian. Omasami. Later, she was Vivian, with lace and a cameo at her throat, her

waist pulled small as a daisy stem by her corset. His own hands on the corset laces and her chirping

admonishments when he was too careful with her.

He wanted to remember those things, not the scream of mortar fire and the wail of dying, not the

weight of a stretcher in his hands, not the alien feel and stink of a gun. Human wars were terrible things, against nature. Mage wars were wars of natural forces.

His wings tore out of his shoulders and spread like twin sails, his claws ripped into the earth and flung

him up against the pull of gravity, toward the sky. That, he remembered, in his dreams. The wind spoke in

his ears and lifted him high, through the night and into the day, into the midst of battle. When mages

warred, high in the mountains above the human realm or in the heart of the desert, they fought with storm

and lightning and fire, with tooth and claw, with swords and arrows. Dane had fought on faerie soil, on land that was not earth, had torn the throat out of a dragonet, had dragged angels out of the sky.

He remembered the moment that he was broken, the agony of it that was nothing next to the agony of

being betrayed, and none of that was anything like the pain of now. Everything in him still raged against

that moment. He dreamed that it had not happened and woke in the prison of his own body.

The dog. The dog had never known his own kind, never known the old laws and ways—all the dog

knew was the way of men. The dog lived on the edge of the camps, scrounged what the humans would

throw him, let himself be used. Dane had pitied him once, let him live, and had regretted it since. He