They had it because they took it off Siobhan’s Dad, because according to him, they offered her a marriage match in exchange for the book. Holding the ring was their attempt to get her to agree.
They kept locked it in a safe. Lacer stole it from them, and Siobhan stole his replica (also making her own), before he returned it to Siobhan.
What if what Myrddin did with spirits made aberrants possible? There weren’t any in his time, because he opened the door to the spirit world?
Also just had the thought that when rereading 203 icarus rising. A ring that’s been passed down for generations still fits perfectly on her finger.
the celerium set within the silver band at the perfect depth to press against the skin
It’s been said that the most common way to lose a conduit is shattering it in a contest of wills. Like the sapphire did: S. used her will directly against Lacer, and bam!
I don’t think age has much to do with it. Her mother’s ring is very old, and I feel confident that other conduits are heirlooms too. I think the problem is that small conduits break relatively often, and bigger conduits are hoarded by gov’t and families.
Well, my rereading is proving fruitful. I hadn’t realised how immediately Siobhan was attracted to Oliver, she certainly kept it under wraps. But more importantly, there is this little tidbit that might explain why she chose the nightmare:
Quintessence of quicksilver, the powder of a potion boiled down into a solid and then crushed, temporarily frenzied the mind. It could make you smarter and grant a liquid creativity that many found enthralling. Some said it felt like approaching divinity.
It was addictive, both physically and emotionally, from the desire for more of that feeling. People told stories about those who had accomplished amazing feats of precise, exhaustive planning or brilliant improvisation under the inspiration of the dust. However, with the accompanying lowered inhibitions, people also got themselves into ridiculous trouble by being too bold to realize they still weren’t smart enough to avoid consequences.
Well then. Lowered inhibitions sounds about right, coupled with desperation…I wonder if Siobhan is going to kick herself later for this?
I wonder if this next little snippet might come in useful? From Siobhan’s first visit to the illicit thaumaturge meeting:
One of the members had been in the middle of his offering, and leaned forward immediately. “This design can keep minor and common spirits confined. It will resist attempts at dissipation, and my experiments showed that only the weakest spirits were able to escape in that manner. It’s particularly useful against spirits with more ordered natures, but none of the four wild spirits I tested escaped, despite one being unusually clever.”
A thought occurs - if she really has jumped into the realm of dreams it’s a good thing she has someone on the outside she can contact! That little dream communication method with the ironically named Undreaming Order will really come in handy.
She’s got some serious hots for Oliver. And, probably has (had) romantic feelings that are gone or suppressed after his betrayal.
Sorry, off topic. I couldn’t resist. Ya’ll know I’m obsessed with Oliver. 
Chapter 9
Siobans Dad
“The Gervins, they’re one of the Crown Families , you know? So wealthy you’d never need to work a day in your life, and as your father I’d be taken care of as well, o’ course—” He seemed to realize he was rambling and coughed to cut himself off. “What I mean is, a couple representatives from the Gervins came to visit me while the coppers were doing their interrogation—and with the coppers being entirely too aggressive, by the way—and when I told them that you are Siobhan Naught and about your bloodline on your mother’s side, and that you’d bring the book along with you, they were more than interested in coming to an agreement.
They were “more than interested” in a marriage after he mentioned her being a Naught and her mothers bloodline. So it wasn’t necessarily the book they wanted. That’s just what her father assumes. Who’s to say.
Italic emphasis on Naught is from the original text not me. Seems to me with the italic emphasis Azalea was trying to imply the Naught bloodline has importance to the Gervins for some reason.
Imagine if the Gervins did work out a deal with Siobhan at the start of the story in exchange for the book. Her father was already in custody of the coppers. Such a marriage / exchange would have to have been a very public deal and agreement from the high crown in order to release the thief and pardon Siobhan. The Gervins would surely have to return the book to the high crown / university. So what would the Gervins get out of the deal? Just the marriage / Siobhans bloodline?
They get to make Damien’s family look bad.
This is literally how she described him:
Only now, as she looked at him without the pall of danger hanging over her every thought, did she realize how perfectly attractive the man was. His shoulders were broad, his hair soft and shiny-looking, and his gaze bright enough to reveal a keen mind beneath. He was likely a competent thaumaturge. His pristine white shirt cuffs were rolled up to his elbows, and as he crossed his arms she noted the muscles in his forearms and his long, graceful fingers. The vague feeling of attraction made her uncomfortable, and more aware than ever of her transformed body.”
She has never lingered over anyone else like that.
For Stef’s sake (totally not building any ships of my own here, especially after being so adamant previously that the last thing the she needs is a lover ;p) I’ll just keep updating this with the subtle moments Azalea slipped in. Not all of them, since I’ve skipped a couple but…
“But it’s a little more interesting when they’re pretty, don’t you think?”
Familiar dark eyes flashed in Oliver’s mind, but he hummed noncommittally.
The blushy blushy one:
“I thought they were fitting for the queen of ravens, a kind of crown for someone who has no need for gold or jewels,” he added. “Do you want me to help you put them in?”
Sebastien hesitated, but wasn’t sure why, so she handed them back. “Yes, please.”
His fingers were gentle, brushing the rim of her ear as he pushed the wires into her hair.
Her skin burned where he touched, and the wires were cool as they slid against her scalp, weaving into her hair as if alive. She startled.
Oliver chuckled. “It’s an artifact. The wires hold the feathers steady and then conceal themselves, so it looks like the feathers are growing out from your skin.” He stepped away, assessing her, then nodded. “Perfect.”
Her gaze slid away from his. “I’m going to look in the mirror.” She hurried down the hall to the bathroom, where she took a few deep breaths to suppress the frustrating blush in her cheeks. “Don’t be a brainless ninny,” she muttered to herself, scowling at her reflection. She rubbed her ears harshly to rid them of the lingering sensation, then judged the effect of the feathered ornaments.
They did indeed give her a faint air of otherworldliness, even as Sebastien. She could imagine the effect would only be enhanced against the ochre skin and high cheekbones of her face as Siobhan. If only her eyes glowed gold or she had facial tattoos or something similar, the effect would be complete.
After a couple more minutes to make sure she was entirely calm—and there was no way she’d get surprised into blushing again—she returned to Oliver’s study.
Oh and let’s not forget he called her beautiful and set up her fake identity as his lover:
“It was the simplest solution, really. No one will think it strange if Sebastien Siverling occasionally visits a brothel, and Siobhan Naught would fit right in among a group of beautiful, exotic women. It’s the perfect place to hide in plain sight, using people’s unconscious biases and associations against them.” He slipped her a leather-bound booklet. “Identity papers for one Silvia Nakai, declaring you a citizen of Gilbratha. Silvia is legally employed at the Silk Door, and if she gets into any trouble with the law, she can call upon her wealthiest and most influential patron to help her. One Lord Oliver Dryden.” He coughed a little awkwardly.
She thinks he’s endearing:
“I’d like to minimize the death toll as much as possible. All the attacking teams will be supplied with basic emergency aid supplies, but it won’t be enough. Anyone who is seriously injured can retreat or be brought to one of the healing stations to receive more extensive care. Life is precious. Not just ours, but theirs too.”
She held back a small smile. She might not agree with all of his ideas, but there was something endearing about the kind of person who would think like that.
After Newton breaks there’s the whole scene at Oliver’s house where Oliver is sitting next to her bed waiting for her to wake up so he can give her fluids. He’s gentle and caring and gets her to talk about her feelings and fears and thinks about taking her hand but doesn’t (probably because he knows she doesn’t appreciate physical touch).
I never really thought about how sweet a moment that was until I started really paying attention to the relationship between them on this reread.
As the carriage passed by the Verdant Stag, he saw Siobhan. She stood out from the crowd. Although she was wearing a cloak with a hood that disguised most of her physical features, she carried herself with the regality of a queen. Yes, he was sure it was her.
Oliver hummed to himself, feeling ambiguous as he watched her enter the inn-cum-entertainment hall. He had grown closer to her than he planned. He was one to take on “projects,” obviously, and though he’d hoped she would grow to be truly useful—which had happened even sooner than he could have guessed, though not in the way he expected—he hadn’t thought it would be more than that. Yet, now he was worried for her, pleased to see her, and disappointed that he couldn’t stop the carriage on the street and call for her to jump in so that they could talk.
Oliver is slightly more self aware than Siobhan 
That said, he keeps comparing other women to her. A look of defiance from one woman reminds him of Siobhan. He says Tanya’s hair is cut in a similar way to hers but is less striking. He’s really down bad.
Emotionally, Oliver rejected the idea of betraying Siobhan immediately, but he still stopped to consider it. No, he was bound too closely to her to sell her out. She was privy to too many of his vulnerabilities, and neither the University nor the Crowns could be allowed to gain that knowledge. Besides, she was his asset, and he didn’t want to trade her away, no matter what they offered.
My girl! Mine! Hiss!
“I actually prefer it this way. Otherwise it feels like I’m taking advantage of you,” he said solemnly.
She raised an eyebrow. “You were trying to take advantage of me. You would have if I’d let you.”
He grinned. “Exactly.”
Sebastien felt a sudden rush of outrage rising up through her chest, but what burst out instead was a single, breathy laugh that surprised her.
Oliver laughed, too, and gave her a surprisingly warm look. “You’re always interesting.”
When he gave her another present just because:
“I almost forgot! I have something for you. A surprise.” He hurried out of the room with a boyish grin on his face, returning with a ribbon-tied box. “I had them specially made.” He handed Sebastien the box, then sat down across from her, watching her unblinkingly, as if to absorb every movement and reaction.
“Is this for any particular occasion?” Ennis had given her gifts on her birthday, when he didn’t forget, but they were often last-minute, re-gifted items.
“No particular occasion. I thought these would be useful, and the kind of thing you might not think to buy for yourself.”
She tugged at the ribbon, feeling strange. She hoped she wasn’t blushing. “Umm, thank you.”
“You don’t even know what it is yet. Open it.”
As a side note, I really love that he got her a gift that was pretty, comfortable, thoughtful and full of the kind of secrets that she adores. And it was useful for self defence. For all his faults, Oliver really did care about her and clearly spent a lot of time thinking about her.
“What happened? What did they do? Siobhan, talk to me!” Oliver demanded, giving her a little shake as he examined her for damage.
He’s cute when he panics over her safety. I’m kinda getting on this ship with Stef (but only long term, they both have too much on their plates to be having any kind of romance).
Oliver grimaced. “Maybe. Or maybe one of them just got a little too bold. In any case, you won’t be taking such a risk again.” His hand was still on her elbow, and he took his gaze away from the carriage window to look her over again for damage. “I’m sorry. I never should have agreed to set up a meeting with the Raven Queen.”
She let out a low sigh. “It’s alright. It’s not like we’re any worse off than we were beforehand. If their words can be believed, we now have a censer worth at least a thousand gold. I…overreacted. To the raven getting disintegrated, I mean. It just took me by surprise.”
Oliver was silent for a moment, and then his hand slid down from her elbow, gripping her smaller hand in his and squeezing.
Dear god, is this unprotected hand holding?!
(Well, they might be wearing gloves, but a girl can dream.)
She let the conversation die, taking some comfort in the anchor of Oliver’s hand against hers.
Sigh
She closed it and locked it behind him, then turned to find his eyes trailing slowly over her form. Sebastien’s clothes were too tight in some places and too loose in others, and she had rolled up the hems of the pants and sleeves so they didn’t drag.
Oliver raised his gaze to meet hers without a hint of apology, giving her a questioning look.
“I’m doing some tests on the transformation,” she explained. “I thought I might as well make myself useful while I’m at it.”
“You’re lucky I didn’t immediately assume you were a burglar and kick down the door. If I hadn’t smelled your brewing from the hallway, I might have.”
She rubbed the back of her head awkwardly, fingers tangling in her long hair and forcing her to tug them free with a wince. “Oops? I hope you don’t mind that I spent the night again?”
His expression flickered too fast for her to track, some unknown emotion or automatic response quickly suppressed. He hesitated slightly too long, just staring at her, then said, “Not at all.”
She raised one eyebrow. He gave her a slightly lopsided smile. “You should know you’re welcome to spend the night any time you like.”
Siobhan blinked once, and then the possible double entendre filled her with horrid, belated embarrassment. She hurried around him and back to the alchemy station to continue her work, thankful that her darker skin would not show a blush like Sebastien’s. It took a few moments for her to regain full focus on the magic, but she managed, and the next time she looked away from the soup pot, Oliver was at his desk writing a letter, seeming to have forgotten her presence entirely.
Never let it be said that our boy didn’t drop any hints.
Oliver chuckled at her sparkly-eyed look of anticipation. “I hope you’ll still stop by to brew for me every now and again, even if you don’t need to?”
She turned back to Sebastien as Oliver watched. “Well, it is good practice, and I’ll need to restock and expand my own potion supply anyway.”
He smiled ruefully as she left, shaking his head.
That’s practically a “come visit?”
Okay, this next one made me cackle:
Oliver was there when she arrived, but seeing that she was busy and distracted, he said only, “Have breakfast with me in the morning before you head back. There’s some upcoming work I want to talk to you about.”
He has this hobo wandering into his house, realises she’s too invested in her latest project to talk to him but is perfectly happy to use his house as her own and he’s not only fine with it, he’s inviting her to breakfast
During the battle at Knave Knoll she’s terrified for Oliver and her concentration keeps wavering as she tries to see what’s happening to him.
He’s also worried about her:
They caught up with the main group after a few minutes, and even though she couldn’t see Oliver’s face through his mask, she watched as some of the worry in his shoulders dropped away when he caught sight of her.
The painful part:
She wanted to ask Oliver what he had that the University hadn’t found. She wanted to confirm her suspicions. She also wanted to flip over his desk, pin him to the wall with her forearm, and scream for him to tell her the truth.
In another way, however, the enormity of this suspicion, this revelation, went beyond any pain her tongue could inflict in return. Words felt too inadequate a response, and that helped her suppress them entirely.
Honestly, if you compare and contrast with the other betrayals she suffered, you can see she’s so much angrier at Oliver because she really does like him. When Lacer betrays her or lets her down she’s disappointed. When Ennis, the man she loved, lets her down for the last and worst time she screams herself hoarse. Her reaction to Oliver betraying her is much closer to how she reacts to her father because her feelings for him are more intense.
Oliver was partly responsible for her ruining her life but that was before he knew her and wasn’t targeted at her.
Lacer tried to violate her mind and she wasn’t so blindingly angry at him. Her heart hurts with Oliver 
“Has Oliver Dryden ever made you uncomfortable, flirted with you, or attempted to get you to repay his help with sexual favors? Is he trying to coerce you into some sort of relationship?”
“What? No. What?” Sebastien had spoken before even considering her response, reeling from the completely unexpected line of questioning.
Damien stared at her searchingly. “Are you sure?”
For a moment, Sebastien considered the gifts Oliver had given her, the meals they had eaten together, and the conversations they’d had. But Oliver treated everyone like they were important and special.
So she does feel important and special when Oliver talks to her
And if he had also thought to take some vindictive pleasure in seeing Siobhan’s father get what he deserved, surely no one would judge Oliver for that? He had been at ease, because Siobhan knew of the danger the day presented and would stay safe under Liza’s wards.
The worst Oliver had imagined happening was that Ennis Naught might be sentenced to death, and Siobhan, despite her disdain and resentment for the man, would be distraught at the fate of her father.
He cares.
Something grew sick inside of Oliver when the raven delivered its letter to the center of the Edictum Council floor. Surely…someone was framing the Raven Queen? Taking advantage of her reputation, just as Oliver had speculated might be possible. Either that, or things had gone desperately wrong. Was Siobhan turning herself in? Wild ideas spiraled through Oliver’s head like debris carried within a tornado.
If Oliver’s dread were tangible, it would have been slicing into his internal organs with every breath. They were at the top of a precipice now, and he could see no way of stopping their descent. Not when she looked like that.
God, I can feel this.
Sebastien’s face was emotionless, and for the first time her eyes reminded him of those of a shark: cold-blooded, predatory, and uncaring. Responses ran through Oliver’s mind, different ways to try and mitigate disaster, to hold up the crumbling brick of their relationship, built so gradually and now tearing apart.
“Listen. I will tell you once.” He paused, drew a deep breath, and repeated more softly. “Please listen. I didn’t intend things to work out the way they did. I never planned for Siobhan Naught to steal a book in my stead, or become the Raven Queen, or my friend. I may not have shared all of my secrets with you, but that has never been a requirement of our relationship, never a promise I made.”
The echo of the front door, though it had been closed gently, seemed to reverberate through Oliver’s bones. He forced himself not to watch her leave through the window. Instead, he pressed his trembling fingers to the cool wood of his desk. Then he let his head slump down onto his hands.
He had lost something precious, and it was more bitter than he had ever imagined.
Honestly, this part always takes my breath away. It’s quite gut wrenching to read when I have so much sympathy for them both. He’s been sick with anxiety, knowing something has gone wrong, he’s angry that she’s cutting him out, he’s worried about losing what they have - that precious, carefully built relationship - and knowing that he is being honest but that she’s too paranoid to listen and that she’s angrier because she trusted him and less inclined to listen and believe him because of that.
She’s assumed that guilt of one part makes for guilt of the whole and she has a whole lifetime of experience being betrayed by the people she loves. She sees the pattern repeating and just wants to hate him wholeheartedly so he can’t hurt her like everyone else did.
His comment about the lopsidedness of their relationship flashed through her mind, and some miserable emotion that was too complex to identify wriggled through her chest. Maybe that part was true, a little.
I hate how they both suffer, even though it gives me hope that in the future they will actually have learned from this and get together in a much healthier relationship with more open and honest communication.
“Of course. Are you going to stay the night? We haven’t touched your room.”
Sebastien shook her head. “I have other accommodations.”
She shook her student token impatiently, and Oliver moved forward to get it. He stared into her eyes as he took it, his fingers brushing against hers. “Thank you.”
I thought this was so cute, she’s still so mad at him but she really went out of her way to help him when she thought it was something that would impact him and he was there like “I kept your room for you 
” and then he went on to ask if she was feeling ok after her father escaped from jail and then:
Oliver very obviously swallowed back whatever words he wanted to say. “I have to go.” He hesitated, then added, “You are welcome to stay here, if you wish. Whenever.”
This is him just outright going “I miss you, please come home”
Sebastien didn’t look back. After about a block, her pounding heart settled. She paused after turning the corner and rubbed at her shoulders, neck, and the sides of her jaw to release the tension there. “Damn you, Oliver,” she muttered. What right did he have to act like he cared?
Oh Siobhan
He looked down at her, his dark blue eyes shadowed and a lock of hair falling forward across his forehead. He remained silent for a few long seconds, his gaze trailing across her face gently before returning to meet her own. “Have you already considered my offer, then?” he asked, his voice as soft as his nameless blend of an accent, and something inscrutable in his expression.
She’s seriously aware of him.
Siobhan let out a short, sharp laugh. “That’s what Thaddeus said! Professor Lacer, I mean,” she corrected.
I’ve been wondering since the first time I read that if she was trying, just subconsciously, to make him a little jealous with that line.
Sebastien should be with someone lighthearted, kind, and outgoing. As part of a couple, Sebastien should be the mature, serious, driven one. Otherwise, his relationship would probably consist of nothing more than studying, discussing, and practicing magic, with nary a romantic moment. There was a good reason for the saying, “opposites attract,” in Damien’s opinion.
So, if you combine this with Sebastien having said that she’d want someone older who you could have a sensible discussion with:
Oliver is older, he’s also charming, he makes her laugh and she has spent hours talking with him and lingering over food to enjoy his company. He brings her out of her shell and there have been times he’s enticed her out of her room when she was going to lock herself up and study. She respects him, but she doesn’t view him as a teacher or father figure. She does find him sexy - so far he’s the only one she’s mentioned an attraction to in the whole series - and despite them both being driven and having their own goals they’ve had romantic moments from time to time despite both of them being incredibly careful not to reveal their feelings, like a pair of wary cats circling each other.
This could have just been its way of communicating that it would protect Siobhan from the big scary wolf
I was thinking back to when Lacer and Siobhan were discussing teleporting / space-magic theory.
I’m wondering what else could Lacer think then she teleported away in front of him. So I went back to reread that section.
Chapter 233
Thaddeus looked at her, then back to the page. “Do you understand this?”
Siobhan would have liked to brag, but she feared that one of them might ask her to explain things if she lied. “Only a little.” She paused, then added, “Not very much,” just to make doubly sure that they didn’t misunderstand.
But when they turned to the next section and found that Myrddin had decided to stop with the attempt to develop true teleportation magic entirely, fearing that he might “destroy the world,” Thaddeus gauged her reaction carefully. “What do you think about that?”
“Myrddin was not a complete idiot,” she said, nodding appreciatively. “He seems like the kind of person who actually tried to learn from his mistakes. I admire that. It is harder than it seems.”
I cannot truly be sure of the outcome or the viability of my void bubble in controlling any backlash. Instant travel is not important enough to risk the lives of everyone in existence, as well as any hope for their future. Also, I live here, and I like my planet un-crumbled.
“I also like my planet un-crumbled,” she joked. Neither Thaddeus nor Kiernan seemed to find it amusing.
If Lacer thinks back to this. She seemed to form a void bubble / her shadow cloak and step into it.
Also when she says “He seems like the kind of person who actually tried to learn from his mistakes. I admire that. It is harder than it seems.”
Lacer could now think that she meant learning to teleport is harder then it seems.
And when she said she also likes the planet un-crumbled maybe they were thinking about her reported ability to teleport through shadows and that’s why they were unamused.
Doesn’t she basically have a strong habit of casting the shedding-destroyer in her personal spaces? Lacer could probably use it to find traces of her, but I would think that they wouldn’t really be in any of the places she sleeps.
Though it does seem more likely that it would lead to classrooms, where she spends a decent amount of time but casting would be more conspicuous. Having traces in all of Sebastien’s classes is suspicious as hell, but possibly not as much of a giveaway.
Here’s a bit from Lacer in the second book:
“Could it be a Nightmare?” one of the containment team members muttered to his partner.
Even the words sent a cold centipede crawling up Thaddeus’s back. He crouched down to draw out the most comprehensive and obscure ward against mental interference that he knew.
No Aberrant was exactly the same as another, but they came in broad types. A Nightmare, especially one at Master level, was the kind of thing that could warrant an entire village and all the people within being quarantined and then firebombed indiscriminately in a desperate attempt to deal with it. Nightmare-types were named such because they could control, in some way, the subjective experience of the people trying to take them down. They used stealth, subversion, or mind-control.
Thaddeus had seen Nightmares that could walk right past a prognos without them realizing they were in danger. Others could insert themselves into your memories as an innocuous friend that you believed was harmless and amicable, despite any and all evidence to the contrary. Others were barely mutated by the change, passing as the humans they had once been, while inside they were twisted and corrupted.
This ward wouldn’t help if the Aberrant was invisible, or could transform into an animal, or travel through the reflection of the shop windows, but all those were things he could handle. The sanctity of his mind was paramount.
This shows that nightmare Aberrants are very different from the usual sort - and logically so, if you consider that they’re very mental drawing from people’s worst fears - I wonder what would happen if a Grandmaster broke and became a nightmare type? Or was infested by a nightmare while in the process of working on/with a portal spell to another realm? One could argue that nightmares are a portal to your worst memories and fears, what if you could extrapolate from that and create a portal to the realm of dreams and nightmares?
Then there’s that lullaby Siobhan’s mother used to sing to her warning her to not wander too far from her body in her dreams.
I’m not convinced that the nightmare is a nightmare type aberrant - or an aberrant at all - but it’s still definitely an option that I’m not willing to rule out.
A bit more on Aberrants and their intelligence:
Taking courage from this, Kuchen thrust out his chin defiantly. “Where did she come from, then? Such a powerful thaumaturge takes time to develop. One with a personality such as hers surely couldn’t have gone entirely unnoticed. The Red Guard have assured us she’s not one of yours, and while they could be hiding the truth, all the other countries we have discreetly reached out to have denied any association. Is it impossible that she is an Aberrant, one like the Red Sage or the Dawn Troupe, who require some low cunning to be effective?”
Kuchen leaned forward, lowering his voice, and continued. “I have heard the rumors of Aberrants that do not simply seem to be devious, their actions the rote artfulness of an ant hive or the routine instruction of a golem, but who are actually intelligent. In which case, their malice could be both deliberate and resourceful. Is it impossible that she is only pretending to be a thaumaturge?”
And here we have Thaddeus outright saying that some Aberrants can have both lucidity and self restraint, as evinced elsewhere by certain Aberrants having agreements with the Red Guard that they will only go hunting if no one comes to them voluntarily:
Thaddeus remained silent unless specifically questioned. He was not convinced, again for lack of sufficient untainted evidence, but it would explain much. If a powerful sorceress had somehow bound the service of an Aberrant, one lucid enough to follow commands and restrain itself when necessary, most of the feats she had displayed could be explained. After all, Aberrants were not constrained to the limits of mortal sorcery.
You know, I hadn’t really thought about it before but the lullabies we pass on tend to be the ones from our own childhoods. Instead of being a warning to Siobhan directly, it might be an indicator of Gramp’s own cultural heritage. Mia likely would’ve heard it from Siobhan’s grandfather shortly after she was adopted, found comfort in it, and so passed it on. Gramps either might’ve ad-libbed it (in the spirit of, "Oh, shit, I have no idea how to take care of children) or heard it himself growing up. I’m guessing he was a Shaman (among the many other things) possibly from a very long line of shamans.
And if Mr.Kalvidasan was a Shaman, some other things start to line up for me in my head.
Here is the timeline of how I see things as having played out, anything spoiler tagged involves spoilers for copy text teasing a future book.
To be perfectly honest with you, I wouldn’t be surprised if grandfather turns out to be the blood emperor.
He had a “foreign” name, held the blood of the People - specifically the Naughts - in high esteem. The blood emperor specifically did experiments on creating people resistant to magic while still being able to cast (and we’ve seen how easily Siobhan recovers from Will Strain compared to others) according to Thaddeus. Not to mention he taught Siobhan blood magic.
He might have been fond of both her and her mother, but I don’t think it was deep enough to make him make a mistake like that out of grief. I think it’s much more likely he would have bound a spirit out of greed for knowledge. Although I will point out that Siobhan saw his dead body so the likelihood of him having broken and turned into an Aberrant himself is small - not nonexistent, but small.
Do we know how literal and how reliable that is though? Like, the first time that is referenced is in a dream/hallucination where said body gets up and speaks to her, and that might be a little bit telling of what really happened, even though if didn’t happen in the way it plays out when we see it. An aberrant is in many ways a dead body after all. He also may well have even taken unsuccessful measures to keep himself from becoming an aberrant that appeared violent and/or altered memories when he erased them.
It seems like memories in the aftermath of his death are also sealed in her mental nightmare box, which does not make all that much sense when he is the one who sealed them.
She said she remembered the beginning and the end and it was the memories in the middle that are missing, though obviously she doesn’t like to think about that night. She said “I remember this and this isn’t what happened.”
When I get to that part in my reread I’ll quote it exactly in this comment, what a pity that work gets in the way of my reading!
The first time we see her nightmare play out:
Siobhan found herself in a diaphanous nightgown, her small brown feet peeking out under the hem, her toes dirty and soles calloused. She looked at her hands, noting their equally small—childlike—size, and the fact that she was having trouble counting exactly how many fingers she had. “Oh no,” she muttered. Or maybe just thought. She couldn’t quite be sure because her lips hadn’t moved.
She was in her childhood house where she had stayed with Grandfather, in front of the tower room with the lead door. Her hand reached toward the doorknob and twisted, then pushed the heavy door open.
Siobhan kept her eyes down, her long dark hair falling forward to obscure her vision at the peripherals. Her bare feet passed over the sticky, red, fungus-like tendrils that had crept their way over the stone floor. They pulsed gently under her, warm and alive compared to the cool stone.
Though she tried to stop, or at least to slow herself, she walked to the center of the room, catching the edge of a mirror frame in her vision. She tried not to look, but she wasn’t in control. The mirror, a rectangle taller than it was wide, was framed in smoldering brimstone, carved in the shape of twisted and elongated limbs, with disjointed fingers poking out here, a knee bent backwards there at the corner, and horribly mangled human feet at the bottom, as if they had been crushed under the monstrous weight of the mirror.
Siobhan’s heart began to beat rapidly, dizzying her and leaving the edges of her vision blurry and dreamlike. Her eyes dragged themselves up to the reflection, which showed not her, but a window looking out over a surreal landscape that had been painted in muted earth tones and fog.
In the distance, hunched forms shuffled. As she stared, they became more defined.
“No, no,” she pleaded, trying to wrench her focus away.
As if in answer to her desperate prayer, her eyes began to move again. But not away. Up—toward the top of the frame—and she couldn’t stop them and she couldn’t look away, but she knew that whatever she saw was going to be horrible, going to break her heart and wrench open her mind. She tried to scream, but what came out were just muted whimpers and whines, like a wounded animal.
Finally, the smoldering brimstone face at the top of the mirror came into view, bound into the frame.
Siobhan tried not to recognize it.
She reached up, ready to claw at her own eyes to stop herself from seeing. Just as her fingertips dug into their slimy wetness, she woke.
A little bit about her antipathy to mirrors:
But that entry linked to a story in the illustrated book of stories, Enough Yarn to Last the Night: A Collection of Myths from the Life of a Man with Many Names. The illustration at the start of the tale was a rather horrifying image of a man standing in front of a large, gilded mirror. He had looked away, seemingly momentarily distracted, but his reflected image remained staring straight at him.
Something about the image made the hair on Sebastien’s arms and the back of her neck rise. She had skipped over reading this tale when the note in the other book had pointed her to it the first time. Sebastien had always had a somewhat instinctive distrust of mirrors. Like other children feared what their toys did in the dark with no one around to watch them move, Siobhan had feared what happened in the mirror world when she was not looking.
And this particular bit from the story of Myrddin:
Another illustration showed both sides of the world, one bright, and one shadowed. The reflection of a puddle was the fulcrum between light and dark. Myrddin’s back was to the puddle, while his reflection had jumped and dived toward the shallow liquid like someone diving off a cliff into the ocean.
If this hadn’t been a child’s tale, anyone doing that would have concussed themselves and maybe even broken their own neck. But in the story, Myrddin’s reflection splashed through the ephemeral barrier between them and rose up behind Myrddin. It had left the puddle empty, reflecting everything but Myrddin himself.
There are definite parallels here - Siobhan has also jumped through the barrier between worlds and now the real world is empty as she’s taken her entire self - shadow and all - into another place.
And now for the bit where she talks to the nightmare:
Siobhan stood in a place she remembered well from childhood. She was in Grandfather’s house, standing before a half-open door. Not the metal one, from the magical workshop in the tower, but the wooden door with the warped board that left a little crack just at eye height.
So this is a different memory to the previous nightmare which was the metal door to the tower.
When she was a child, she would peek through it into Grandfather’s room sometimes. But now, she was too tall and would have to crouch down to see through it. ‘At least I am not thirteen again,’ she thought, though the sheer relief of that confirmation seemed strangely powerful. ‘Am I often thirteen, in my dreams?’ She couldn’t remember.
Siobhan usually imagined her nightmares as a kind of physical mass locked away in her head. A slimy, putrid, hungry liquid. Normally, it was contained perfectly, but in sleep—in dreams—she was unguarded, the dream-space undefined enough that the box keeping it all sealed up tight became undefined, too. And so, the nightmare-stuff had a chance to leak out. If she could wake quickly enough, most of it would get sucked back into the box as reality reasserted itself, leaving only the lingering terror and flashes of strange imagery.
Now, though, without the anchoring of her physical body, things normally confined to dreams started to leak out. Siobhan had no need to peek through the door. She already knew what was on the other side. ‘My mind could have conjured almost any other scene to keep me from the insanity of sensory deprivation,’ she lamented. ‘But of course it always comes back to this.’
So this is a real scene from her memory that she’s repeated many times before.
Siobhan braced herself and opened the door. The warding medallion was there on the table, with all of Grandfather’s artificery gadgets and lights and lenses that helped him use tools sized for a little bug. His gift for her, not finished yet.
Grandfather’s corpse was there, too, half his head a hollow. Brain matter and blood—so much blood—pooled in front of the fireplace, its warm flames reflecting off the dark, placid surface. Just as she had in reality, Siobhan moved past the corpse to the table, picking up the medallion.
So we know this happened, she said this occurred in reality and this is how she got her medallion.
She examined it for a moment, feeling the weight of it in her hand, the moldings of glyphs and symbols on its surface, so vivid despite it all being a figment of memory and imagination. Something rustled behind her, and she spun around, heart leaping in her chest.
Grandfather’s corpse had sat up. One of his eyes was missing, blown away and leaving only an empty, ruined socket. The other watched her with a bright golden iris staring out from a blood-red sclera. “It’s not complete, you know. I never had the chance to finish it.”
This is the part where the nightmare interferes.
Siobhan’s knees trembled, and she clenched the medallion in one fist so hard her knuckles whitened, the other bracing against the desk to help support her weight. “This didn’t happen.”
Grandfather tilted his head to the side, letting her see the hollow, meaty cavern that made up the remaining half of his skull. “How would you know? You do not remember anything.”
Her voice cracked. “I remember this part.”
“You should remember more,” he said, his eye suddenly intense, almost glowing against the shadows of his face, the fireplace behind him giving him a halo of brightness. “If you just remembered, you could fix things, don’t you think? You would know why you have these nightmares, and maybe they would stop.”
“I know well enough why I have them.” She did, even if she tried never to think of it or the thoughts connected to it. She knew well enough, and could guess at the rest.
This is the bit that clues us in to the fact that Siobhan is burying things in her own mind. Part of her suppression survival tactic.
Grandfather’s expression drew together cruelly, his mouth twisting in a sneer. “Do you truly? Do you think I had your best interest at heart by this time? I’d already gone quite insane. I harmed you, and yet you cling to the wound like it is a gift.”
Siobhan shuddered. “You are not my grandfather. I remember this night, and this did not happen. You’re…the nightmare. Or a piece of it, trying to leak out of the box.”
His sneer slipped away too quickly to be natural, and he laughed lightly, almost seeming proud. “It seems he raised no imbecile. You are correct, more or less. He did not have enough time to do a perfect job, and he never expected his patchwork solution to have to last this long. He had planned for you to go to one of his acquaintances who would settle the matter for good. But you forgot about that part, and he was too incoherent to realize he needed to repeat it for you. So you let things stay like this, trying your little patchwork solutions that are about as effective as using your finger to plug a leak in a dam.”
From this you can see that the nightmare is not to be trusted. It lies easily and you can’t trust the next statement since the previous was full of lies and it only dropped it because it was challenged.
Grandfather—or rather the thing wearing his body—lurched forward, rising to his feet like a puppet on strings. “You can’t keep depending on the seal to hold. It’s cracking, my little hazelnut,” he said, using the term of endearment only her grandfather had called her. “And it’s going to fail soon. You need to take control. ‘You control your mind, it doesn’t control you.’ Remember?”
“You just want me to let you free,” she whispered. “But I won’t. I never will.”
He lurched forward a couple more steps, his face too hidden in shadows to make out the features except for that gold, glowing eye. “What do you think is in the box? Aren’t you curious? Aren’t you afraid? Don’t you hear me scratching from the inside?”
Menacing.
Then she reflects on her conversation with the nightmare:
Siobhan didn’t believe the things it had told her about Grandfather having gone insane by that time, wanting to hurt her. Grandfather had died to save her. And then the Red Guard had come in and razed the entire village to the ground. They had to, to destroy the infection. And Siobhan had spent the last seven years now doing her best not to think about it.
That still seemed safest, especially now that she had seen a glimpse of what lay beyond the seal. Siobhan had recognized that golden eye, and it had not belonged to Grandfather. His eyes had been a rather non-distinct blue. And she feared that pulling on the memory of where such an eye really came from would lead to other memories, ones that should stay gone.
She knew the beginning, and she knew the end. Only the middle was gone, and that did not feel safe enough.
When the nightmare takes over her shadow she has flashes of memory:
Except it wasn’t totally inconceivable. Those glowing amber eyes were familiar, and for a moment, a flash of blood and brain matter pooling out in front of the fire came to mind.
That was followed by a blink-fast vision of an egg with a yolk made of blood. And then, even faster and on the edge of passing too quickly for her mind to grasp, a doorway filled with hungry sky.
Blood and brains in front of a fire is memory. But I wonder if the blood yolked egg and the doorway to the sky are as well. Because it puts me in mind of how Siobhan used to dream of flying as a child and how she couldn’t remember that dream ending, just one day it wasn’t there. That could just be a normal thing with moving on from childhood fancies…or she was scared by what she saw in the sky in the mirror and it killed her desire to fly but she doesn’t remember so all she has is an end to the dream.
It makes me more inclined to believe these are things she actually saw rather than visions given by the nightmare which has already taken over her shadow.
A thought passes through my mind - how did the nightmare kill people? Did it frighten them to death? Did it make them live out horrifying situations and kill other people?
Could Siobhan, under the control of the nightmare, have killed her grandfather? Perhaps before the spell to lock it in took full effect? Or perhaps her horror at the situation made it take effect - after all, her mind is a steel trap which could make it very hard to remove all ties to a memory without her actively working to suppress it.
The conversation:
She could still sense something from it, the way it noted the jump of the muscles in her jaw and throat, tracking every involuntary movement with a mean amusement. It was enjoying this. A surge of hatred, sickly sweet and cold, swept through her.
“Raaz didn’t quite catch everything,” it said. “Don’t you remember when we met? Don’t you remember my name?”
Siobhan did remember, even if she desperately wished she didn’t, but she wouldn’t say it. “If you’re sealed, how are you doing this? Taking over my shadow?”
Its amusement grew. “Well, you so kindly swallowed a beast core for me.”
She gasped. “You absorbed the power from the beast core? How?”
It continued as if she had not spoken. “And then you detached a piece of your existence for me, one conveniently not bound by the seal.”
This lends a bit to my theory that it might be lying about the beast core. Possibly.
Siobhan, for some reason, wanted to laugh. She tasted blood in her mouth.
“With the little cracks in said seal, it only took some effort and a bit of power to slip into the empty spot. I have to admit, I had such fun.”
“What would have happened if you ran out of the power you absorbed from that beast core while detached from me, inhabiting my shadow?” she asked.
“I would have had to slip into someone else’s shadow,” it said, but Siobhan felt its uncertainty and fear.
“I believe I would have had to consume the original shadow to take over. Quite difficult to do with a powerful thaumaturge.”
Siobhan did her best to keep her face from reacting. This, she was sure, was a lie. It had made that up. It had no idea what would happen if it ran out of power away from her, but it didn’t believe it would be anything good.
“Can you take control of my shadow again?”
“Any. Time. I. Want,” it said drolly.
That was a lie, too. “Can you tell what I’m thinking?”
“Of course. I live in your head, darling. I ride around inside your thoughts.” It wavered, though neither the light nor Siobhan had moved. “I know how afraid you are right now,” it whispered. “But there’s no need to be quite that terrified. I was very helpful tonight, don’t you think? I protected you, at the cost of using up that meager bit of power. I was useful, and the borrowing of your shadow caused you no harm.”
But she could still feel the truth of the monster, and the way its rapacious feeling of starvation only heightened at the dilation in Siobhan’s pupils and the pulse in her throat. It didn’t want to eat her, literally. It just wanted to kill her and use her corpse for its own purposes. Metaphorically. Maybe not her physical corpse. But something like that. And it was true that she was afraid, but if it had really been able to feel her emotions, it would have picked up on the hatred that she was barely tamping down. Her eyes burned with tears, but not from fear or despair. She simply felt too much loathing for one body to contain.
It was because of this thing that Grandfather was dead. Because of it, she had lost everything.
Siobhan swallowed and firmed her voice. “What do you want?”
Its voice warbled a little more, growing faint. “I want you to remember me,” it said.
Siobhan could feel its presence receding, leaving her natural shadow behind. Its eyes were the last to go, staring at her until the glow finally disappeared.
And another point on seals and memories:
Sebastien closed her eyes and tried to search through her own mind. ‘Is the seal broken, then? Or just imperfect?’ Because Grandfather had missed one of her memories, the one he didn’t know she had. Sebastien shied away from touching it or thinking about it too directly.
It’s occurred to me during my re-reading that Siobhan is quite closely mirroring Myrddin.
She has her shadow the way that he had his reflection, they both have struggles with their companion.
They both duelled a scion of a noble family and gained much fame from it.
They both have a shield that absorbs everything thrown at it.
They small conspiracy demon on my shoulder is whispering that in the very first book Siobhan speculated during one of her lectures that time just be malleable in the same way that other dimensions are. Maybe Siobhan is Myrddin!
Cough
Anyway. Perhaps in order for us to speculate as to her adventures in the next book we should study the stories of Myrddin more closely. She has some incentive to create a Carnagore of her own…and a disembodied intelligence she can throw in to fuel it, perhaps. I mean, that’s one way of getting the nightmare out of her head, right?
Of course….some of the stories do say that Carnagore turned on Myrddin in the end…
Edit: hell, even down to some of the spells used in that duel!
Some said the noble’s first spell had been a fireball, others a flaming arrow, and others some kind of flashy fire-bird construct.
The heir chucked a phoenix spell at her didn’t he?
Some accounts from the audience said that the disk began to create its own cold wind, with a rim of frost around the edges, and that as the blackness grew larger it began to curve around into a giant dome to cover Myrddin, still expanding.
Obviously she didn’t use her shadow in the duel…but still. The parallels are eerie.
I have a slightly less tin foil hatty theory where her Grandfather is Myrddin and possibly also the Blood Emperor - or from the same country as the Blood Emperor. I posit that he simplified the shield down from what it originally was to the esoteric chant he taught Siobhan. The simplicity means the spell does less as a baseline, but is easier to cast and has more potential in the long run as your understanding improves.
I think his extremely long life could be due to some enormous magical undertaking that could have required him to channel tens or even hundreds of thousands of thaums continuously whilst also going about his everyday life. Maybe he locked away the fey from the mortal realm? Maybe he established an experimental facility on the moon and needs to constantly pump it full of magic to make sure his experiments continue? Maybe he had a nuclear waste bunker on another planet full of Aberrants?
Maybe he created a new magical order and is the reason Aberrants exist in the first place? Maybe magic in his time was too fractured by the cataclysm to be stable?
Did I say this was less tinfoil hatty? Oh dear. The speculation has run rampant.
Edit: At one point Thaddeus does come right out and says that there’s evidence that her grandfather could have been part of the Blood Emperor’s cohort.
Another edit:
Or, perhaps you are speaking of something more unambiguous. A way to somehow strip a being from their body and condense their consciousness into information, then encode it into the form of a memory? Memories are never forgotten, but by breaking all connective bonds of recollection, one could force forgetfulness and thus lock the memory, and the consciousness, away.
The last would require some ability to isolate what creates consciousness, which, as far as I am aware, is yet beyond us. But an advanced simulacrum of consciousness, of intelligence, could be possible.
“As far as I am aware is beyond us” - and yet this seems the closest to what Grandfather did.
I was thinking along similar lines except that S would have been in the classrooms as Sebastian baring maybe one or two occurrences. Presuming that the hair of Siobhan doesn’t divine back to where Sebastian’s body has been of course.
To add to the wonderful wild speculation; what if Myrddin had a break event and became one of the first Aberrants? Being as powerful as he was he conceivably could and broken into a very aware nightmare-esque one that ultimately became Amber locked away in Siobhan’s head.
It could explain how she was able to get the body swap amulet in the first place as the book recognised part of her as Myrddin.
There are probably a few extracts in the books so far that push this towards being unlikely but that’s the whole fun of tinfoil speculation!