“Ditto—”
“We can steal a carriage?—”
“We can steal clothes?—”
“We can wear wigs?—”
“Guys, look!” Mimi again, pointing both fingers toward the table in the yard.
Master Talik had stood up, hands over the table, and he’d leaned in halfway to Vesta, who was no longer laughing, but sitting back on her chair. He said something, but his lips barely moved. There was no way we could read the words he said.
Then Vesta reached for her cup of tea on the table, took a slow sip while we held our breaths. She said one word, but we couldn’t make that out, either. Could have been anything.
But Master Talik stepped away from the table then. Look at us. Nodded once.
Damon pushed the gate open the next second. “Get in.”
27
The inside of the house was just as messy as the garden—but in a very aesthetic way. If I were to say that Vesta had spent her eighty-three years accumulating things and never throwing any of them away, I would probably be right. Books on every surface—stacked on tables, piled on chairs, lining the walls in shelves that bowed under their weight. Dried flowers hung from the ceiling in bundles. Crystals and stones and small glass bottles filled with colored liquids crowded the windowsills.
The whole place smelled of tea and dried lavender and old paper, and it was so warm I was sweating ten seconds in. I pulled the cloak off my shoulders, and so did everyone else.
Vesta didn’t speak to us at all. She led us to a room at the back instead, larger than the first, with a round table in the center and enough mismatched chairs for half of us. The rest leaned against walls or sat on the floor.
Silence.
This room had shelves full of glass containers and jars and boxes full of herbs and strange looking liquids, too. I’d think it was a kitchen, but there were no appliances.
Vesta sat at the very head, lips turned downward, never even glancing at Master Talik who sat on her left, but tracing the faded turquoise flowers drawn on the tabletop. They were pretty, though faded. Half of what they used to be.
Like me.
“So,” the woman finally said, pulling her red shawl tighter over her shoulders like she was cold. “The Hands of the thirty-first Turning Trials.” Most of us flinched under her gaze. “I watched you on the screens, you know. Both times.”
Nobody really knew what to say to that, so we just kept our mouths shut.
“You were very brave,” she said, which was odd because she looked like she was about to say—“And very stupid.”
Yep, that.
Then she sighed. “But mostly brave.” A look at Master Talik sitting with his head down. “You’re sure about this? You’re sure it’s a veil and not an extraction?”
Master Talik opened his mouth to speak, but I said, “We are,” together with a few others.
I wasverysure that the memories I missed were there, hidden in my mind somewhere. I just couldn’t reach them.
Vesta nodded, then her eyes moved to Silas who sat across from me, next to Master Talik. Studied him.
Something passed across her face, but it was gone too soon so I had no idea what she was thinking.
The tension in the air grew.
“All right.”
Vesta looked like she was settling as she adjusted her shawl and fidgeted in her seat and cleared her throat about a dozen times. “All right. Since you’re already here, I might as well give it a go.” Her hands had been under the table, and when she brought them up again, she brought a chronobank with—a proper Timekeeper Clock.
It was fancy—golden with silver engravings, as big as the palm of my hand, and with a cover, too. She pressed the button on the edge and it popped open, but it faced her so we couldn’t see how much Sparetime she had in there. Probably a lot.
