“Really?” Tavi asked.

“Certainly. How would they? Watercrafters, for example, gain a sensitivity to others that becomes a part of their very being. They have few, if any, memories of what it was like to exist without that sense. Nearly everyone in Alera has their senses expanded in some way, to some degree. If they suddenly lost access to their furies, for whatever reason, I expect that they would feel quite disoriented. I should think it would be something like losing an eye.”

Tavi winced at the image. “I notice,” he said, “that you haven’t answered my question.”

Alera smiled. “Haven’t I?”

Tavi eyed her for a moment. Then he said, “You’re saying that I’m crafting without realizing it?”

“Without feeling it,” Alera corrected. “You make clear to me what it is you wish to accomplish, and I set about ordering it, within my limitations. But the effort for it still comes from you, as with any other furycrafting. It’s a steady and gradual process, one you don’t feel happening. You only become aware of it when physical symptoms begin to trouble you.” She sighed. “It killed Sextus; not as much because he pushed too hard—though he did—as because it made him dismiss the symptoms of his poisoning, incorrectly, as part of this process.”

Tavi sat up and studied Alera more closely. She held her hands in front of her, folded inside the opposite sleeve of her misty “gown.” More of the gown was gathered over her head in a hood. Her eyes looked sunken. For the first time since Tavi had seen the great fury manifest, she did not look like a young woman.

“The weathercrafting,” he said. “It was a strain on you as well. It’s hastening your... your dissolution, isn’t it?”

“It was a strain upon all of Alera, young Gaius,” she replied, her voice quiet. “You upset natural order on a scale that is rarely seen—in concert with the eruptions of two fire-mountains, to boot. You and your people will feel the aftereffects of these few days for centuries to come.”

“I sincerely hope so,” Tavi said.

The great fury glanced at him and smiled, briefly. “Ah, there it is. I sometimes think that if one cut open the scions of the House of Gaius, they would find well-chilled pragmatism flowing in their veins instead of blood.”

“I have provided abundant evidence to the contrary, today, I believe.”

“Have you?” she replied.

“And again,” he said, “you have avoided answering my question.”

Her smile widened, briefly. “Have I?”

“Infuriating habit,” he said. “My grandfather must have learned it from you.”