Chapter 44
Chapter Forty-Four
Is that what you were going to tell me?
I almost ask him.
Then I scan the chamber and make a quick decision. The matter of soulbonds—whatever that entails—belongs in private. Not here, with his team watching, Vivian and Thea listening, and my parents confined twelve feet away inside a ward that is surely less soundproof than I would like.
My mother has always found ways to hear what she should not.
Later, then.
Everything else first.
The weight of the day settles over me—not physical exhaustion, but mental strain, the knowledge that everything is about to change and I cannot yet see what shape it will take.
Cáel reads my expression at once, as he always does. “Can we discuss this later?” he asks softly.
“Yes.”
“All right. Let’s wrap up.” He retrieves his encrypted device and makes a call, his voice low and precise.
Events accelerate.
More people arrive—not only members of his team but others with central government accents, the sort of people no one argues with. Nobody introduces them. Nobody asks them to.
Central government, here in person. The people the local government report to.
They have spent fourteen hundred years pretending not to see.
Or, more likely, using our city as an experiment nobody bothered to end.
I look at Cáel and realise, with a small jolt, that he has not worked through Velmora alone. He has been coordinating with both governments at once.
Not easily, I suspect. No one looks pleased to be here, and Cáel’s calm has the brittle edge of someone who has spent hours forcing doors open with evidence, leverage and sheer will.
A full investigation. A proper one.
I cannot believe I didn’t see it earlier. Part of me is quietly impressed; another, smaller part aches because he never told me.
I will think about that later too.
I drop the ward around my parents, and they are taken into custody at once.
My mother bristles. “Do you know who I am?” She looks at me, then at Vivian. “Elmo, tell them to stop this. Vivian, this is absurd. I am a Morris—”
“We know exactly who you are, Mrs Morris,” says a slim guard with sharp eyes behind his glasses. “Arms behind your back, please.”
“I will not—”
Her wrists are secured before she finishes the sentence. My father offers no resistance. He merely stares at the stone floor, shoulders curved as though making himself smaller might render him invisible.
I do not know what I feel.
Satisfaction. Vindication. I wish I felt either of those things, but instead I am simply sad.
This could have ended a long time ago.
Cáel quietly informs the team about the sphere in my mother’s pocket. They remove it with painstaking care and seal it inside a specialist case, the clasps clicking shut one after another.
I watch as my parents are escorted from the chamber.
Just like that, the room is checked, secured and cleared.
The man with the glasses approaches me. “Miss Morris. Elenora Morris?”
“Yes.”
He glances at the bright white rune floating overhead. “Is this your work?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t interpret it. The magic is far beyond my range.” He studies it for another moment. Reflected light whitens the lenses of his glasses. “But it’s extraordinary. Will you explain it to me?”
“I can show you if you can get me a pad and pencil.”
He smiles. “Wonderful. Let’s find somewhere more comfortable. The top of the Aegis Spire, perhaps, unless you need to remain here?”
I look around the chamber. The helix is gone, the room hollow in its absence. “No. I don’t need to be here.”
To my relief, there is a lift beyond the door my parents used. Cáel’s injured team member looks equally grateful.
We ascend.
At the top of the Spire, on the viewing deck enclosed almost entirely by floor-to-ceiling glass, I settle into the same chair I used a few days ago.
Another lifetime, it seems.
Someone has quietly reopened the building. The catering staff are struggling to keep pace with the influx of officials, and trays of beautiful little things keep arriving regardless. I nibble a sandwich, then a scone with jam and cream, while watching Cáel across the room.
Tireless, he moves between meetings and calls, his calm instructions to senior officials delivered with the unhurried steadiness I now find deeply reassuring.
The man with the glasses sits opposite me and places an artist’s pad and pencil on the table.
I set down my scone.
Mina stares at it.
I shuffle my plate farther away, earning a reproachful snuffle.
I wipe my hands, then take the pencil. The feather on my arm warms of its own accord as magic rises freely, no longer siphoned away before I can grasp it.
I draw the scene: the chamber, the helix, the ward containing my parents. Panel by panel, like a comic strip charting each stage and every choice.
When I reach the rune network, I remain deliberately vague. No one should ever rebuild a suppression grid. That knowledge must die with us. Instead, I sketch only enough for the logic to be clear.
In careful script, I add my reasoning.
I hesitate when I reach the moment I returned everyone’s magic, then include it anyway. Honesty is safer than allowing the Districts to discover the truth by accident.
I cannot dictate what people do with it.
Much of my life has been stolen—my magic, my work, even my body, slowly poisoned. My history has been weaponised against me.
Perhaps, when the truth emerges, people will understand my decisions.
Perhaps not.
There will be anger. Families seeking justice for loved ones lost to the Fade. Matters far above my station.
All I can do is follow the magic, heed my conscience and hope.
The man asks astute questions, and I answer as fully as I can, watching for the moment he decides to cuff me.
It never comes.
“Thank you, Miss Morris,” he says at last. “The central government appreciates your assistance enormously.”
“That’s it?” I grip the pencil hard enough for the ridges to dent my fingers. It is a foolish question, but I need the answer. “Am I in trouble?”
He smiles. “The Governor of Velmora has vouched for you. Your actions here today were undertaken with government knowledge and co-operation. There will be inquiries, of course. Reports. Hearings. But you are not under arrest, Miss Morris. Quite the opposite. You will probably receive a commendation. I imagine you will become quite famous.”
“I don’t want to be famous,” I say at once. “I just want to be left alone.”
I want to take the man I love and my dog and disappear somewhere quiet.
Perhaps that will not happen.
A hateful little voice that sounds exactly like my mother whispers, Why would he want the dregs of a society already broken?
I stop and look at that thought properly.
It is not mine. It never was. She is in a cell somewhere beneath this building, and I am still doing her work for her, free of charge, out of habit.
A lifetime is a long time to be told a thing. Apparently it does not all leave in a week.
You are not the dregs of anything, I tell myself, in my own voice. It sounds ridiculous, so I make myself think it twice.
He ignores my comment. “I’ll leave you to your food.” With a professional handshake, he departs.
I strip the chicken from a sandwich, and Mina lifts each piece from my fingers with exquisite delicacy.
Then I rise.
Cáel is deep in conversation with a group of grave-faced officials. Vivian and Thea confer with another. Everyone is busy, purposeful, and there is nothing more for me to do here.
I am about to do it again. Slip out, tell nobody, manage myself alone and let the people who love me find out afterwards.
So I cross the room first.
Vivian breaks off mid-sentence the moment she sees my face. “Home?”
“Home.”
She kisses my cheek. “Go on. I’ll bring your sister-in-law and a very large dinner tomorrow.”
Thea lifts one hand in farewell without turning round. She has not finished with the officials.
“When was that water supply last sampled?”
A pause. “I’d have to check.”
“Then check. My laboratory has run it twice, and I don’t believe either result.”
“A water specialist is being briefed. He should be here within the hour.”
“Good. And nutrition. There is nothing in the food. Not poor quality—nothing. I ran a carrot and got results consistent with paper. Whatever took the magic took the nutrition with it.”
“We have aid on trucks,” says one of the harassed officials. “Every family will have rations within the week.”
“Within the week?” Thea stares at him. “No. Their food is testing like paper. They eat today. Work out the logistics afterwards. Get the trucks moving.”
Mina and I walk to the lift.
On the ground floor, I find a member of Cáel’s team and ask whether he can escort me to the Districts. He blinks, perhaps surprised that I am simply leaving, then tells me the transport lifts are running and that I have full clearance.
We climb into a car. Mina sprawls half across my lap on the back seat, warm, heavy and reassuring.
We drive away from the Aegis Spire.
Below, the Districts are eerily still, as though the city is holding its breath.
Calm before the storm, perhaps.
I picture my neighbours in the tower block as their magic returns and allow myself cautious optimism. Ink talent is largely passive, creative rather than destructive. The Salt District should cope.
Iron too.
The Bone District, though, is best avoided when its magic truly wakes.
I hold on to the memory of the powerful practitioner I sensed as I unravelled the rune network. People will need to stay out of their path.
When the car stops outside my tower block, I say, “Thank you. When he is free, please will you tell Cáel I have gone home?”
Not vanished. Home.
I am pretty sure he already knows I left.
At home, I brew tea, feed Mina and change into my pyjamas. After promising her a walk in a few hours, I crawl into bed, pull the duvet over my head and, at last, sleep.