Marduk had rules.
He simply considered explaining them a character flaw.
The knife went on the table when I was six.
The herb cupboard became accessible when I was seven.
The eastern path stopped being forbidden when I was eight, although the old man never actually told me this. He merely stopped appearing behind trees whenever I tried to use it.
Permissions in Marduk's house worked much like weather.
You learned they had changed by surviving the consequences.
By nine, I thought I understood him.
That was my first mistake.
"Take this."
He tossed me a canteen.
I caught it with both hands and immediately felt water running over my fingers.
There was a crack near the bottom.
I raised an eyebrow.
"Generous."
Marduk was crouched beside the cabin steps, repairing the leather wrapping around his staff. He didn't look up.
"You're welcome."
"It leaks."
"Excellent. Your eyesight works."
"An increasingly rare miracle in this household."
He pulled the leather tighter with his teeth.
"North ravine. Before sunset."
I waited.
Nothing else came.
I had learned that silence could be interrogated if you were patient enough.
Marduk had learned that he could simply remain silent longer than I could remain patient.
Eventually, I sighed.
"Purpose?"
"Come back."
"Instructions?"
"Those were the instructions."
He handed me a knife next.
The knife, at least, was intact.
Short blade. Thick spine. Bone handle polished by years of use.
I tested the edge with my thumb.
"Food?"
"No."
"Blanket?"
"No."
"Firestarter?"
"No."
"Would you like me to leave a forwarding address for my corpse?"
That earned me a glance.
"You're nine, Raymond. Stop talking like a divorced merchant."
He went back to the staff.
I looked toward the northern ridge.
The ravine lay beyond it, perhaps two hours away if I took the safe trail and considerably less if I climbed directly over the basalt rise.
I'd been there twice with him.
Never alone.
"How long?"
"Until morning."
That changed things.
The nights on the north side were colder. The rock held little heat after sunset, and the ravine trapped damp air from the sea.
The canteen gave me maybe a third of its original capacity before the crack emptied it.
One knife.
The clothes I was wearing.
No food.
No fire.
I looked at Marduk again.
He was still repairing the staff.
There was an extraordinary cruelty in being dismissed by someone who knew perfectly well you were trying to determine whether he intended to kill you.
But after nine years with him, I knew one thing.
Marduk did very little without preparation.
If he wanted me dead, the ravine was unnecessary.
If he wanted me frightened, he'd chosen the wrong child.
Which left education.
"I'll be back for breakfast."
"Don't make promises on an empty stomach."
I left.
I took the safe trail.
That was the first part of the lesson, although I didn't know it yet.
The shorter route crossed loose volcanic rock and saved perhaps forty minutes. Forty minutes was valuable.
An intact ankle was more valuable.
People often confuse efficiency with speed.
They are not the same thing.
The island taught that lesson with admirable consistency.
I walked under an overcast sky, keeping the damaged canteen tilted so the crack stayed above the waterline.
The solution was awkward.
It slowed me.
It also kept the water inside.
By the time I reached the ridge, my wrist ached from holding it at an angle.
There are plans that look elegant on paper and ridiculous in practice.
One should prefer the ridiculous plan that works.
The ravine opened beneath me.
Two walls of grey stone.
Sparse trees.
A narrow stream that vanished beneath the rocks before reaching the coast.
The first time Marduk had brought me there, he'd pointed out claw marks on a trunk and asked what made them.
I'd said a predator.
He'd called me an idiot.
Anything with claws could leave claw marks.
Species mattered.
Height mattered.
Direction mattered.
Age mattered.
Whether the animal was marking territory or climbing away from something larger mattered most.
So before descending, I sat.
Ten minutes.
Then twenty.
I listened.
Birds on the western wall.
Insects low around the stream.
Something small moving through brush.
No alarm calls.
No heavy movement.
I descended.
Water first.
The stream looked clean.
That meant absolutely nothing.
Marduk had once shown me a pool clear enough to count every stone at the bottom. Two dead goats lay fifty paces upstream.
I followed the water until I found insect activity, then farther until small tracks appeared in the mud.
Nothing dead nearby.
Nothing discolored.
I filled the canteen.
Then I drank from my cupped hands instead.
The cracked container was more useful as reserve than convenience.
After that came shelter.
There was a shallow recess under the eastern wall, protected from most of the wind. Dry leaves had accumulated at the back. Something had nested there recently, but the droppings were old.
I scraped them out with a branch.
The knife stayed clean.
That became important later.
By sunset, I had water, cover and a crude layer of insulation under my clothes.
I had no fire.
Starting one would have required either tools I didn't have or far more effort than the warmth justified.
More importantly, smoke carried.
Light carried.
Smell carried.
A warm boy beside a fire is simply cooked meat with ambition.
So I stayed cold.
The first few hours were uneventful.
I hated that.
Danger you can see is a problem.
Waiting for danger is theatre, and I have never enjoyed being part of someone else's performance.
I began mapping.
The ravine narrowed northward.
The stream provided one line of movement.
Three game trails crossed it.
Small herbivores used two.
The third had deeper prints.
Four toes.
Broad pad.
Old.
I avoided it.
I placed loose pebbles along the approach to my shelter.
Not a trap.
An alarm.
Then I moved twenty paces away and made another disturbance—broken brush, disturbed leaves, a scrap of cloth from my sleeve.
A false sleeping place.
Primitive misdirection.
But lies don't need sophistication.
They need an audience willing to believe them.
Darkness settled.
The temperature fell.
I curled beneath the rock recess, arms tucked under my shirt, breathing through my nose.
An hour passed.
Perhaps two.
A pebble moved.
I opened my eyes.
Another.
Left side.
Slow.
I didn't reach for the knife.
Metal makes people feel brave.
Bravery is very often a poor substitute for information.
I listened.
A sniff.
Then another.
Soft feet.
The shape entered the strip of moonlight outside the shelter.
Lean.
Low.
Long forelegs.
One of the island's dusk-hounds.
Juvenile.
Alone.
That was encouraging.
Then a second shape appeared.
Less encouraging.
Then a third.
I remained still.
The first moved toward the false bed.
It smelled the cloth.
Paused.
One paw scratched at the leaves.
The others spread out.
Not hunting as a disciplined pack.
Searching.
I revised.
The smallest turned toward my actual shelter.
I picked up a stone.
Waited.
Its nose lowered.
Closer.
Five paces.
Four.
I threw the stone past the false bed.
It struck the wall.
The hounds snapped toward the sound.
I moved.
Quietly.
Out the back of the recess, through a gap I'd noticed earlier, up a narrow shelf along the rock.
The smallest saw me.
It barked once.
The others followed.
Wonderful.
I climbed.
The shelf narrowed quickly.
My fingers found cold stone.
Feet sideways.
Keep three points of contact.
Do not hurry because something behind you is hurrying.
The first hound jumped.
Its claws scraped below my boot.
Too close.
I pulled higher.
It tried again.
Couldn't reach.
I found a ledge barely wide enough for my hips and sat there, back pressed against stone.
The animals paced below.
I smiled despite myself.
A stalemate.
Ugly.
Cold.
Effective.
I expected them to leave.
They didn't.
That was the second mistake.
An hour later, a deeper call echoed from the north.
The three juveniles stopped pacing.
All of them turned.
My stomach tightened.
Another call.
Closer.
They scattered.
Not toward it.
Away.
I watched them disappear into brush.
Every useful instinct I had told me that when predators flee, you should resist the temptation to feel victorious.
Something moved below.
Large enough that I heard its weight before I saw it.
I shifted slowly on the ledge.
A shadow passed between the trees.
Then another sound came from above.
Stone tapping stone.
I looked up.
Marduk.
He was lying flat along the top of the ravine with his staff extended downward.
"Grab it."
I stared.
"Good evening."
"Raymond."
There are many tones a mentor can use.
That one meant jokes had become an expensive luxury.
I grabbed the staff.
He pulled.
My shoulders protested as I climbed the final distance.
Once over the edge, I rolled onto my back, breathing hard.
Marduk caught my collar and dragged me away from the drop.
"Move."
We moved.
No lecture.
No criticism.
That frightened me more than the ravine.
We crossed the ridge without using the trail.
Marduk chose a line through dense brush, fast enough that I had to work to keep pace.
I heard the animal once behind us.
Branches shifting.
Then nothing.
We didn't stop until the cabin lights came into view.
Marduk barred the door.
Set his staff beside it.
Only then did he sit.
I stood in the middle of the room, wet, cold and irritated.
"You came back."
He rubbed both hands over his face.
"Obviously."
"No."
He looked at me.
"You came back for me."
His expression hardened.
"Don't make poetry out of basic maintenance."
"What changed?"
Silence.
"Marduk."
"Migration."
I waited.
He sighed.
"The dusk-hounds shouldn't have been there."
"But they were."
"Yes."
"And whatever followed them?"
His jaw worked once.
"Also shouldn't have been there."
Interesting.
Marduk had made an error.
Not a theatrical error designed to teach me humility.
A real one.
I sat opposite him.
"You didn't know."
"No."
The word came without decoration.
That impressed me more than any excuse would have.
I looked toward the door.
"I had the shelf."
"You had a shelf until you didn't."
"I could've stayed there."
"And if the rock-cat climbed?"
I stopped.
So that was the larger animal.
Marduk leaned forward.
"You mapped what you knew."
"Correct."
"You planned around what you knew."
"Also correct."
"And then you started believing the map was the ravine."
I disliked that sentence immediately.
Mostly because I understood it.
He pointed toward the knife at my belt.
"Show me."
I handed it over.
He examined the blade.
Clean.
"You didn't use it."
"No need."
He looked at me.
There was no approval in his face.
No disappointment either.
"Good."
That surprised me.
Then he tapped the knife against the table.
"But this?"
He pointed toward the cracked canteen.
"Explain."
"I kept the fracture elevated."
"All night?"
"Until I found water."
"And if you hadn't?"
"I would have rationed."
"How?"
I told him.
He listened.
Then shook his head.
"Too conservative. You'd have left the ravine dehydrated."
I frowned.
"No. Based on—"
"Based on a colder night."
He stood, took a cup, filled it and pushed it toward me.
"You didn't account for climbing."
I said nothing.
He was right.
The hounds had forced physical work my original rationing hadn't included.
Unknown variable.
Again.
I drank.
Marduk sat back down.
"Thinking is useful."
"I'll write that down."
"Thinking you have thought of everything is how intelligent people die."
That one I did not joke about.
The following morning, he made breakfast.
This was arguably more dangerous than the ravine.
The eggs were burned.
The fish was somehow both raw and dry.
I inspected it suspiciously.
"Is this another test?"
"Eat."
"That is not an answer."
"It's food."
"We disagree on terminology."
He threw a spoon at me.
I caught it.
And ate.
That was how life with Marduk worked.
No ceremony.
No congratulations.
A dangerous night, an argument, terrible fish.
Then the next lesson.
Years later, people would ask when my education truly began.
They usually expected an answer involving combat.
It didn't.
It began with rot.
I was ten when Marduk cleared the main worktable and placed three things on it.
A dead reef-rat.
A bundle of pale leaves.
A black glass vial.
I looked from one to the other.
"Charming."
"Open the rat."
"Before breakfast?"
"After."
"Even worse."
He slid me a small blade.
I cut carefully along the abdomen.
The smell arrived almost immediately.
I leaned away.
Marduk did not.
"What's wrong with it?"
"Dead."
He stared.
"Remarkable diagnosis."
"Give me a moment."
I examined the organs.
Discoloration around the liver.
Dark residue near the stomach.
No obvious external wound.
I touched the pale leaves.
Bitter smell.
Same plant I'd seen along the southern marsh.
Animals normally avoided it.
I pointed.
"Poisoning."
"Maybe."
"Maybe?"
"Finish."
I opened the stomach.
Fibrous remains.
The pale plant.
"Poisoning."
Marduk nodded toward the black vial.
"Make it useful."
"That's rather broad."
"So is dying."
Inside the vial was a clear liquid with a faint green tint.
Distilled venom, if I had to guess.
He wouldn't tell me from what.
Marduk enjoyed turning incomplete information into a personality test.
I smelled it from a distance.
Sharp.
Mineral.
The pale leaves contained an alkaline sap. I knew that from previous cleaning work.
Neutralization seemed obvious.
I crushed part of the leaf.
Added water.
Filtered it through cloth.
Then introduced one drop of the black vial.
The mixture turned cloudy.
Good.
Second drop.
The glass warmed.
Less good.
I stopped.
Marduk watched.
"Continue."
"No."
His eyebrow rose.
"The reaction is accelerating."
"And?"
"And I enjoy having hands."
He grunted.
I moved the vial away from the burner.
Heat continued building.
That made no sense.
I hadn't added enough reactant.
A thin shimmer appeared along the surface.
Mana.
I felt it more than saw it—a pressure against the fingers holding the glass.
I set it down immediately.
The vial cracked.
Marduk moved faster than an old man had any right to.
He dropped a clay cup over it.
Then pressed two fingers against the table.
Something passed through the wood.
The pressure vanished.
A moment later the glass broke beneath the cup.
No explosion.
No fire.
Just a sharp crack.
Marduk lifted the clay.
My mixture had become a grey paste.
I looked at it.
Then at him.
"That was supposed to neutralize."
"In your head."
"The chemistry was sound."
"Was it?"
"Yes."
"Then drink it."
I looked at the paste.
"Perhaps we should preserve it for guests."
A corner of his mouth moved.
Almost a smile.
Almost.
I returned to the ingredients.
"What changed?"
Marduk tapped the leaf.
"Living things here absorb mana."
"I know."
"No. You know the sentence."
He tapped the vial.
"Venom carries the pattern of what made it. Roots carry where they grew. Bone remembers stress. Blood remembers more than you'd like."
I looked at the grey paste.
"So composition isn't enough."
"Better."
"The mana state matters."
"Better."
"And grounding the reaction through the table dispersed it."
He shrugged.
"Or interrupted it."
"You don't know?"
"No."
There it was again.
The most unsettling thing about Marduk was not how much he knew.
It was how casually he admitted the edges of it.
He pushed the dead reef-rat toward me.
"Again."
The second attempt took the entire afternoon.
This time, I didn't begin with what I thought the ingredients should do.
I tested them.
Small quantities.
Different vessels.
Cold.
Heat.
Salt.
Stone.
A strip of untreated wood.
The venom reacted differently to each.
The pale leaf did too.
By dusk, I had something ugly.
Brown.
Bitter.
And stable.
Marduk dipped a metal needle into the venom, touched it to a piece of fresh animal tissue, then treated the same spot with my mixture.
The discoloration slowed.
Didn't stop.
Slowed.
I watched carefully.
"Partial."
"Yes."
"How partial?"
"Enough that someone might reach a healer."
"Not enough to cure them."
"No."
I should have been disappointed.
Instead, I felt something far more useful.
Interest.
A system that refuses simplicity is irritating.
It is also exploitable.
"What do you call this?"
"Medicine."
"No. The discipline."
Marduk cleaned the needle.
"Alchemy."
I looked around the workroom.
Jars.
Bones.
Minerals.
Dried plants.
Bits of metal.
Half-finished notes.
No piles of gold.
No mystical ceremony.
Just transformation constrained by material, mana and ignorance.
"People actually waste this making gold?"
"People waste everything making money."
"Now that," I said, "I understand."
He handed me the rag.
"Clean the table."
"So the grand initiation is over?"
"What initiation?"
"Alchemy."
He stared at me.
"You made brown paste that delays one kind of venom."
"A humble beginning."
"You nearly shattered a vial in your face."
"A memorable beginning."
"Clean."
I cleaned.
After that, alchemy entered the house quietly.
It became salves for cracked skin.
Preservatives for meat.
Better lamp oil.
A tincture that made Marduk sleep for six hours and deny afterward that it had worked.
I learned that materials had histories.
So did bodies.
So did people.
And with enough observation, patterns appeared.
That was the seductive part.
Patterns make you feel safe.
By twelve, I had started predicting when Marduk would leave the cabin by the way he arranged his tools.
When he was worried, he sharpened blades that didn't need sharpening.
When he was hiding something, he reorganized his shelves.
When he had made a decision he expected me to hate, he cooked.
This should explain why I became suspicious when I returned from gathering herbs one evening and smelled stew.
Not burned stew.
Actual stew.
I stopped in the doorway.
Marduk sat at the table.
Two bowls.
Bread.
One wrapped object between them.
I looked at the food.
Then the object.
Then him.
"Who died?"
"Sit."
"That's not reassuring."
"Raymond."
I sat.
He pushed the wrapped object toward me.
The cloth was dark blue.
Old.
Carefully folded.
I knew it.
Or thought I did.
The iron box.
The one in the wall.
Marduk had caught me examining its lock years earlier.
He'd moved it afterward.
Apparently not far enough.
I unfolded the cloth.
Silver caught the lamplight.
The pendant.
My fingers stopped.
I had seen it once before.
Briefly.
The day he'd caught me.
He had taken it away before I could open it.
Now he said nothing.
I picked it up.
Cold metal.
Fine workmanship.
Too fine for anything made on the island.
There was an engraving inside.
To my love, Medina.
The room became very quiet.
"Medina."
Marduk ate a spoonful of stew.
I looked at him.
"My mother."
He chewed.
Swallowed.
"Yes."
There are moments when you imagine you will feel more than you do.
Joy.
Grief.
Recognition.
Some enormous internal rearrangement.
I felt none of those things.
I felt irritated.
Because I had been holding a question for twelve years and discovered that Marduk had been keeping one of the answers inside a wall.
"How long have you had this?"
He looked at the pendant.
"Since the beach."
"You said you found nothing useful."
"I didn't say that."
"You allowed me to believe it."
"That is different."
"To lawyers."
"Then become one."
I put the pendant down carefully.
Control your hands before your voice.
Old habits from another life.
"Why now?"
"Because now you can hold it without inventing a mother around it."
That stopped me.
He continued eating.
I hated that he could do that.
Deliver one unpleasantly accurate sentence and then return to soup.
"What was she like?"
"I don't know."
"You saw her."
"For minutes."
"You told me she reached the shore."
"Almost."
"Was she from Valos?"
His spoon stopped.
Very small movement.
Enough.
I saw it.
Marduk saw me see it.
And there we were.
Two dishonest men separated by a bowl of stew.
"I asked a question."
"I heard you."
"Then answer."
"No."
Simple.
Calm.
Infuriating.
I leaned back.
"Interesting."
"Eat."
"You know something."
"Everyone knows something."
"About the pendant."
"Eat."
"About her."
His expression changed.
Not anger.
Something older.
That was worse.
"Raymond."
"What?"
"Leave this one."
I smiled.
Not because anything was amusing.
"That is a fascinating request to make after twelve years."
"I didn't say forever."
"When?"
"When knowing won't get you killed."
"And you decide that?"
"For now."
There was the shape of our entire relationship.
Protection expressed as authority.
Affection disguised as refusal.
I understood it immediately.
Which did not mean I accepted it.
"You could tell me enough to prepare."
"No."
"You could tell me what danger the name carries."
"No."
"You could—"
"I could give you half an answer," he said, "and watch you build the other half yourself. You've been doing it since you learned to talk."
I went quiet.
He pointed at me with the spoon.
"That's the danger."
Not Valos.
Me.
My habit of filling empty spaces until uncertainty became a model.
Usually a good model.
Sometimes a completely wrong one.
The ravine returned to me.
A shelf.
Three hounds.
An animal that wasn't supposed to be there.
I looked down at the pendant.
"Where is she buried?"
Marduk's shoulders lowered slightly.
"South cliff."
"You buried her?"
"No."
Another silence.
"I never found her body."
That landed differently.
"But there's a grave."
"A marker."
"For what?"
"For you."
I looked at him.
"You kept telling me she died."
"I believe she did."
"Believe."
"Yes."
"You don't know."
"No."
It was astonishing how much damage two letters could do.
No.
I stood.
Marduk didn't stop me.
I took the pendant.
"Where are you going?"
"To the south cliff."
"It's raining."
"I noticed."
"Tomorrow."
"Tonight."
He sighed.
Then reached beside the table and threw me his heavier cloak.
I caught it.
That was Marduk.
He would refuse the answer.
Then make sure you were warm while resenting him for it.
The marker stood near the cliff where the grass thinned against the salt wind.
A low pile of stones.
No body underneath.
I knew that now.
Somehow it made the place more honest.
I sat.
Rain clicked against the hood of Marduk's cloak.
The pendant rested in my palm.
Medina.
I tried the name quietly.
Nothing happened.
Of course nothing happened.
Names are not doors.
They're handles.
Whether anything remains on the other side is another matter entirely.
I thought about the version of her I had built as a child.
A woman crossing impossible water.
A perfect sacrifice.
Marduk carrying me home.
A grave.
Clean.
Complete.
Comforting.
Now there were gaps.
No body.
A Valosi pendant Marduk had hidden.
Questions he refused to answer.
A woman I had mistaken for a story because stories are easier to control than people.
"Thank you," I said eventually.
The words felt awkward.
I almost laughed.
I've given speeches to rooms full of men who wanted to kill me with less difficulty than those two syllables.
I closed my hand around the pendant.
"I don't know what you wanted for me."
Rain ran from the edge of my hood.
"I don't even know if you wanted anything beyond the obvious."
Live.
That much I could infer.
Anything more would have been vanity.
"So we'll begin there."
I stood.
No promise of empire.
No declaration about becoming a monster.
Those are the sorts of things boys say when they're desperate to make pain sound expensive.
Medina had paid for my life.
The only sensible response was to use it well enough that the payment wasn't wasted.
When I returned to the cabin, Marduk was awake.
Naturally.
He sat by the dying fire, repairing a glove.
He looked at the pendant around my neck.
Then at me.
"Finished?"
"For tonight."
He nodded.
I took off his wet cloak and hung it beside the hearth.
"Why did you never let me call you Father?"
The needle stopped.
For once, Marduk didn't have an immediate insult ready.
He pulled the thread through the leather.
"Did I stop you?"
"Yes."
"When?"
"When I was five."
"You remember too much."
"I remember you making me scrub the cooking pot for an hour."
"It was dirty."
"I called you Father."
"It remained dirty."
I stared at him.
He stared at the glove.
"Marduk."
His mouth tightened.
Interesting.
I sat across from him.
"You don't want the name."
"No."
"Why?"
He worked another stitch.
"Because it's already taken."
That was not the answer I expected.
I touched the pendant.
"My biological father."
"I assume you had one."
"You know what I mean."
"Yes."
"Is he Valosi?"
The needle stopped again.
I smiled.
"Almost caught you."
"Almost isn't useful."
"Usually."
He resumed sewing.
I let the silence sit.
Pushing harder would gain nothing.
Marduk could be pressured.
But pressure changed the thing you were trying to obtain.
People forget that.
A confession extracted badly gives information and destroys the relationship that could have given you more.
I was beginning to understand relationships as systems of leverage.
That was useful.
It was also, though I didn't know it yet, one of the more dangerous ideas I ever learned.
"So what do I call you?"
"Marduk."
"Too formal."
"Master."
"Absolutely not."
He looked offended.
"I've spent twelve years keeping you alive."
"And done a very inconsistent job."
"Ungrateful parasite."
"Old Man."
He frowned.
I liked it immediately.
"Old Man."
"No."
"Excellent. Settled."
"Raymond."
"Yes, Old Man?"
He threw the glove at me.
I caught it laughing.
He didn't laugh.
Not at first.
Then his shoulders moved once.
A quiet sound escaped him.
That was enough.
I kept the name.
The years before my fourteenth birthday passed in work.
Real work.
Not a montage of heroic suffering.
Mending roof tiles after storms.
Dragging saltwood up from the beach.
Learning which mushrooms caused fever and which merely caused embarrassing digestive negotiations.
I ruined batches of medicine.
Marduk ruined dinners.
I learned to preserve meat without turning it into leather.
He taught me how to read the color of a flame and the silence of an injured animal.
I learned that some mana-rich plants changed properties according to soil.
That repeated spell use could irritate the body's channels.
That recovery required sleep whether ambition approved or not.
That the island had places even Marduk avoided.
And slowly, very slowly, I began noticing something else.
Weight.
Not metaphorical weight.
Actual weight.
A cup occasionally felt wrong in my hand before I touched it.
Falling objects seemed to announce themselves through a pressure I couldn't explain.
On certain mornings near the forge, I could feel where Marduk stood behind me because the floor carried him differently.
At first, I assumed observation.
Then experience.
Then imagination.
I said nothing.
Marduk noticed anyway.
Of course he did.
Three weeks before my fourteenth year, he placed an iron sphere on the worktable.
The same table where I'd first opened the reef-rat.
He set my pendant beside it.
Two objects.
Two different problems.
One I wanted answers about.
The other I didn't understand at all.
"Tomorrow," he said.
I looked at the sphere.
"What happens tomorrow?"
"Forge at dawn."
"I already know the forge."
"No."
He tapped the iron ball.
"You know how to hit metal."
His finger shifted toward my chest.
"Tomorrow, we find out whether your body is ready to survive what you've been feeling."
So he knew.
I should have been surprised.
Instead, I looked at the pendant.
"Afterward, Valos?"
Marduk's face closed.
"No."
I expected anger.
It didn't come.
That frightened me more.
I picked up the iron sphere.
Heavy.
Cold.
Ordinary.
For the moment.
"Then I'll have to become very difficult to ignore."
Marduk snorted.
"Become?"
I smiled.
He took the sphere from me.
"Sleep."
"I rarely do my best work asleep."
"Your body repairs channels while you rest."
"You might have mentioned that earlier."
"I did."
"When?"
"Every night when I told you to go to bed."
I considered this.
"Terrible teaching method."
"Yet somehow you're still here."
He extinguished the lamp.
The pendant rested against my chest in the dark.
Medina remained a question.
Valos remained a locked door.
Marduk held the key—or believed he did.
At that age, I still thought every locked door presented the same problem.
Find the key.
Control the person holding it.
Open the door.
Simple.
The island had already warned me twice that the world was rarely that accommodating.
I hadn't learned the lesson yet.
But at dawn, Marduk would put me in front of a forge and begin teaching me something much less forgiving than strategy.
He would teach me what happened when the thing I was trying to control was my own body.