“Ah, well, in fact,” He cleared his throat. “The fine smiths at House D’Talus made this, on orders from High Lord D’Talus. Or at least, that’s what the paperwork the deliverymen brought with them says.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Do I wish to know how you managed such a feat?”

“The less you know about that, the better. As for wearing the suit, that’s easy. Only a few years ago, you would have been more than strong enough to wear that. So the solution isn’t to design a different suit, it’s to restore your strength.”

I walked over to him and put my hands on his shoulder. “How? The gaesh—”

He gently put his hands on my wrists and pulled my arms away from him. “There are loopholes. I haven’t been ordered not to take the sigil off your back. And as it happens, Relos Var asked me to help you. Clearly, this is helping you.”

“Relos Var?” I stepped away from Qown.

“Yes. A few years ago, truth be told. He never rescinded the order, so here I am, still helping.” He grimaced. “Unfortunately, I can’t promise this will be easy. In fact, removing the sigil may hurt a great deal.”

“What do you mean? Why?”

“Well, it depends. If I can erase what Senera wrote, then it’s easy. The difficulty comes if I can’t. Then my options for removing the mark become … painful. And surgical.”

My stomach tightened. “Are you suggesting skinning my back?”

He made a face. “Maybe a little? Just a few layers. I’ll heal any injury afterward. I’m much better at healing than I used to be. But there’s one other complication.”

“Tell me.”

“I don’t know what this sigil does. I mean on an intrinsic level, I just don’t know. I can’t find it in any books. Then I realized Senera doesn’t need books. She learned this from the Name of All Things, so she’s the only one who understands that sigil’s meaning. It drains your strength, but what if it also does more? We don’t know its purpose, only its symptoms. So I don’t know if Senera will be notified if we disrupt this mark, and I don’t know if removing the mark will have some other catastrophic effect. I realize you haven’t looked at your back through the Veil—”

“That would be difficult, yes.”

“Right. The sigil pulls tenyé off you and shunts it elsewhere. Which means if we stop the flow, someone may notice.”

“So you’re saying that when we do this, we need to be fast.”

“And we need to do it soon,” he confided, “because someone at House D’Talus will start asking questions—for example, about why they delivered a custom lead-lined suit of shanathá armor to Yor.”