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corner. And with it, as always, came the complete and perfect awareness of herself. If she wanted, she could count every hair on her head, knew the width of each fingernail, the landscape of every tooth, the position of each freckle.
    But to free herself of the paralyzing potion, she would need to look inward even more deeply.
    Her consciousness dove below the flesh of her arm, traveled up the bone to one of her fingers. She went inside one of her veins and got caught in the flow of her own blood. She examined every drop until she found what she was looking for.
    They looked like glowing blue crystals, spiked and clinging to the drops of blood like sandspur. The potion.
    Tapping into the spirit gave Rina total control of her own body. She simply needed to know what had to be done and focus. She ordered the corrupt blood to flow out of her finger, clean blood to replace it. A second later she was able to wiggle that finger. It felt stiff and ached, but she could do it.
    She repeated the process with the other four fingers and then the rest of the hand. She opened and closed her fist, working the muscles.
    Rina ignored the screams of pain and the crunch of weapons smashing armor. Whatever was happening was none of her business for another few seconds. She needed one good arm. That was all.
    She forced the potion up past her elbow, then past her shoulder. Her arm was free of it now.
    Jariko cast a spell, and the small clearing flashed with blue lightning.
    Rina rolled her shoulder. It felt like a rusty hinge, but it could move.
    It could strike.
    She reached out with her one good arm and latched on to the wizard’s wrist just as he was preparing to cast another spell. Jariko looked back, eyes wide with horror and realization.
    The strength of the bull tattoo flowed into Rina’s hand. She squeezed. Jariko’s wrist crunched and snapped like a fistful of dry twigs. The wizard screamed. She jerked hard, pulling him down into the cart with her. He fell across her legs, looking up at her, terrified.
    Rina let go of his wrist and latched on to his throat. She guessed how she must look. The rest of her was still paralyzed, her head lolling to one side, eyes glassy and unblinking. It must have seemed as if her arm moved independently of the rest of her. As if it were possessed by some demon specter.
    She squeezed once, and Jariko’s neck snapped, eyes rolling back in his head.
    Rina sat in the cart for long seconds, listening. Whatever had happened, it was over now. She saw bodies on the ground in front of her but couldn’t turn her head to see anything else.
    She focused, repeating the same trick as before, chasing the potion from her other arm, legs, head. She pulled it from every part of her body until it was a knot of bright pain in the middle of her stomach. Rina pushed the dead wizard off her, crawled to the edge of the cart, and gagged.
    At first nothing came up. She gagged again, chest and throat burning. Rina’s mouth suddenly tasted sour, and she spit. She still had the potion gathered in her gut.
    Her back hunched, mouth opening so wide her jaw hurt. She vomited a long stream of hot fluid that spattered on the ground, steaming and sizzling. It was a mix of blood and digestive fluid and Jariko’s potion. The smell hit her, and she spewed a second gout of vomit on top of the first.
    She collapsed trembling in the back of the cart. A slick sheen of cold sweat covered her body. Rina was still tapped into the spirit. She pushed away all pain and discomfort, commanded her limbs to obey. She lurched to her knees. Then to her feet. She stepped over the first two bodies, her eyes going wide at the third.
    Bishop Hark!
    She knelt next to the man who was down in the mud, gently turned him over. “Bishop.”
    Hark’s eyes flickered open. His mouth worked but no words came out.
    “Easy,” Rina said. “I’ve got you.”
    Rina hadn’t seen everything that had happened, but it was an easy guess that Hark had been on the receiving