No matter which direction he picks, no recognizable landmark ever appears. By the time he circles around to a green, four-story home, he realizes that he's been moving in a spiral. He picks another direction. He'll either end up in the sea or at his cottage at this rate. Another day, another night in an abandoned house. He doesn't know how long he's been wandering now. He still doesn't know where he is, or where he's going, only that he wants to put as much distance as possible between him and the Overseers. The rush of people frightens him—so many faces, and it's dangerous to stare at them for too long. They look at him as if they're weighing him as a threat: how has he come to be like that? Who is he?

He crouched in a back alley to try to compose himself. His arm hurts, but not as badly as his head does from the overstimulation. He'll go left at the next crossroads, he decides. He has a good feeling about that. He closes his eyes to steady himself, and when he opens the again, a shadow is in front of him. He glances up.

A tall, lean blonde woman looks him over gently, in the same way that people look over something sickly and pitiable.

"There you are, Kirin," she says softly in her languid tone, crouching beside him, as if he were a stray cat that might run off on a whim. "I thought I recognized you. Dr. Hypatia has been worried sick over you these past few days, and you look like you haven't done much better. You know, Lucia Pastor went straight to Overseers for you. Walked straight into the outpost, and demanded to know where they were keeping you. When they turned her away, she went to the Duke and asked him to issue an emergency order to stay your execution."

She pauses. "Paolo laughed himself silly when they were forced to admit they couldn't do that, because they hadn't the slightest idea where you escaped. Dr. Hypatia asked Paolo to find you, if the Overseers didn't kill you first. So of course, Paolo made me look."

She's carefully gentle with him, as she takes his hand. "Come on, let's go back. You must be really hungry by now. It's a bit of a walk, but we shouldn't run into any trouble now. And if we do, well, I was bored today anyway. Hey, why don't you tell me about the beetles on the way there?"

He complies. She seems nice enough, and she knows Hypatia. He chats with her about the beetles, but halfway through telling her about the Serkonian Green Beetle, he has a terrible sense of unease. He's forgotten who she is, or why she's guiding him, or where she's taking him. Maybe she wants to take him back to the outpost.

She correctly reads his silence. "What about the Serkonian Green Beetle?" she prompts, but he's becoming increasingly frightened. His hand squirms in hers, as he thinks about letting go and running away. He should, shouldn't he? They'll be back at the outpost soon enough if he doesn't do something.

"It's ok," she assures him with a quick squeeze. "We're just going back."

Fear flashes through him. The humming under his skin is loud, and he breaks free from her grasp. He pulls at the Void, and in the next instant, he's on a nearby balcony.

He crouches down, enough to be overlooked, shaking from the fear and adrenaline. He can't remember why he should be hiding from her, only that it's imperative that he not make a sound.

She searches the alleyway and the nearby streets, coming into view a few times. Finally, she gives up.

He doesn't move until nightfall.


He sticks to the bloodfly-infested houses after that. He doesn't mind their incessant humming; on the contrary, it's reminiscent of the clockwork soldiers patrolling, and it's easy to fall asleep next to them. He helps himself to the forgotten fruit, even as he forgets where he's already been. The tins are too tricky to navigate so he leaves them alone.

He would like to pin the bloodflies, and perhaps even open up their secrets with one of those tools he saw at the Overseers' outpost, but for now, they are allies in loneliness, and he drifts off to their humming, curled up in the wreckage of a home long abandoned. The pain in his arm now reaches him in his dreams—there is no more respite in sleep. The wound is hot to the touch, and he doesn't know how to fix it. He's only dimly aware of why it even hurts in the first place.

So, instead, he follows the current, walking towards a place he cannot consciously remember. And if this is one of the currents the Outsider mentioned, he follows it down to its depths, trailing through wreck after wreck after sandy wreck, crawling through broken floorboards and perpetual confusion to an unknowable end, talking softly to himself about this and that. The sound of his own voice steadies him, reassures him that he still exists even if there are no more coordinates to determine who he is.

He crawls through a window—the third floor of a pale grey building. The room is a mess: thin, dead plants crinkle in the breeze, and the heavy curtains are pulled tightly against the sun. Dust hangs and stirs around him. And on a sofa, her arms pulled close to her is Breanna. Her dark hair is loose around her on the sofa, her once-fine clothes stained and worn. She hardly stirs from her place—a half-hearted invitation to a robber to put her out of her misery, one of those little dares she makes to fate.

He doesn't know what to say to her, only that he's tired and his arm is a blaze of pain. What was it he had to remember to tell her about? The séance? The Conservatory? Lens. Yes, that was it.

"The lens aren't ready yet," he says distantly, almost recalling the reason to let her know this, and at his voice, she stirs. Surprise breaks across her face, as she looks back at him from her position on the sofa.

She surveys him with disbelief, as she raises herself to a sitting position. "Kirin? You're alive? Did you break out of Addermire just to see me?" she says, in a hoarse, disaffected tone. "I'm almost touched. You look like you swam with the hagfish the whole way here. Maybe we can dig up Luca and make it a proper reunion."

Jindosh tries to remember what happened to Luca, trying to align fragments of his memories: the séance, the coup, the dinner party. "He's... at the palace..."

She gives a sharp laugh. "There's nothing left at the palace, Kirin. You should know that. Luca is dead, and his double is pretending to be him. Not that much of a loss, truthfully." She curls on herself again. "Without Delilah, there's no use in anything. They let me live just to let me suffer. If I was dead, at least maybe then I could look for her in the Void."

"The whales are under the floorboards," he offers helpfully. "They sing at night."

She stares at him in confusion. "How would they fit there?"

"I've seen them," he says, a little unsettled by her doubt. He must have answered wrong again. Perhaps, he reasons, people don't want to hear about the whales, just like they don't want to hear about the beetles. But even as he tries to remember this for the future, it starts to fade again. He clasps his hands to his head in frustration, but Breanna catches his left hand mid-gesture, as a bemused expression crosses her face.

"What is this?" she asks, turning his hand over. She stares at the mark. "Why you? Why you of all people?" A plan begins to form in her head, the cogs beginning to stir again. She wets her lips, as the impossible becomes real again.

"You know what this means," she says slowly. "This changes everything. I can—I can touch the Void again. I can be myself again. We can—we can bring back Delilah. I see it, Kirin, I see it! Oh, I've waited for her return for fifteen years, what's one more! She gave me the best years of my life, and now—"

Her eyes are bright with plans. "We can change everything with this. You can give me your power. We'll go to Aramis's house—the Void is still creeping about there. Do you remember the code for the clockworks, the one that overrides them? It doesn't matter. I'll break into the Academy to get your notes back if I have to. Everything is possible again, Kirin."

He's not sure what she's going on about, only that she seems more agreeable than earlier. He tries to review the context: Aramis, the Academy, Delilah, clockworks. Aramis is a blur in his mind, a large red-headed man. Thoughts of the Academy bring only a deep pain in his chest. And then he can't remember the rest, and by this point, the conversation has already continued.

Breanna is sketching a map on a scrap of discolored paper, making asides to him about the best way to make Aramis compliant. "I suppose you can't imprison him in that ghastly house of yours, can you? Lock him in one of those rotating rooms? I read that they made the whole place into a museum. Perfectly horrid. I suppose Her Royal Majesty had them take down all the silvergraphs too." She pauses in thought. "Do you think they kept the jar with your fingers?"

Jindosh looks down at his prosthetic fingers in thought. He watches the way the porcelain segments move and curl when he flexes his fingers. Yes, there was an accident: a burst of light, and then, a moment later, pain in his hand. But after the shock of his error, he remembered the thrill of excitement at seeing his own severed fingers on the laboratory desk, a unique chance to merge his body with the mechanical, to test the limits of the flesh.

"Best to not think about that," she continues, taking his silence for horror. She guides him over to her side, intent on having him review the map for errors, and instead, he gasps in pain and blanches as she touches his injured arm.

"Did they beat you at Addermire?" she asks, made uncharacteristically generous by her newfound hopes. "That figures. I'll make you something for the pain."

"Not Addermire," he says, but he can't remember where he came by that wound now. A gun? Yes, yes, that was it. The Overseers and the outpost were connected somehow.

Breanna pulls him back to the present. "Where did they keep you if not Addermire?"

"Hypatia," he says. "Hypatia was there—the house with the beetles."

Breanna smirks. "Of course. Dearest old Alex got a taste of what it meant to be alive, and it scared her back into being a mouse. She can hide all she wants under that sweet façade, but she only does all of that to keep herself from thinking. But I know all about her, and I saw how she loved it. You can't create a shadow side from nothing, after all."

"She was good to me," he says distantly, trying to recall an example of this, but there is only a general sense of ease in his body when he thinks of her. "She... read to me."

"Being good is all she has," Breanna replies bitterly. "She doesn't have the strength to live as she really wants to. Not like me. I gave up everything for Delilah to live as myself, freely, and I'd do it again a thousand times over. I'd have hurled myself off a bridge if I had married that man. I knew that even as my wedding was being arranged. Then Delilah came to me, and I saw in her a chance I'd never had before, never dreamed of before even as I had desperately wanted it. "

A pause, as Breanna considers him. "But she and I will be reunited soon enough," she says. "Go get washed up. I think I have some of Luca's old clothes still around here. You can have one of his shirts for a nightshirt. You're in luck that washing is tomorrow."

He obeys, his long-forgotten memory guiding him to the bathroom—memories of those long times spent plotting and planning over fine Tvyian wine, delicate fruits, and grandiose maps. We'll have the finest country, Breanna had laughed. Guided by those who should rule. All shaped in our image.

Jindosh examines the taps in earnest now. Hot, cold, closed, open. He tries various combinations but to no avail. When the water is too cold, he can't remember which tap was for the hot water. The water stops and starts as he tries to understand how it all works.

"Are you trying to flood my apartment?" Breanna asks, as she comes into the bathroom with a delicate linen shirt draped over her arm. She turns off the taps.

He fumbles for the right words, aware that this is a simple task that others can do, but it eludes him. "The taps... they... they..."

"I guess you didn't get better after all," she says in a different voice. "You're going to be like this forever, aren't you?"

And the knowledge of his loss pains him: he knows he is different and now there is only a gap between who he was and who he is. And in that moment, before this understanding slips away again, he wishes he were different, that he could figure out this world, and no longer be a stranger to it. She knows too, now, and maybe he's right that everyone knows. And there's a certain pain in that moment, that maybe what he wanted more than anything was to keep his secret from her and pretend that they were the same as ever.

Breanna draws him a hot bath, largely out of her own preference for them, and he sits beside her, fascinated by how the water pours forth. "You know," she says, "the coven thought we were lovers." She gives him a wry smile. "As if." And in turn, his mind dreams of a machine that can tread water, made of intricate and shining bronze parts, but as he grows aware of how the machine must be, it fades away again.

She leaves him to his own washing, placing Luca's shirt on the sidetable with a complaint that this is really her maid's work, but the lazy girl hasn't come in yet. The water is pleasant against his skin, and the sensation of the water imparting its warmth onto him reminds him that he's always loved hot baths, especially in Karnaca. And for a moment, he's comforted by this little piece of himself before his fall from grace and knowledge.

He stays too long in the bath, lost in his dreaming of things that will never be realized, and Breanna begrudgingly helps him finish washing. Then once he's settled in Luca's shirt, a little too big for him, but comfortable, she offers him a cup of a dark red substance with roughly chopped, dried herbs floating along the surface.

"It'll take away the pain for a little," she says.

He hesitates.

"Drink," she says, and he complies. It's spiced wine, strong enough to dull the taste of the herbs.

And for just this night, the herbs are strong enough to ward off the pain. He settles into the guest bedroom, sinking under the heavy blankets. As he slips off into sleep, his mind wanders, dreaming of lamps and mine shafts and the green moths that flutter in the dark.


Breanna is eager to begin. The next day, after breakfast, she brings out a beautifully carved spinning wheel, stolen from the Conservatory. "I'm going to teach you as Delilah taught me," she says. "Did you ever learn how to spin?"

He frowns.

"Thought so," she says. "Well, today you're going to learn how, so you can properly bond with me. This is how Delilah showed me how to transfer power to my witches." She sets him in front of the spinning wheel, and guides his fingers to the roving, the unspun wool. Then she instructs him, sitting beside him and moving the pedals with her feet. "Pull the roving through your fingers. Steadily. Not too fast, not too slow," she says, watching him carefully as he fumbles with the newly forming thread. "Don't think too much about it. Pull it through your fingers, then let it go into the bobbin. Pull it through, let it go. There we go."

When he's spun enough yarn cleanly, she stops the spinning wheel. "Now I want you to reach into the Void, pull that power through you, and let it go into me." She mimics the action of spinning. "Pull it through, and then let it go."

He repeats her actions, his fingers inarticulate and awkward, but doesn't feel anything slipping through his fingertips. It's not like earlier—that desperate need to get away. He had been frightened, and the humming under his skin had responded accordingly.

She sits back on the sofa in despair, her head in her hands. "I'll think of something you can understand. I can't let this slip by."

And in turn, he settles down on the rug and fiddles with the spinning wheel. It's been such a long time since anyone's let him see a machine in action again. He doesn't understand it anymore than he understands the other ordinary machines, but it's familiar enough to be tinkering with them, and he holds onto that familiarity as best he can. He holds onto one of the wooden spokes and turns the wheel with a half-remembered gentleness. He fiddles with the bobbin, noticing how it spins under his fingers. He traces the curved wood. It's all connected, it all flows. He thinks of the wheel and how it turns, and as that thought slips, his mind dreams of a waterwheel, pulling up from the depths, steadily, slowly.

His head crackles with the humming under his skin, and then—! And then he can feel Breanna under his skin, joined somewhere under the humming. Breanna's eyes widen, as she glances back at him. She grins uncontrollably as she surveys herself.

"I'm alive again," she whispers.


The witches come soon after that.

They flock to Breanna's apartment, and the place gives way to dried herbs, powdered bones, heaps of plants. Tinctures line the windowsills, and more still crowd the tables. Breanna holds court in her living room, plotting the best way to break into Aramis's home. That, she tells them, is the key to all. The line between the Void and reality is weakest there: it's so fragile now that she won't need three other people for her séance.

Jindosh tries to follow along, but his body is beginning to fail. He's too feverish now, even as he longs for warmth. It's not that Breanna never meant to attend to his wound properly, only that it's easier to keep pushing it off into the future—and Delilah's imminent return overshadows everything else. Soon, he's too weak to get out of bed. The world swims, and he can only lie there, eyes shut against the waves of pain and terror. He doesn't know why he hurts, only that he keeps retching from the pain, that his body is sore and feverish, and that he is alone. He tries to get up and blacks out a little way from his room. They don't let him out of bed after that.

One of the witches comes to feed him porridge laced with the herbs. He doesn't know her, and she isn't gentle with him when he turns away from her in futile despair. His world becomes a feverish haze of drugged sleep, feeding, and cleaning; he resurfaces to reality only once the herbs wear off and pain comes, like the sunrise, radiating through. And then, he's staying as still as possible to avoid provoking more of the pain, too warm and too cold, until a witch comes to begin the cycle again.

Outside, Breanna is talking with her witches. "It's all too late, isn't it? That's a pity. The infection has set in by this point," she says. "He won't make it long like this. Do you think it's the spirit or the flesh that the Outsider makes his mark on?" A pause as she listens. "I think it must be the spirit. It feels too gauche to simply cut off his hand and keep it around."

She comes into his bedroom, a small pair of silver scissors in her hand. Her pale face is flush with the thrill of her plans coming to fruition. She kneels beside him, and isolating a patch of his hair with her fingers, clips off a section.

"You'll get your wish, Kirin," she says. "You're going to live forever."


AN: Thank you for reading! Comments are loved.