Free Thief’s Magic by Trudi Canavan

disbelieving.
    “A hunch.”
    “You never have hunches.”
    “Yes, I do.”
    “It’s why you never found anything in Mailand. Wasting all that time measuring and looking for logical ways to predict where the caves were dug. Should have just got digging, like we did – eh, Neel?”
    Neel shook his head. His face was blotchy and pallid as he looked up at Tyen, his eyes wide.
    “Thanks for rescuing us,” was all he said.
    Then he stopped, bent double and vomited on Miko’s shoes.

CHAPTER 6
    S o … what the binder said … was that how you were made?
    More or less. The writing on the page was, as always, graceful and confident. Skin instead of cloth and paper. Hair instead of thread. Bone instead of card. Glue from sinew, rendered down.
    So there is bone large and flat enough in a human body?
    Bones can be moulded and reshaped with magic, just as a person’s appearance can be changed – if the sorcerer has the knowledge, skill and enough flesh and bone to apply it to. Roporien could alter his appearance to be more appealing or more frightening to others, if the advantage was worth the effort.
    I’ve never read of anyone capable of doing that, but I suppose he would not have needed to change often in this world since everybody was already so impressed by him. But shaping your bones, making glue, tanning skin … wouldn’t that have taken a long time?
    The process can be accelerated with magic.
    Even so, you must have been … well …
    Conscious. Yes and no. That part of me that became a book stayed so. The rest died with what remained of my body.
    Which was most of it, surely?
    Yes. And possibly most of my mind.
    Possibly? You don’t know for sure?
    I cannot lie. I cannot stop myself storing information and answering questions. I feel no emotions. Therefore some things were taken away, along with the parts of the mind concerned with controlling parts of the body I no longer have.
    Could those parts be replaced? Could you become a woman again?
    I don’t know the answer to that.
    Hasn’t anybody tried?
    Once, a young sorcerer attempted it.
    And failed, obviously. Do you wish to be a woman again?
    I know that I am not whole but I do not miss what is gone. I am not in great anguish, as you fear.
    Perhaps because you cannot feel it. I wonder if, now, in this age of discovery and invention, we could find a way to restore you. If you wished it, of course. It is likely you would then age and die, so I would not try such a thing if you did not want it. Though … forgive me for pointing this out, you’ve lived an awful lot longer than you would have if you hadn’t been made into a book.
    Yes, though if you only count the time I have been conscious I have not yet lived as long as I might have as a human.
    Perhaps, if you exist for many hundreds of years more, you will surpass a normal lifetime. After all, you’re in very good condition for a thousand-year-old book. I guess what I wish to ask is: if you could become a living human again, would you choose to?
    I would, because in this form I am a servant at best, a slave at worst. I would like to feel again. To experience all that being human entails.
    I would like to meet you, as your whole self.
    And I would like to meet you. Would you teach me how to live in this new era, with its fabulous machines and strange rules?
    Yes, I would be honoured. I—
    The book jumped in his hands then began to buzz. Tyen looked up, his heart racing, and realised it wasn’t Vella making the noise, but Beetle hovering behind her. The insectoid made a hoarse piping sound, as if something was wrong with the whistle it used to sound the alarm for
—
    The door burst open. Miko strode inside, kicking the door closed behind him. Startled, Tyen snapped the book shut.
    “How were sorcery classes?” Miko asked, but didn’t pause for a reply. “Neel didn’t show today so I went by his room. Still sick he reckons. What?”
    Tyen realised he had been staring at Miko, still frozen in surprise.