Ink and Bone

The Doctrine of Mirroring. As above, so below.

They parted company near their sleeping quarters with Rijuta and Yeva, who continued on to their likely imaginary card game. Thomas was talking some nonsense about the saturation properties of ink on paper, but he fell silent when Jess stopped replying.

Jess stretched out on his camp bed, closed his eyes, and fell asleep to the dancing visions of ink blots that left bruised echoes nothing could erase.

EPHEMERA

An urgent communication from the Obscurist Magnus to the Artifex Magister:

Our monitors have reported new information has been added to Thomas Schreiber’s personal journal. His drawings are very close to a working model, and a more efficient working model than we have ever seen before, even the one developed by Scholar Wolfe that led to his confinement. Action must be taken to secure his notes and any working models that he might have developed.

Reply from the Artifex Magnus to the Obscurist Magnus:

And so, again, we are at a crossroads.

This is a consequence of allowing Wolfe to live, instead of simply killing him outright as well as destroying his work. If dangerous ideas are a disease, he is the very definition of an infectious carrier.

You must stop protecting him, Keria.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Arriving in Alexandria was a messy affair. The High Garda force crossed the border in a long convoy, speeding along empty roads, but as they reached the city’s precincts the progress slowed, and the last hundred kilometres took hours more than Jess had expected. By the time the carrier finally hissed to a stop on a huge field of evenly paved stones beyond the High Garda barracks, night was already falling on the city, and the day’s warmth was chilling fast.

Jess hopped down, groaning from stiffened muscles, and turned to offer Khalila a hand. She didn’t need it, but she accepted with a dimpled smile. It didn’t move him. The girl Jess was interested in wasn’t in this carriage.

He looked up and down the rows, and Glain caught his shoulder as he started to move off. ‘Careful,’ she said.

‘I know.’

‘I mean it.’

He shook free and walked to the front of the vehicle. The other carriers were parked neatly side by side, with well-practised precision. The troops were disembarking and forming into lines, but he and his fellow students weren’t expected to be so orderly … at least, he hadn’t yet seen Wolfe appear to order it. So he dodged between forming ranks of soldiers and tried to keep himself hidden from sight as he moved from carrier to carrier, checking identification codes … and there, ahead, was the one that he knew held Morgan.

The door was unlocked as he came to a halt, and three armed guards emerged. A beat later, Morgan appeared in the door.

It didn’t look like her, except for the silky fall of chestnut-brown hair. She was a pale shadow, drawn and very, very weary. One of the guards – Yeva, Jess realised – offered her a hand, and Morgan accepted it. As her foot touched the stone flagging, she looked up.

She saw him.

He didn’t know what he expected from her, or himself; he hadn’t thought beyond the simple, visceral need to be there to see her. He hadn’t quite imagined what it would feel like to be seen by her in turn.

The girl he’d kissed in the dim sanctity of his tent was gone, and the one who stood there watching him was a stranger.

The small guard – Rijuta – saw him, and crossed to him with all the crackling energy he’d seen in her before. No smiles now. Nothing but business. ‘Go back,’ she said. ‘She doesn’t want to see you. You will only make it harder for her.’

That was probably true. Jess nodded. He cast one more look at Morgan – the last look he would ever have, he thought – but she wouldn’t meet his eyes at all.

He turned to go.

A gleaming black carriage was steaming towards them, fast. No ordinary carriage. Definitely not High Garda. It had ornate brightwork, and Jess had a strange vision of the carriage he’d climbed into when he was ten years old, and a man ate a book in front of him.

This was the conveyance of someone important.

The carriage rolled to a smooth halt, hissed a white cloud, and a sharply uniformed footman came around to open the passenger door.

The Artifex Magnus stepped down, and after him, a woman with a gleaming gold collar around her throat. It was intricately, expensively engraved with symbols that flowed together in a surprisingly elegant design.

It couldn’t be anyone but the Obscurist Magnus.

Jess heard an intake of breath from the High Garda around him, and spines straightened. But she never leaves the Iron Tower. Obviously wrong. Here she was, and walking towards them, surrounded within a single stride by a walking armoured shell of six guards. She was a tall, bronze-ski

She wasn’t coming towards him, after all. She was walking towards Morgan. Jess was merely in the way, and at a commanding glower from the Artifex, he moved. Not far, though. And not willingly.

‘Stay still,’ said a voice at his shoulder. Jess looked back to see Wolfe had joined him. He’d do

He had the feeling Wolfe wasn’t glad to find him here, but he couldn’t help that. He’d done what he had to do.

The Obscurist Magnus stopped a few steps from Morgan, and bowed just the slightest degree. ‘I am pleased to find you well, Miss Hault,’ she said. ‘I trust your journey here has been smooth.’

It was absurd, how socially correct it was, after all the blood and death and anguish. Jess wondered how Morgan managed not to fling it in the Obscurist’s face, but then again, Morgan had better survival instincts. ‘Very pleasant,’ she said. Her chin rose just a little. ‘Please don’t expect me to thank you.’

‘Thank us for saving you from a lifetime of ru

On a cushion of black velvet inside lay a silvery engraved collar, like the one that the Obscurist Magnus wore. She took it in both hands, and a soft orange glow formed where she touched it. Formulae, made visible and real. The talent of the Obscurists. Morgan’s talent.

The collar separated at an invisible seam.

No. Jess could read that clearly in Morgan’s eyes, in the shudder that ran through her body. But she didn’t try to run from it now.

There was nowhere to go. No one who could help.

The Obscurist Magnus stepped forward and spread the metal around the girl’s throat. It gleamed, rare and beautiful, and as she made a graceful gesture with one hand, the symbols hovering around it whirled, spun, and snapped inward.

The collar shut with a tiny, singing sound, and Jess saw Morgan lurch as if physically stung by it. She bit her lip on a cry, and tears welled in her eyes. She raised her hands to touch the thing, and Jess realised no one had removed her shackles.

The Obscurist realised it at the same moment, and glared at the guards. ‘Take those off,’ she ordered. ‘There’s no need to be cruel.’