Before fire consumed her, she said to all those who watched, “I die in the solace that my rage dies with me. I wish not to live among these men.”
By testament of the Stewards, Joan made no sound as she was released of man’s cruelty. If any remnant of her magic seeped free of the fire, then it seeped into the earth, while the eye of the enemy was enthralled by the flames.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWONINA
Trent?” I repeated, the letters on the parchment fading. They were blotted, and many had been crossed out, rewritten. Polly’s fingers were stained with it, her hair flattened in the back, her eyes wild with sleeplessness. She nodded emphatically.
She’d woken me but not the others. Not yet. I couldn’t be sure why.
“Surely,” Polly said, pulsing with some sort of awareness. “It is no coincidence.”
I reverted my eyes to the letters so that I would not need to see her face. Sometimes when I looked at her, I forgot what she was. What she’d done. “Nothing about Idia’s Seam?”
“No, nothing yet. But Nina—”
“Then, keep translating.”
Polly sighed. “There will be some holes. I don’t remember all the glyphs, and some are faded. It takes time to pull the ink—”
“Well, time isn’t on your side,” I said curtly. “Nor ours.” I began to turn away.
“Nina, wait.” Polly’s hand reached for my elbow, but retracted at the last moment. “I—I just wanted to tell you that I’m sorry.”
“So, you’ve said.”
“I mean… for your mother,” she said warily, like I was a dog baring its teeth. “Theo explained what happened. I know you went to Kenton hopingto spare her.” Her eyes pinched. “We were all fools in the end. None so much as me.” One lip worried over the other, but she had the gumption to look me in the eye when she said, “I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but I wanted you to know, if I could undo it all, I would. I wanted to the moment I sent that scribble.”
“A moment too late,” I retorted. And I left Polly to return to her tiny foreman’s office with her flurry of parchment and the Stewards’ book, shoulders hunched over.
Orderlies were the only others awake at this early hour. It seemed they never slept. They carried their items to and from pallets. One woman simply went bed to bed, singing soft Crafter songs in a voice that would break hearts.
I wondered if once, three daughters had resided in this town. I wondered if it had looked the same after the enemy had come for Joan.
Two more Trent Crafters had died in the night. When morning bloomed, Patrick and Theodore carried the bodies out to the ravine, and I buried them.
Theo looked bloodless and sick. John took his hat off and bowed his head. It was then that I gave them Polly’s translation. I watched their eyes catch on the wordsTrentandbeastandwitches.
I watched confusion dawn, as it had in me.
“The beast,” Theo read. “It must mean the invaders from other shores. The ones who came in the Battle of Belavere.”
Lines deep as rifts appeared in Patrick’s furrow. “Perhaps.”
“Fuckin’ animals, in any case,” John uttered.
“Trent,” Patrick said, his thumb smearing over the word. “Their name was Trent?”
“Could it—could it mean this place?” I asked. “Perhaps this town was named after them.”
“It’s as common a name as any, miss,” John said, taking the translation from Patrick. “More likely it’s a coincidence. This could’ve happened anywhere in the Trench.”
But I couldn’t shake the feeling crawling beneath my flesh and skippingthe rungs of my spine. I’d felt it the day Patrick and I hid in a cellar, and again the day of the Artisan School attack. I felt it now, catastrophe in my blood, a relentless pounding in my head.
We ate meagerly, guiltily, knowing we took from what little stores Trent had left. Then Edith came to find us.
She nodded to me first. “Thank you,” she said on a choked whisper. But she hardened her jaw, refusing to cry. “Those people—they deserved some decency.”
I only nodded. What else was there to say?
