Supper was a simple affair that night. Sharp cheese with grapes and an apple tart that smelled delicious, though Claire couldn’t manage anything more than a few bites. Kleo’s note, though now just soft ash in the Wefts’ stove, seemed to have burned a hole in Claire’s stomach.
At first bells, Claire was to leave the Wefts’ townhouse, and by second bells, she should be on the Weaver’s Bridge, meeting up with Kleo and the narrowboat she’d arranged to slip Claire far away from Thorn’s bright-blue eyes—and the Love Knot Tine … unless she could find a way to break it free in just a few short hours.
Grown-ups always complained about time, but before now, Claire had thought she had too much of it. Long classes about even longer division would drag on for what seemed like days, and boring summer afternoons weeding the garden felt like an eternity. But now … Claire would give anything for those lengthy moments. In Arden, she could feel time slipping past her, rushing her recklessly forward like rivers nearing a waterfall.
The faster it flowed, the closer she was to disaster.
The closer she came to losing Sophie forever.
“Elaina?”
Someone tapped Claire’s shoulder, and she looked up to see Mistress Weft gazing down at her, a worry line between her brows. “I was wondering if I could take your plate, dear,” she said, and from her tone, Claire had the feeling this wasn’t the first time she’d asked.
“I can do it,” Claire said quickly, scooting back the wicker chair. She reached for the other empty plates on the table. “Where should I put these?”
“The sink is just fine,” Mistress Weft said, gesturing to the dishes already stacked there. “We’ll deal with it in the morning.” Mistress Weft glanced at the pile of wool that still needed to be spun before her eyes slid to Lyric, who’d excused herself earlier and was again practicing the steps in front of the fireplace.
As she watched, Lyric rose onto her toes, executing a crisp pirouette. She spun faster and faster, looking for all the world like a top, when suddenly—
Thump.
She was sprawled on the wooden floor.
“Lyric, dear, are you all right?” Mistress Weft asked, setting down the spindle she’d just picked up.
Lyric sat there, seemingly surprised. “Of course I’m not! How can I be? I don’t know the steps. And Kleo—she promised—argggh!”
Lyric leaped to her feet and ran toward the stairs. Claire knew that in any other, non-Spinner household, they would be hearing the stomp of her feet up the stairs, but the cushy carpet completely muted the sound. It was too bad, really, Claire thought sympathetically. Sometimes, the loud declaration of a stomped foot was helpful in getting rid of anger. The sound meant that she was here, and she was important, and she should be paid attention to. That’s what Mom had explained when Sophie had started getting particularly moody and was slamming doors on a near weekly basis.
“Sorry you had to see that,” Mistress Weft said. “I’ll go and check on her.”
But Claire again saw how the woman’s eyes sized up the amount of wool still left to be tamed.
“I’ll go,” Claire said, quickly placing the plates in the sink and wiping her hands on a nearby towel. Sometimes when people were upset, they wanted to be left alone, but from the expression in Lyric’s eyes … Claire thought that maybe just the opposite was happening.
And if she was really going to run away tonight, she’d at least have to say good-bye to Lyric first.
Claire climbed the stairs and stopped in Kleo’s room to grab something from her Hollow Pack before she tapped on Lyric’s bedroom door. “Lyric? Can I come in?”
There was no response, which Claire took as a good sign. She let herself through.
Lyric had flopped onto her bed and was staring wide-eyed up at her canopy, while her braids and loops hung over the mattress’s edge, nearly brushing the floor.
“What do you want?” Lyric asked. She didn’t sound mad, only glum.
“I just wanted to see how you were.” Claire replied with the truth. “And to say, I think you looked really good during practice. I think you have a chance.”
Lyric sighed, and the sound wrapped around the room. “I don’t know about that. Maybe if Kleo were here to help …” She rolled onto her belly and looked at Claire. “She left us earlier than she had to, you know. She had an entire summer she could have spent with Mama and me before she started on her journeyman trials. She has her whole life to be a historian!”
Claire was confused. “But you’re also rushing away to something,” she pointed out. “You want to go be a part of the queen’s court.”
“So I can see Kleo!” Lyric said, flopping again into the pillows. “She was Historian Fray’s former apprentice. Historian Fray will make sure she’s at court. She’ll probably be the youngest royal recorder and I’ll just be … silly little Lyric, stuck at home.”
Though Lyric’s story was different from Claire’s, the words were familiar to her. There had been so many times—even before the ladder—that Sophie had gone off and left her.
“She’s just spreading her wings,” Claire said, repeating what Mom had often said to her about Sophie.
Lyric snorted, and Claire remembered how useless those words had first sounded to her. What had actually cheered her up was when Mom said that she could invite her friend Catherine over, and they’d spent a fun afternoon together, watching movies that Sophie would have called babyish. There were no screens in Arden, but that didn’t mean she and Lyric couldn’t do something fun. Claire reached into her pocket and pulled out what she’d stopped to collect from her room: a bit of chalk.
“Hand me your Flyers?” Claire said, and when Lyric looked at her, startled, Claire just smiled and shook her head. “It’s a surprise. Trust me.”
With the chalk, Claire began to draw lightly on the underside of her dance shoe. A comfortable silence settled over the room, but with Lyric around, the quiet never lasted long.
“I’m sorry,” she said unexpectedly from her pile of pillows.
“For what?”
“For your thoughts getting Gathered. If I hadn’t been caught, you wouldn’t have had to turn around to rescue me.”
“True,” Claire admitted, and paused her sketch. “But then I wouldn’t have known how to ask the Spyden my question.”
“Do you remember what you asked?” Lyric said, sitting up. “Are your memories coming back?”
“Uh, no,” Claire said, trying not to feel too bad about deceiving Lyric. Because technically they weren’t coming back. She’d always had them.
Again she began to draw, and the images flowed, as if they’d always meant to exist …
“Oh, wow!” Lyric grabbed the shoes from Claire moments later. “It’s beautiful!” She held the soles out so Claire could examine her own handiwork. Two unicorns now pranced on the bottom of Lyric’s Flyers. One reared up, his horn piercing a crescent moon Claire had just managed to fit in the corner, while the other unicorn jumped over a curtained stage.
“When my sister had a dance recital, she’d always ask me to draw something lucky on the soles for her before she went out to perform,” Claire explained. “And the chalk should stop you from slipping again.” It wasn’t Gemmer magic, though chalk was made from crushed stone—just something useful she’d learned at Sophie’s dance classes as she’d watched the students rub the dust onto their slippers. Okay, maybe she’d done a little Gemmering, just to make sure the chalk would stick longer than usual and hold its design, but that was it.
Claire glanced away from her drawings to smile at Lyric, but the girl was already throwing herself at Claire for a hug. “Elaina!” she squealed excitedly. “Your memories, they’re coming back! You remember you have a sister!”
Claire smiled. It couldn’t hurt to say the total truth for once. “I do.” She settled comfortably against the pillows and watched as Lyric tried out her newly chalked shoes. “And I miss her.”
Claire knew she would miss Lyric, too, as she watched the younger girl, inspired, begin to practice her dance moves on her own. But Claire couldn’t risk telling her the plan. An uncomfortable thought brushed against her. Was this how Sophie felt all those times she’d chosen to leave Claire in the dark? If it was … well, Claire still didn’t like it, but maybe she understood her older sister just a little bit more.
Claire was about to say good night, instead of good-bye, and head to Kleo’s empty room to pack when her eyes settled on a pile of books stacked up next to Lyric’s bed: Royal Compendium, Histories of Arden’s Queens and Kings, Journals of Majesty. And last but not least, The Crown and Its Making.
No wonder Lyric had been able to answer the director’s question! She’d been doing her homework, throwing her heart and soul into becoming an expert on the d’Astora family. That was another thing about Lyric that made Claire think about Sophie. Sophie, too, would become invested in a certain topic or era and become an expert on everything about it. So far, Claire had been a part of Experiences involving Greek gods, Shakespeare’s plays, and right before she went into the hospital, Jane Goodall and other naturalists.
“Can I see your books?” Claire asked.
Lyric nodded, too out of breath from her deep knee bends to respond.
Flipping The Crown and Its Making to its index, Claire scanned the topics for something that could be helpful. She thought “The Breaking of the Crown” might hold something useful, but the pages there, written by a Spinner historian named Alice the Acute, contained only information Claire already knew: that the Spinners had chosen to display their portion of the crown proudly, while the other three guilds were more secretive about what had been done to their tines: if they had been hidden, destroyed, or maybe even lost.
She flipped the pages again—and froze.
It was a simple drawing, done in ink and charcoal. It didn’t prance across the page, but Claire had seen it before and not only seen it—but drawn it: a queen and princess, their backs toward the viewer, stared upon the Crown of Arden.
“Hey, Lyric?” Claire called, and the girl came over. Claire pointed to the sketch. “What is this?”
“Oh, I love it, don’t you?” Lyric said. “This is supposedly a sketch that Queen Estelle drew—well, Princess Estelle, actually. This is just a copy—I think the original might have gotten destroyed in the great flood, about one hundred and fifty years after the war.”
“Do you mind if I borrow this?” Claire asked, already shutting the book and clutching it to her chest. Lyric nodded, and Claire hurried to the guest room and closed the door. She went to her cloak pocket and pulled out the sketch she’d done, along with the pink marble she’d found in Woven Root. Carefully, she flipped open the book and placed her sketch next to it. With barely a thought, she polished the pink marble to a glow so that she could see the details more carefully.
Claire’s breath caught. Her sketch was exactly the same as the one in the book, right down to the border of geese. But how, if Claire had never seen this image before? Nervously, she nibbled on the end of her pencil.
The pencil.
Claire pulled it away from her lips.
Letter stone was rare in Arden, and pencils were treasured. This was the only pencil she’d seen in Arden. Legend was that it had belonged to Charlotte Sagebrush, who’d created Arden’s first alphabet. Claire wasn’t sure if that was true or not, but she knew for sure who had been its owner before her: Scholar Terra. Otherwise known as Queen Estelle d’Astora.
What if Queen Estelle had had this pencil since she was a little girl? It was a rare enough treasure to be fit for a royal gift.
Her fingers traced the drawing she’d done that afternoon. Rocks held the memory of the earth—isn’t that what she’d learned in Arden? They contained imprints of all the creatures that had once swum in the seas and walked on the land. Claire had even witnessed for herself how a stone forest could keep the echoes of a unicorn hunt. If petrified wood could do all that, why couldn’t the letter stone in her hand remember what it had been asked to draw before?
Wonder swept through Claire. Her sketch was not her sketch at all but an echo of the queen’s sketches, done so long ago. The pencil had somehow recognized the crown Claire had been drawing, and its memory of that moment had been released. That dream within Claire, that almost memory, was a memory, but not Claire’s. It had belonged to Princess Estelle.
Claire’s eyes darted to the corner of the page, and excitement began to course through her. She knew how to open the Diamond Tree Vault!
A slight gasp came from over her shoulder. Claire had been so absorbed in her thoughts that she hadn’t even been aware of Lyric opening the door to the guest room.
“Elaina,” Lyric said, taking a step closer. “What’s that?”
Confused, Claire glanced back at the girl. Lyric’s eyebrows had risen into twin arcs above very round eyes that were staring at the pink marble that sat forgotten … and glowing. Claire slapped her hand over it, but it was too late.
“Elaina,” Lyric whispered, “are you a Gemmer?”