certain fathoms in the earth

Or another way — an earlier way, an older way.

What will become of the magician of Gilead when Farson wins, and all men are brothers, and no man is dinh, and no man needs another’s advice? When her husband is no longer dinh? What then, she’d asked him; Then I’ll burn my books, he said, smiling with long teeth. It seems like such a terrible thing that it gives her a cold feeling in the pit of her stomach even now.

Going into his rooms without being invited there — without a purpose in mind — seems like an impossible thing. She is barefoot in the shards of Marten’s scrying-glass, and bloody. The guns are too heavy for her hands, heavy on the woven belt hanging low around her waist, but the balance is the same. They’ll be Roland’s one day, but today they are hers in service. She’ll shoot true.

She knows all the hiding places still, even fallen from Steven’s good graces.

Marten isn’t welcome here. All his beautiful things locked away. Smashed glass, the silver basin stoven in, stones cracked, paper burning. They’re magic books, all right, but they’ll burn — wet with oil, all those bygone trees and carefully scraped hides blasted and warped.

“What have you done?” There’s hurt in his voice, real hurt like she’s never heard before — for a moment she thinks, this is the real man, this is the man I loved, that some spell has been broken that hung on her or on him and now everything can change. But the next words out of his mouth are “oh, you simple bitch, and that’s Marten Broadcloak as she knows him, snarling as if she’s mildly inconvenienced him.

“You have no leave to be here,” she says. “These things aren’t yours any more. You forfeited them.”

These things — trophies, trinkets. Clearing out the garbage.

His face turns conciliatory again — and how could she ever have found him handsome? “Gabrielle, lady-sai, sweeting. This isn’t a place for you. This is a place for men.”

He’s promised to make her go mad if she leaves him. His magic isn’t in a book or in a glass ball, it’s in her head — he’s in her head, twisting his fingers through the skeins of her thoughts, he is piercing her heart.

But a madwoman might do anything.

He moves toward her with hands raised, fingers spread, the universal male gesture to prevail over a weeping woman — the fire is spreading, the hem of his cloak is smoking and the whole room fills with the perfume of burning wool. Gilead is a city of stones, but flames rise.

Roland isn’t the boy he once was, never again will he huddle up under her arm to hear a story or fall asleep against her knees — he’s a man now and no gift can reconcile them. It seems like a poor compensation for what she’s sent him off to do. She’d told him everything. She forgave him everything. It wasn’t the stone that drove him to the foolhardy edge of madness — and it wasn’t magic that stayed his hand, it was the sound of his mother’s voice.

She doesn’t have to love her husband in order to love her son.

This isn’t what he reckoned her for. Marten sweeps in on her, twisting her bare wrist back, but the pistol-grip fills her right hand and the barrel presses close against his side before he can whisper a single sweet word in her ear. Time to find out what he’s made of — flesh and bone, or something else.