“Yes.” Shevir seemed relieved to change the subject. “Er, to that end … the reason I sought you out was to ask if you might be willing to provide some samples for us. My fellow scriveners — that is, of the palace contingent — thought we might share this information with the previts in Shadow and the Litaria.”

I frowned at this, unpleasantly recalling other First Scriveners and other examinations and other samples over the centuries. “To try and figure out what’s changed in me?”

“Yes. We have information on your, ah, prior tenure. …” He shook his head and finally stopped trying to be tactful. “When you were a slave here, immortal but trapped in mortal flesh. Your present state appears to be very different. I’d like to compare the two.”

I scowled. “Why? To tell me that I’m going to die? I know that already.”

“Determining how you’re turning mortal may give us some insight into what caused it,” he said, speaking briskly now that he was in his element. “And perhaps how to reverse it. I would never presume that mortal arts can surpass godly power, but every bit of knowledge we can gather might be useful.”

I sighed. “Very well. You’ll want my blood, I presume?” Mortals were forever after our blood.

“And anything else you would be willing to give. Hair, nail parings, a bit of flesh, saliva. I’ll want to record your current measurements, too — height and weight and so forth.”

I could not help g th not helprowing curious at this. “How could that possibly matter?”

“Well, for one thing, you appear to be no more than sixteen years old to my eye. The same age as Lady Shahar and Lord Dekarta, now — but initially, I understand, you looked significantly older than both of them. Approximately ten years to their eight. If you had merely aged eight years in the intervening time —”

I caught my breath, understanding at last. I had grown up before, hundreds of times; I knew the pattern that my body normally followed. I should have been heavier, taller, more finished, with a deeper voice. Eighteen years old, not sixteen. “Shahar and Dekarta,” I breathed. “My aging has slowed to match theirs.”

Shevir nodded, looking pleased at my reaction. “You do seem rather thin, so perhaps you lacked nourishment while you were … away … and this stunted your growth. More likely, however —”

I nodded absently, quickly, because he was right. How had such a crucial detail escaped me?

Because it is the sort of thing only a mortal would notice.

I had suspected that my condition was somehow linked to the friendship oath I’d taken with Shahar and Dekarta. Now I knew: their mortality had infected me, like a disease. But what kind of disease slowed its progress to match that of other victims? There was something purposeful about that sort of change. Something intentional.

But whose intent, and for what purpose?

“Let’s go to your laboratory, Scrivener Shevir,” I said, speaking softly as my mind raced with inferences and implications. “I believe I can give you those samples right now.”

I was getting hungry by the time I left Shevir’s laboratory, just after dawn. It wasn’t bad yet — not the sort of raw, precarious ache I’d known a few times during my slave years, whenever my masters had starved me — but it made me irritable, because it was more proof of my oncoming mortality. Would I starve to death if I ignored it now? Could I still sustain myself with games and disobedience, as I normally did? I was tempted to find out. Then again, I considered as I rubbed my upper arm, where a bandage and healing script concealed the divot of flesh Shevir had taken from me, there was no point in making myself suffer unnecessarily. As a mortal, there would be pain enough in my life, whether I sought it out or not.

Noise and commotion distracted me from grimness. I stepped quickly to the side of a corridor as six guardsmen ran by, hands on their weapons. One of them carried a messaging sphere, and through this I heard the speaker — their captain, I assumed — issuing rapid commands in a low tone. Something about “clear the north-seven corridors” and “forecourt,” and most clearly, “Tell Morad’s people to bring something for the smell.”

I could no more resist such temptation than I could Shahar’s summons — maybe less so. So I hummed a little ditty and slid my hands into my pockets and skipped as I headed down a different corridor. When the guards were out of sight, I opened a wall and tore off running.

I was almost thwarted by the Tree, which had grown through one of the most useful junctures in the dead spaces, and by my stupid, infuriatingly lanky body, which could no longer squeeze through the tighter passages. I knew plenty of alternate routes but still arrived at the courtyard late and out of breath. (That annoyed me, too. I was going to have to make my mortal body stronger, or it would be completely useless at this rate.)