Janel chewed on her lip, her expression thoughtful.

Brother Qown sighed. “Do you really think you can learn to transmute razarras ore?”

She met his eyes. “Thurvishar will know how.”

Qown leaned back, feeling spectacularly stupid. “I … stars. You’re right. He probably will. That didn’t even occur to me.” He raised his hands. “All right. All right. You see about enlisting his help to learn that spell, and I’ll see what I can do about acquiring you a very special suit of armor.”

It was Janel’s turn to look surprised. “How in all the heavens do you plan to do that? Did you take up smithing while I was elsewhere?”

Qown grinned. “You’ll see.”

51: DRAGON HUNT

Jorat Dominion, Quuros Empire. Three days since most of the Blue Palace guards were animated from the dead

When Qown paused, he looked around, expecting someone to make a comment or have a question.

But instead, Kihrin simply gave a significant look to Janel. “Well?”

She chuckled and took her turn.

Janel’s Turn. The Ice Demesne, Yor, Quur.

Suless proved to be far more invested in magics that dealt with living creatures than inanimate ones, but no one becomes a god-king without being extraordinary at magic on a general level, so she did have pointers on what had to be done.

As I predicted, Thurvishar had more.

Still, it was nearly three more months before I felt ready to make the attempt. Then I was waiting on Brother Qown to come through on his end of the plan: the armor needed to protect me.

I’m sure you can imagine my relief when Qown sent me a message. When I arrived at his room, I discovered a suit of complicated, intricate plates, sewn to thick, pliable material, lying on his bed. Brother Qown stood next to it.

“Qown? What is … what is that?”

“Your armor,” he replied. “Well, not armor. Remember how I said metal provided excellent protection against razarras? This is it.” He waved a hand toward the suit as though presenting a prize. “I scribed the air sigil on the inside. Between that and the metal, you should have enough time to make your changes to the ore, before the razarras poisoning begins to affect you.”

“How did you ever manage—” I tried to pick up the suit and found I couldn’t.

It must have weighed several hundred pounds. I wondered how he’d managed to transport it. A team of servants? Some magic spell?

“What is this made from?”

“Lead, mostly.”

I just stared at him in disbelief. “I’m not sure where you managed to find this, but I’m even less certain how you thought this would work. I can’t lift this, let alone wear it.”