Chapter 166: A Talk With Ouroboros

"My servant, aye?" Ouroboros chuckled.

The sound rolled through the void and the gears trembled in their places.

"I came to pay what I owe," I said.

"Did you?" The light brightened slightly, then dimmed. "You told your friends I spoke to you. You told them I gave you a revelation."

My stomach turned over. ’Hmm... Indeed. Worthy of being a Supreme Angel’

"I needed a reason they would believe," I said.

"Yes. You always do." There was no anger in the voice. "I do not mind. I have been called a great many things by a great many liars. Being called a revelation is one of the nicer ones."

I said nothing. A small gear drifted between us, spinning backward, and I watched it so I would have something to look at.

"Show me what you brought."

I raised the Shard of Lu Xiye in both hands. In this place it did not look like a broken crystal. It looked like a window, and behind it the crimson hunger moved slowly, like something asleep.

The light leaned toward it. I could not say how I knew. The whole void seemed to tilt, and the threads stretched toward the Shard like grass bending in wind.

"Hmm," Ouroboros said. "Sovereign. Marked by blood. Carried by a great man for a very long time."

"It is the one you asked for."

"It is the one I asked for," he agreed. "And the blood?"

So I drew Fury, the black sword Culex had given me when I joined his army, and I pressed the edge to my left palm and pulled.

It hurt more than I expected. The blood did not drip. It rose from my hand in a thin red line and floated upward, spreading into the void as if the void were water. It crossed the gears. It touched some of the silver threads, and each thread it touched flared and went still.

"Enough," Ouroboros said.

I closed my hand. The cut was already closing by itself, which I did not like.

"Now give it to me."

I let go of the Shard. It did not fall. It rose out of my hands and drifted toward the throne, turning slowly, and I watched it go with a strange feeling.

The light swallowed it.

There was no sound. The crimson thread in the crystal flared once and went out, and then the neon blue went dark as well, and then it was gone.

For a long moment nothing happened.

"Is that all?" I asked. My voice came out smaller than I meant it to.

"For the debt, yes." The light settled. "Your concealment was a loan, little thief. Now it is a purchase. You owe me nothing."

I breathed out, and it shook. I had carried that debt through the entire plan.

"You are relieved," Ouroboros said. "Most people would be grateful."

"I am grateful."

"No. You are suspicious. That is better." The light flickered, amused. "You have questions. Ask one. I am in a good mood."

I had a hundred. The quest, the original Edmund, the Shard, the king who had given his Gift away like a coin, the man called Anthony whom I knew nothing about, though I did not yet know that name. I tried to pick the one that mattered.

"Why did you not tell me not to kill Culex?" I said. "Before. When we made the deal. You asked me to kill him for the Gift."

"I did not ask you to kill him."

"You said..."

"I asked for his Gift," Ouroboros said. "You decided what it would cost."

The words went through me like cold water. I replayed the day I had prayed to him, the candle, the whispers, the demand.

’Did he ever say it? Did he ever say kill?’ I could not remember. I had built the plan on what I assumed, and I had been so sure.

I did not say anything for a while.

"That was my mistake," I said finally.

"Many people’s mistakes are shaped like that," Ouroboros said. "They hear what they were already planning to do."

It was gentle. That was the worst part. A sneer I could have handled.

"May I ask a second question?"

"No."

I almost laughed. It came out as a cough.

"But I will give you something for free," the light said. "Do not mistake what you have just avoided for what you have just won. You did not defeat a king, Edmund Rhys. You were permitted to stand in front of one."

I thought about the staircase, and the boy who had screamed for three days, and Saud against the gates. I thought of Culex’s face when he had put his hand on his son’s head.

"I know," I said.

"Do you?" The voice grew quieter. "We will see. Go back. They are waiting for you, and you have been gone longer than you think."

"How long?"

The light did not answer. The gears slowed, and the threads began to pull away from me, and the void shrank like a closing eye. I felt the dizzy drop again, the stomach-swing, and I grabbed at nothing.

The last thing I saw was the throne of crystallized time, with its frozen moments, and a light that was already fading. A door opening. A sword falling. A child laughing, mid-breath.

Then the floor hit me.

I was lying on my side in the throne room, my cheek on cold stone. The candle had burned down to a pool of wax and was still flickering. The Shard was gone. My left palm was sticky and red, though the cut was only a thin pink line now.

I sat up slowly. My head was pounding, and my spiritual power was almost empty. I could feel the Core ticking like a cooling pot, and the fragment in my Spirit Temple was pouring fog into it as fast as it could.

I stood up, wiped the dried blood on my trousers, and walked to the gates. They were heavy, and my arms were weak, but I pushed them open.

Sera was sitting on the top step with her back to me and her knees pulled up. She turned at the sound. She did not look relieved.

"You were gone for an hour," she said.