Fascinated despite herself, she nodded.

Dr. Silk removed his specs. He gazed at her with nacreous eyes that gleamed in the low light. His pupils were tiny and gray, his eyelashes stark white. Karigan, who had seen many extraordinary things in her life, was not repulsed or taken aback but more curious.

He looked mildly disappointed by her lack of reaction. “I learned the hard way not to look directly into an etherea engine when one threatens to implode, which happens occasionally,” he said, “though I’ve never heard of anyone else being thus afflicted in such accidents. However, I believe . . . my altered sight is, in a way, a gift, for all that it pains me, and makes everyday vision different. For instance, here is what I see when I look at you. I see an aura of green clouding around you, and dark wings. Tell me, do you know what it means?”

DARK WINGS

Dark wings. It was not the first time she had heard this. It was Fergal Duff, his Rider ability just emerging, who said he’d seen dark wings around her. She stared hard at Dr. Silk, his eyes agleam with pearlescent fire. Fergal was able to sometimes see auras around other magic users. What Dr. Silk had seen sounded very much like that. Could this accident of his have brought out the same sort of ability as Fergal’s? In her own time, might he have heard the Rider call? No, she thought. He was not Rider material.

“Well?” he asked. “Have you nothing to say?”

She shook her head. “No. I—I don’t know why you would see such a thing. I don’t know what it means.”

He appraised her a moment more with those disconcerting eyes of his before replacing his specs. “I believe you. It is how I see people—the aural energy around them. Sometimes there are patterns, but yours is different. It is why I first took an interest in Professor Josston’s supposed niece. You are . . . different. Josston was clever to come up with the story that you’d been in an asylum. How better to explain you? Here we have taken you prisoner, you were struck hard by the emperor’s Eternal Guardian, which was surely painful, you are in manacles, and yet you have not shed a single tear or begged to be let go. You bargained on behalf of Mr. Harlowe, not yourself. Most females would be making unseemly caterwauling nuisances of themselves in the same situation. You have exhibited no such normal female behavior, and you show no sign of shame at baring your face before strangers. I do not think you are mad, and these factors combined with the story of your arrival and the questions you have answered, lead me to surmise you are who you claim to be.” He paused then went on. “You mentioned you traveled into Blackveil with Eletians. We found on your person a small round crystal we associate with Eletians.”

“Yes. It was my mother’s, and it was only recently passed to me.”

“Your mother was an Eletian?”

“No. She was befriended by one who gave her the crystal.” Although Karigan had come to question how much she really knew about either of her parents, she was firm on at least that point: Her mother had not been Eletian.

“How did it come about, this friendship between your mother and an Eletian? At that time, Eletians were not prone to making appearances outside their forest.”

“I don’t know exactly.” That much was true, she thought. Somehow Laurelyn had sought out her mother and found her, but Karigan did not feel she needed to bring Laurelyn into this discussion with Dr. Silk. “My mother died when I was little, and I only found out about all this toward the end of winter. My winter.”

“So what are they used for, these crystals?”

“The Eletians, on the expedition, used them as a light source, like in the legends about how they collected silver moonbeams. Have you heard those?”

“Yes, yes, of course. But we can’t make the ones in our possession light up.”

“You have some?”

“Several, obtained from captives during the war.”

There was too much Karigan had failed to learn about the empire’s rise. Had the Eletians fought alongside the Sacoridians? Had the entire population been annihilated? What had become of them?

“I think they light up just for Eletians.” Some instinct prevented Karigan from admitting that she could illuminate her own with a touch. The less he thought she knew, the better.

“Magic?” Dr. Silk murmured.

Karigan shrugged. “Even in my time, we find Eletians to be very cryptic.”

Dr. Silk chuckled. “Can’t argue with that. This line of questioning is, of course, leading somewhere.” He stood unexpectedly and came around the desk. “Come with me, Miss G’ladheon.”

“Rider G’ladheon,” Karigan corrected. “Or Sir Karigan.”

“Come along.” Dr. Silk acted as though he hadn’t heard. “We haven’t all day.”

She held her tongue and followed him into a corridor. Accompanied by the guards who had brought her, they set off into the depths of the palace. This time she paid attention—not so much to the ornamentation, unless it provided a convenient landmark—but to their various turnings through the hushed corridors. When they came upon the fountain of the dragon this time, she stumbled to a halt and remembered. She remembered a dream that might have been more than a dream. Just like in the drawing shown her by the ghostly Yates, there were corridors to either side of the fountain. Yates had pointed to the one on the left. It led to the prison of forgotten days. She knew it with that inexplicable sense of knowing. Would Dr. Silk take her there? The scything moon was held captive there, whatever that meant.