The problem, Winola explained, was that two people could not coexist with only one body. At least, not for very long.
Karys let the scholar’s explanations wash over her. Ferain remained wholly silent, and her shadow pooled darkly below the chair.
Attempts at human-to-human binding had been made since the earliest days of derivative workings, even in the centuries before the discipline had existed as a widespread formal practice. Back then, the power to reshape reality had resided almost exclusively with the Bhatuma, who were conferred their authority by the Embrace herself. The teachings that the heralds had gifted their adherents, often methods to work minor miracles of heat or light or sound, were scattered and poorly recorded, or else jealously guarded by the individuals who had received them. Nevertheless, even in those days, humans had experimented with the crude tools at their disposal.
Workings of any kind posed significant risk, that was obvious, but something about tying people together generated especially grotesque results. The Bhatuma had often been cruel and perverse, but even the most inimical among them avoided conjoining human beings—there was something in the act that they abjured, something insidious in its results. While the heralds had only acknowledged a small handful of true working sins—mind manipulation, soul retention or obliteration, and apotheosis—human-to-human binding stood out as an odd, out-of-place sort of taboo for them.
Perhaps because of their censure, very little information about the practice was available; just a scattering of fragmentary records and warnings. Most researchers seemed compelled to destroy their notes, as if to scour away any evidence of the horrors they had observed.
What Winola did know was that the bound individual would steadily grow in power, and seek to gain possession of the host’s body. Depending on how the binding had been performed, this could occur extremely rapidly, or over the course of several hours. Days, at the most. In the best case scenarios, this simply resulted in the death of the host body, which the bound party would then inhabit and animate like a rotting flesh-puppet. In more unfortunate cases, well …
“It’s been called ‘contestation,’” said Winola. “The bound individual meets sufficient resistance from the host that they are unable to seize complete control.”
Instead, the body would literally tear itself in two, with both parties fully conscious, fully capable of feeling, and fully able to understand what was happening.
Karys showed her teeth in an approximation of a smile.
“Delightful,” she said.
In other instances, particularly those involving the physical meshing of multiple human bodies, the results varied even more gruesomely. More explosive, in a lot of cases, although the implosive incidents were certainly memorable additions to the corpus in their own—
“At least that’s not my situation,” said Karys.
“Yes.” Winola had the grace to look abashed. “That’s some comfort. Sorry.”
Karys rubbed her temples. “But if the bound party knows they could get ripped in half or—I don’t know, turned into a corpse puppeteer, why try to take over in the first place?”
The scholar hesitated, and then gave a shrug.
“It might not be a choice,” she said. “It’s theorised that the bound individual would be in pain, and desperate to return to something like their own body. In those circumstances, resisting might be like thrusting your hand into a fire and trying to hold still while you burn.”
Wonderful. “Well, it’s been two days. There’s been no contestation, and I’m not dead. That has to mean I didn’t perform human binding, right?”
“It’s … promising. But not conclusive.”
“Why not?”
“Because you can hear him. If he were truly contained within the Lapse beyond the Veneer, my assumption is that he would remain insensate and incapable of communication—he wouldn’t be able to perceive the world outside, let alone interact with it. But if he can speak, then some part of his consciousness must extrude beyond those confines. While it’s possible that the Lapse is dampening or slowing the usual effects of human-to-human binding, that doesn’t necessarily indicate…”
“That I’m safe.”
Winola nodded. “It’s too early to be sure, that’s all. Do I think you’ve performed human binding? No, not in the conventional sense—the relic seems to have formed a protective screen that divides you from this man. Is he nevertheless bound to you in some capacity? Maybe. If he can penetrate the Veneer, even partially, I believe he must have latched directly onto a part of you during the binding.”
Karys envisioned an enormous leech affixed to her back, dark and hungry. She shifted on her chair, the hair at the base of her scalp standing on end. From the start, it had made no sense that Ferain could talk to her. Worse, she also had no idea how to sever the tether between them—and if what Balusha had said was true, if the simple binding she had worked now lay inside the Lapse … a locked door with a melted key.
“This is a misunderstanding,” muttered her shadow.
Winola saw her disconcertion, and offered a little smile.
“The situation isn’t hopeless,” she said. “You said it yourself: it’s been two days, and nothing has happened. You might be in uncharted waters right now, but there’s no guarantee matters will deteriorate. If you can’t disrupt the tether using the Veneer, then we’ll find something else.”
We? Karys tried to keep her expression neutral. “And what would that cost?”
Winola appeared briefly confused, then shook her head. “No, I’m not trying to charge you, don’t worry.”
“Then why help me?”
The scholar frowned. “Because I … want to? I studied workings with the intention of helping other people. It’s a personal moral code, I suppose. Besides, your situation is very interesting and unusual, so I’m curious to see how it progresses.”
“To see whether I explode or implode.”
Winola laughed. “Not how I would have expressed it, but yes. Listen, if you give me a little time, I’ll do some research into the matter. And if you think you owe me for that, there is one thing.”
“Yes?”
The scholar sat back in her chair. She stretched her arms overhead, and cracked the tendons in her neck.
“Buy me dinner?” she said.
“Dinner?”
“I like that new bar in east Tomasia.” Her cheeks had turned slightly pink. “I should have more information by tomorrow evening. We could meet there.”
A meal seemed like a very small price to pay for her help. “That’s all you want?”
Winola grinned. The expression made her look unexpectedly mischievous.
“It isn’t every day a deathspeaker buys me a drink,” she said. “Seven o’clock?”
When Karys left the Higher Biological Workings building, classes were ending, and the campus bustled with students. She kept her head down as she moved through the crowd. A warm evening. Overhead, a flock of cape petrels flapped and squabbled, their white-tipped wings cutting through the air. It was later than she had expected. She took the road past the administration block, down to the streets running parallel to the ocean. The air smelled sweetish and salty with the wind blowing off the docks, a mix of sun-dried fish and old blood. The Veneer prickled against her senses, whirring softly. The density of all the workings wrought on the campus produced a dull fizzing that seeped through the fabric and into her awareness.
Ferain waited until she had left the College grounds before he spoke.
“I think she might have it wrong,” he said.
A Hound lay in the shade of the tea shop across the road. Karys whistled. The creature stirred and wagged its tail, but did not get up.
“Proximal overlay,” said her shadow. “You remember how we could see the Construct outside the Lapse, how it could have heard us? What if that is what’s happening now?”
The knotted tension in the pit of Karys’ stomach eased a little. She exhaled.
“Makes sense, doesn’t it?” said Ferain. “It’s only a theory, but it fits.”
“Maybe.”
“Which would mean that I’m not a danger to you.”
“Maybe,” she repeated under her breath. She crossed the road, and the Hound’s tail wagged harder. She crouched down beside it, and ran her hand over its flank at the ridge between the warm fur of its body and the hard horny slope of its seating bowl.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” said Ferain.
“Are you in pain? Like Winola said, the part about contestation?”
“No. I don’t feel anything, really.”
She could not tell if he was lying. She did not know what to think. She straightened, and the Hound rose beside her. “You should have said something earlier.”
“I didn’t want to interrupt. Besides, I might be wrong—I know very little about workings.”
“Still.” Karys climbed onto the Hound’s back. “Kitha Street, Old Market.”
Her shadow grazed its fingers across the creature’s fur, and then fell neatly back into her silhouette.
“It’ll be fine,” he said. “Tell Winola on your date tomorrow.”
“Date?”
He seemed startled by her reaction. “Well … yes? You agreed to dinner.”
“Because she was offering to help me.” Karys’ face warmed. “She said it was her moral code.”
“You didn’t realise she was flirting with you?”
“I—” She felt tongue-tied. “No. No, she wasn’t.”
He laughed. “You really didn’t notice?”
“No one ‘dates’ deathspeakers. We aren’t a good long-term investment.”
“Firstly, that isn’t how attraction works. Secondly, ‘investment’ is a tragic way of referring to yourself.”
“She was not flirting with me.”
“She was very pretty. In a bookish sort of way.”
“Be quiet.”
The journey back to her flat seemed to take an impossibly long time, and Karys was irritable and short-tempered when the Hound finally reached her street. An old man with a begging bowl hunched on the steps outside the neighbouring building. She dropped a coin to him without a word, and climbed the stairs up to her door.
“I don’t know why you’re so touchy,” said Ferain.
She fumbled with the lock. “Maybe because there’s a man who keeps following me around and commenting on everything I do.”
“I don’t comment on everything.”
She got the door open and walked inside, tossing her bag onto the table. The room was soothingly cool, the yellow afternoon light streaming through the window onto her bare floor. Mail under her door again, another collection notice from Worked Dispatch, a request for a speaking in Tomasia—
“Wait,” said Ferain.
The urgency in his voice brought Karys up short, and she went still. Her shadow stretched across the floor, quick and fluid.
“What is it?” she asked.
He stopped in the spill of sunlight beside her bedside table. “Your window. You left it closed this morning.”
At the foot of her bed, the curtains stirred in the wind. The window stood slightly ajar, letting in the salt breeze.
“Does anyone else have access to your flat?” asked Ferain.
Karys shook her head. Her bed was made, but in the corner closest to the window, the coverlet was rumpled with the impression of someone else’s hand. Her eyes travelled the room, itemising her limited possessions. Nothing missing, nothing that struck her as out of place—but someone had been here. Cold fingers crawled up her spine. “It doesn’t look like I’ve been robbed.”
“Maybe they were after something specific.”
The books stacked on her bedside were as she left them; her shelves were undisturbed and tidy, a thin layer of dust coating them. She shook her head. “I don’t think the flat has been searched.”
Her shadow extended over to her closet, and slid under the door. It reappeared a second later. “No one there.”
“Bathroom?”
He flowed across the room, losing shape, and slipped inside. “No, not here either. Whoever it was, they’re gone now.”
Karys glanced back at her front door. Gone, but for how long? The familiar space suddenly seemed alien and threatening, no longer a refuge. She had been robbed before, but this felt different, more invasive. Had the intruder expected her to be home? She imagined them padding across the floor, standing over her bed while she slept. Watching her. If Ferain had not said something, she might not have noticed the window.
“If they didn’t take anything,” she said slowly, “then maybe they left something behind.”
“Such as?”
She motioned for him to be quiet a moment. The Veneer in her flat was smooth and thin, a curtain of gossamer on the surface of the world. She peeled it back, and her shadow breathed in sharply.
“What is that?” he asked.
She frowned. “The other side of the Veneer. You can sense it?”
“It’s … amazing.” He returned to her side. “So strange.”
After over a decade of accessing the underside of reality, Karys was used to the preternatural sheen of the world past the Veneer: the shifting glaze of colour and texture and sound, the distortions that lacquered the air. She had not anticipated that Ferain would experience them too—probably not a good sign, but she could not afford to worry about it now. She listened, extending her senses outward, tracing currents of light and pressure.
The workings in her vicinity gleamed much brighter than their surrounds. A Bhatuma-derived working drew water from the heated cisterns in the basement, shining through the wall. She had personally wrought a simple Ephirite derivation to power the etherbulb in her reading light; it slowly revolved in place, emitting a gentle murmur.
“It’s beautiful,” said Ferain.
“Quiet,” she muttered.
Her attention snagged on a faint mosquito whine coming from the gap between the wall and her bed. The Veneer bunched slightly over her blanket there, a tiny ripple in the otherwise inert surface. She walked over to the bed, and the sound grew louder. There was something there, something new. An inch at a time, Karys carefully pulled the blanket toward her.
Nestled in the coarse weave of the fabric was a tiny striped tick. Its forelegs twitched. A tight string of workings were knotted around its legs.
“Tracking bug,” said Karys, stepping back.
Sensing prey, the tick crawled toward her, moving in an irregular zigzag over the blanket. Karys scowled, strode to the kitchen, and took a glass from the sink. She returned to the bed and trapped the creature.
“There might be more,” said Ferain.
She shook her head. “I think I’d sense them. This is an Ephirite derivation: one of New Favour’s. They’re the only ones who could work this finely.”
Below the glass, the tick walked in an unsteady circle. Karys’ shadow coiled over the blanket, studying the worked parasite more closely.
“They know where you live,” he said.
“Oh, they’ve always known. They’ve just ignored me—until now. Now they want to keep an eye on me.”
Ferain made a frustrated noise. He flowed up to the windowsill, checking the street outside. “Do you think they could be watching the building?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.” She crossed to the kitchen again, and crouched before her cupboards. Her skin felt cold. Behind her mismatched collection of chipped bowls and plates, she found an empty glass jar.
“What are you doing?”
“With luck, wasting a saint’s time.” Karys walked to the bed, removing the lid. Deftly, she switched the glass and the jar, then flipped the edge of the blanket over so that the tick fell in. It landed on its back, tiny legs twitching. She screwed the jar shut again. “I can’t stay here. If they suspect I might be harbouring the Vareslian they’re looking for, then they’ll be back.”
“If they’re watching and they see you leave now—”
“I can lose them in the city.” She opened her bedside drawer, and took out her pen and a sheet of loose paper. In large block letters, she wrote: DO NOT OPEN, EPHIRITE MONSTER INSIDE, and then, below that: HOPE YOU ENJOYED THE SEARCH, SAINT, and then, for good measure: FUCK OFF. She bit the inside of her cheek, spat into her palm, and pressed the note to the side of the jar.
“Hold fast,” she muttered.
Her saliva adhered the page to the glass like glue; the paper wrapped neatly around the vessel and stayed there. The same working she had used in the Sanctum. She raised the jar, checking that the tracking bug was still safe within it.
“Go to the embassy,” said Ferain. “They’ll shelter you.”
She scoffed. “If New Favour’s got a watch on anything, it’s the Vareslian embassy. If I show up there, it’s as good as confirming I’m involved with reekers.”
“Then what’s your plan?”
She pulled her safe out from under the bed, and pressed her thumb to the worked lock. The door opened. She took out her stash of emergency cret. Most of her money was in the bank, but paranoia always caused her to keep some on hand, just in case. “Lay low and consider my options.”
Her coat was lost in the Sanctum, along with her good boots. Karys scanned her sparsely furnished flat. What else could she take, what else might she need? A small, childlike part of her lamented leaving: this had been a safe place, her own place, and she might never be able to return to it again. She quashed the thought. Be practical. If there was a chance that New Favour was watching the building, then she should take as little as possible, do nothing to arouse their suspicion. She tucked her flick-knife into her pocket, and fetched her light jacket and a change of clothes from the closet.
Someone knocked on the door. She froze, and her shadow tensed.
“Cas Eska?” called Carillo.
What did her landlord want? Karys did not move. Carillo almost never came up to her flat, not unless there was a problem. For him to call now …
“Cas Eska?”
“Who is that?” whispered Ferain.
She cursed under her breath, and strode over to the entrance. Her shadow made a sound of alarm. Karys ignored him, and opened the door.
Carillo stood on the step outside, hands buried in his pockets. His face was inscrutable behind the thick grey snarl of his beard. His eyes were small and black.
“Evening, casin,” said Karys, keeping her expression neutral. She couldn’t immediately see anyone else outside. Not that she expected New Favour saints to barge into her flat, but it still came as a relief to find Carillo alone. “What is it?”
“Your rent is late,” he rumbled.
Of course. She had meant to pay that morning, but it had slipped her mind. “Sorry. I’ll get the money to you, let me just—”
“You’re never late with the rent,” he interrupted.
“My apologies. It won’t happen again.”
He shook his head. “I’m not here to accuse you, Eska. I am making sure you’re all right. You’ve been coming and going at odd hours.”
She felt a little disconcerted. “I, uh … work. Sometimes the jobs are unpredictable.”
“It’s a hard occupation you’ve landed upon. People aren’t always kind about that.” Carillo shifted his hands in his pockets, gruff and unsmiling. Karys couldn’t remember him ever having spoken this much to her before. “Not kind at all. But you always pay the rent on time. One of the best tenants I’ve had—so I wanted to make sure you haven’t gotten into some kind of trouble.”
“No, no trouble.”
He studied her face, his own serious. He nodded.
“That’s fine, then,” he said in his deep, flat baritone. He turned to go. “So long as you’re sure. And you know where to call if you aren’t.”
He was halfway down the steps when Karys spoke.
“I might be late with the rent next month too,” she said. “Maybe the month after that as well. It could be difficult to find me.”
Carillo paused. Then, without looking back, he gave a shrug.
“It’s hard to attract tenants these days,” he said. “Chances are, the flat could stand open a while, and I wouldn’t notice. Goodnight, Eska.”
“Goodnight. Thank you.”
He carried on down the stairs. “Make sure you lock up.”
Karys watched him go before stepping back inside. She picked up her bag and tucked the jar with the tracking bug under her jacket, then looked around the room one last time, struck by the sudden, strange certainty that the place would never be home to her again. This quiet refuge and its comforts were already lost. The yellow curtains fluttered in the breeze, shading the light over her old bed.
She closed the window, and left. The Hound was still nosing about the street; she whistled, and this time the creature came straight to her. It bent its legs, and she climbed up with a murmur of thanks, slipping the jar down to the floor of the seating bowl. She tried to look relaxed and cheerful as she gave the animal an address in Scuttlers.
Although it felt like she had left something important behind, when the Hound began to move, Karys did not look back again.