Chapter 148: Hush

Seren was awake on her bench with a pill knife in her hand before Aren was through the shutter.

’I guess she learned from the last attack’

"Stay there."

He stayed in the corner by the door, with the grey rag over his face, a grey coat and grey gloves on his hands, and let her look. Her eyes went over him and slid off, and came back, and slid off again.

[False Face: Concealment active.]

The goose had left for the Ninth Ring carts that afternoon, loudly. The crate he would come back with was already in the Deep Purse.

’She knows the goose’s voice better than her own furnace. So Hush doesn’t have one.’

"So you’re the ghost." She didn’t put the knife down. "You’re smaller than the crew says."

He held out a folded paper at arm’s length. She took it with two fingers, and the corner went brown where she held it.

"’You said thank you. I came to collect.’" She looked up. "You write like a child."

He held out the second note.

"’There is a black thread in your core. It goes into every pill you press. I can take it out.’" She didn’t move for some time. Out in the long room the three furnaces stood cold. "How do you know that?"

He gave her the third note at once, because there was only one question she could ask first.

"’Your rite pill. Tarquin paid Corvel for it. It’s in his ledger, in his own hand.’" The corner of the paper went black and curled in her fingers. She folded it along its creases and put it inside her shirt. "So my cousin bought it, and the family handed it to me." She weighed the knife. "Every healer I paid in four years looked at that thread and gave my money back. Why should you be any different?"

He held out the fourth note. TEST IT ON A COPY FIRST.

She laughed once, without any warmth at all. "You wrote this whole night down before you came. Damn you! Fine. Bring your stack."

In the long room she lit the left-hand furnace with a fistful of cores, waited for the white, and put her hand into the fire to the wrist. A second Seren stepped out onto the stone, with the same cold grey-green eyes.

Aren laid his gloved palm flat on her, and the Scar woke on the left side of his chest.

’Listen first. Find where it ends and she begins.’

He sent the Familiar in and listened. Poison always tasted foreign to the Familiar, something it could pull out of a man and leave the man behind. This thread didn’t. Whatever Corvel had put in that pill had grown out of her own essence for years, and to the Familiar it tasted like her. It bit down on the first turn of thread, and the core came with it.

He pulled it back hard, already too late.

The copy went grey from the chest outward, down its arms and up its throat, and fell into a heap of warm ash at his feet.

[Familiar of Nothing has fed.]

[Ledger entry added: The Rot (copy). Extracted. Bearer destroyed.]

Behind it the fire was still burning. Her copies only ever went to ash when their fires went out, and Seren stared at the heap.

"That was me," she whispered.

’Listening won’t work. It’s made of her.’

’And she can’t afford a second copy before the real one.’ He wrote on the back of the fourth note, in slow capitals: NOW I KNOW HOW IT GOES WRONG.

She sat down on the stool and pulled his hand closer. "Four years I’ve braced at that furnace and read thirty-four. If you kill me, ghost, at least I won’t see that number again. Do it."

He put his palm on her real body. The heat came straight through the glove, and the cloth began to scorch.

’Fault Line.’

Lines came up all through her, faint, the places any body would give under a hard enough blow. Around the thread there was nothing. Thread and core lay together, and nothing in them was about to break.

’Then I make it about to break.’

He let the Familiar bite once, lightly, on one turn of thread, and held it there, pulling. Under the pull a line lit up along that turn, thin as a hair, the place where thread and core were about to come apart. Then the next turn lit, and the next.

’One bite too deep, and she’s ash like the copy.’

The Familiar wanted the whole hot copper core. He held it on the bright line and made it take only what lay on the far side, and it snarled at him down his own spine, and blood ran out of his nose under the rag. It lunged for more, and he dragged it back. It lunged again, and this time Seren bit down on her own sleeve.

The last of the thread came away all at once.

[Familiar of Nothing has fed.]

[Ledger entry added: The Rot (Seren Veil). Extracted. Bearer intact.]

Seren drew a long, slow breath, and he felt the knot in her chest that had been shut so long open by itself. Heat rolled off her, every jar on the bench rattled, and the two cold furnaces caught fire on their own and burned white.

[Investment recorded.]

[Type: Risk taken on behalf of Anchor.]

[Anchor progressed: Seren Veil. Rank C → Rank B.]

[Mirror Return triggered.]

The little wheel spun between the three white fires, went past x10, and stopped in the wider band of x100.

[Result: x100.]

[Return: the Anchor’s progress, x100.]

[Comprehension: the Anchor’s copies, seen. Remade in the Host’s core element. Core element: Void.]

[Skill acquired: Void Copies (Lv. 3).]

[Up to two copies. Each has the Host’s body, hands and borrowed skills, and no class skills.]

[Each copy standing locks a third of the Host’s essence until the Host sleeps.]

[A copy destroyed sends its wounds home. Its third stays locked.]

[When they end, what they learned and what they suffered return to the Host.]

’A hundred times a whole rank, and none of it went into my ring. Comprehension took her trick instead, and started it at level three. That’s where the hundred went.’

’Hers need a lit fire, die with it, and can’t press. Mine need no fire and last until I sleep.’

Then the Scar went heavy on his chest.

[Familiar of Nothing: Hunger 0%. Will not feed: 60 days.]

’I dragged it off a whole hot core, and now it sulks. Two months with nothing to eat poison for me, in a city full of pill-makers. Fine. I’ll eat carefully.’

Seren was looking at her shaking hands, and she let them shake. "Rank B. The Bureau makes you wait a week for a silver band." Her eyes were wet, and furious about it. "I’m sending you the bill."

She looked down at the notes in her lap. Then she looked past him at the bench, where three jars of the goose’s lily stood in a row with their labels in big printed capitals. LILY. COLD. DON’T TOUCH.

She picked up the first note and held it beside the nearest jar.

"Hush writes like a child," she said. "So does my goose."

Aren didn’t move.

’Printed capitals were supposed to have no hand in them. Mine lean, apparently. Next note, I will write with my left hand.’

’She has the jars and the notes, and she’ll lay them side by side every morning until she’s sure. A lie tonight buys me a week, and costs me her bench for the rest of the year.’

Then he pulled the rag down, and let her see the goose’s face.

"The lily never ran out," he said, in the goose’s voice. "I did."

Seren stared at him. Then she threw the pill knife, and it went into the doorframe a hand from his ear and stuck there, humming.

"Four boys!" she said. "I hired four boys before you, and the one I kept was the ghost."

"You kept the one with clean lily."

She breathed out hard through her nose, and some of the fury went with it.

"If anyone asks," she said at last, "and the Veils will ask, my goose came back from the carts with a crate before the first bell, and ground all night, and I swore at him the whole time. I’ll say it to Tarquin. I’ll say it to the Bureau, and to any Lamplighter they send." She pulled the knife out of the doorframe. "Not for you. For the lily."

[Seren Veil. Hostility: 72% → 61%.]

He took off the grey coat and the burned gloves, put on the goose’s brown coat, and stood in the middle of the long room.

’Void Copies. Two.’

[Void Copies.]

A third of everything he had went out of him, then another, so fast that the floor tilted. He caught the bench and held on while the room went grey at the edges.

Two men stood in front of him in brown coats, with his boots, his hands and lily dust in the creases. They had his face, the goose’s face, plain and ordinary. They looked at him and waited.

’A third left in me. I can stand and think. I couldn’t fight a cat.’

Seren looked from one goose to the next and to the third, and swore at all of them in turn.

Then she stopped swearing. She looked at the copies, at the three white fires, at her own hands.

"That’s my trick," she said. "My core heals, and one breath later you do my trick. Without a fire."

"Nothing of yours is missing. Light your hand and see."

She put her hand into the left fire to the wrist. A second Seren stepped out onto the stone and glared at the two geese, and Seren let the fire take it back.

Her eyes narrowed. "Whatever you are, goose, I don’t want to be your enemy."

’Smart woman. Not too smart, please. Keep hating me a little. It pays.’ Aren held the bench.

Seren tapped the knife. "I said you’d need two of you."

"You did," Aren said. "Can yours press now?"

"No." She looked at her own hands as if they owed her money. "A copy’s press is my essence twice. It would kill me by the third pill."

’I need to exploit my copies to the maximum.’

By the time the windows went grey, boots scraped on the roof. Rook climbed in over the sill with his bottle and his book, as he did every dawn, and stopped.

He looked at Aren, and at the two others, and back at Aren.

"Stone-seller. Are those your brothers?"

"Yes," said all three.

"Your brothers are uglier than you."

He sat down on the sill, poured a cup and held it out to the nearest copy, and watched it drink without a word.

’Rook comes every dawn, and I let him. Two who know in about ten minutes...’

"Where were you last night, stone-seller?"

"Back from the carts before the first bell, with a crate." Seren didn’t turn from her furnace. "Then grinding, all night. I swore at him the whole time."

Rook looked at her back for a breath. "One of them, maybe." He went back to his book.

Aren leaned on the bench and counted, because counting kept the floor still.

’A Cardinal wants the ghost, and something cold touched my back in the Undervault. I need to be stronger before either of them finds me. Two copies, every night. Pills buy cores. Cores move my ring. And while Nil goes down to hunt, I will need one copy to go down with him.’

Seren put a pestle into each copy’s hand, and a third into his.

"Grind, goose. All three of you."