Chapter Forty-Four
He regarded me expectantly as if awaiting my reaction, the room around us silent except for the constant murmur of the rain.
In return, I gaped at him. I could not comprehend his words; each time I tried to grasp their meaning, it slipped further away from me, like a flame winnowing a match down to nothing. “I…I don’t understand.”
Sighing, Noé shifted, his angular body one long comma sloped leisurely in his seat.
“It is true that centuries ago, when the marriage edicts were canonized, most common people were frightened of your kind,” he said after a moment.
“Yet my ancestors—the early Weavers—were not the magicians the Balmoorish recognize them as today. At best, they were charlatans, proffering false potions and poultices for the general public. It was the silkwitches who possessed the kinds of abilities people now attribute to men like my father. My forefather, though…” His eyes met mine, steely and calm. “He was different.”
His throat flexed as he swallowed.
“His name was Aristide—Aristide Alaire. He was the person who discovered that silkwitch hair could be spun into magesilk—and that magesilk, in turn, could be used to weave enchantments,” Noé said. “Beyond that, though, he realized it could be used to bind.”
My skin went cold. “To bind?”
“Exactly,” Noé confirmed. “Few people today know that a vow forged with magesilk is unbreakable, so long as the magesilk itself is not destroyed. Aristide, my ancestor, was the first to learn of its potential. He wooed a young silkwitch—a girl named Léontine—and then, once she was firmly in love with him, he begged her to give him a hair from her head as a sign of her devotion. He tricked her, telling her that if she truly cared for him, she would swear an oath on the newly spun magesilk, pledging herself, and all her magic, to him.”
“He stole her power?” I asked. My heart had stopped; I could feel it, as hard and still as a rock in my chest.
“And bound it to himself, yes,” Noé replied.
“Poor Léontine didn’t realize what had happened to her until it was too late.
She tried to revoke the promise, but so long as the magesilk it had been made with continued to exist, it was unbreakable.
To ensure she did not destroy it, Aristide placed the strand in a ring, which he kept on his person always—the first seal.
” His features darkened. “He drained Léontine completely,” Noé finished.
“Until even the final remnants of her power had left her.”
A shudder passed through me. “What do you mean,” I asked, “drained?”
He regarded me sympathetically. “It happens gradually,” Noé said.
“Like water seeping through a crack in a jug. After a bond has been forged, each time a Weaver calls upon his wife’s gift—her magic—he pulls a bit more of her Wit out of her body and into himself.
As his power waxes, hers wanes, until eventually, all the ability that was once hers resides inhim. ”
His fingers twitched against his armrest in distaste.
“Men like my father want you to believe that our bloodlines are powerful, but in truth, nothing separates Weavers from any other citizens of Balmoore except for the secrets we pass down through our lineages and the magic we steal.” Noé went on.
“Think of it. Have you ever witnessed an unmarried Weaver express even a hint of magical potential? I told you myself that I was powerless when we walked in the garden, and you thought nothing of the disclosure, because the mythology we have built is so strong.”
He had. The realization was jarring. He’d confessed the truth of his magic to me the first time we’d spoken privately, the same way he’d slipped me the hint about his father’s upcoming trial: like a card dropped into my pocket for later examination. I’d found one clue. How had I missed the other?
I resisted the impulse to put my hand to my chest, where my own Wit was curled like a sleeping cat without a door to awaken it. A Weaver possessing it… The idea was beyond my comprehension. It would be like losing a limb.
“Our blessings, then,” I said. “They aren’t meant to fade.”
Noé smiled, a sardonic lift of his mouth.
“It is curious, isn’t it, how easily we accept the explanations we’ve been given?
That silkwitch abilities fade once a girl reaches maturity, while Weaver magic doesn’t blossom until after marriage,” he said.
“When in reality, it is all by design. We spin lies about your blessings disappearing, engineer the system so that those of you who fail to marry early enough are carted off to the cloisters before they can wonder why their gifts haven’t left them yet.
When, in fact, it is the wedding ceremony itself that causes them to ultimately vanish. ”
The quiet was back, soaring out from where it had been lurking, curled in the corner of the room.
His confession was like a boundary; we lingered, unmoving, on opposite sides of it, each of us waiting for the other to act.
My thoughts stuttered; I could barely process it, all that he’d revealed to me.
I feared swallowing it would make me choke.
“But even if all you’re saying is true,” I replied at last, “why are silkwitch Wits so limited and Weaver gifts so comparatively strong? Is it something to do with the binding?”
Noé shook his head. “You are told your Wits are limited,” he corrected.
“From the time their blessings manifest, silkwitches are isolated, made to compete with one another for husbands, and then removed from society if they fail to secure one. In truth, though, your talent with doors is likely only the start of your abilities. If you were trained—if your gift had time to develop and grow—I’d imagine you’d be able to accomplish far more.
Passing through walls, possibly, or other limiting surfaces.
Perhaps even forming new entryways where none previously existed. ”
I drew a breath. “So your father…”
“Stole my mother’s Wit without her knowledge when they wed, yes.” Noé lifted a brow in confirmation. “Just as he wished me, last year, to steal Ophelia’s.”
Both of us stiffened as, from beneath the rug, there came a muffled clatter—something falling deep below us, in the hollow dark of the tunnels.
I’d been so absorbed in his speech, I’d almost forgotten that the Weaver King himself was still unaccounted for, roaming Fortblanche like a rogue beyond the gates.
By now, he must have found Clio’s unconscious body where I’d left it in the tunnels.
Once he realized I was not with her, would he return?
Noé seemed to sense the threat as keenly as I did, his fingers flexing over the armrests of his chair. “Eliot has told you the nature of Ophelia’s Wit, I’m sure,” he resumed. “Her gift of intuition?”
At my nod, he continued. His speech was quicker now, urgent.
“My father prized it greatly,” he said. “Imagine what such an ability might grow into if left to mature—he was determined to have it for our line. But…” He hesitated.
“Father has always underestimated your kind. He sees silkwitches as cocoons, ripe for harvest; he forgets that you can act without his compelling you to.”
“Ophelia’s Wit led her to the tunnels,” Noé went on roughly. “Unlike Eliot, she’d never spent much time in Fortblanche prior to the competition—once she came into her blessing, her own father kept her on a tight social leash—but while she was here, she made up for it and then some.”
He paused again, angling himself away from me. Somehow I understood that the move was protective—that he did not wish me to see the emotion in his eyes. The thought left me uneasy.
“I should have realized she was looking into something,” Noé went on, and I jerked to attention again.
“She was exhausted constantly, always missing meals, arriving late to meetings we’d arranged, but honestly…
I was just so happy she was here at all that I didn’t bother to question her. I neverthought—”
His voice caught; abruptly, he stood and crossed to the windows, putting his back to me.
“I never thought I would marry for love,” he continued softly, to the rain.
“After she and I realized our affections for one another, that possibility usurped all else. I didn’t care about the competition, so long as she won it.
” His voice lowered, a wrathful undertone slipping into it.
“I let my father do whatever he wished.”
His loathing fell heavy, like a pall over the room.
Shivering beneath it, I regarded him—his hunched form by the windows, his dark brows furrowed with the consternation of a vigil-keeper.
Whatever else I thought of him and his actions, I realized, I believed that Noé Alaire had loved Eliot’s sister.
And I understood, too, that his affection had not been enough.
It seemed a long while before I spoke again. “But then she found the door.”
Noé glanced at me slowly, as if he’d forgotten I was there. “Exactly,” he said, collecting himself. Shifting, he leaned to press his back against the window behind him.
The entrance to the study, I noticed, he’d left unguarded; I wondered if he knew, as I did, that I was too caught up in his story to leave without hearing its end.
“Ophelia found the moonless door,” Noé elaborated.
“She never did get her hands on the key, though in the end it didn’t matter—even without glimpsing the chamber, her Wit allowed her to intuit its purpose.
She confronted me about it during the final ball.
” Glancing down, he picked at his nails again.
“My father hadn’t told me the truth of our kind at that point,” Noé admitted.
“I think he was withholding it deliberately in case my feelings for Ophelia dissuaded me from binding her, but it mattered little.”