The ring was in Talis’s pocket at the moment. A bulky, heavy weight that spun on her hand with the slack. It seemed safer off her finger. And the old metal made her skin itch.
If Meran’s actions had all been a result of Talis using the ring, she might as well have done those things herself. The violence on one end, the healing on the other. She shook her head.
“All right, then,” Talis said, re-rolling the bandages she’d been about to wrap back around her trunk. “So heal the broken rib already.”
There was only a narrow space between the counter where Meran sat and Talis’s seat on the surgery table. The woman lifted one leg and put the ball of her bare foot against Talis’s knee. Talis felt a tingle spread through her body, like electricity and ice wrapped around each other and traveling through her bones. She hissed, surprised at a sharp pain in her side. Meran closed her eyes, and Talis felt something shift. The bone was knitting back together. In her mind’s eye she could see it happening.
And then the pain was gone.
The tingle chased upward to her arm. The brand flared with blue light.
“And this?” Meran opened her eyes again and gave Talis a look that seemed to pierce through her.
Dug shifted and stepped into the room. “Onaya Bone wanted you to have that.” He sounded almost desperate. Meran had left him with his older battle scars, which he’d proudly earned. But the way he spoke in favor of Talis’s new modification went beyond a preference for the look.
Meran’s toes massaged Talis’s kneecap through her pant leg. “You may not always want such gifts as Onaya Bone has to offer.”
“Leave it for now.” Talis pulled a long-sleeved gray shirt down over her head, marveling at the sensation of breathing and stretching without pain. The ache in her shoulders had also disappeared.
Meran removed her foot. The tingle of cold lightning pulled back out again, as though the tendrils had been an extension of Meran herself, and she’d taken them with her. It left Talis feeling slightly hollow.
“How strong is your power, exactly?” she asked Meran, as she lifted her hair so it pulled free of the collar of her shirt.
The simula ran a finger along the blue lights of her opposite arm. “This piece of me has her limits. Whole, I would be ten times as strong.”
“And the ring controls you completely? Whoever holds one can make you do anything?”
“It is a battle of wills. I must resist where I can. My freedom is my destiny. Trapped for all this time, I can bear no more bindings. But I am segmented, and so the programming of this artificial body is stronger than my will. For now.” Meran’s neon blue eyes flashed. “Reconstituted, no mortal could bend my knee.”
Dug was quicker on the math than Talis was. “There are four more rings, not nine. Wouldn’t you be five times stronger when we find them all?”
Talis watched Meran’s face for the answer but wanted to shoot Dug a remonstrative look. Who said they were going after the other rings? They were on their way to Nexus. Meran and Onaya Bone would partner up and fight off the aliens, and Wind Sabre was going to retreat out of that picture and be glad of it.
“The rings are the fractured pieces of my being,” Meran said. “My quintessence.”
Her eyes slid from Dug to the lump in Talis’s pocket. “There are five other elements to collect before I will be fully restored.”
Talis’s skin prickled. The anxiety she thought had finally released its grip on her returned. Meran’s phrasing could not have been coincidence.
“Who are you?”
“I am everything.” She slid off the counter and put her hands on Talis’s shoulders. “Or I was. When we reach Nexus, perhaps I will be again.”
Meran smiled that cryptic smile of hers and left the room, lightly caressing Dug’s shoulder as she passed by him.
Alone together, Talis and Dug exchanged a look. Talis took a deep breath.
“Well, that sounded ominous.” She reached forward, opened a drawer under the counter, and plucked out the jar of Zeela’s healing ointment. She pulled up her right sleeve, then unscrewed the cap and held the jar in her right hand while she gently applied the herbal mixture to the brand. She felt the raised flesh beneath her fingertips, tracing the ridges as she gently massaged the ointment over Onaya Bone’s mark. The scent of rosemary and mint delighted her nostrils, and she exhaled a large breath.
Dug crossed to the counter and leaned back against the spot across from Talis where Meran had been. He didn’t reply. She looked up at him with a raised eyebrow, but he didn’t appear to notice.
“Scrimshaw settling in?”
“Xe seems content,” Dug said absently. “Xe gave Sophie the tablet.”
“Then she must be very content. Remind her we’re not done yet. I don’t want her taking that apart until this is over.”
His jaw was slightly slack, and he seemed to be trying to capture a thought and turn it to words.
“What’s on your mind, Dug?”
He reached into the folds of his loose pants and pulled out a wooden locket, which he tossed to her.
She knew what it was, but opened it anyway. The cover rotated on a pin near the clasp, revealing a shallow indentation carved in the bottom half. Within, a tiny etched portrait of a Bone woman looked fiercely back at Talis. She was strong-featured: high cheekbones, nose long and broad. Her lips were thin but not severe. Talis thought it captured Inda perfectly. Her heart caught in her throat. For her friend, now gone. For Dug, barely managing his pain after all these years.
She looked up at him. His jaw was set and the muscles in his temples worked as he barely controlled his anger.
“The Veritors killed my family, Talis. You know this.”
Talis blinked rapidly. Closed her eyes, took careful breaths. Caged the flutter that threatened like
