NOVEL NEXT Chapter 78: The Shape of Power
"You think we can use it to transfer Fulminancy?" Rowan asked. He eyed the locket on the table warily. Kess sat across from him at one of the long tables in the mess hall as the storm raged outside. It was late, and the hall was deserted of near everyone save a few older guards seeking nightcaps across the room.
Kess nodded, turning the locket in her hands. Nearby, a candle shied away from a slight breeze that wormed its way into the manor proper. "You remember how those old books suggested that a physical medium was required?" Rowan nodded, and she held out the locket. "After what Niall said, I think this is it."
The locket twinkled in the dim light of the mess hall, the candle guttering nearby. It seemed innocuous enough, but he'd read enough to think that Kess was on the right track. The Archives books outlined a detailed process for transferring old magic from one person to another, though at the time, Fulminancy hadn't been what was transferred.
The scholars of that time had spent mind-boggling amounts of time and resources to refine the process, but it was hard to figure out what exactly that process had been, given that they had access to a handful of books—some useful, others not so much. Though Rowan's research was thorough, he had at best a rudimentary understanding of the process—and certainly not enough of one to act on that knowledge. Kess, however, was of another mind entirely.
"Whoever took the Fulminancers from those wagons had one as well," he finally said. Kess met his eyes, her own solemn.
"I always wanted to believe it was a personal effect," she said quietly. "But both the other Councilmen had one as well, so I should have known something was odd."
Rowan said nothing, giving her space to talk if she felt like it. He had a utilitarian understanding of what had occurred on that night years ago, but Kess hadn't shared the emotional impact of such an event. She didn't really need to. Rowan could see it in her eyes—in the way she had been terrified to even touch her powers for so long. While she now fought with her Fulminancy, it had cost her something.
But gone was the woman of nearly a year ago, who had cursed him for his interest in the art itself. In front of him sat someone who, while not fully comfortable with what she had, was willing to at least work with it. Rowan trusted her. Had that happened during the months they'd worked together Uphill? Or had it happened when she'd been willing to break her vows to save him?
Perhaps, like most things, it had happened slowly and quietly without him realizing. It had happened when he'd tried to understand why anyone would act the way she did at all, instead of cursing her for it.
"You're not going to convince your father without real Fulminancy," Kess said quietly. "That visual symbol is important to him, and the Council. People might know you can do something, but that's not enough without the physical mark of the powers—if anything, using what you've got might start a panic."
Rowan nodded. "While I'm loath to admit it, you're probably right," he said. He rotated his shoulder, thinking. "My father is obsessed with Fulminancy," he said, grimacing. Kess let out a little laugh, still turning the locket in her hands.
"Like father, like son," she said, eyes twinkling. Rowan waved her off.
"So how do I convince my father that I'm 'normal'?"
"I give you my powers," Kess said simply. It took a moment for the statement to fully sink in. When it did, Rowan simply stared at her. Her smile was gone. Mariel's storm, she's not joking, he thought.
"We don't know enough," he said, shaking his head. "Even if it's possible to do it, we don't know enough about the side effects. What happens to you if we mess up somehow? What happens to me? I mean clouds, Kess, I've read about twenty different attempts to transfer powers before they created Fulminancy—all of them failed, and with disastrous consequences."
Kess shrugged, eyes on the locket. "But they perfected it—otherwise the Council wouldn't be using it."
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"We don't know how well it's working for them," Rowan argued. "My lights aren't any better. Fulminancy is unstable, and it's only getting worse. How do we know it still follows the same rules that it did for scholars thousands of years ago?"
"We don't," Kess replied. "But it should be possible, given what we've read. Though how we go about it, I have no idea." She grimaced. "I haven't been reading as much as I should have been."
From what little Rowan had read on the subject, it didn't seem like a very pleasant process. Fulminancers who transferred their powers sometimes didn't get them back at all, and it often left them bedridden for weeks. The worst possibility, of course, was that they wouldn't survive the transfer at all.
"How do we know it won't kill you?" he asked. Kess gave him a blank stare.
"We don't."
"And you're willing to risk that?" He didn't say that he wasn't sure he was willing to risk that. While her days of burnout from lack of control seemed to be behind her, thoughts of her deathly pale and sick were hard to completely eliminate from Rowan's mind.
In front of him, Kess sighed, some of her dark hair falling into her face. "I'm not getting this close to the Council otherwise," she said. "Oliver might as well be a ghost. Niall can't access him. Wyatt's family hasn't seen him. But I saw him that night, Rowan. And we both saw those records in the Archives. I don't care at this point how I get them, but I want answers. That's to say nothing of what else the Council is doing. I'm tired of being given the runaround." She met his eyes, her fingers closing around the locket. "This might be our best chance to speed things up. And if you want legitimacy for both your powers and your lights, this is a way forward. Grandbow might not listen to you now, but with a Seat, you employ him. You can demand that the lights are taken down until you figure out a way to make them safer, then re-release them when you do—this time to the entire city."
It did sound plausible, though Rowan wished he didn't have to ascend to a Seat to force Grandbow to behave. Unfortunately, the man now had his patents, and while money certainly flowed Downhill to Rowan, so too did guilt. Rowan frowned, suddenly realizing something. "Why not accept the Seat yourself?" Kess just shook her head.
"I can't," she said. "The men who tried to put me in the Seat in the first place are dead, but the older Council members might be able to put two and two together. With you, though, they'll be watching a little less carefully."
Reluctantly, Rowan realized it made sense. Kess was too high profile to take the Seat and expect any real information. She would be dead or imprisoned before they discovered anything of her brother, the storm, or his father's plans.
Rowan still wanted to fix his mess with Grandbow and the lights, but there was a bigger part of him that needed to find out what his father was up to. His father wasn't a particularly good man, but he usually had a reason for doing what he did. His sudden interest in taking a Seat didn't bode well, but perhaps he had good reason for doing so. In Mariel's Seat, at least, Rowan might be able to figure out why his father was there in the first place.
But there was another problem. Rowan's father wanted the Seat, but would he kill for it? From what Kess had said, Seats who ascended—what they called the brutal murder of near relatives—were given greater powers. Nearly all Seats went through this process, supposedly, only because it was difficult to pass the Council's tests without that additional power. But there had to be another way. Rowan hadn't even thought about the implications of taking a Seat, but surely he could find a way around the requirement. And surely not every Seat resorted to such barbarity. Had Niall really murdered two of his closest friends or family?
He shook himself out of his thoughts. He had to focus on the original issue at hand: transferring Kess's powers without killing her in the process.
"We need to do this the right way," he said slowly. "Until we know how my powers actually work, I don't think we should do anything. It's possible that the interactions between our powers might factor in when we try the locket."
"So we solve that first," Kess agreed. "Then we try the locket." Her eyes held a strange mixture of fear and excitement. Rowan didn't have her taste for adventure, but he felt her curiosity in a scientific sort of way. "We can try your powers in different amounts—in different scenarios, some with me drained and others without. Maybe it's the amount that matters and not just how much you're channeling."
Rowan nodded slowly, the beginning of an experiment forming in his head. He itched to pull out a notebook. His gut churned nervously with the idea of messing with Kess's powers, which currently held a damning record of blowing several things up and nearly killing her on multiple occasions. Still, Rowan was a researcher at heart. The thought of understanding Fulminancy in its entirety was too enticing to pass up. He worried about Kess, but her excitement was contagious, and Rowan had a hard time bringing up the more practical and realistic sides of the argument. And well, sometimes research was risky.
"Well," he said softly. "There's no time like the present."