1
SABLE
Breakfast should be the safest part of the day.
The little kitchen smells of barley porridge, steeped mint, singed kindling, and the faint mineral tang of the rainwater I boiled before dawn. Smoke curls lazily from the stove pipe, too thin to trouble the rafters, and the window above the washbasin glows with a pale gray morning light that makes every cracked cup and dulled spoon look gentler than it has any right to look. Outside, the lane is waking in pieces: wagon wheels grinding through mud, a goat bleating as though offended by existence itself, someone cursing at a jammed shutter. It is ordinary. Blessedly, stubbornly ordinary.
Corin sits across from me with his elbows on the table, his hair still mussed from sleep, one hand wrapped around a chipped clay cup. He has one sock on and one sock missing, because he claims matching feet before breakfast is “a tyranny invented by joyless people.”
“You’re staring,” he says, lifting his cup.
“I am assessing whether you are alive enough to be useful.”
“Cruel woman. I stirred the porridge.”
“You leaned against the counter and criticized my stirring.”
“I provided moral oversight.”
“You told me the oats looked depressed.”
“They did. Look at them now. Happier already.”
I try not to smile, but the traitorous corner of my mouth gives me away. “That is because I added honey.”
“That is because I believed in them.”
He grins at me over the rim of his cup, and for one sweet, stupid moment, I let myself enjoy him. The sharpness of his face has worsened this week, and there are shadows beneath his eyes that no amount of sleep can soften, but his grin is still his grin. Crooked. Shameless. Mine, in every way that matters.
He starts to say something else. “You know, if old Mother Vey catches you buying honey from the west stall again, she’s going to?—”
The cup slips from his hand.
It hits the table first, bounces once, and drops to the floor where it shatters into three large pieces and a spray of smaller ones. Tea splashes across my bare ankle, hot enough to sting. I flinch, already opening my mouth to scold him for being clumsy, but then blood spatters across the table.
Not a thread of it. Not a little stain on his lip.
A mouthful.
Dark red against the pale wood.
“Corin?”
He blinks at me as if he hears me from the far end of a tunnel. His hand rises to his mouth, trembling, and comes away wet. His expression changes before mine does. He understands first. He has always been quicker with fear when it belongs to him.
“Sable,” he says, and his voice breaks around my name.
He tries to stand.
His chair scrapes backward with a wooden shriek, and he gets halfway upright before his knees fold. He clutches his chest with both hands. Beneath the thin linen of his shirt, his pulsekicks visibly under his skin, wrong and violent, a fluttering thing trapped behind his ribs. The sight steals the air from my lungs.
I move before thought catches up.
I catch him under the arms as he falls, and his weight nearly drags us both down. My hip slams into the table. A bowl tips and porridge spills in a thick, steaming heap over the edge, but I hardly feel the burn when it hits my wrist. Corin’s head lolls toward the floor, and I twist hard, taking the impact through my shoulder so his skull does not strike the stones.
“Corin, look at me.” My voice comes out too loud. Too sharp. “Look at me, damn you.”
His eyes flutter, unfocused.
