Pain.

  He didn't know how long he'd been lost in it. Everything else — the bed beneath him, the quilts he was wrapped in, the magelight tacked underneath the desk, so that he wasn't in the dark even if he was left alone — was too distant for him to focus on, too vague to matter. Everything hurt. Every breath, every twitch of his fingers and flex of his toes, was pain. An echo of another place, another time, another gesture. Every slow exhale through gritted teeth was the yell he hadn't let out. Every shift of his limbs was a mockery of the struggle he'd refused.

  And beyond his own pain, his own memories, were the continuing reverberations of what had been pushed into him. Rage he didn't understand the source of, artificial desire for things he didn't want, closeness wielded as a blade instead of offered like an outstretched hand. When those came, he focused harder on the pain. Even pain was better than that.

  Within the pain, there were sometimes moments of reprieve. Gaps, uncertain intervals when the pain didn't vanish but its omnipresence faded, reduced to a low thrum instead of crashing into him like unceasing waves that crested and receded with the heaving of his chest. In those gaps, the magelight underneath the desk winked out. He was left in the dark.

  But not alone. There was someone there in those gaps, though the pain was still too fierce for him to focus on who it was. The hurt receded only far enough for him to catch glimpses, the barest hints of who was in the room with him. It didn't make sense. He should have been able to feel them. There was nothing between him and the rest of the world then, no magic around his mind to keep the emotions of others out.

  Mirk didn't feel any emotions when the darkness came. Instead, he felt coolness. A tingling sensation, strange but not unpleasant, like static washing over his aching mind and body. The static helped to dampen the pain. In the gap left in the pain's wake, he tried to focus on the world outside himself. The bed — lumpy, thin, but better than hard cobbles. The quilts — not warm enough to ward off the damp chill of the room, but wrapped around him tight, a fabric cocoon. And a smell that only came with the darkness, that of oranges and freshly opened lilies.

  He clung to those details when the pain returned and the magelight winked back on. There was something out there other than pain. A world he could return to, if only he could make himself focus. If only he didn't allow the pain to keep being the only thing that mattered.

  And so, the kindling sickness began to burn out.

  - - -

  He'd been locked in the room for months. Mirk only knew it by the tally he kept in the slim journal that'd been slipped in with his breakfast soon after he'd felt well enough to try eating again. He'd been recording his thoughts in it meticulously, day after day — the note tucked in among its pages, written in a slanting, tidy hand, had said that putting all the emotions pounding at the back of his eyes into words would help.

  It didn't. Being shut up alone in the narrow, low-ceilinged room hurt as badly as being trapped inside his mind. An empath wasn't meant to live in isolation. Without ever being able to feel the emotions of others, it was too easy to keep getting caught up in his own.

  Mirk put down his pencil, turning away from the tiny desk across from the equally tiny bed, eyeing the door. It wasn't technically locked. The other note he'd been sent, three days after the journal, had said he was free to leave at any time. That no one would keep him from shuffling out of the building, that none of the mercenaries standing watch at the East Gate of the K'maneda's City of Glass would bar his way, that the London Teleporters Guild was a mile away down the road past the gate. They had standing orders to send him wherever he wanted. He could go home.

  But there was no home for him in France anymore, not really. Without a family, home meant nothing. Which meant there was nothing left for him to do but start over again in the City of Glass rather than returning to Nantes, where he'd be nothing but a burden on the other high-born mages who still felt some obligation to his murdered family.

  Providence made no mistakes. He could only make the best of what he'd been given. And he wasn't becoming any less of a burden on the mercenaries who'd saved him by spending his nights writing foreign words copied from the dictionary into the journal. He wasn't even helping himself with all his scribbling.

  Biting his lip, Mirk clenched the edge of the desk and levered himself to his feet. His legs were unsteady; he'd only gotten out of bed for the first time a few days ago. It would be better once he got moving, Mirk told himself. It was only five steps to the door. He grasped the handle. He met no resistance as he turned it and pushed the door open.

  Beyond the door was a hallway, one as narrow as his room and made of the same featureless gray stone. It was lined on either side with doors identical to the one Mirk poked his head out of. He paused to listen. To feel. Nothing. Either everyone was out, or all the other rooms were shielded against errant emotions just like his own. Sucking in a deep breath, Mirk ventured out into the hall, trailing one hand along the wall for support.

  The hall led to stairs. Wider, but steep. And straight. Mirk took them one by one, like a child first learning to keep his balance. Down one floor to a square landing. Then down another. Four long, musty stairways. Still, he felt and heard nothing. Mirk had the uncanny feeling that he was alone in the building, that everyone else in the world had vanished along with his family. That the notes that kept coming along with his meals were just figments of his imagination. At the bottom of all the steps was a vestibule with an unlit heater on one side and a bin tucked into the corner beside it. In front of him was a threadbare rug and two scuffed wooden doors with worn metal handles.

  He crossed the vestibule. Grabbed hold of one handle with both hands. Throwing all his weight backwards, Mirk pulled the door open.

  His senses were assaulted by a dozen things at once: the scent of ale, the hiss of drizzle on stone, laughter echoing in the distance. And a feeling of mingled desire and glee that burned like hot daggers shoved into his eyes. Mirk lost his grip on the door's handle and it fell shut. But the desire kept reverberating in his mind, stronger and stronger, until Mirk could feel the claws digging into his shoulders again, the breath forced out of his lungs by a hot weight pressing down on his body, trapping him. All he could hear was the dark, cloying voice that had lurked in the back of his mind for months, rising up to make its endless demands for things he didn't understand.

  Blindly, Mirk stumbled to the side and retched up that evening's supper into the bin. He sunk down onto his knees, still heaving though there was nothing left in him. Mirk tried to get back up. But the emotions, the memories, all of it was too much. He curled up on the floor in front of the doors and hugged himself tight in a vain attempt to stop shaking.

  If he was ever going to rejoin the world outside those empty halls, he'd have to try again. But not tonight.

  - - -

  A week after Mirk had tried to go outside, Pavel came to visit him.

  He was a slight man with a soft mental presence, light enough to perch on the edge of the desk across from Mirk's bed without making it creak and bow. But even Pavel's emotions, quiet and tinged with melancholy, were enough to make Mirk's eyes water. It made him wonder if he hadn't been too hasty in asking for the healer he wrote notes to, someone named Emir, to start letting people come visit him so that he could work on his mental shielding. "Are...is everything all right? With the others?" Mirk asked Pavel, since the sell-sword seemed disinclined to break the silence himself. K'maneda tended to either be gregarious or taciturn, with little in between.

  Pavel nodded. "As good as they ever are."

  He was leaving much left unsaid, judging by the worry Mirk felt flare up in him, but he decided not to press the issue. "Ah, I see..."

  After another long pause, Pavel sighed. "I'm sorry. I told them to start with someone else."

  "Oh, no, it's fine," Mirk insisted, dabbing at his eyes with the sleeve of his robes as best he could without drawing attention to the fact that Pavel's emotions were making them water. "It's just...you feel very...euh, gray."

  "Gray?"

  Mirk started and stopped a few times, trying to find the right English words to describe what he felt, the depressive weight of Pavel's mind in the back of his head. It was as if Pavel was resigned to everything in life, both good and bad, powerless to do anything but bear up under it. The feeling was uncomfortably familiar. "Like...everything is too much."

  Pavel shrugged. "I'm a Seer. It doesn't leave you with a lot of hope for the future." He deliberated, then forced a smile onto his face. Even without his empathy, Mirk would have known it wasn't genuine. In his weakened state, without thick mental shielding to ward off the harsh edge of others' emotions, Pavel's melancholy lingered in the room like a dark pall of smoke hanging up near the ceiling. "But it's not all bad. It's just better to be prepared for the worst."

  "I suppose that makes sense..."

  "Like I said, I told them to start with someone else. Ilya, maybe. He's always too distracted to think too hard about things like the future."

  For just a moment, the grayness that shrouded Pavel's mind lifted. It was enough to make Mirk smile, though his eyes were still brimming. "Methinks that might be why you're such good friends. It...helps. To make things, euh...equil...no...it's a b..."

  "Balanced?" Pavel suggested.

  "Yes! That's it. Like how you need lemon with butter..."

  "I am a little sour," Pavel conceded, swinging his legs, hugging himself. One of his usual habits, Mirk had noticed. Like he was trying to comfort himself, or like he was always cold. The Seer looked a bit thinner than he had back in France. Mirk wasn't sure if that was the truth, or if it was just his ability to feel the man's mental wanness playing tricks on his eyes.

  "That's not bad," Mirk said. "The world needs all kinds of people."

  Pavel stared across the narrow gap between them. As he studied Mirk, a white film passed over Pavel's eyes. He quickly blinked it away. "I'm terrible at this," he grumbled, looking down at his knees. "I was supposed to come in here and make you feel better."

  "You have," Mirk said. "It's nice not to be alone. Even if it's still a bit...much."

  Pavel snorted. "Share a tent with some of these bastards for a week and then come tell me that."

  - - -

  Two weeks after Pavel had first visited, Ilya was sent in.

  Pavel always knocked. Ilya walked in without knocking or fanfare, bringing that evening's meal tray with him. He sat down cross-legged on the end of Mirk's bed, setting the tray between them. Mirk was glad that the bed held up under both their weight. Ilya wasn't the tallest of the foreign mercenaries who'd been protecting his family, nor was he the most muscular, but he was still double Mirk's size. Despite that, the mental feel of his presence was as quiet as Pavel's. And much less melancholy.

  "Supper," Ilya said by way of greeting, nudging the tray closer to Mirk.

  "Oh...stew again?" Mirk was getting sick of it — he'd have given anything for fresh bread instead of the rocks that counted for rolls among the K'maneda — but it felt wrong to complain, considering he was living off their charity.

  Ilya nodded. "No meat."

  "I'm glad you remembered," Mirk said, reaching for the spoon beside the bowl. He paused. There was something more on the tray, a collection of metal ingots of different shapes and colors. "What are these?"

  Ilya considered them, then picked one up, blowing aside a lock of the long, white-blond hair that'd fallen into his face. "For practice," he said, holding his hand out to Mirk, the ingot cradled in his palm. "Watch."

  Mirk did watch. But the sight of the ingot lifting off Ilya's palm and turning over in the air above it didn't catch Mirk's attention as much as the sound did. He hadn't heard it in months, the faint murmuring of the Earth's bounty. Then again, he wasn't hearing it now either. His own mind was too full of his own emotions, not clear enough to perceive the muted voices of the wood and metal and stone around him like he'd always been able to since the elemental part of his magic had awakened. But his mental shielding was still weak. And the tinkling of the ingot was so loud inside Ilya's mind that he could hear it through him. "You hear it too?" Mirk asked him.

  Ilya smiled to himself. "Silver is nice. A pretty song, like a bird. Yes?"

  Mirk watched the ingot spiral higher above Ilya's palm, thinking. Along with the fluttery, chime-like voice of silver, Mirk could feel Ilya's contentment and fascination. It was a welcome change from Pavel's gloominess.

  Though Mirk did wonder how the fighter could stand to be so cheerful. Now that he was looking at his hand more closely, he noticed that there were bruises on Ilya's wrist, extending up underneath his shirtsleeve. They must not have been hurting him that badly if he couldn't feel their aftermath in Ilya's emotions. That or Ilya was just so accustomed to being in pain that it wasn't strong enough to drown out his other emotions. "I thought you were a fire mage?"

  "I am. But I've always heard things too. Metal is easy."

  "You're very good. I couldn't do that even when I was well."

  The ingot dropped back into Ilya's hand. He stretched it out to Mirk across the tray. "Let's try together."

  Smiling back at Ilya, Mirk took the ingot from his hand, though he was mindful not to touch the fighter's calloused palm. He was getting better, but Mirk didn't think he was ready for that. Not yet.

  - - -

  Ilya never knocked, but Mordecai took things one step further. He ignored the door completely, teleporting into the middle of Mirk's room. The slap of displaced air from behind him startled Mirk so badly he almost spilled his morning tea all over his lap.

  "Oh! You're up! Great! I hate waking people up," Mordecai said, grinning at him, stopping himself short before he could clap Mirk on the shoulder. "Though you wouldn't stab me for it."

  Mordecai's emotions were louder against Mirk's steadily returning shields than Ilya or Pavel's. They constantly shifted with Mordecai's attention, though they were invariably cheerful and bright. Mordecai's mind felt fidgety, just like his physical body — the teleporting mage was already poking through all the clutter on Mirk's desk, one foot tapping. Mordecai was physically smaller than even Pavel was, but his mind filled up the room, leaving Mirk little space to sort out his own thoughts.

  Before Mirk could return Mordecai's greeting, he was talking again. "Oh, no! Don't tell me Gen stuck you with the dictionary too!" he said, grabbing it off the corner of Mirk's desk.

  "Euh...well, I need it to read all the other books he sends me..."

  Mordecai shook his head, putting the dictionary down. "That's not the way to learn English. Trust me, I know. I had a bitch of a time learning it. First had to learn Russian to deal with Niv and the rest, then I had to put up with learning English from Gen. The English was worse. Because of all these books," Mordecai said, prodding at a stack of them, running his fingers along the spines. "How can you learn to talk from books?"

  Mirk smiled to himself. Even though Mordecai's emotions were stronger, there wasn't anything to fear in them. Even the annoyance that came along with his complaining was light, fleeting. "Methinks you must have learned somehow. You're the best of all the Easterners."

  Mordecai waved a knowing finger at him. "That's because I go out of my way to talk to normal English people! Well. Irish," he corrected, a grin coming onto his face again as he dug in his pocket for something. A different emotion overwhelmed all the rest for a moment — devotion, the bottomless warmth of someone hopelessly in love. Mirk was glad to feel it, even if it was strong enough to make him wince. It reminded him of his mother and father. Mirk quickly pushed that thought away, focusing back on what Mordecai was doing.

  He'd pulled out a scrap of paper and was smoothing it out against his chest. "The best way to learn is jokes! I tried them out on Danny first and they got her to smack me, so they must be good." A flicker of worry passed through his mind then along with his devotion — whoever this Danny was, Mordecai was concerned about her well-being. But whatever he had written on the bit of paper soon replaced the worry with a feeling of giddy anticipation.

  "I might not know enough to understand..." Mirk said. Mordecai's exuberance was so infectious, he found himself grinning along with the teleporting mage. Even if it was spurred on by Mordecai's emotions rather than his own, it still felt nice to smile. Like he was more himself.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  "They're healer jokes! So I'm sure you'll get them. All right, first up: what does a good healer need the most?"

  "Euh...hmm..."

  Mordecai, as always, couldn't contain himself. He barely let Mirk sit with the question for more than a few seconds before blurting out the answer. "A lot of patients! Get it? Patients like sick people, and patience like not throwing them out the window for being idiots? It's great!"

  It wasn't very funny. But Mirk laughed anyway.

  - - -

  Mirk’s bed had survived all his other visitors, but it hadn't stood a chance against K'aekniv. At least the half-angel knew enough people and was imposing enough to get Mirk a new one in short order.

  He pressed his back against the far wall of his room, opposite the door, making as much room as possible to allow both K'aekniv and his new bed to be crammed inside. It meant the door was left hanging open. Mirk could hear the voices of other people out in the hall, drawn out of their rooms by the commotion to come gawk at K'aekniv. But K'aekniv's emotions were so strong that Mirk couldn't pick up on their distinct mental presences, feeling nothing but a few flashes of tired annoyance and exasperation past K'aekniv's triumph. K'aekniv had to pull his wings tight against his back and do a lot of juggling to wedge both himself and the bed through the narrow door. Fortunately, from what Mirk could see and feel, the bed's weight was nothing to the half-angel. It was just clumsy.

  With one final push, K'aekniv made it through the doorway, leaving clumps of tarnished grayish white feathers behind on the doorframe as he struggled through. He tossed the bed and its mattress into the gap left by the one he'd broken that morning, laughing. "Hah! Those idiots in supply said I needed to take it apart. Shows what they know, eh?"

  Taking it apart was what had finished off Mirk's last bed. K'aekniv had wandered into his room and plunked himself down on the end of it without knocking, the same as Ilya before him. But K'aekniv was even bigger than Ilya, inhumanly strong and heavy. Half of the bed’s slats had snapped the instant K'aekniv sat down. The half-angel had shrugged and fished a bottle of a pungent, clear liquor out of the front pocket of his overcoat in apology before hunkering down on the floor to attempt to fix it. Within the hour, K'aekniv had gotten so frustrated by all its nails and splinters that he'd lit the bed on fire. They'd managed to save the quilts, but none of the rest.

  "Thank you, Niv," Mirk said, holding the bottle K'aekniv had left him with back out to the half-angel. Mirk had tried a drink, and although the liquor was potent, it wasn't enough to take the edge off of K’aekniv's emotions.

  "No problem!" K'aekniv said, uncorking the bottle and taking a long drink. As an afterthought, he leaned over and pulled the door shut. Then he paused and looked around the room, thinking — there really was no room for both of them inside, even with Mirk being so small in comparison. The quarters in the healers' dormitory weren't meant for half-angels. At least, not ones who'd inherited angelic wings and stature. All Mirk had inherited from his father was angelic durability and empathy. Both of those had felt more like a curse than a blessing as of late.

  "Tiens," Mirk said, taking the quilt off his desk and shaking it out over the bed. "I'll sit here. You can have the, euh, rest."

  Mirk had to press against K'aekniv's side for a moment to squeeze past him to the bed. K’aekniv’s overcoat and his uniform didn't leave any skin exposed. Still, being so close to him made his emotions press that much harder against Mirk's mental shields. They were barely doing anything. But even though K'aekniv's emotions were strong, strong enough to give Mirk a headache, there wasn't anything to fear in them, just like there hadn't been in Mordecai's.

  When K'aekniv laughed at the sight of Mirk scrunched up on the bed, his amusement, his happiness at seeing him responsive and alive, was pure and complete. There was no pity in his emotions, no disdain, no lingering bitterness over what had happened to Mirk's family and what more he could have done. K'aekniv was glad to be there with him, without reservations. Though the feeling was intense, Mirk had no desire to avoid it. He was glad to endure it. And, underneath everything, sense a faint tinge of it mirrored in himself.

  "So what am I supposed to do, huh?" K'aekniv asked, rousing Mirk from his thoughts. "Teach you something? Like what? How to beat someone?"

  Mirk shook his head. "No...that's not it. Methinks you're here to...what was it...keep me company?"

  K'aekniv shrugged his wings, then got down on the floor. He had none of a full-blood angel's stoic grace and poise. K’aekniv collapsed into a heap, sprawling out across all the available space, unbothered by how cold and hard the floor had to be. He propped his feet up on the trunk they'd pushed aside to make it easier to get the bed in, sipping from his bottle as he thought. "Do you want to hear a story?"

  "If you have one.” It was a silly caveat. K’aekniv’s giant head held more stories than the greatest guild libraries. And K’aekniv’s were, on the whole, much more fun.

  “Who do you think I am? What kind do you want? Exciting? Happy?”

  “Hmm…how did you all come here? You're from far away, non?" Russia, Mirk thought, though the Eastern mercenaries were always arguing about being lumped together like that. They were insistent on how each of their homes were different, each one the most beautiful. And not full of "stupid bastards who don't know their foot from their ass", to borrow their own words. Their constant bickering had made all the stress caused by the dilemma his family had hired them to help with less pressing, somehow.

  "Ah! Yes, I'm from Kamenka. Some village up north, by the sea. No one's ever heard of it. But the trip, that was interesting. I was a real idiot back then, you know, just some kid. So it makes a good story."

  Mirk settled in with his back against the wall as K'aekniv began to ramble, gathering up one of his quilts and hugging it against his chest to ward off the chill. The story was interesting, but the emotions that went with it were better. Nostalgia, happiness, pride. None of it at the expense of anyone else. Inch by inch, Mirk began to relax. So much so that when K'aekniv shifted and puffed up his wings to get comfortable, Mirk picked up the loose feather that drifted into his lap with a smile instead of regret.

  Instead of his father's torn and bloodied wings, all Mirk saw in that feather was K’aekniv. Though it was odd that K'aekniv was losing so many feathers. Combined with the ones left on the doorframe, there had to be three dozen scattered about the room. It was too early for him to be going through his fall molt. Which meant something else had to be off, that he had to be exhausted or starving, even if there was no trace of either in his emotions.

  Mirk made a mental note to himself to ask someone about it, then let himself be swallowed back up in the welcome feel of K'aekniv's gladness.

  - - -

  If one of the other men didn't come to visit him, there was always Genesis.

  Genesis, who had tended to him during his long weeks spent overwhelmed by the kindling sickness, though Mirk hadn't been able to tell it was him who'd been checking in to make sure he wasn't getting any sicker, that his body wasn't failing along with his mind. Genesis, who had given him stacks of books to learn English and magic from, though he also grudgingly brought along adventures and plays sometimes, with muttered asides about not understanding the appeal of them. Genesis, who always felt like nothing, despite every indication that he had to be miserable, shaking with chills or fussing with some bit of bandage wrapped around one of his unnaturally long limbs. Sometimes Genesis felt like the only constant in his life, even though he'd only first met him and his men less than a year ago in the most disreputable inn on the wrong side of Nantes.

  Even when Mirk brushed a hand against the back of Genesis’s while the commander was passing him something, just to test himself, Mirk could feel nothing from Genesis. Nothing but the cold, staticky press of his chaotic magic. In that way, Genesis served his own purpose in his recovery, though Mirk didn’t think Genesis realized it. He reassured Mirk that he would be capable of reaching out again one day, able to touch and embrace without fear of feeling too much. Mirk suspected his constant prodding bothered Genesis, but the commander was considerate enough not to scold him about it.

  Genesis had appeared a few hours after the supper tray had clanked down outside Mirk's door that night, just as Mirk had mustered up the will to try calling the pewter spoon he'd been given to practice his magic with across the room from his desk to his hand. The commander had startled him; the spoon had ricocheted off the wall behind Mirk instead of snapping into his hand. It bounced off the dresser crammed into the corner of his room before landing at Genesis's feet. Genesis had frowned down at the spoon, then launched into a lecture on the proper technique to controlling summoning spells.

  Mirk had stopped listening and had started woolgathering a few minutes into Genesis’s lecture. The long pauses that littered Genesis’s speech, a holdover from his incomprehensible native tongue, made it hard to tell whether the commander had concluded or was only collecting his thoughts. Genesis was lost in the middle of one of these when Mirk finally decided to cut in, wincing at the way his voice cracked as he spoke.

  "I...methinks it might be time for me to leave, messire."

  Again, Genesis frowned. Whether it was because Mirk had interrupted him, or because he’d called him messire — it had become a habit, and Mirk never had been good at breaking those — was unclear. Nevertheless, rather than ignoring Mirk and carrying on, the commander nodded. "If that is your preference."

  "How can I help here? I’m not suited to fighting, but if there are other healers…"

  Genesis's frown deepened, just a hair. "You are under no obligation to remain with us. You were brought to the City because you required...assistance. We will not keep you from returning to Nantes. You owe us no debt."

  "There isn't really anything for me to go back to, is there? Unless there's been a letter from someone."

  "No. There has been nothing."

  Mirk sighed, doing his best to ignore the way his heart sank at Genesis's words. Though he’d been trying to put it out of mind along with the rest of what had happened, Mirk had been hoping that someone might try to reach out to him. An old friend of his family, or someone from the abbey. But there was no sense in dwelling on it; no amount of wishing would bring back what was gone. "Then you and the rest are all I have left."

  "I...see."

  The one thing Genesis's magic didn't shield him from completely, Mirk had discovered, was pain. Tiny flickers of it escaped Genesis's chaotic aura as the commander considered Mirk’s request, shifting back on his heels and leaning against the door to Mirk's room. Pain wasn't nearly as strong coming from Genesis as it was from anyone else, but it still chafed at Mirk's mind, like a blister from breaking in a new pair of shoes.

  The pain had to be bad that night. Some part of Genesis was almost always bandaged whenever the commander came to see him as of late, but the wounds were rarely severe enough for Mirk to be able to feel his pain. Mirk scanned Genesis for injuries as the commander mulled things over.

  There were no bandages on him that evening. But Genesis was wearing low, thin-soled shoes rather than his usual tall riding boots, and he was favoring his right side. It had to be his leg. "We had considered the possibility that you might choose to stay,” Genesis finally said. “It would be pointless to put you through the Academy. I have been told that healing is best learned through…practice. A position is open at the infirmary. As for training in other magic, I am...capable of directing you to the proper grimoires."

  Mirk found himself smiling, even though Genesis's pain was still nagging at him. Genesis had always been stubborn. It didn't matter whether Mirk bumbled into the right results through trial and error first; Genesis was insistent that he learn the proper method to handling magic. The proper method being the one he thought to be the most sensible. "How many healers are there?"

  "One hundred and fifty-three." Genesis paused, doing a bit of mental math. "Three hundred and twenty-seven support members who are not full healers are counted as part of the Twentieth Medical Division as well. The Tenth is...approximately the same size"

  "That many?"

  "This is an army. There are many....incidents."

  Mirk saw his opportunity and took it. "Like what happened to you?"

  Genesis gave him a blank look. "Nothing has happened."

  "Your leg is hurting," Mirk said, gesturing at it. "What happened?"

  "...it is unimportant."

  "Methinks it'd be best if you sat down, messire. It won't heal any faster with you standing on it."

  Genesis continued to stare at Mirk as if he didn't understand. After first moving aside his growing collection of pillows — K'aekniv delighted in stealing them from somewhere, and although Mirk had told him he had enough, he still brought a few every time he visited — Mirk patted the far end of his bed. Mirk supposed he could have directed the commander to the chair at the desk across from him. But Mirk found it too low to be comfortable for long, and the top of his head didn’t quite reach the level of the commander’s shoulders. Genesis would have needed to fold himself in half to sit in it. "There's plenty of room."

  Still, Genesis refused to budge. "It will heal...no matter what is done to it. Eventually."

  Mirk caught himself an instant before he could tisk at him. He hated to be so blunt, but it seemed to be the only way to get K'maneda to listen. Either they were too literal-minded to pick up on subtlety, or they were too intransigent to do anything they didn't feel inclined toward unless asked directly. "Everyone would be hurting less if you sat down. Messire."

  With a tired sigh, Genesis pushed off against the door and crossed over to the bed. The commander's pain flared as he moved. Probably because he was walking on his leg like there was nothing wrong with it instead of being gentle with himself. "A proposition. I will sit...if you stop calling me that. I am no one's lord."

  Mirk shrugged. "All right."

  Cautiously, as if he expected something terrible to leap up out of the crack between the bed and the wall and attack him, Genesis sat down. Despite the dimming of his pain as he stretched his legs rigidly out in front of himself, Genesis seemed much more uncomfortable sitting on the bed than he had been standing back by the door.

  Mirk considered the best way to phrase the question that was bothering him as he looked the commander over again. Everything about Genesis, his missing boots aside, was perfectly in order, from his long black hair drawn back into a tidy low pony-tail, to his immaculately pressed black uniform. Though, the more he eyeballed the latter, the more Mirk thought there was something off about that too. There was the fleeting tang of another smell in the air, one distinct from the scent of lilies and oranges that followed the commander wherever he went, along with his shadowy magic. "Are the healers very busy this time of year?"

  "Not particularly."

  "Oh. Then you've just been busy."

  Genesis shook his head, once. "No more than is...customary."

  "Euh...then it's...a magical injury, I suppose?"

  "No."

  Mirk sighed. Getting information out of Genesis was worse than prying sweets from a child before dinner if the commander wasn’t in a sharing mood. Which he rarely was. "Then why isn't that fixed?"

  "It has been seen to," Genesis said. The commander seemed genuinely perplexed by his question, much to Mirk's surprise. Mirk leaned in and took a closer look at Genesis's right leg. That was what had been bothering him about Genesis's uniform. Now that he was closer to him, Mirk could see that blood was beginning to seep through Genesis's trousers up near the knee.

  "It's still bleeding."

  Genesis cursed — at least, that was Mirk always assumed he was doing whenever he made those occasional jumbles of hissing and clicking noises — prodding at his leg with the barest tip of one finger. It came back red. Continuing to mutter to himself in something that was decidedly not English, Genesis dug in his overcoat pocket for his handkerchief and dabbed at the growing bloodstain.

  "You should go see the healers, Genesis," Mirk said.

  Genesis gave up on trying to clean his trousers, dropping the handkerchief. A tendril of shadow lashed out from underneath the bed, snatching it out of the air before it could hit the floor and dragging it off under the bed. Mirk was still uncertain whether Genesis actively summoned the shadows to do his bidding or whether their interests just happened to often coincide. Either way, their uncanny movements whenever the commander was present had never bothered Mirk. They were just another part of Genesis, as integral to him as his slender limbs and long nose. "The healers were the ones responsible for this...shoddy workmanship in the first place,” Genesis said, not without some bitterness.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Their healing magic is…ineffective. The chaos does not allow for it. I wouldn't have gone to them at all, had the bones not been broken. The rest, I am...capable of seeing to myself."

  Mirk searched for something to say, still staring at Genesis's injured leg. Genesis had never said anything before about healing magic not working on him. Mirk had always assumed that he just put off visiting the healers as long as he could, or that he was too stubborn to go to them without first waiting to see if his wounds would take care of themselves. The bandages always went away, after a time. "Couldn't they at least give you something for the pain?"

  "Pain blockers make me…ill."

  Useless to do much else, Mirk picked restlessly at his quilt as he groped for a solution. None came. "It doesn't seem fair."

  "Few things are."

  "Maybe they just haven't found the right spells to make it work yet."

  "I...doubt that."

  Mirk had tried for so long to forget it that the memory took him by surprise. During their flight to his grandfather's manor, they’d been ambushed. A horde of dark, rotting things so wretched and lurching Mirk could barely stand to look at them had risen out the canal by the roadside. One of them had managed to land a blow on Genesis's leg that had severed some vital part of him, making blood pour from him in torrents.

  Unable to help with the fighting, Mirk had clamped his hands over the wound, stuttering every prayer he could remember as he'd watched Genesis's eyes lose their focus. Mirk had been terrified. He'd begged all the saints, anyone who might hear him, to stop the bleeding, to let Genesis get up again. Without the commander's shadowy magic there to hold the other nightmares back, Mirk knew they were all dead. Or worse.

  And Genesis did get back up. The bleeding had come to a sudden halt. Once they'd all made it to the Lis de la Rivière, Mirk had asked Genesis about what had happened. The commander had offered Mirk nothing more in response than a shrug and the unlikely explanation that the wound must have clotted on its own.

  "I've done it," Mirk said, softly.

  Genesis waved a dismissive hand at him. "A fluke. Occasionally a healer will manage to do something. The chaos is not...prone to excluding any possibility completely. However, I would strongly advise against making a second attempt. It will not…end well."

  He wanted to protest. But Mirk bit his lip instead, forcing himself to look away from Genesis's leg and down at his own. His own thighs were growing thicker by the day, as he ate more and did exercises in his room to try to recover his strength. The most immediate effects of the kindling sickness, the unceasing loops of emotion he'd been trapped in, were fading. He was getting better. Closer to leaving. Meanwhile, everyone else who came to visit him, Genesis included, seemed to be getting worse.

  For once, Mirk decided to be more direct right from the start. "What's happening, Genesis? Pavel's almost as thin as you are, and Niv's losing enough feathers every day to fill a whole pillow. Is something wrong?"

  Genesis sighed. "The situation is...complex. We are being put on more contracts than is practical at present. I am working to prevent this from continuing. Thus, the leg."

  The leg. And the constant stream of other, lesser injuries Genesis had been enduring, all without comment or complaint. None of it felt right to Mirk. There had to be more going on than what Genesis was willing to say to him, but he knew there was no sense in arguing with Genesis about it, just like there was no sense in arguing with him over his leg. If he wanted to find out what was happening to Genesis and the Easterners, he'd need to go out into the City of Glass and see for himself. If he wanted to help in return the men who'd done so much to help him, he needed to learn to heal properly instead of only using his potential now and then to press together paper-cuts and soothe away blisters.

  "When can I start at the infirmary?" he asked Genesis.

  "Whenever you...prefer to start."

  "Tomorrow?"

  "If you wish."

  Again, Mirk found his eyes drifting back to the bloodstain on the leg of Genesis's trousers. If the commander was to be believed, it was a small thing, not something worth his concern. But he knew better. If the injury was bad enough for him to be able to feel Genesis's pain, it had to be severe. And that meant that whatever the commander was doing to get himself injured was terribly dangerous. He'd seen Genesis rip through whole hordes of demonic constructs without taking as much as a scratch.

  If the foe he and the Easterners were fighting was strong enough to leave Genesis in such a state, Mirk knew he wouldn't be able to do anything to stop them. But he refused to believe, considering all the wonders and horrors he'd seen magic create, that there wasn't a way for it to do something as simple as fix a broken leg.

  "I do," Mirk said, looking back up at his face.

  Genesis's expression was unreadable, as always, the same as his emotions. But he nodded nevertheless.

  "Then I will...make the necessary arrangements."