“You’re an asshole,” she told him, without rancor. What rancor could there be in a statement of fact? She donned a surgical mask and returned to the table with a glass jar, a rubber tube, and a silver needle. The needle she slid into his arm, and the glass jar began to draw his blood—eight pints. Fortunately, the jar, like her purse, was larger than it looked from outside. “You always were.”

“I helped you, Tara, as I helped all my students. I made you part of something bigger: a community dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge, the advancement of Craft, the salvation and elevation of the race.”

“You stole minds. You tried to break me, and when I fought free you tried to destroy my career.” The exsanguination vessel worked fast; his skin tightened as his veins collapsed. “When that didn’t work, you followed me to Alt Coulumb, and now you’re dead and I’m not.” She pressed the skin taut below his collarbone’s V, sliced a straight line down to his groin, and peeled back his chest. Slabs of muscle and fat glistened, and she cut into these until she bared the bone. “I guess that settles the question of whose methods work better.”

Spectral familiar laughter answered her. “Please. You had two gods, Elayne Kevarian, and a host of gargoyles and Blacksuits on your side. You didn’t beat me so much as outnumber me. But you can’t outnumber what’s coming.”

She pressed her lips together, and flensed his legs. Silver glyph-lines sparked around tibia and femur; his patella sported a star with six, no, seven, no, six points. As she cleaned his bones, she carved through Craftwork sigils, hidden mechanisms and machines. In his left thigh she found a bullet wrapped with scar tissue.

“I wanted to kill Alt Coulumb’s god and take his place,” he said. “It was a long shot, but if I’d won, imagine the rewards.”

“I’d rather not.” Corpse meat squelched beneath her gloved hands. Blood did not stick to her shadowy gloves.