Claws and hands grabbed me, lifting me to my feet. I gagged on pain and the fetid balewind, grateful that I hadn’t had anything more than coffee for breakfast.
“I’m sorry, Doctor,” Jack said, his voice muffled by the bale-armor around him. “Far had to call you to find you. We told him not to do it until the last minute. Are you all right?”
The others echoed his question. I nodded, which was as close to lying as I’d come in a long time. But I was alive and the call hadn’t lasted as long as Carel’s the night before. ‘All right’ was a relative concept.
“Tell me this isn’t an escape,” Droit said, steadying me. “Because if it is…“
I shook my head, then flinched and grabbed it.
“What’s wrong?” Droit’s grip tightened on my shoulder and arm.
“Come,” Far ordered.
“Wait, Far!” Milka tugged on its hand. “He’s not ready yet.”
The transient halted, the shifting features of its face turning toward us.
The bell tolled again, louder now that we were across the Line. The sound pierced my skull and seemed to sweep it clean until my nausea was replaced by its single, reverberating tone. I took a deep breath, concentrating on the sound and letting it restore me.
“Magister Carel said there’s something wrong with his head that makes calls hurt,” Holly explained to Droit. “Because he’s insane.”
“He’s not insane!” Jack protested.
“Or he’s got something else wrong with his brain,” she amended. “But if Far didn’t call him, we wouldn’t be able to find him, so he had to.”
“Why do you want him?” Droit demanded. “And what the hell is that noise?”
Feeling a little more like myself, I straightened and looked around.
Far had created a minimal environment around us, just a cobblestone road under our feet, but it was enough to give my beleaguered mind a sense of place. He had also clearly imposed some stricture on the bale nearby; it wasn’t changing in response to our thoughts, as it would if it were uncontrolled.
“He wants us to follow him. He says it’s important,” Milka replied. “But he only wanted Doctor Axton, not you.”
“It’s his lucky day — he got me, anyway.” Droit released me, straightening my borrowed waistcoat with a tug. “I don’t suppose you have any idea what’s going on here, Ax? Running out in the middle of an inquiry isn’t going to look good for your case.”
“I don’t know any more than you do.” I looked up at Far. “You called me?”
“Yes.”
The bell tolled.
“Come,” he said, turning again.
“Wait. What’s that noi—“ Droit flinched. “Dammit!”
“What’s wrong?” One glance at the strain in his face, and I could guess.
“Michael’s calling me. How the fuck does he think I’m supposed to get back to him?” Droit grimaced and rubbed his temples.
“That’s not fair!” Milka protested, looking at Far. “You said nobody could call us here.”
“He is not mine.” Far’s voice was deep, inhuman.
“Huh?”
“The Hound is not mine. I do not protect he.”
Ah. Rules. This was something I could do something about. I turned to the transient.
“He’s mine, Far,” I said. “So, if I’m yours, then he’s yours. Please break Michael’s call.”
“He is Hound to Yzyrchye.”
“Not anymore. Now he belongs to me. Please break the call.”
“She mark him.”
“Yzyrchye marked the children around us, too. But they’re not hers, and neither is Droit. Please.”
The bell tolled. Far faced me a silent moment, and then Droit dropped his hand, looking relieved.
“I am going to kick Michael’s ass for that when I get back.” He glowered at Far. “Explains a lot, though. If my first contact with humans was being called, I’d probably want to come in killing, too.”
“Are we ready yet?” Finn asked. He was always in a rush, as if trying to make up for the time he’d lost as the first of the children to be kidnapped.
“I’m going to be in a great deal of trouble when I return,” I told Milka, worried. “I hope this is important.”
“It must be,” she said simply. “Far’s never called all of us at once before.”
“And I’ve never heard a sanctum bell on this side of the Line before, either,” Kate added. I felt a leap of excitement as I put two and two together.
“A sanctum bell — do you think it’s Cardinal Croix?”
“Yes,” Far said, starting to walk. “Come. We go there.”
“How’s the leg?” Droit asked me as the children spread out, apparently as comfortable off the cobblestone road as on it. It was disorienting to watch them, with their claws and carapaces, float in the “sky” around us, so I kept my eyes fixed on Far and Milka, who were walking in a more normal fashion. Every three minutes or so, the bell tolled again, as if calling us to mass in the middle of hell.
“It hurts.” I lifted a shoulder. “I didn’t think to grab my crutch.”
“Should we ask the kids to make you some bale laudanum? Is there such a thing?”
“I would prefer not to experiment.”
“Or they could create a bale-crutch?”
“It wouldn’t stop the pain.”
“No, I guess not.” He looked at me, his hands in his coat pockets. Strands of blond hair had slipped from his ponytail to curl around his face. “Well, Axton Payne. It seems you have as many secrets as I have vices.”
“I prefer Axton.”
“I might, too, if I ever got to know him.”
I winced.
“Thank you for jumping in after me,” I said, meaning much more than that. Thank you for defending me over breakfast. I’d noticed how he’d kept deflecting Lorencz and Aronson’s anger. Thank you for not losing your temper. Thank you for acting like this still might work out.
“That’s my job.” Droit smiled to himself. “I’m a retriever.” He patted his sword, with its hound-shaped pommel. It had been a gift from his cousin and Lorencz, after he’d rescued them the last time we were dragged across the Line. He carried it everywhere with him, now.
“If you don’t want to be considered Yzyrche’s Hound anymore, you should stop calling yourself a dog.”
“I don’t want to be Yzyrche’s Hound, but a dog isn’t such a bad thing to be. Brave. Loyal. Clever.” He gave me a sly, sidelong glance. “Obedient.”
“You’re not my dog.”
“Yet here I am, trotting at your heel. Besides, you just told Far I belong to you. Axton’s Hound. Payne’s Hound? Hmmm — yes. Payne’s Hound. It has a certain ring to it.”
I shrugged, uncomfortable, as usual, with his joking.
“Nobody human has ever been possessive of me before,” he continued, with a blithe air. “I think I like it.”
“Droit!” I protested.
“I told you, call me Tegeus. Especially as it seems I’ve been on a first-name basis with you all along.” He paused. “What did you mean when you said Yzyrchye had marked me and the kids?”
“Yzyrchye’s touched all of you.”
He caught the evasion at once.
“Touched. Is that what you meant by ‘mark’?”
“Well —“
“You meant it literally, didn’t you? Marked.”
“I —”
“The truth, Ax.”
“You have scars. Here.” I touched the side of my head, where I’d seen the scars on him and on the children. He mirrored my action, running his fingers along the sides of his temples.
“Those are from Michael trying to bash my brains out.”
“Not all of them. A lot of them are old. I noticed them when you were in the hospital, but I didn’t guess what they were until I saw Yzyrchye’s probes pushing into your skull. Then, when I found similar marks on the children, I was certain. They’re surgical scars.”
“You mean Yzyrchye’s been probing around in my brain twice?”
“Yes.” I strongly suspected it had been more than twice, but I didn’t know for certain, and this wasn’t the right time or place to speculate.
He pulled his hands away, as if by force of will.
“Why?”
“I think — this is just a guess — I think that, years ago, Yzyrchye altered your brain when it made you its Hound. And I think it altered the children’s brains so they could overcome the effects of nix.”
Droit shook his head.
“I chose to become Yzyrchye’s Hound. It never forced me.”
“That doesn’t mean it didn’t surgically alter you after you made your decision. Maybe it changed your brain so that it could sense what you sensed. Or maybe it made you more sensitive to Might’s influence. It’s difficult to say without proper research.”
He scowled. We walked in silence a few more minutes as the cobblestone road unfurled beneath Far’s hobnail boots.
“For what it’s worth,” I continued at last, trying not to sound wistful, “whatever changes Yzyrchye made to you and the children didn’t damage your brains. Being called doesn’t hurt any of you any more than expected.”
“I don’t think you have brain damage, either,” he said, as though somehow he could tell.
“I’m either brain damaged or mad. And an alienist would know if he were going mad, don’t you think?”
“You’re not mad.”
“I analyze myself on a regular basis. I know I’m troubled, but I don’t think I’m mad.”
Droit glanced at me.
“You’re thinking about your mother, aren’t you?”
I nodded. He moved closer and threw a companionable arm around my shoulders.
“Well, I don’t think you’re any crazier than the rest of us.”
I considered what I knew of my three friends.
“I don’t find that very reassuring, General.”