Chapter 11 · Orin's Bad Deal

Marcus's throat still tasted like copper and ash when he stumbled into Orin's waystation three hours later. The merchant was polishing a glass orb that showed tiny galaxies dying inside it. He didn't look up.

"You're bleeding sound," Orin said. "I can hear it from here. Sit before you leak all over my inventory."

Marcus dropped onto the stool across from him. His voice was gone. Not hoarse. Gone. He'd burned it holding that floodgate shut long enough for seventeen people to crawl out of the submerged plaza, and now when he tried to speak, nothing came out but a thin whistle like air through a cracked pipe.

Orin finally glanced up. His eyes were the color of oil on water. "Oh. You actually did it. Impressive. Stupid, but impressive." He set the orb down and leaned back. "So. You need something, or you're just here to bleed on my furniture?"

Marcus pulled the lyre shard from his jacket. It was warm. It was always warm now, ever since the man in the plaza had looked at it and gone white. That thing killed a city once. The shard hummed against his palm, a frequency he felt in his teeth.