He exhaled through his nose. “I should be retrieving you.”
“Oh, I think this route will do just fine.”
Shaw rolled his shoulders, and she grinned, feeling sure she could manage the sacrifice of this victory. Before he could scowl much more, likely unsure now if what he promised was worth the cost, frantic pounding interrupted the silence.
Skirting around him, Lux jogged up the steps.
Now this knock she knew quite well.
A dripping bundle laywrapped in a ragged blanket. The sobbing woman held it tight and clutched close to her chest, while a man stood behind her. Tears ran down his bearded cheeks as he lowered a hand a second away from rapping on Lux’s nose.
“Come in.” Lux backed from the sense of heartbreak that billowed around her. Always so much heartbreak—and always laced with a threadbare shred of hope. She glanced at Shaw, urging him to say nothing. With hooded eyes, he obeyed.
Lux entered the workroom and turned up the lamp. Twisting back, she watched the parents, observed as they didn’t even look at her, their hands laying the little body ever-so-gently upon the table. It looked so small.
“How long?”
The woman raised her eyes. A gaze filled with so much sorrow, Lux felt instantly sick. “Eight hours, nine at most.” She bit her lip against a sob as the man fished through his coat. “We’ve been searching most of the day. We finally found her. In the marshes. She’s only just reached her second year. She—”
Tears poured from her eyes, yet she didn’t look away. Begging.
“How much?” the father asked, hoarse.
Lux relayed the sum, and the color drained from his face. He frantically searched again, turning up a button and a roll of string. Desolate eyes found hers.
“I don’t have it.” He laid the single goldquin on the table. Followed by a silvdan. Five coptons.
The woman’s mouth opened and closed, staring at the child as if she could will the life back. Her skin paled to ash.
“We must. We must. We must.” The mother rocked back and forth, holding her middle. She shook her head, unwilling to believe. “We must.”
Lux stared at the unmoving bundle on the table. She should turn them away.Wouldturn them away. Exceptions were always a mistake: a rule in dark business.
She opened her mouth to tell them to go—but something else tumbled out. “My door creaks terribly. It’s been years now.” The man’s eyes snapped to hers. “Perhaps you could fix it for me? I’d pay you well.”
Understanding swept the despair from his features. “Of course,oh, of course. Of course, I could fix that.”
She nodded and her attention left him. “Put the money in the crock.”
Stepping toward the body, she carefully unwrapped it. The blanket gave way to rounded features: a soft face beneath a head full of dark curls, and a little body in a sodden, dirty dress. She was cold and wet and blue, her limbs rigid in death. Lux undressed her carefully.
She remembered that proprietor’s daughter now. The one she couldn’t save. They’d been nearly the same age. And she’d lain just like this. But it had been too long. Too wet, too blue, toocold.Lux couldn’t have brought her back.
She wouldn’t have been the same.
Lux draped the small body in a sheet much too big for it before turning back to the shelves, toThe Risenpropped just as she’d left it. She allowed a moment for the greeting plants to wrap their vines about her fingers in welcome.
“That’s enough.”
Normally, she would never allow family to watch, but she didn’t know if Shaw had managed to sneak out her front door yet. She gestured them to the stool resting in the corner instead, handing the mother a dress that dripped. The woman snatched it to her, where she clutched it so tightly to her chest, Lux was sure her hands would be left aching long after their release.
Lux took one of the precious howler teeth from the jar. Grinding, measuring, stirring, she settled the paste beside the child’s face. Then she painted.
“Back from Death we beckon,
A guide between Life and Fate.
Mend what has been broken:
