Once the gathering was over, Sansen and Jiaola took us back to an inn they'd scoped out. Despite all the magic and wonder they could conjure up when they set their minds to it, they were still adults in a city they'd once called home; I suppose it was no surprise that they were far more competent than we were when it came to securing basic needs like food and housing.

We burned through the rest of our skeleton-smashing money grabbing a room for the night. Strictly speaking, we didn't need to buy either; we'd done perfectly fine fending for ourselves on the way here, after all. But we were all tired—in what I hoped was a perfectly normal way that signified no latent cancers—and with the exception of Meloai, it was more convenient to just buy food than to hike all the way out into the plains to camp.

We'd rented two rooms—Sansen and Jiaola had wanted privacy—but all five of us piled into the larger of the two in an impromptu group meeting. There were only two beds in the room Meloai, Lucet, and I would be sharing; Jiaola had offered to get Meloai a bed as well, but since she didn't sleep she'd instead elected to save the cash. I was sitting on one bed next to Meloai, me enjoying the luxury of a mattress, Meloai the novelty of the first inn she'd ever visited. Sansen and Jiaola sat opposite us, Sansen leaning on his husband's shoulder with bags under his eyes, light still leaking from beneath his left eyelid. Lucet paced back and forth like a caged tiger, sending petrified-wood oppression and feathers of freedom into the walls until a layer of trapped vacuum perfectly sealed the room, ensuring no sound could enter or exit.

When Lucet finished her spell, she spoke up. "We should investigate Zhytln," she said.

That... could mean a lot of things. Sansen cracked one eye open and said, "You don't mean for medicine."

"Why would I?" Lucet asked. "She didn't exactly make a sterling first impression. If her methods of healing involve letting her rummage around in my mind, I'll take my chances with the cancer."

"You get a chance," Sansen murmured. "I don't."

Lucet opened her mouth to speak—

"No surgeons here," Sansen said. "That's a Peaks thing, and I'm not going back."

"But what i—"

"They're fighting a war, and we have nothing left to offer."

"Then I'll—"

"No you won't." I could feel the weight of exhaustion weighing on his soul, memories and feelings that had once been vibrant and green crushed into a dark mass of coal. "You say there's always a way to change the future. That what I see are just possibilities. That we can find a way out that doesn't involve letting yet another mind-manipulator get their fingers into our souls."

"But it's true!" Lucet burst out, fists clenched impotently. "After everything we've been through? We know secrets of magic that even the Silent Peaks haven't discovered yet. I'm not letting anyone else control us—Iola, the Peaks, Zhytln—and I'm not letting fate itself stand in our way, either. We'll keep looking."

Sansen closed his eyes. "I knew you'd say that," he murmured. "She didn't change your mind either."

"She?" Jiaola frowned, shaking his husband, but Sansen didn't respond, once more lost in the haze of time. Fuck, it'd been hard enough for me to live through the deaths of strangers to find Jiaola in their memories—how many times worse must it have been for Sansen to see his own life end time and time again?

There was a reason few witches trod the path of the oracle, no matter how much power laid down that route.

Lucet clenched her jaw, taking in a deep breath, mist filling her soul. "Sansen—we have to be careful about listening to him. You know that hopelessness is a side effect of abusing futuresight."

"Then what do you suggest that we do?" Meloai asked, and from anyone else it would have thrown oil on the fire but from her it was nothing more than a request for clarity. "You say that we should investigate Zhytln. What does that entail?"

"We've been told she can exploit the connection between souls and bodies, altering one to alter the other," Lucet explained. "Maybe that's true, maybe not. Our first step should be to find out if that is true, and if she has the knowledge that can help us."

That got nods from around the room, Sansen excepted. Emboldened, Lucet continued. "And we know what she wants—she's been trying to get her living memories into the souls of everyone she can get her hands on, for whatever nightmarish purposes she has in mind."

"So, what, you want us to... offer to take up her living memories in exchange for her healing us?" I asked warily.

Lucet stared at me as if I'd sprouted a second head. Which, come to think of it, might not have been as outlandish as I'd once thought, what with the soul-body transformations I'd seen Iola go through. "What? No. We're five soulmages with magic the rest of the world doesn't know exists. We rip her mind-control bullshit out of every soul we can find, demand she teach us what she knows if she wants us to stop, and heal ourselves with the knowledge she gives us."

It was Lucet's turn to grow a second head. Judging by Jiaola's expression, this one had fangs.

"I don't think you know what the word 'investigate' means," I finally said.

She waved a hand. "Cienne, this is serious."

"So am I." There was a knocking at the door, and Meloai jumped, but I shook my head. "Not now," I called out to whoever was at the door. "Come on, we've talked about this."

"Are you telling me I'm being an ass?"

"What? I don't—what does that have to do with—"

"Cienne?" Meloai frowned at the closed door; another three knocks came from the other side.

Now is not the time to hyperfixate on a doorknob, Meloai, I thought to myself. Lucet barreled onwards. "No, really," Lucet asked. "Am I the bad guy? Because all I want is to get rid of Iola's last stranglehold on us without signing our souls over to someone even worse in the process."

"You're not the bad guy, Lucet. It's just—this plan of yours has too many failure points. How do we know Zhytln won't just refuse to spite us and leave us with weeks of wasted effort, or that we'll even be capable of learning the kind of magic it would take to heal the damage Iola's done through pure soul manipulation?"

"Cienne!" Meloai grabbed my shoulder.

"What?" I snapped, and she shrank back. Oops. I let that spear of glass impale my soul—I deserved it. "Sorry. Just... what is it?" I asked.

"It's—nothing," she muttered. "Just, uh... that shell of silence Lucet erected is still up, right? No sound can enter or leave this room?"

I scanned the walls with my soulsight. "Seems so, yeah."

"Then... where's that coming from?" Meloai nodded towards the door.

Three more knocks rang out.

I'd like to say my reaction was to reach for the vast array of magical powers at my disposal, but in truth, part of me still believed I was a helpless student of an uncaring academy, watching the world crumble around me as I huddled behind a pile of rubble. I backed the hell away from that door as Lucet held out her hands, calling a memory of a bow into her soul and loading an arrow of sorrowful salt. Jiaola shook Sansen's shoulder, but the old oracle just smiled.

The knocking happened again, precise and polite.

"I'll open it," Jiaola said, and before Lucet could object, he turned the knob and dismissed the shell of magic Lucet had woven.

On the other side of the door, a woman in a bartender's apron smiled at the five of us, either ignorant or unimpressed by the weapon Lucet aimed at her heart. Though I had never seen her in my life, I remembered her face—how could I not?—as clearly as the first moment I'd heard her name.

"I have heard you five were seeking me out," Zhytln politely said, walking into our crowded room. "Shall we have a civil conversation?"