Within These Wicked Walls(81)

Jember narrowed his eyes, but at the portrait of Magnus’s father instead of me. “Normally, I would applaud your good sense—”

“Would you really?” I said, raising my eyebrows.

“—in cleansing the Manifestations in order of strength.” I dodged away as he attempted to flick me in the forehead. “But in this case, you should’ve left all the Manifestations intact and dealt only with the hyena. Cleansing it all first gives the Evil Eye too much opportunity to assess your capability.”

“Well, I didn’t know that,” I said with a frustrated shrug. “We never made it to that lesson, remember?”

“That’s because you weren’t supposed to be here.”

A book dropped on the ground and skidded, stopping between us.

“That’s our warning to go,” I said. “Should we work in the game room?”

Jember didn’t move. “Hand me that.”

I sighed, but picked up the book and held it out to him. I winced as he cocked his arm back. He threw the book at the wall, the sharp edge denting the canvas right where someone had painted Magnus’s father’s throat. The book flipped, slapping messily against the mantel then to the ground. Jember murmured something that included a swear and the word colonizer as he left the room.

I followed at a safe distance until we were in the game room.

“I have a feeling you know the man in the portrait,” I said carefully.

“Never met him.” Jember chose the chair by the fire, so I put the basket of supplies on the coffee table before taking the couch across from him. He snatched a disk of silver from the basket. “But that boy has the same face.”

“Really? I think Magnus looks more like Saba.”

He flinted his pen violently. “That little jackass does not look like Saba.”

I smirked at his defensive tone and leaned forward to watch him work, but he waved me away. Right. Don’t watch. Just feel. I sat back in my chair again.

“I never wanted you to have to learn this sort of thing,” he said, a few strokes in.

“Then why did you start teaching me to cleanse Manifestations in the first place?”

“At first? Because constructing amulets kept you out of my hair for hours at a time.” He shrugged. “You were good at it. Excited about it. And I liked teaching you. Besides, when I took you with me to see clients they would always tip you.”

“And then I stopped being lucrative because I wasn’t cute anymore.”

It wasn’t just growing older and longer, my face morphing out of its cute little baby features into something more plain and awkward. Jember had stopped bringing me along about the same time I’d gotten my scar. The quick memory reminded me it was there, and my arm instinctively lifted to cover it, trying to make the gesture look casual by pulling my knees up on the chair and folding my forearms on top, shielding my mouth and cheeks.

I don’t know if Jember noticed what I was doing, but he said, “That’s not true. You stopped being lucrative when you became a little dick.”

I let out a breath of laughter. “Kind of like you.”

“Yes, but I had already built a reputation. It has a different effect when you’re previously an endearing angel.” He leaned back, propping his legs up on the table between us. “You’d never been beaten up like that before, so the attitude was understandable. But I like that you grew out of it. You have to find the survival habit that works best for you, and you operate better on optimism.”

“Maybe you should try it.”

“It’s too exhausting. I have to save my energy for things that matter.” He sighed and waved the amulet at me. “Are you paying attention? I’m not going to start again for you.”

“It doesn’t feel done.”

“It’s not.” He raised an eyebrow at me. “If only you weren’t so ambitious. Then we wouldn’t be here right now.”

“Feel free to leave after you’ve finished with that amulet,” I said. “I can handle it from there.”

It was stupid of me to say that—if he called my bluff there’d be no one to construct the amulet when the hyena was released.

He sighed and looked at the unfinished silver, not like he misunderstood it but like it was the canvas for some other thought. I didn’t dare interrupt that thought, and so we sat in silence for what felt like minutes. “Only four debtera in history have survived their encounters with a hyena. All of them suffered nerve damage from their injuries. None of them could bear to touch another living person again. Three of them killed themselves before old age could take them.” He shook his head, as if realizing he wasn’t working, and made a few more strokes. “I don’t want that for you.”

I swallowed, my throat dry as I took in his words. “Why haven’t you ever told me this before?”

“Would it have mattered? All children think they’re invincible. Besides, constructing amulets is in you, like music. Most debtera are content to cleanse everyday Manifestations, but you’ve never been. Teaching you to cleanse a hyena would’ve been too much encouragement.”

“I’m good at this, you know I am. And if you had just taught me everything, maybe you wouldn’t have to be here right now doing it for me. I know you hate being here.”