Marie dragged Isabelle’s trunk from under the bed and from its depths extracted a quondam metal cylinder about the size of a man’s thumb. Bronze in color with a purple patina, it bulged around its waist, with a spherical head at one end and a semicircular stirrup at the other.

She presented it to Quill, whose eyes went round at the sight of it.

“Where did you get this?” he asked.

“I took it from the corpse of the first man who tried to kill me,” Isabelle said.

“Just press the round end against your skin,” Marie said. “Be careful. It stings.”

Quill examined the cipher closely and carefully, an antiquarian in sudden possession of the rarest of finds: a working quondam artifact perhaps touched by the Builder’s own hands. Quite reverently he pushed it into the pad of his finger. It snapped, the needle stabbed and drew blood. He winced and sucked his finger, handing the cipher to Isabelle.

Isabelle’s muscles ached, but she twisted the head to activate the cipher’s analytical function and the word “Fenice” appeared in raised letters along the barrel above a series of strange glyphs Isabelle had yet to interpret. Isabelle twiddled the now-evident dials on the barrel and entered Quill’s name above his sorcery. It never ceased to amaze her how the cipher could be seamless one minute then display grooves that ran latitudinally around the barrel in its diagnostic configuration, then sprout longitudinal legs when activated as part of its swarm. Yet it never seemed to be of more than one piece.

“According to this, your body at least is Fenice,” Isabelle said.

Quill sagged as if shedding a heavy weight he hadn’t known he’d been carrying. He looked down at his hands as if imagining them sheathed in feathers and equipped with talons. He turned his gaze to her, his expression clouded with loss and resentment. “First you steal from me the key to the Vault of Ages and manage to lose it, and now you want me to give you the power that should have been mine. Is there anything I possess you do not covet?”

Isabelle grimaced. “I understand what it is like to have something taken from you. I have lost my arm, my title, my rank, and my name. All were taken from me against my will, and some by those whom I had helped lift into power. The betrayal hurts worst of all. I will not hold it against you if you deny my request, but I will tell you this. No matter how much I have lost, I have never once felt bad about helping another person, even those who might not deserve it.”

Quill looked away. His mouth flattened into a line and he quivered as if he wanted to unleash a tirade.

Instead he asked, “What happens if the transfusion doesn’t work?”