we've gotten off on the wrong foot. The good doctor is here to lift a heavy burden from you, to give you a present. But you must promise to use it responsibly.'
Sela's eyes widened. A present? Sela did not have a good history with presents.
'Let's let the doctor come in and go about his business and then you can see. Fair enough?'
Sela nodded, and Everess let the doctor back into the room. He looked into her eyes with a magnifying glass, blew some kind of powder into her ears. He pricked her finger with a needle and let a drop of blood fall into a tiny glass vial. From his bag, he took a small box the size of a stick of butter and dropped the vial into it. The box rattled for a moment and then produced a series of musical tones that appeared to satisfy the doctor.
'She's in perfect condition,' he said to Everess. 'Physically, anyway.'
'Then let's do it,' said Everess.
The doctor reached into his bag once again and took out a circular object wrapped in muslin. He held it out in front of her and unwrapped it slowly, showing it to Sela. 'What do you think of this?' he said, finally speaking to her.
Sela looked. It was another Accursed Object. She wanted to cry. This one was much narrower, and it was trimmed with fine, filigreed silver, unlike the solid, featureless ring currently encircling her arm.
'What is that?' said Sela.
'Neither the doctor nor I believe that you're ready to have this thing removed entirely. We're not sure how powerful your Gift is without it, and I'm not sure I want to find out.'
He paused, taking the band from the doctor's outstretched hand, and his face grew suddenly very serious. 'This is power, girl. Power and freedom that I've decided you're capable of controlling.' He held it up for her to see, and he gripped her forearm tightly. 'If you ever, for a moment, abuse this freedom,' he said, 'I'll put you down like a buggane in heat.'
Sela knew that threats were supposed to be upsetting, and she had seen others cowed by them. Sela assumed that the portion of the heart that cringed at being threatened must have been cut out of her. It was at moments such as this one that Sela frightened herself, when she got glimpses that she was so very unlike the others around her. She knew she was different, but that didn't make it any easier.
What passed through her mind next was a list of the ways that she could kill Everess where he stood. Not that she had any intention of doing so. She actually quite liked Everess; he was going to teach her how to be useful. But it made her feel better to think of killing him.
'We should lay her down for this,' said the doctor, indicating the bed. 'I imagine she may thrash around a bit.'
'Should you give her a physick of some kind?' asked Everess.
The doctor only shrugged in response. He unscrewed the lid from a small jar and sniffed the contents. The smell seemed to satisfy him. 'Lie down,' he said. It was the first time he'd addressed her since he'd entered the room.
Sela did as she was told. Freedom? Power?
The doctor held up the replacement torque in both hands, turned it around in the light. 'Such fine workmanship,' he said. He handed Everess the small jar. 'When I give the word, pour this over the existing torque.
'What does it do?' said Everess, sniffing the jar just as the doctor had done.
'It will dissolve the iron; the thing should just fall right off.'
The Accursed Object? Fall right off? Surely this wasn't right. The Accursed Object was never to be removed. Never, never, never!
'No!' she shouted. She jerked herself up off the bed, twisting her arm out of Everess's grasp. Everess stumbled backward, spilling the liquid contents of the jar onto Sela's shoulder. The liquid ran down her shoulder, and she scrambled away from Everess and the doctor, screeching, her hands over her ears.
When the liquid touched the Accursed Object, it began to sizzle and sputter. Sela looked and saw acrid smoke and a fine red foam erupting wherever the jar's contents touched the Accursed Object. There was a cracking sound, and she felt something strange, something that made her stomach drop deep and clouded her vision.
The Accursed Object fell off of her arm.
She felt naked and exposed, but only for an instant. She touched her arm and the corrosive from the jar burned her fingers, but she didn't care. She felt the indentation in her skin where the Object had been for as long as she could remember.
'Get her!' shouted the doctor, and she looked around. Everess and the doctor were trying to get at her, the doctor in front, holding the Object's replacement. He was coming at her. He was trying to hurt her. And everything was clear, and everything was bright, and the thing that was inside her reared up and grinned from imaginary ear to imaginary ear because there was
