The Blunt Reaper

Mara blinked.

Rook froze.

She looked at his hands, then at his face. "What exactly were you about to do?"

"Nothing."

"That looked suspiciously like something."

"I was checking whether you had gone insane."

"By climbing onto the bed?"

"I wasn’t climbing onto anything."

"You were leaning over me with both hands out."

"One was for your arm. The other was for your throat."

Mara stared at him. "That explanation made it worse."

"It would have stopped you from biting me."

"I’m fairly certain you’re not the rapey type, but you’re making a terrible effort at proving it."

Rook withdrew his hands and sat again. "I’m not interested in you."

"You didn’t need to sound offended."

"I’m not offended. I’m relieved you didn’t wake up screaming and try to chew through my face."

Mara looked down.

The marble remained enclosed within her hands. Its white interior had gone still, and nothing appeared beneath the surface except her own faint reflection.

"How long was I inside?"

"Not long."

"That was not a useful answer."

"Several minutes."

"It had felt considerably longer."

Mara could still hear the machinery grinding behind the sealed compartment. The smell of the laboratory remained trapped in her thoughts: disinfectant, metal and something faintly rotten beneath both.

"The officer from the Forty-Second should return tomorrow," he continued. "You should sleep. Once he tells us where the Manager disappeared, we’ll be leaving the Bastion."

Mara placed the marble beside her. "You’re not interested in what was inside?"

"No."

"You spent the last several days following me to the Remembrancer, watching every test and emptying this room in case the memories made me violent."

"That was for my safety."

"You also sat beside me the entire time."

"The Brand prefers you alive."

"There’s no Brand binding you to me."

Rook’s gaze sharpened slightly, though he gave no answer.

Mara watched him for another moment. "I should at least tell you what I saw."

"You should keep it to yourself."

"Why?"

"Because it probably has nothing to do with me. The Fourth Rank was made from dozens of souls. You could have watched any one of their lives."

Mara almost smiled, but the memory of the young man strapped to the table stopped her. "There was nothing worth panicking over."

Rook looked back at her. "What does that mean?"

"It means I saw a laboratory. Several people were running tests on a young man and repeatedly drawing his blood. One of the doctors thought the patient had died, and while he was removing the restraints, the patient woke up and stabbed him with a syringe."

Something changed in Rook’s expression.

It lasted less than a second. His shoulders became rigid, and his eyes moved toward the marble before he forced himself to look bored again.

Mara continued, "They put the patient inside a machine. Afterward, the doctor hid the injury and went home. He became sick. His skin turned grey, his hair started falling out, and then the memory ended."

Rook remained silent.

"That was it," Mara said. "No names. No explanation. I barely saw the patient’s face."

"Then it means nothing."

"Yes. That’s what I assumed."

"Good."

Mara picked up the marble. "So why did the person whose memory that was become part of an Abomination that blamed you?"

Rook released a long breath. "Maybe you should have read the ledger before shoving your head into the fragment. The Remembrancer could have separated the wrong memories."

"I was about to say the same thing."

She reached toward the stone table, where she had left the thin ledger beside the sealed pouch.

The ledger was gone.

Mara searched the bed and then looked toward Rook. "Where is it?"

"I read it."

For several seconds, neither of them spoke.

Mara slowly lowered her hand. "You read it."

"Yes."

"The ledger concerning the memories you repeatedly insisted were meaningless."

"I was curious."

"That doesn’t sound like someone who wants nothing to do with his past."

"I didn’t say I wanted nothing to do with it. I said most of it was probably useless."

"You told me not to look."

"That was because putting the memories of a Fourth Rank inside your head is an objectively stupid idea."

Mara held out her hand. "Give me the ledger."

Rook reached inside his coat and removed it. The silver thread around the cover had already been broken. He placed the book in her palm without meeting her eyes.

"What did you find?"

"Nothing useful."

"Rook."

"It contains the memories the Remembrancer removed from the fragment. Most belonged to people the Fourth Rank consumed over the years."

Mara opened the ledger.

The writing inside was small and dense. Each section had been separated by a line of silver ink, with brief descriptions identifying the memory and explaining why it had been excluded. The first pages recorded deaths in flooded tunnels, forests and abandoned Bastions. Several described Reapers being torn apart by creatures Mara did not recognize.

Rook leaned back in his chair. "There were hundreds of death fragments. Some belonged to Reapers. Others belonged to travelers or people from settlements the Fourth Rank attacked. The Remembrancer removed them because none related to the repeated laboratory memory."

"All of them died in the Underworld?"

"Yes."

"Every one?"

"Every memory he could identify."

Mara continued turning the pages. Some entries occupied only a few lines. Others contained notes about several souls dying together, their memories already fused before the Fourth Rank consumed them.

"If they all died here, that still doesn’t explain the laboratory."

"They lived before they died."

"You know what I mean."

Rook looked toward the shuttered window. "The laboratory could have belonged to any of them before they entered the Underworld."

"And the doctor?"

"Probably one of the souls it ate."

"The memory came from several people. I saw through different eyes."

"Then several of them worked in the same place."

Mara reached the final page. The Remembrancer had written only a few lines there.

REPEATED RECOLLECTION RETAINED.

ORIGIN UNKNOWN.

EVENT OBSERVED THROUGH MULTIPLE CONNECTED SUBJECTS.

MEMORY PERSISTS BENEATH ALL IDENTIFIABLE DEATH FRAGMENTS.

She read the last sentence again.

The laboratory was not merely one person’s memory. It existed beneath the memories of several souls consumed by the Fourth Rank, linking them long before they entered the Underworld.

Mara closed the ledger. "That seems worth noting."

"It notes that the memory exists. It doesn’t explain it."

"The Fourth Rank blamed you for its deaths."

"It blamed me for everything. Abominations aren’t reliable witnesses."

"You said all the excluded death memories happened here."

"They did."

"Then why were several souls connected to the same laboratory before coming here?"

Rook stood and crossed toward the door. "I don’t know."

"You’re not even curious?"

"No."

"That was much too fast."

He stopped with one hand against the latch.

Mara watched the stiffness in his shoulders. Rook had spent days mocking her interest in the fragment, but he had broken the ledger’s seal and read every page before she entered the memory. He knew enough to dismiss each question before she finished asking it, yet not enough to make his answers convincing.

For someone who claimed not to care, he had worked very hard to find nothing.

Mara placed the marble back inside its pouch. "You’re afraid there might be something in it."

Rook opened the door.

His coffin stood against the corridor wall, its heavy frame surrounded by the weapons he had removed from the room. He lifted it onto his back and tightened the chains across his shoulders.

"I’m afraid we’re wasting time."

"That isn’t the same thing."

"It’s close enough."

Mara looked once more at the ledger. The notes offered no names she recognized and no connection she could prove. A laboratory, a patient, an injured doctor and several people who had eventually died within the Underworld. Whatever joined those events to Rook had been lost somewhere between the memories.

For now, there was nowhere else to search.

She tied the pouch shut and placed both it and the ledger inside her coat. "Fine. We’ll leave it."

"Good."

"For now."

Rook looked back at her. "You always add the worst part after making something sound reasonable."

"You’re the one hiding things."

"I don’t have anything left worth hiding."

Mara stepped into the corridor beside him. "That sounded almost convincing."

"It wasn’t meant to."

He closed the door behind them and began walking toward the lower hall. Tomorrow, the Forty-Second’s officer would return with whatever information had been recovered about the missing Manager. After that, they would leave the safety of the Bastion and follow another road toward another place people were wise enough to avoid.

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