“The alternative is that she slips away from us,” I said. “I can’t bear that. And I’m sure Rick and the other bone magi will work out how to make it as safe as possible.”
Jeremiah turned to look at Viv’s still face. She moved just then, twitched as if she were aware of his regard. Her lips turned down in a frown, parting slightly, and her hands atop the blanket closed into loose fists. I gasped and took a few steps to stand by her side.
“It’s an autonomic reaction,” Jeremiah said. “They think she might actually be dreaming, based on her brain activity. So she’s still herself in there. Helena, if she dies from the Damerel rites, I might as well have killed her.”
“Don’t think that way!” Anger flooded through me, and I almost slapped him for being so self-centered. Instead, I said, “You’re not the only responsible one. I am too. Stop thinking of yourself and think of Viv. They want us to choose an aegis for her—does it have to be a specific one?”
Jeremiah sighed. “The aegis is supposed to be something you have an affinity for. Like how front line fighters with the wood or steel aegis are usually the type of people who have a strong urge to fight evil. The sort of people who’d be police officers or soldiers under other circumstances. But Viv isn’t awake to make that decision.”
“So it’s up to us.”
Malcolm said, “You should consider Viv’s personality and desires. Often the choice of aegis is obvious.”
I thought about it. Not wood or steel. Viv was squeamish, so not bone. Malcolm was right, the choice was obvious. “Glass,” I said. “She’s perceptive and good at seeing to the heart of things.”
Jeremiah’s face cleared. “That’s what I was about to say.”
“Which means good things, right? That it was obvious to both of us?” I squeezed Viv’s hand, which was cold and once again limp. “Just think how excited she’ll be to be a magus.”
A smile touched Jeremiah’s lips. “True. I don’t think it’s anything she ever considered seriously, but she’s griped so much about not having telekinesis whenever the remote is too far away, I think…I think she’ll love it.”
The door opened, and Ruby Wallach walked in. “So, we have a plan,” she said with a smile. “This must be what Grandpa felt like all the time.”
“We think it should be a glass aegis,” Jeremiah said.
“That should be fairly simple to produce.” Ruby checked Viv’s vital signs. A cloud passed over her face briefly. “Good thing, because we have less time than I thought. No, don’t worry, it’s not urgent,” she said, forestalling Jeremiah’s protest, “it’s just that the lower her magical reserves during Damerel, the less time we’ll have for implantation. So the sooner we can do this, the better.”
“How soon?” Malcolm asked.
Ruby’s eyes went distant with calculation. “Tomorrow at seven a.m. Excuse me, I need to get someone working on that aegis. Go home and get some sleep, all of you. I’m sure you’ll want to be here for this.”
Jeremiah and I looked at each other. It was the understatement of the century.
At 6:15 the following morning, Malcolm and I were on the freeway headed for the Gunther Node. We’d said goodbye to Claude earlier as he prepared to return to Switzerland. “It is all right, yes, to use your wardstone?” he’d said. “I have appreciated your hospitality.”
“Of course,” I’d replied. “I’m so glad we could put you up—and that you survived.”
“I will contact you later, when I know the status of the Athenaeum,” he’d said. “But if we are to restore it, it will be many months, perhaps years. It is better than ‘never,’ but I fear the Athenaeum will be of no immediate use in the fight. Again, I am angry, but there is nothing else I can do.”
It made me angry, too, angry and worried. As each named Neutrality slipped away from us, it felt even more like we were headed for disaster. Whatever might happen if they all were destroyed didn’t bear thinking about.
I tucked my hand under my leg—the dawn light was pale and slanted toward us from the east, but I was superstitious that if I exposed my hand to any sunlight, it would stay yellow forever—and traced the line of the door handle. “How many of these have you seen? Aside from the two you were in?”
Malcolm glanced my way. “Of the Damerel rites? Ah…ten, I think. No, nine. The tenth was aborted by the participant, who changed his mind before it began. So, nine.”
“And were they all successful?”
Malcolm’s peaceful expression gave way to a frown. “Two of them failed. One was someone who should never have undertaken Damerel, but we couldn’t convince her of that. The other…just failed. Occasionally that happens.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t let that upset you, Helena. Viv has as good a chance as anyone. Maybe better, because she’s a survivor, and that matters.” He took the freeway exit and turned right. “Have faith.”
Faith. I clung to that. It was all that was left to me.
Someone was waiting at the teleportation circle that served as the entrance to the Gunther Node. He nodded to us as we joined him inside the circle. Holding a plastic card attached to a lanyard around his neck, he knelt and dipped the card into a thin slit like running a credit card. “Three,” he said, and in an instant we were in the great central hub. This morning, it smelled like maple syrup overlaying the usual gardenia scent. “Waffle Wednesday,” the tech explained, and shooed us out of the circle before disappearing.
I took Malcolm’s hand, and we followed the green line down the infirmary corridor all the way to Green 1. We saw Rick there, talking to a large man in teal scrubs whose tidy blond beard made him look like a well-groomed Viking. Rick waved us over. “This is Earl Kirschbaum,” he said. “He’s a bone magus from Yakima who’s done a lot of work in sports medicine. I asked him to assist in rousing Viv because he understands head trauma, which has some similarities to her condition.”
Malcolm and I introduced ourselves. Kirschbaum shook hands politely. “Friends of Ms. Haley?” he said. “I have to warn you, this is not going to be pretty. She’d be disoriented even if all we did was wake her, but the amount of information we have to throw at her…you need to be prepared to be a calming influence.”
“We understand,” Malcolm said. “Is there anything in particular we need to be aware of? Anything to do?”
Kirschbaum scratched his beard. “Usually, rousing someone who’s unconscious is a simple matter of goosing the autonomic system. It’s confusing as hell to the patient, but sometimes it’s necessary. The problem here is that Ms. Haley needs to be clear-headed for Damerel, and she hasn’t responded to that intervention anyway. So that method is useless.”
“Earl has something different he’s tried in the past,” Rick said. “We’re going to shock her system with an influx of sanguinis sapiens. Processed, of course, but a concentrated dose.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?” I said. “It sounds like what caused the damage in the first place, being hit by a high dose of magical energy.”