“You mean she’ll die?” Ōbhin was snarling.
She focused on him. His back was to her, the light of a diamond jewelchine falling across his shoulders. He held something in his hand, a jar with something black thrusting out the top. It was full of liquid. An amber light glowed inside of it.
“Bastard,” another voice growled.
She jumped to see Fingers standing beside her, wiping at his mouth. His face looked sick. “What he did to you . . . Pus-filled roach!”
“Did something happen to Ōbhin?” she asked, bewildered.
Then she noticed what was in the jar Ōbhin held. A human brain. Confusion rippled through her. She pushed herself up to her feet, feeling unsteady only for a moment. The last thing she remembered was trying to tell Ōbhin about her problem before she’d collapsed into his arms.
“You took her mind out of her body!” growled Ōbhin. She realized he yelled at Dualayn. He wore a surgical apron, blood smeared across the front.
“Yes, and you will harm her if you keep swinging her about,” Dualayn said, reaching out to take the jar with gentle hands.
A sinking dread filled her as she struggled to decipher what was happening. Where she even was. It looked like Dualayn’s lab, but it wasn’t. There was far too much space. More tables. The walls were covered in anatomical drawings. Then she noticed two patients he’d brought from the hospital were each on a table, the man’s chest spread open.
Normally, that wouldn’t have disturbed her, but she wasn’t prepared to see a man's innards on display. She clamped a hand over her mouth, a sudden surge of bile in rising up in her throat. She turned away.
“Dualayn,” she croaked when she had control over her rebellious stomach. “What is this place?”
“You brought her down here?” Dualayn said in exasperation. “Child, it’s okay. I was just waiting for you to be ready to understand the full breadth of my work before sharing it with you.”
“Like taking her brain out of her body and attaching it to obsidian jewelchines!” snarled Ōbhin.
Avena’s head whipped around to Dualayn. She focused on the jar. On the brain. She found herself crossing the distance without thought as she stared at it. A human mind, the brain stem disconnected from the spine. No eyes attached or auditory nerves. It was suspended in some brine with a ruby and sapphire jewelchine to maintain the environment. It was an idea Dualayn had told her about once, a way to remove an organ and revitalize it before returning it to the body.
But if the body needed that organ to live . . .
She touched her head. “That can’t be my brain.”
“Yes, child, it is,” Dualayn said, a smile crossing his lips. “Remarkable, yes? You think your thoughts are happening in your head, but they are actually occurring right here in the jar. That’s the seat of your identity. Where your soul resides.”
Black iron wires drilled down into her brain, penetrating her wrinkled gray matter. The topaz healers were equally connected, keeping her mind alive. She squeezed tighter at her head, her stomach churning.
“Then what . . . How is it . . .?” She struggled to speak. “How can my body work without my mind? How am I talking?”
“You have an exquisite device inside your skull. Before I broke off my partnership with my colleague in Democh, he sent me two of his prototypes. His obsidian minds. They are amazing devices. They can control a human body just as well as a regular mind, only these ones can receive signals. He wants to use them to control his soldiers like automatons, but you . . .” Dualayn smiled. “You are being controlled by your own brain. See?” He touched the spire thrusting out the jar’s top. “Here is the antenna. It’s wired to your mind. It sends your thoughts and commands to your body through the immaterial in the same way that the eight Harmonic Tones resonate through the world and power jewelchines. Your body responds in a similar, though more complex, fashion.”
“But . . . you healed my brain,” she said. “Why did you take it out of my head?”
“I saw him using topazes to heal the wound to your brain,” Ōbhin said.
“But it wasn’t enough, right?” she demanded, staring at Dualayn. “Right, Father? You had to remove my brain to heal me?”
She stared at him, the man who’d taken her in at fifteen and given her a job. The man whose son she would have married if tragedy hadn’t befallen Chames. She studied with him. Worked at his side. He taught her how to treat the sick and build jewelchines. She’d investigated the Recorder with him. He had to have an explanation. A logical reason.
“Please, Father,” she said, her words rough. She felt on the verge of falling apart. Her eyes implored him.
“Child,” Dualayn said, “this was the perfect opportunity to test everything. I had already removed the top of your skull. Once your brain was healed, I took advantage of this fortuitous event and replaced your brain with the obsidian mind. I didn’t know that there would be any deleterious side-effects. I had been meaning to ask you if everything felt the same, but I fear I’d gotten distracted.”
A cold fury ignited in Avena, a blizzard howling through her soul. She felt the emptiness widening to engulf her in a cocoon of safety. She could withdraw, flee this betrayal, but she refused. She wouldn’t be helpless. She embraced the pain as she snatched her brain from him. She held the seat of her awareness cradled to her breast as she glared at Dualayn with loathing. An odious, pain-filled rage swelled in her.
“She’s passing out, you gloveless snake!” Ōbhin snarled. His black-gloved hands seized Dualayn’s bloody apron. Ōbhin thrust the rotund man back into the table, bending him half
