“There are no pines in Alendal. And in the fifteen years I lived there, I saw snow twice—long before you would’ve been born.”
Jacen was suddenly unsteady again.
“You’re not Dalish,” Ogden said with a sigh. “You might blend in better there, with your coloring.” He gestured, indicating Jacen’s pale skin and white-blond hair. “But . . . no. You remember a place that doesn’t exist.” He muttered to himself, “Sloppy work.”
Memory erasure was an imperfect science. Jacen had always known this. It had never occurred to him that his memories might have beenaddedto—that even what details he did recall might be fabricated.
“You want the truth?” said Ogden. “The real truth, from the very beginning?” He tapped his gloved forearm, the spot where every citizen of Zivora had their consecration scar. “Start here. And remember, they’re always watching.”
With those words, an image flooded Jacen’s mind, flung from Ogden’s with stark clarity. Then the healer ushered Jacen out the door and shut it in his face.
Hours later, Jacen was drunk again.
He hadn’t intended for it to go this way. He had also intended to apologize to Nines as soon as he arrived back at the chapel. Instead, he found himself pretending he didn’t remember a thing about last night. He sent her off to run some nonsenseerrand with a flexible deadline, and by evening, she had yet to return.
There was still no word from Ysira. Or Seth.
Jacen lasted all of a few hours before he couldn’t bear it. When his pulse had slowed, his shaking steadied, and his mind calmed, he examined his consecration scar. His thoughts circled back to the image Ogden had projected at him: a shallow incision in someone’s forearm, a two-pronged metal instrument digging in and pulling out . . .something.
No doubt the old bastard was manipulating him, but neither could Jacen stand to leave this alone.
He did not own precise surgical tools—only a knife. He finished Ogden’s bottle, opened another, and rolled up his right sleeve. He balanced the tip of his dagger over the faint white line of his scar, just beneath his bandage. He gritted his teeth.
He had to see. He had to know.
He made the incision. He spread the flesh apart with his fingers, blood sheeting down his arm, puddling on the table. His breath hitched. Something metallic glittered beneath the epidermis. He grasped for it, biting his tongue through the pain, digging deeper into his forearm and pinching the thing between slippery fingernails as it tried to wriggle away. Revolted and fascinated, he tugged at it.
The door opened, and Nines walked in.
For an instant they stared at one another, her eyes enormous.
Jacen paused with the silver filament halfway out of his arm. Then Nines shrieked and ran toward him.
Jacen knew well enough what this must look like—him covered in his own blood, beside a knife and an empty bottle of liquor.
“It’s all right,” he tried to say, but she’d already seized an altar cloth and was trying to force it against his arm.
He somehow kept hold of the filament while staving Nines off with his elbow, long enough to rip the thing out. A piece of metal no bigger than his thumbnail squirmed in his grip. It had three short appendages, strong and fine as spider’s silk, and was not unlike the device the Church used to mark citizens for Harvest. Though it moved like something living, Jacen sensed no consciousness.
He stared at it, heart thudding in his ears.
They’re always watching.
He dropped the thing on the table, flipped his dagger around in his uninjured hand, and used its pommel to smash it.
“What’s that?” Nines cried. “What’s going on?”
“Please trust me when I say the less you know about this, the better.” Jacen let her sense, at least, that he spoke the truth. “Did you get the . . .” He’d forgotten what errand he’d sent her on.
“Birdseed?” Nines glanced at the full bag of it, in plain view on a shelf by the door. “I was waiting outside. I felt you—” Her face worked furiously. “I thought?—”
Jacen held the altar cloth to his arm as he searched his cabinets for a proper bandage. By the time he’d tied it off with his teeth, Nines still hadn’t moved.
He said, “I’m sorry you had to see this.”
Nothing. But Jacen had a hunch. Gently, he told her, “There was a suicide in my cohort, too.”
Jacen watched Nines, expecting nothing from her—merely providing an empty silence for her to fill, should she choose to.
