“Allow me to demonstrate.” Before I could move away, he lashed out with the blade. It wasn’t like being cut with steel. I’d registered the earlier wound, and it had already begun to heal. This seared across my skin like ice and fire, sending pain crawling up my chest and into my throat. I bit back a shout. A small cut, and shallow, but more painful even than the beating Philine had once visited upon me.

I staggered back, pressing a hand to the wound.

Kaphra studied the edge of the blade, his hand still tight around one of Mephi’s horns. “There are kernels of truth in stories, even the most absurd ones. When I was a teenager, I used to laugh at that play, Phoenix Rise. How could one special sword defeat the Alanga? It didn’t really make sense. Even with witstone, it takes time to get from island to island. Are we meant to believe that one lone Sukai traveled the breadth of the Empire, searching out and hunting down Alanga? It’s a fantasy that makes the Sukais sound more noble and intrepid than they actually are. In the end we are all animals, scraping by with what we can. None of us are noble.”

I traced the carved ceiling beams with my gaze. “You are hardly scraping by, though I won’t argue against labeling you as an animal.”

“You were my best smuggler,” Kaphra said, as though he hadn’t heard me. I stared at the blade, the blood upon it, Mephi crouched and hurting. He might think he could keep me in hand with Mephi’s life on the line, but my bones vibrated to an almost painful degree. Anger flooded hot in my belly. He thought he could control me? He thought he could cut Mephi with that accursed blade and get away with it?

“You could be so much more.” He was still talking. Oh, he was worse than I was – he didn’t just speak to fill silences, he spoke to hear himself speak. He wasn’t selling me on anything, no matter how eloquent he thought he was.

I’d spoken an oath to Lin, and I’d made a pact with myself to help the Shardless Few. And now the Ioph Carn wanted to have me on a leash?

“I have a ship at the docks. We leave tonight.” He pulled Mephi closer to him. The beast whimpered.

A breeze from the open door tickled my cheek. I could feel every tiny hair that it lifted. Something stirred within me. “I am not going with you,” I said, not quite feeling myself. I felt like I was floating above my body, like I’d ceased to be Jovis at all. “And neither is Mephi.”

“I think you are,” Kaphra said, hefting his sword. He held it to Mephi’s neck.