Riven nodded, but couldn’t help but eye the box.Perhaps Avice thought he was just eager, but he was truly dreading looking at the scroll.
“Food,” she said gently.“This will wait.”
Riven turned back to his plate, but the next bite of bread was dry in his throat.What if the blood magic pulled him in again, and he lost himself in its lure?Just like a bottle of letheon.His hand shook as he reached for the kavage.
Witless was by one of the windows, his face turned toward the sun.“Warm,” he said, rocking the baby doll.
“Be about your work, moon-child,” Avice snapped.
Witless cringed, hunched slightly, and hurried to the door.“Yes, yes,” he simpered as he fled.,
With a sniff, Avice pulled a shuttle, needles and a ball of silken cord from her bag and set to work.Focused.Patient.
Riven chewed a bite of chicken slowly, thinking, suddenly curious.“Do you enjoy knitting?”he asked, invoking his mage sight.
“It’s tatting, not knitting.”Avice shrugged and didn’t look up.“I am commanded.”She spoke absently, in a dull voice, as if it was of no matter whether she liked it or not.
But Riven saw, beneath the constraints, behind that golden webbing, a flicker of some small…resistance.No.More like an opinion suppressed by the bond.
He opened his mouth to ask more, then stuffed in some bread instead.Too dangerous to ask too many questions too fast.
“Finished,” he said, getting up and taking the tray over to one of the empty shelves.“Why don’t you sit here,” he said, gesturing to the end of the table.“You can sit and work and still watch me.”
Avice nodded and let him place a stool where he wanted her.Where he could study both woman and scroll at the same time.The written words and the living example.
Avice opened the box.He heard the rattle as she reached inside.There were other things in that box.
Another part of this puzzle.
She pulled out the scroll and held it out to him.
Riven took the scroll and shivered slightly as he unrolled it to the binding spell.The use marks were there, the imprints of other hands, the wear spots where weights had been used to hold it open.Not that those were needed now.The scroll lay quiet, acquiescent.
Avice’s hands started to dance in an intricate pattern, weaving the cord into a pattern of knots.
Riven let his gaze fall on the handwriting, black and thin and just as spidery as the day before.
But the lure, the call he expected, was not there.
He let out a slow breath, hopefully hiding his relief.
Riven set to work.No spell was perfect.There had to be a way.
A sigh fromAvice brought him out of his contemplation.
The Bondmaiden was standing and stretching.“I must go,” she said.“It’s almost the nooning.”
“So soon?”Riven frowned.“I’d hoped—”
“We are needed elsewhere, this day.”Avice held out a hand for the scroll.“One of us will return, later.”
“This won’t do,” Riven frowned at her, daring to push.“I need a set schedule,” he said firmly.“I can’t just study this when you and the others are available.I need time to memorize the chants.”
Avice stared at him.
“I must be ready,” Riven stood, drawing himself to his full height.“The spell must be cast at the right time, and I must be ready well before that.”
She gave him a grudging nod, which made him bolder.“I also need supplies,” he said.“Boxes of colored chalk, bags of sand.I’ll need to practice laying out the matrix, and it needs to be precise.”
