Chapter Thirteen
In the middle of the night, I lurch suddenly awake.
I lie still and listen, wondering what startled me.
Nothing in the room stirs. The window is dark glass, without even the faintest moonlight to silver it.
I breathe in the scent of the beeswax candles and the freshly laundered sheets and think perhaps my imagination has got the better of me.
Absurdly, I think of Sylvie’s ghost, and a chill prickles over my skin.
Then I hear it: a thump above, as if something heavy has hit the floor.
Sylvie’s room.
I roll out of bed and land on my bare feet, already beginning to Weave a cat’s cradle as I squint at the clock. It’s two in the morning. Nobody should be awake, not even her.
I creep down the corridor to the first stair; the steps creak no matter how softly I tread.
On the upper floor the hallway stretches into shadow.
My feet are chilled by the cold floorboards.
Light shines beneath Sylvie’s door, but all is quiet again.
In a tall painting beside me, a North ancestor looks down broodily; he has Conrad’s dark brows and wavy hair.
I give him a scowl and scurry past, every sense craning.
The threads between my hands quiver; with a breath of magic, they’ll release a spell to immobilize anything and anyone who might mean harm.
Another thump rattles Sylvie’s door and is followed by a crash.
I break into a run, reaching for magic, prepared to stun unconscious whatever’s on the other side of that door. Keeping my spellknot taut, I bend my thumb and little finger just enough to turn the knob—
—and stumble into a maelstrom.
Sylvie is spinning in midair, lit by the candles burning on her dresser, surrounded by a swirl of flying detritus: shoes, dolls, hairbrushes, vases, a great many wooden carvings of animals and warriors.
It’s all whirling around, faster and faster, objects crashing together and spinning away, bouncing off the walls.
“Rose!” Sylvie cries out. “Help!”
She flails around, tipping head over heels. Her window is open, and she’s heading straight for it; she’ll spin into the night and then, when the hovering knot around her ankle has worn out, she’ll plummet to her death.
I lunge across the room, dodging flying objects, and then leap, grabbing her by her heel just as she floats through the casement.
With a grunt, I pull her back inside and rip the knot off her ankle. The thread turns to ash in my hands—she was only a second away from falling three stories.
Sylvie collapses onto me, and we both crash to the floor.
Keeping low, for there are still dozens of items spinning overhead, I unravel the unused stunning knot I’d woven and rework it into a settling charm.
My first attempt fails, leaving my heart clenching, but the second works. The charm seizes the errant objects and gently returns them to the floor.
A moment passes, in which Sylvie and I both pant for breath, surrounded by a mess of toys and candlesticks and broken vases.
Then she rolls to her feet and spreads her arms wide, her face flushed and her hair wild.
“Did you see that?” she asks. “Did you see what I did?”
I slowly sit up, looking around. Each of the items I brought back to the floor has a little hovering charm bound around it.
Several of them are beginning to flake away, and the smell of ashes grows stronger.
In an arrangement of glass jars, vases, and cases along one wall, a good many frogs are frantically jumping around, excited by the activity.
At least she didn’t try to send those flying about, nor did she draw energy from them.
But the greenery in their cages—mounds of moss and weeds she’d planted for them to hide in—is all wilted and brown, sucked dry.
A clear sign of a clumsy amateur’s first Weaving.
“You can channel,” I whisper.
“I can channel!” She claps her hands, giggling. “I knew I could! I always knew it!”
“Sylvie, you can channel.”
“Aye.” She frowns. “We just discussed that.”
Rising to my feet, I pick up a carved oak Valkyrie, complete with a tiny wooden sword and cunningly shaped armor, and I recognize Mr. North’s artistry in it. Picking at the hovering charm tied around the figurine’s waist, I shake my head, speechless.
“The first few didn’t go right,” she says, anxiously peering over my shoulder as if I were a teacher grading her exam. “I had to work at it a bit. I forgot the loopy thing you did at the end.”
But it’s not her technique which steals my breath away—the knots are clumsy—but rather the fact she channeled so many at once.
I hold up the doll and frown at her. “Sylvie, have you ever channeled before?”
“I’ve tried, and I got a warm feeling all through me, but I never knew any knots. Nobody would teach me. I tried to learn battle spells from some spiders I caught in the larder, like Robert the Bruce did when he was fighting the English. But I guess they weren’t the same sort of spider.”
The question is, does Conrad know Sylvie has magic? He told me she’d been tested, and that nothing had come from it. Was the Weaver who tested Sylvie simply incompetent, or did Mr. North lie?
And if he did know she could channel, did he purposefully leave her untrained?
Because the only reason anyone would neglect a child’s magical aptitude . . . is because they want it to go away.
If left untended, the ability to channel fades over time.
A child fully capable of crafting a hovering charm at age five could lose the knack entirely by the time she is ten, if she is never taught how to control that energy.
That’s why it’s so important that young Weavers are trained early.
It’s what, I believe, my aunt intended to happen to me.
If I hadn’t been taken in by the Order of the Moirai when I was, I’d have lost the talent entirely not long after leaving her house.
Heat sparks in my chest, a waking dragon.
“Sylvie.” I keep my voice low and easy, so she can’t see the rage building to an inferno inside me. “Did your brother ever let anyone test you, to see if you had magical aptitude?”
“What does that mean?”
I kneel opposite her. Then, pulling the spare thread from my sleeve, I twine it around her fingers and mine; a four-hand cat’s cradle. She watches eagerly, eyes bright. The web is spread between us, threads quivering expectantly.
“It would have looked like this,” I say.
“Whoever was testing you—perhaps the schoolteacher in Blackswire—would have asked you to close your eyes and exhale very slowly, while thinking of these things: The wind pushing open a cracked door. A heavy cloud finally releasing rain. An oak shoot pushing up through the soil, finding the sunlight for the first time.”
“Like this?”
She shuts her eyes and breathes out; at once the thread between us glows blue white and crackles with frost, all the way up my fingers and then my arms. Above us, flakes of snow begin to fall from nowhere, lacy white and soft.
The air in the room turns frigid; my breath clouds white in front of my lips.
The damask drapes on the window and bed creak as they stiffen, ice riming the fabric.
The thread burns through to ash, powdering our hands.
“I did it again!” she says, holding her palms out to catch the snow. “What spell is that?”
“It’s a simple cold spell,” I whisper. “And no one ever asked you to do that?”
“No.”
So he did lie.
I look up at the snowfall, which begins to dwindle now. A few more flakes drift down and lace the carpet before dissolving into water. “You’re sure you haven’t done anything like this before?”
She scowls. “I told you I hadn’t! What’s wrong? You look angry.”
What’s wrong? What’s wrong is that Sylvie is ten years old. She has magic, yes, but she’s never used it before. Which means it should have faded away years ago. She shouldn’t be able to summon a thimbleful of energy.
But to fill all those hovering knots, and to react to the test like that .
. . I’ve only ever seen girls barely change the temperature of the thread, the difference all but imperceptible.
I remember my own test, administered by Sister Elizabeth three days after Lachlan addled my aunt’s mind.
I’d summoned enough cold to frost the tips of the old woman’s fingers, which had made her nearly giddy with astonishment.
Now, thanks to Sylvie, there is frost lacing my shoulders and collarbone, and cold water runs down my arms and face where the snow begins to melt.
I stare at Sylvie, at a loss for words, my mind vibrating between fury and wonder. She may be the most powerful Weaver I have ever encountered. Stronger than me, certainly, and to think for all these years, her talent has lain dormant, not only neglected but actively suppressed by her brother.
I rise to my feet and go to the door. “Sylvie, go to bed. It’s late.”
“What?” She blinks. “But—but we’re only just getting started!”
“Started at what?”
“Well . . .” She raises her hands. “My lessons.”
“Your lessons?” I shake my head. “I’m not here to teach you.”
“But you must.” Her eyes begin to well with tears. “I was going to show you what I could do, once I’d got it under control. I thought for sure you’d be my teacher. I want this. I want it more than anything in the world.”
I stand frozen in place, my pulse pounding in my ears. I glance at the shriveled plants in the terrariums and think of the damage an untrained Weaver can do.
“Please!” She clasps her hands together in supplication. “Nothing ever felt so right or wonderful or good! Please, Rose. I want to be like you. I want magic!”
I want magic, Aunt.
I have a right to it, same as anyone!
I shut my eyes, leaning on the door. I can hear my own voice, clearer than I ever have since that horrible night. My hands move subconsciously to my throat, to the burn scar on my neck.
“You have to teach me,” Sylvie says, and I open my eyes with a shudder. “We can practice in secret. Just you and me. Connie doesn’t ever have to know! Please?”
“You need a proper teacher,” I whisper. “I can’t—I’m not here to get involved. Even if I wanted to, I have my own—I have to go.”
“But, Rose—”
I flee down the hallway, fists clenched, so angry I could scream. That anger is good; it is hot and powerful, and before it, the memory of my aunt disappears. It’s so strong it’s almost like magic coursing through me, filling me with strength.
I will find Conrad North, and there will be a reckoning.