The door burst open then, and a guard strode two paces over to my mother and took her forearms in his hands.
She didn’t fight, didn’t struggle. She let me go and went away.
The door closed behind her. Daylight slunk back from the corners of the room, and all was quiet except for my labored breaths.
My fingers still cold, I took out my mother’s note and read it twenty times. Thirty times, eyes pinched in the dim. It was just an old children’s song. One of a hundred she’d sung to me.
I buried my face in my hands and screamed until my throat tore.
She wouldn’t die. They wouldn’t kill her. Tanner was desperate, but not foolish. I still had something the House needed.
These thoughts cycled, turning to a sort of madness. Twice, I almost called for the guard. Twice, I came close to surrender.
But I’d surrendered once already, hadn’t I? Now Kenton was torched and crumbling.
So, I sat and let my insides feast on themselves. Let my throat tear itself to strips.
At some clockless hour, the door unlocked yet again. A tray was pushed in, bearing a dish of fish and vegetables. A cup of water. No cutlery.
The door slammed shut. I was too sickened to eat. The tray could stay there until morning, when someone would come to reclaim it.
But then something beneath the plate’s edge caught my eye. Something small, wrapped in parchment and tucked out of sight.
I ignored the food and pulled the parcel free, the parchment immediately uncoiling in my palm.
A stoppered vial—the contents almost black.
My battered heart reanimated.
On the parchment was a tidy hand—one I recognized, though I hadn’t seen it since I was an apprentice.
From Patrick, it said, though the writing could only be Theo’s.
And I stared at the ink, puzzling for hours, picturing this vial passing from Patrick’s hand to Theo’s, to mine, and I felt relief.
There’s a plan, I thought.Patrick has a plan.
I stared at the embroidered widow’s lace, then gulped down the idium all at once.
CHAPTER NINELORD TANNER
Lord Tanner did not return to his residence that evening. He was too filled with a need to act—to dosomething. He was the bloody Head of House, for God’s sake. He could not sit on his hands and allow a fucking chit from Scurry to bend him over.
When he returned to his office, he knocked a glass sculpture of Saint Merlo off his desk, drank a generous pour of port, and ripped his robes from his arms, feeling as though they had suddenly become snakes, constricting him. He was soon drunk, muttering at the walls. Who was he but an Artisan who had only ever sought to protect this continent, its heritage?
He stood over the old book, Idia’s Seam hidden somewhere in its fibers, and considered, briefly, throwing it into the hearth.
Lord Shop appeared before him sometime after that. The clock chimed low—a midnight dirge.
“I’m afraid there’s no avoiding it,” Shop said to him, and he couldn’t make heads nor tails of the words. How long had the man been talking?
Shop shook his head when Tanner offered him the bottle of port. “You were never one for fun,” Tanner said bitterly, then upended the bottle into his own glass. A fair amount splattered onto the floor.
“My lord.” The bottle was removed from his hands. Shop laid heavy palms on his shoulders, shook them slightly. His eyes swam into existence. “Time is of the essence. Can the earth Charmer be convinced?”
“No,” Tanner said. The mention of her brought venom to his mouth. “Scumbitch,” he muttered.
“Then what are your orders?”
