Composing himself, Neph pulled back the flap. Tenser was sprawled on as fine a bed as they’d been able to make, his limbs loose, features slack, breath slow, eyes open but unfocused and rarely blinking. Neph pretended difficulty kneeling at Tenser’s feet and extended the magic as Khali had taught him. “Holy One,” he called. “I am here to serve.”

Tenser’s eyes closed then opened again, and She was present. Her presence filled the little tent like a sooty cloud, making it hard to breathe. “You have been neglecting your duties,” Khali said. Her voice was Tenser’s but the intonations were wrong, the accent unfamiliar. “This host has bedsores.”

Neph’s throat relaxed. “I will attend to it personally. Immediately. I’ve been about your business, collecting specimens for you.” He cleared his throat but didn’t cough. His coughing irritated Khali. “I was hoping we could talk about my reward.”

Her laughter was amused, Neph thought. It was hard to tell because though Khali controlled Tenser’s voice and eyes, She didn’t control his facial expressions. They remained blank, slack except when tongue and jaw worked to make words.

Khali wanted to be truly embodied, not the rude parody of it She had in Tenser. She needed three things: Ezra’s weaves on Black Barrow to be broken, a willing host, and a spell that would require the blood of an Ursuul and the combined might of Neph’s two hundred Vürdmeisters. Godkings in the past had delivered two of the three, but none could dismantle Ezra’s work, because Ezra had used Iures to deny Khali embodiment. But Neph could undo Ezra’s spells—because Iures remembered every weave it had ever helped make.

“I want two things,” Neph said. “Godking Wanhope will arrive soon to kill me. I want to deny him the use of the vir. Second, I want to live another hundred years.”

“Impossible,” Khali said.

“Fifty then. Forty.”

“Once embodied, I can give you a hundred years. But I can’t deny Dorian the vir.”

Neph’s heart sank. Dorian was Godking Wanhope? Of all Garoth Ursuul’s sons, the last one Neph wished to face was his old pupil. “I thought You controlled—”