The black ribbon hovered two inches above the Last Guest’s upturned palms, turning in the cold air with the slow, oily curl of woodsmoke trapped under a cellar floor.
It did not give off heat. It gave off a dull, metallic vibration that made Noll Vey’s single stone arm hum from the knuckles to the shoulder joint—the sound of eight thousand names written into muster books, forty-two supply wagons requisitioned from border villages, and six company commanders who had carried the King’s seal through the winter mud. Every thread of state authority that Lord Auditor Orin Vane had gathered into the March Ledger’s charter was wound into that single black cord.
The Last Guest lifted its hands.
The creature’s movements were unhurried, holding the steady, unceremonious posture of an old laborer sitting down on an overturned tub to eat a cold crust of bread after twelve hours in the trench. It did not bare fangs, and it did not open an abyss in its face. Its mouth opened simply, no wider than a man taking a draught of well-water from an iron ladle.
The ribbon of black light bent downward.
It flowed into the Guest’s mouth in a smooth, continuous stream. Where the black light crossed the creature’s pale lips, tiny sparks of dull violet flickered and died, smelling faintly of dried iron gall, candle tallow, and the wet wool of soldiers standing watch in a freezing ditch.
