Leaning back in the niche, Kai stared at the opposite wall, at the painting of a starlit beach on West Claw, white sands and spreading calm water. A suggestion of sunset lit the horizon. She forgot whether the painting was Jace’s idea or if it sprang in full tacky glory from the forehead of a Graefax Tepes Ross consultant. Each carrel had one, always the same scene. The intent was to calm priests amid this unholy system of metal and wires. We promise to make the process of ripping your spirit out of your flesh as painless and routine as possible. In her early days with the Order, Kai had wondered at the choice of scene, until she realized that the rush of arcane fluid through hydraulic pipes was supposed to provide an audio component to the painting, a sound of surf. Better to have chosen a foreign image. An alpine meadow, maybe, like the ones in old mystery play musicals: priestesses capering among goats, singing swollen songs to their living mountains. Kai had grown up with surf, and sand, and the painting felt like a fake smile from a trusted friend.

She swung counterweighted metal claws into position. Gears ground in hidden mechanisms. Metal fingers settled against her temples, her ankles, her waist, her neck. The cavern air was warm, but the metal cold. She shivered in her linen suit. Wires and needles waited within those arms, cold tendrils coiled under tension. She looked up at the ceiling, raw unfinished hungry black. “I offer myself,” she whispered. The machine heard her. The claws at her arms extended thin points of lightning that tickled the inside of her elbows, sought and found the veins there. The hairs on her arms snapped to attention. She was the core of a thrumming beast. All she had to do was straighten her arms, and plunge the lightning needles in.

She clenched her teeth, and punched her arms straight, and fell into the open mouth above.

Chapter 23

23

Falling, again, and always. Kai’s eyes sang. Broken glass was the world and gleaming, every moment and memory a cutting edge. Assembling those shards into a mosaic hurt.

Teeth ground teeth, a vibration in her skull. That was reality, distant, fading, gone.