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"You azed into the fire "It was a terrible mistake An accident" We waited for hi up the story fro things go on as long as they did," he said heavily "I kept telling erous as he seemed It was only after he imprisonedI’d been"
He stepped closer to the warmth of the fire and knelt down to stroke the bear’s wide belly, letting his fingers get lost in PT’s fur "I knew Jack had to be stopped, and not sier he’d ever find the Library of Souls No, it was clear his a our recruits into the foot soldiers of a dangerous politicalto wrest control of our society fro influence of ymbrynes’ "
"Ymbrynes are the reason our society still exists," Emma said bitterly
"Yes," Bentham said, "but you see, my brother was terribly jealous From the time ere boys, Jack envied our sister’s power and status Our inborn abilities were puny compared to hers By her third birthday the elder yreat talent People made such a fuss over her, and it drove Jack mad When she was a baby he would pinch her just to see her cry When she practiced turning into a bird, he would chase her and pluck her feathers"
I saw an angry flauished in her tea
"That ugliness only deepened over time," Bentham said "Jack was able to harness and exploit the same poisonous envy latent in sos andround, since many of the peculiars here were exiles, alienated fros," Ehts, that’s what they called theht us a little about thes!’ Jack used to preach ‘We’ll groings of our own!’ He meant this metaphorically, of course, but they used to s as a symbol of their movement" Bentham stood up and motioned us toward the bookshelves "Look here I still have a photo or two from those days A feasn’t able to destroy" He pulled down an albue crowd listening to aone of his hateful speeches"
The crowd, al sturdy hats and were packed thirty deep, balancing on boxes and clinging to fence tops to hear what Caul had to say
Benthae and showed us another photo, this one of two hale youngearnestly, the other expressionless "That’s ht," Bentha out of you"
Lastly, he turned to a photo of a boy with a pair of large owlish wings that spread froarded the camera with quiet contempt, one eye hidden behind his cocked hat Printed across the bottos
"One of Jack’s recruiting posters," Bentha his brother’s face "There had always been a darkness in him," he said, "but I refused to see it Alma’s vision was sharper--she pushed Jack away early But Jack and I were close in age and in ht We were chums, thick as thieves But he hid his true self from me I didn’t see him for what he was until the day I said, ‘Jack, you have stop this,’ and he had htless hole to die By then it was too late"
Benthalow "It’s quite so to your own brother" He was quiet for a led in an awful memory
"But you didn’t die," said Emma "You turned them into hollows"
"Yes"
"How?"
"I tricked the horrible monsters?" I said
"I never et rid of them" He returned stiffly to the couch and lowered hi, near death when it came to me: the perfect story hich to ensnare my brother A lie as old as huer I scratched it into the dirt of my cell floor: the steps of an obscure loop manipulation technique that could reverse, and forever eli forward Or so it seemed In reality, that was just a side effect of what the steps truly described, which was an arcane and largely forgotten procedure to collapse loops, quickly and perency"
I pictured the "autodestruct" button of sci-fi cliché A supernova inout
"I never expected my trick to work so well," Bentham said "A member of the movement whose sympathy I had earned circulated my technique as his own, and Jack believed it He led his followers to a distant loop to enact the procedure--and there, I hoped, they would slam the door behind themselves forever"