“Perhaps, but at least I do not pretend to be sane.” Czensos tapped his wicked staff on the ground. A pulse like silent thunder throbbed through Isabelle and she nearly fell. Her body felt wrong, heavy, lopsided. She clamped her left hand to her stump. Her spark-arm was gone. Her scales and feathers too. Even the voices in her head had vanished. She had all but forgotten what it was like to have a silent mind. The sudden silence captivated her despite the circumstances.

Sedgwick reeled, his gloriole vanished. Even Marie staggered back, her color returning, black hair, brown eyes, and clothes of mismatched motley hues that put the loudest Gyrine to shame. She doubled over, gasped in pain, and bawled. Isabelle guessed all the emotions she’d been unable to express had come welling up at once, a geyser of pent-up fear and delight and anger and joy.

Released from Marie’s grip, Ivar lurched to his feet, looking around baffled as if the whole world had changed. His time shadows were gone and he was as stuck in the moment as everyone else.

“The reliquary of Saint Iav,” Czensos said. “Just a taste of oblivion, a sense of what is to come. It wears off in a few minutes.” He jabbed the tip of the staff into a bewildered Ivar’s chest. “Unless I give you the full dose.”

Ivar’s last sound was a gasp. And then he was gone, as if he’d never been.

Czensos pointed the tip of the staff at Isabelle. “Take comfort in knowing that your death serves a greater purpose.”

“Annihilation is not a purpose. It’s a capitulation.” Isabelle dashed away from him, circling. She’d spent most of her life unhallowed, without any manifest sorcery. Readjusting ought to be easy, but her body was queasy and slow.

Something blurred in the corner of Isabelle’s vision, a small black bird swooping in at tremendous speed.

Bitterlich, no!

Bitterlich hit the frontier of the reliquary’s power and his sorcery sloughed away … but not his velocity. As a clayborn man he smashed Czensos like a cannonball and plowed him into the boundary wall. Both men fell, stunned. Isabelle rushed toward them.

Czensos recovered more quickly and stood while Bitterlich discovered the nausea that came with losing his sorcery. Czensos’s flesh arm dangled, broken. His clockwork arm raised the awful black staff to strike.

A gun cracked, and another, and another. Blood sprayed from Czensos’s chest. Marie, her eyes streaming with tears and her expression twisted in rage emptied all her remaining pistols into him. “Die, you son of a dog!”

Blood flowing from his wounds, life draining from his body, the hate in Czensos’s eye still burned bright. His clockwork arm cared nothing for the expiration of his flesh.

“Breakerspawn!” He stabbed at Bitterlich.