Behind me, it sounded as though another Gods’ War had broken out. Shiny cried out as someone hit him. An instant later, that person went flying. There were choking sounds, grunts of effort, more dishes shattering. But there was no magic, I realized in alarm. I could see none of them—nothing except the tiny pale glimmer of the arrowhead where it had fallen to the floor, and the swift-moving bob of Serymn’s blood sigil as she ran to the door to shout for help. Shiny fought for his own rage, not to protect me, and that meant he was just a man. They would overcome him soon, inevitably.
The ash. I felt around, closer to the fire, ready to snatch my hand back if I encountered something hot. My fingers fumbled over a hard, irregular lump, quite warm but not painfully so. Bits of it crumbled away as I touched it. A chunk of old wood that had been burned to charcoal, probably over several days.
The color black.
Behind me, Dateh had managed to get free of Shiny, though he was wheezing and hoarse. Serymn had him; I heard her murmuring, worried, to see if he was all right. Beyond them, a flurry of blows and shouts as more men ran in.
Inspiration struck like a kick to the gut. Scrambling back with the charcoal in my hand, I shoved aside the rug and began to scrape the charcoal against the floor, grinding it in circles. Around and around—
Someone called for rope. Serymn shouted not to bother with rope, just kill him damn it—
—and around and around and—
“Lady Oree?” Dateh, his voice rough and puzzled.
—and around and around, feverishly, sweat from my forehead dripping down to smear the blackness, blood from my scraped knuckles, too, forming a circle as deep and dark as a hole into nowhere, cold and silent and terrible and Empty. And somewhere in that emptiness, blue-green and bright, warm and gentle and irreverent—
“Dearest gods, stop her! Stop her!”
I knew the texture of his soul. I knew the sound of him, like chimes. I knew that he owed Dateh and the New Lights a debt of pain and blood, and I wanted that debt repaid with all my heart.
Beneath my fingers and my eyes, the hole appeared, its edges ragged where bits of the charcoal had broken off with the force of my grinding. I shouted into it, “Madding!”
And he came.
What burst from the hole was light, a scintillating blue-green mass of it that roiled like a thundercloud. After an instant, it shivered and became the shape I knew better—a man formed of living, impossibly moving aquamarine. For a moment, he hovered where the cloud had been, turning slowly, perhaps disoriented by the Empty’s deprivations. But I felt rage wash the room the instant he spied Dateh and Serymn and the others, and I heard his chimes rise to a harsh, brassy jangle of dire intent.
Dateh was shouting over the guards’ panicked cries, demanding something. I saw a faint flicker from his direction, almost drowned out by Madding’s blaze. Madding uttered a wordless, inhuman roar that shook the whole House, and shot forward—
—then jerked back, tumbling to the floor as something struck him. I waited for him to rise, angrier. Mortals could annoy gods but never stop them. To my surprise, however, Madding gasped, the light of his facets dimming abruptly. He did not get up.
Faintly, through shock, I heard Shiny cry out, in something that sounded much like anguish.
I should not have been afraid. Yet fear soured my mouth as I scrambled to my feet, stepping onto my own drawing in my haste to reach him. It was just inert charcoal now. I tripped over the rug again, righted myself, fell over a chair that lay across the floor, and finally crawled. I reached Madding, who lay on his side, and pulled him onto his back.
There was no light in his belly. The rest of him shone as usual, though dimmer than I’d ever seen, but that part of him I could not see at all. He clutched at it, and I followed his hands to find the smooth, hard substance of his body broken by something long and thin, made of wood, that jutted up. A crossbow bolt. I grasped its shaft in both hands and yanked it free. Madding cried out, arching—and the blotch of nothingness at his middle spread farther.
I could see the arrow’s tip. Dateh’s arrowhead—the one made from my blood. There wasn’t much left; I touched it and found that it had the consistency of soft chalk, crumbling with just the pressure of my fingers.
All at once, Madding guttered like a candle flame, his jewel facets becoming dull mortal flesh and tangled hair. But I still couldn’t see part of him. I felt for his belly and found blood and a deep puncture. It wasn’t healing.
My blood. In him. Working through his body like poison, snuffing out his magic as it went along.
No. Not just his magic.