Chapter Eight Nina
Tanner entered my room after dark, stepped right over the brink towns on the rug, and stopped somewhere near Gilmore. The Gyser River ran between his shoes.
His nose wrinkled at the ceiling. “My word, are those starlings?”
The birds in the rafters above tittered nervously. They had become accustomed to me, but they fretted now in Tanner’s presence. “I suppose you endured worse confines in Kenton Hill.”
I said nothing, though I wanted to spit at him.
“I’ve come to tell you that at this moment, Patrick Colson is agreeing to ally with the House. He will be our Alchemist.”
I damn near laughed. These were desperate words. I said, “When hellfire swallows the continent, perhaps.”
“The only barrier that remains,” Tanner continued doggedly, ignoring my jab, “is you.” He moved forward suddenly, and I found myself shifting back on the mattress, seeking distance. A girl once more, cowering in a drawing room.
“Your impudence puts me in a very difficult position,” Tanner continued.
Mania swarmed his eyes, turned them brilliant.
“Do you understand that, girl? Do you comprehend what is at stake?” He shook with unfettered rage.
It bloodied his cheeks, brought his forehead to a high shine.
I watched his hands carefully, my insides winding tighter and tighter.
“I could have thrown you back into the swill before you ever stepped foot in our halls, and instead I let you remain, I offered you a place among us!” And now it seemed he spoke to himself, pacing frenetically over Trent, over Scurry.
“I allowed you a chance, opportunities of which your peers could never hope to see! And you discarded it.” He seethed, sucking air between his teeth.
He stopped his pacing to look at me, and I wondered if he imagined pulverizing me to mince.
“You’ve forced my hand, Clarke. I’ve come to give you your very last opportunity.
You belong to the House now. You will do as you are bid for your nation.
If you refuse, Rose Harrow will die for your futile rebellion. ”
I wanted badly to be the kind of woman who bared her teeth in the face of threats. Instead, I was shrinking, attempting to become nothing.
That was what I really wanted—to be saved by obscurity. I wanted to mean nothing, to have nothing the men of this world could try to possess.
Tanner had caught the scent of my fear, and he bore down. “And I’ll have you watch that execution, Nina, if that is what you choose.”
I closed my eyes. I pictured my mother as I’d last seen her. Skeletal, tormented. My voice shook. “If she dies,” I said, “I’ll give you nothing.”
You have something the House needs. It gives you power.
I wouldn’t yield. Couldn’t.
Tanner’s eyes bulged. He raised his hand as though he might strike me. I flinched and felt ashamed for it.
But his hand never landed. He lowered it slowly, inch by inch with whatever willpower he retained. “We’ll put your words to the test, then,” he snarled. He stalked to the door and opened it.
On the other side, in the grasp of a guard, was my mother.
A waif. So insubstantial her clothes overwhelmed her. As with before, her eyes swiveled from place to place, and she seemed unable to set them on any particular thing.
In her hands, clutched against her chest like a baby, was a small embroidery hoop.
“See this as your last meeting,” Tanner said to me. “Unless, of course, you choose to save her life.” He reached out and clasped my mother’s upper arm, pulling her into the room.
Then he strode out and slammed the door behind him.
I breathed once, twice. “Ma?”
She’d once been so big to me that she’d filled every corner of every room, filled my sleep, her body wrapped around mine, my hand in hers, her apron cleaning my face, her fingers twining through the knots in my hair, pulling me down the lanes, all the way through the first years of my life.
Then there was a blanket of empty years where she hadn’t been there at all.
She wasn’t here, either, not really. She’d retreated inside herself.
My throat strained painfully. I’d hated her longer than I’d loved her. Before I’d known what she’d done—what she’d felt forced to do for my betterment.
How long had she worked for the Artisans, I wondered? Cleaning their plates and sweeping their floors, before the secret came to haunt us both?
All that sacrifice, all that suffering. It had brought us only more of the same.
“Ma,” I said more insistently, my voice waterlogged.
Finally, her eyes turned to me.
Slipping from her shaking lips, in quiet repose, came the stumbling chorus of a song I barely remembered. “Sweet girl, Caranina,” she whispered. “Sing sweetly for me…” The rest faded off into a rasp of breath, continuing without voice.
“Yes,” I said. “It’s me.” I wanted to wrap my arms around her, add another layer to her, but I was sure she’d shrink away. Just looking at me seemed to take tremendous effort.
Slowly, she held out the hoop of fabric toward me and pointed to a flower she’d stitched, the petals a deep burgundy. It grew everywhere in Scurry, choking the ground. A weed so resilient, even the soot couldn’t kill it.
“Widow’s lace?” I said softly. Again, she flinched.
In Scurry, she’d sewn clothes for an extra few farthings, I remembered. We’d wash scraps of discarded fabrics and rags, and she’d patch them together, turn them artful and new. She’d embroider embellishments on them and sell them to the neighbors.
When she continued to point at the cloth, I thought perhaps she meant it for me. I approached carefully and took it from her, ran my fingers over the thread. “Thank you.”
She only backed away and hummed softly, as though soothing herself. It was so pitiful I wanted to kill the ones who had brought her here.
Instead, I rubbed away the tears clouding my eyes and said something gentle. Her life had been anything but gentle.
“In the spring, we’ll go down to the river and get the very first flowers,” I said, the way she used to promise me in Scurry. She’d make that promise all the way through the winter. “We can weave the stems into little boats.”
More muttering, louder now.
“And we’ll pretend we’re aboard.” I swallowed, sinking beneath the sorrow of it all. “We’ll pretend we’re sailing away.”
“To a big place,” Rose said, only this time her eyes finally saw my face, taking on awareness.
“That’s right,” I breathed, forcing a smile. “And any door we knock on will open.”
She smiled thinly. “An’ we’ll go dancin’.”
I nodded.
There was an all-encompassing silence, and I thought perhaps she’d returned to the surface. Her eyes fell to the embroidery in my hand, then back to my face.
Hesitantly, she stepped close enough that I could touch her, close enough that she could reach for me. Her fingers lifted, as though she meant to touch my hair, tug on the blond coils of it again.
They stopped short. “I…” she began, floundering. “I’d do it all differently.” She shut her eyes tight, perhaps so she wouldn’t break once more.
I took her hand in my own and found it cold. She squeezed my fingers. A sob broke free.
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.