“Yes. You won’t find it in any guides, though. It comes and goes. So, he’s mollified?”
“Uh-huh. But now he’s wondering where Nayda is.”
“This gets trickier.”
“Yes. “
She was blushing, and she did not meet my eyes readily. She seemed aware, too, that I was noting her discomfort.
“I told him that perhaps Nayda was exploring, as I’d been,” she went on, “and that I’d ask after her.”
“Mm-hm.”
I shifted my gaze to Nayda. Coral immediately moved forward and brushed against me. She placed a hand on my shoulder, drew me toward her.
“I thought you were going to sleep,” she said.
“Yes, I was. Did, too. I was running some errands just now.”
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“Time lines,” I explained. “I economized. I’m rested.”
“Fascinating,” she said, brushing my lips with her own. “I’m glad that you’re rested.”
“Coral,” I said, embracing her briefly, “you don’t have to bullshit me. You know I was dead tired when you left. You had no reason to believe that I’d be anything but comatose if you returned this soon.”
I caught hold of her left wrist behind her back and drew her hand around to the front, raising it between us. She was surprisingly strong. And I made no effort to pry open her hand, for I could see between the fingers what it was that she held. It was one of the metal balls Mandor often used to create impromptu spells. I released her hand. She did not draw away from me, but rather, “I can explain,” she said, finally meeting my gaze and holding it.
“I wish you would,” I said. “In fact, I wish you’d done it a bit sooner.”
“Maybe the story you heard about her being dead and her body the host for a demon is true,” she said. “But she’s been good to me recently. She’s finally become the sister I’d always wished she’d been. Then you brought me back here and I saw her like that, not knowing what you really planned to do with her-“
“I want you to know that I wouldn’t hurt her, Coral,” I interrupted. “I owe her-it-for favors past. When I was young and naive on the shadow Earth, she probably saved my neck, several times. You have no reason to fear for her here.”
She cocked her head to the right and narrowed one eye. “I’d no way of knowing that,” she said, “from what you told me I came back, hoping to get in, hoping you were deeply asleep, hoping I could break the spell or at least lift it enough to talk with her. I wanted to find out for myself whether she was really my sister-or something else.”
I sighed. I reached out to squeeze her shoulder and realized I was still clutching the Jewel of Judgment in my left hand. I squeezed her arm with my right hand instead and said, “Look, I understand. It was boorish of me to show you your sister laid out that way and not to have gone into a little more detail. I can only plead industrial fatigue and apologize. I promise you she’s in no pain. But I really don’t want to mess with this spell right now because it’s not one of mine-‘
Just then Nayda moaned softly. I studied her for several minutes, but nothing more followed.
“Did you pluck that metal ball out of the air?” I asked. “I don’t recall seeing one for the final spell.”
Coral shook her head.
“It was lying on her breast. One of her hands was over it,” she said.
“What prompted you to check there?”
“The position looked unnatural, that’s all. Here.”
She handed me the ball. I took it and weighed it in the palm of my right hand. I had no idea how the things functioned. The metal balls were to Mandor what Frakir was to me-a piece of idiosyncratic personal magic, forged out of his unconscious in the heart of the Logrus.
“Are you going to put it back?” she asked.
“No,” I told her. “Like I said, it wasn’t one of my spells. I don’t know how it works, and I don’t want to fool around with it.”