WITH THE THREAT of the fishing boats gone—for now, at least—I returned to my clock tower. I kept only Nessie near me, a silent watcher as I opened my great-grandmother’s journal. The gears of the massive clock ticked by while I slowly turned the pages, examining Master Ostrum’s notes in the margins.
The scribbled words were frustratingly vague. I had no doubt that they had meant something to him, and, likely, Master Ostrum had planned on sharing what he’d discovered with me, the only student he’d shared his dark theories with. But phrases like “refer to Whitmore’s” or “418” or “similar to the effects in Almand’s theory” meant very little to me, and I couldn’t see their connection to necromancy. The numbers likely referred to other books or papers, but I didn’t know which ones.
I kept reading anyway. It was a slim hope, to find something hidden within the text I’d read dozens of times, but it was the only hope I had left.
“Why aren’t you like them?” I asked softly, even though I knew Nessie couldn’t answer me. She was the first person I had raised, and perhaps I had irrevocably damaged her soul when I tried to pull it back from Death. But none of my other revenants were an empty shell. They weren’t the humans they once had been either, but they were, at the very least, more. If I couldn’t make Ernesta exactly as she had been before she died, a vivid flame of life, I would settle for a spark.
I wasn’t sure how much time had passed when I finally came across a page that’d been circled in Master Ostrum’s heavy hand, highlighting a list of medical tools. I’d read the passage before—I’d read the entire journal over and over before coming to Yūgen. But it was only now that I’d learned necromancy that I realized it was important.
Dowsing rod—locate fluids
Pendulum—draw out poison
Stone hammer—eradicate bile
Crystal shard—rejuvenation
Plaster of willow—heal a sprain
Orcine sinew straps—reduce a tumor
I examined the passage, trying to see why Master Ostrum would bother marking it. The nearly illegible word he’d scribbled in the margin seemed to say “collector” or maybe “collection,” and I wondered if he was referring to something in his own collection of inherited objects from Bennum Wellebourne.
Most of the items on the list were, at best, weak substitutions for actual medicine. I stared at the list for several long moments, wondering, praying for understanding.
No answer came.
I tossed the little book onto my desk. It landed facedown, and for a moment, I felt bad for mistreating it. I was still, after everything, my father’s daughter. I brushed my fingertips over the leather, feeling the insignia stamped into the back. A rising sun with six pointed spikes to represent the six original tribes that joined together to form the start of the Allyrian Empire. This notebook had been imported from the mainland, probably from the capital city of Miraband, like most of the small luxury items in those early days of the colony, before Lunar Island had set up its own manufacturing.
It wasn’t the book’s fault—or Master Ostrum’s—that there was nothing here that could help me. It was a feeble hope, anyway, the kind easiest to break.
If I wanted answers, I’d have to find them myself.
My hand ached as I clutched my tiny iron crucible. Not my right hand—my left hand, the one that had been obliterated when I’d become a necromancer. I winced in pain as I lifted my residual limb. The flesh ended above my elbow, scars stretching over the too-pink skin at the end. But a shadow hand extended past that, a dark hand made of nothing. I could see it. My revenants could see it. But no one else.
What else could I see, now that I was a necromancer?
I turned to my twin sister. “Fetch me a mirror.”
Without a word she spun on her heel and raced down the spiral staircase. She could sense the urgency in my command, and it took her only moments to return, her feet pounding up the stairs. She had ripped a gilt-framed mirror from a wall within the hospital so forcefully that plaster clung to the edges. She set it down in front of me, and for a moment we were both reflected in the smudged surface. Even though she was the one who’d lost her life, I looked like a ghost next to her, my hair a shock of white after my battle with Governor Adelaide, a stark contrast to her solid black tresses.
We used to be so similar that sometimes even our own mother couldn’t tell us apart. But it was more than just the hair now. Her eyes were hollow; mine were bright. Her skin was ashen but unblemished; mine was haggard from lack of sleep. Her body was cool to the touch. I still had my fire.
I turned to the mirror. I had never tried to see my own soul before.
I looked now.
It was harder to see a soul in a living person. Life filters the light. But souls were easiest to glimpse in the eyes since light clung to the irises. And there . . . there. A bit of gold sparkling in my own brown eyes, trailing across my skin, swirling over my heart.
Unconsciously, I raised my right hand, tugging my shirt down and exposing my breast, the heart that lay under it, the light that seemed a bit more visible there.
I cast my eyes to my residual limb, the arm Death had taken. I held it in front of me. The shadow arm did not reflect in the mirror.
I had used this shadow arm to pull the souls from Governor Adelaide’s crucible, breaking it and ending the plague. I had used it to grasp the governor’s own soul, forcing her to be still as I drove a sword through her heart. I had dipped the incorporeal fingers into corpses, pulling up the dregs of their souls to reanimate them.
Now I let my shadowy fingers trail along my skin. I shuddered, my throat gagging at my own touch. So cold.
Tears sprang into my eyes—not of sorrow, but of horror. I wanted nothing more than to break free of my own touch. But I was so full of soul, of life. Could I . . . ? I glanced at Nessie. Could I give something of myself to her?
I forced myself to stay still. My shadow hand paused over my heart. I glanced at the mirror. My own eyes were wide with terror, sweat beading on my forehead. I swallowed, hard.
And I plunged my hand into my skin.