Page 94 of The Thirteenth Count

For one breath, the dying ember glowed white.

Then it was ash, and the wind took it out over the dark, down toward the valley, the way ash goes home.

Fern closed the window. She sat on the edge of her bed in the dark with her bleeding thumb against her lips, and did not cry. The fire she had held down all day was still there. It would always be there. And with great calm, in her father’s clear, mild carrying voice, she began to sort the living⁠—

The ceremony was in nine days.

The Keep interrogated itself for four days. Doors opened at odd hours. Servants went down one corridor and returned by another, hours later, walking carefully. The laundry ran short-handed on the second day; the kitchens on the third. No one was dismissed. No one was arrested. One by one, the household passed through a room below the East Wing and emerged quieter. Yet preparations for the Bonding ceremony never stopped. Crates, decorations, and flowers flowed up the Coil past whatever came down. The machine did not mourn.

Fern embroidered. Transcribed. Was boring. Sprout, who despised boring, sulked on the mantel with his back to the room and one ear turned, always, toward the door.

And watched the people she loved get fed, one by one, through the room below the East Wing.

Lina went on the fourth morning.

She was gone six hours. When she returned to the blue suite, Lina knocked. She had oiled the hinges herself and once came and went like weather, but now she waited to be admitted. Inside, she folded her hands and fixed her eyes just left of Fern’s face. Her voice was pressed flat as table linen.

“I’m to resume my duties, Miss. The Steward’s office thanks the household for its patience during the review.”

“Lina.”

“Will you be wanting the grey dress or the⁠—”

“Lina.”

Lina’s eyes finally met hers. They were dry, past crying, which was so much worse. She crossed the room in three quick steps and knelt beside Fern’s chair under the pretense of gathering dropped pins. When she spoke into the floor, her words were fast and almost soundless.

“They know it came through the walls or the wagons. They don’t know which. They asked me about the cellar deliveries. They asked about your habits, your walks, your hours, whether you keep candles.” Lina swallowed. “And then they stopped asking about you. And started asking about Jonas.”

Fern’s stomach dropped through the floor of the world.

“They asked if my brother enjoys his post.” Lina’s hands were perfectly steady, sorting pins that did not need sorting. “Whether the East Wing suits him. Whether I thought he’d find the outer patrols very different.” Her voice didn’t break again; it had gone somewhere beyond breaking, into the flat silence on the far side. “He wouldn’t last a week out there, Miss. He doesn’t understand cruelty. He thinks the warders’ jokes are jokes. And they said it to me smiling, the way you’d discuss the weather, and then they thanked me for my service and sent me back up.”

Fern slid out of the chair and knelt on the floor in front of her, and took Lina’s sorting hands and held them still.

“Look at me.” She waited until the deep brown eyes came up. “Here is what happens now. You know nothing. You saw nothing. You dressed a spoiled Rootfolk girl who treated you like furniture, and you were grateful for the wage. From today, in front of anyone—anyone, Lina—you hate me a little. Do you understand? You’re careless with my hair. You sigh at my requests. You give them a servant with no reason in the world to bleed for me.”

“Miss—”

“They taught me this.” Fern’s voice came out level and cold and strange to her own ears, and she recognized it, with a distant jolt. It was the voice of the woman who had taught her. “The face is a door. You keep it shut, and you keep Jonas behind it. That’s the whole of it. They gave it to me to survive them—I am giving it to you.”

Lina stared at her. Her eyes widened, then filled, but beneath the fear and grief, her jaw set with the same hard resolve that had said, show them, power is something you are, over a jar of lavender salve a lifetime ago.

“You’ve gotten frightening, Miss Silverbell,” Lina whispered. “I mean it kindly.”

“I know,” Fern said. “So did they.”

Marcus found her in the gallery that afternoon.

She heard him before she saw him; he had never once in his life crossed a room quietly. She arranged her face and kept walking. He fell into step beside her anyway, reeking of cologne and satisfaction, turning the new silver ring on his finger.

A signet, fat as a beetle, with the Blackwell rose cut deep. He wore it like a child’s medal, angled into the light.

“Miss Silverbell. Taking the air?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Terrible business, all of it. The escape, the hanging. The whole house upside down.” A sigh of theatrical regret, ruined by the corner of his mouth. “Though I hear the investigation is nearly concluded. They say the watch was warned, you know. In advance. Someone clever.” The signet caught the wardcandle light. “Imagine being that clever.”

Bank the fire. Fern watched the gallery’s long windows approach and pass, one by one, and kept her pace even and her hands loose, and did not put Marcus Blackwell through any of them.

“I’m sure I couldn’t imagine, my lord.”