3

THIS TIME, I think as I fill my bag, this time, I won’t come back. I’ve been hiding in my room since Owen’s command that I marry into House Canroth, wondering what to do. My mother has given up knocking on my door.

Outside, the night is heavy and wet. There are no stars and the only sound is the sea breathing, the constant measured rasp of the surf. Dawn is not far off, and it won’t be long before the starlings and servants awake. I’ve only a handful of brass left after buying Ilven’s gift. I’ve never had to worry about money; if ever I needed something, the servants bought it for me, and transactions were handled discreetly, from accounts that I have never seen. Now I wish I’d asked for a coin here or there. A few brass bits won’t buy me more than a worker’s tea, but I take them anyway. Them and the contents of my jewelry box.

On second thought, I put most of the jewelry back. It will be too obvious. Instead, I take only a few of the older pieces—a necklace, a set of hideous earrings, and three old but still valuable hair clips. Small ones, ones that I last wore when I was five or six. No one will notice that these are missing. I shove them into my bag.

I pause at the tiny enameled scriv-box. It opens at the slightest pressure of my finger, revealing the meager amount of scriv inside. The dust is made of fine gray grains, like ashen sand, and smells like citrus and musk. The smell of magic. I should take this—without it I am nothing, powerless as a Hob.

Without it I have almost no magic. Like all high-Lammers, I am a lucky accident of birth, gifted with a talent that can be expanded by something as simple as a mineral. A mineral unfortunately rare and extremely addictive. This—this dust—rules our lives. Sometimes I wonder if it would be better had there been no magic at all.

There are tales of Hobs who had natural magic unfettered by a dependency on scriven, who were created after House Mallen opened the Well—the source of all the wild, uncontrolled magic in our land—but the sharif-councils and the Great Houses have killed any of those Hobs that might once have existed.

The only ones who are allowed to use magic are the high-Lammers. We’re bound to the scriv, so our magic is tempered. We can’t accidentally flatten cities or bring down a plague. And of the Lammic practitioners of magic, there are only three accepted types: War-Singers like myself, who can manipulate air; Saints, who can see the future; and Readers, who can tell people’s emotions from the flare of their auras.

The Well is sealed.

All the Hobs with magic have been destroyed. The animals twisted by the opening of the Well have been harnessed or hunted. The unicorns that were once goats are again our beasts of burden, the lions-turned-sphynxes are killed for their coats, even the little wyrms, tiny legless dragons, are no more than an occasional lucky find in a gardener’s compost heap. Now there is only us—the Houses. Scriv.

I snort softly. Am I ready to give this up—to become like the mundane Hobs? The grains are cool against my fingertips, stirring up the sharp smell, the musty illusion of power. I have never been allotted more than the barest amount at a time; my brother controls exactly how much scriv my mother and I are allowed.

It is the same in all Houses. My status as War-Singer is little more than a hollow title. I will never be allowed to be truly powerful. I accepted that I would see only two years of real training at university, nothing like my brother’s seven. Not unless there’s another war with the Mekekana and we need every Lammer to fight them off. Not that there’s any chance of that happening after their thorough trouncing.

I rub the scriv between my fingers and let it fall back. Of what use to me are illusions?

The scriv-box closes with a clean snap. The leaping silver dolphins on the lid, picked out against the blue enamel sea, grin up at me in gentle mockery. No one will believe my little fabrication if I take my scriven with me.

I ache to take it, to not leave it here to waste.

Instead, I force myself to turn away.

The shawl I’ve chosen for tonight is my favorite—golden-brown sea silk in a delicate scallop pattern, beaded with the smallest of amber glass seeds. I wrap it around a pair of embroidered shoes and tuck the bundle under my arm. I’m wearing my oldest, shabbiest dress, thick woolen stockings against the chill, a rough coat, and a pair of sturdy boots. They were meant for walking, but I’ve never had much chance to use them and the leather is stiff and uncomfortable.

They also squeak. I curse the Gris-damned boots under my breath. I’ll never get out of the house without using magic.

I turn back to the little box sitting expectantly on the mantelpiece and exhale a long breath I didn’t even know I was holding. Just one pinch, that’s all it’ll take. And this will be the last I have.

No one will notice if a few grains are missing. I step forward to press the catch.

The last time. You should make the most of it, I tell myself, as I take the smallest pinch of scriv possible. The dust fills my nose with the sharp smell of magic, and then, all around me, the air is real, solid. Carefully, I use my scriv-enhanced abilities to hold sound in place as I step over the collection of cold tea things outside my doorway and creep down the winding turret stairs, past the second-floor wing where my mother sleeps, past the ranks of servants’ rooms, farther and farther down, till I am in the long open tearoom.

The house is held still and silent with my magic, but already I can feel the edges of sound filtering back in. I barely took enough to last five minutes. There’s no going back.

The last of the scriv-high fades just as I turn the bone key in the front door. Outside, the night waits, clammy-handed.

The door shuts softly.

In the kennels, one of my brother’s dragon-dogs whines, perhaps hearing the faint click of the lock. My breath held, I wait, the seconds slipping past. The dog shuffles. The steady thump thump thump of its heavy tail against the wood is like a fist beating on a door. It makes me pant faster, just trying to suck some air down a too-tight throat. The throbbing bruises on my neck feel like they go all the way to the inside. The sound fades, and the air tastes like burning copper when I am finally able to breathe normally again. Damning myself for not taking more scriv, I inch along the path.

The darkness is a blanket. I stumble over the shadows of things that are not there, falling and scraping my knees and palms on the seashell grit that edges each paving stone. This time the dog must hear me, for it yaps once into the starless night. Another dog joins it, and soon all my brother’s damned dragon-dogs are baying and barking in a frenzy. Their howls echo against the distant forested hills.

Not bothering to be silent now, I run for the long shadows of the box firs that grow alongside our house. Protected from the worst of the sea-winds, they grow tall. I huddle in between them, the fresh piney scent filling my nostrils. Under it is the heady loam of the soil, grounding me.

“There anyone out?” calls a woman’s voice. Firell.

I shut my eyes and press myself against the wall, dampening the back of my coat. Go away.

Instead of magically hearing my thoughts and disappearing back into the house, Firell walks down the pathway. Her boots thud on the stone. She pauses, and I want to scream. Then the footsteps fade away.

Oh Gris. Thank all the Old Saints that Hobs aren’t any more magical than a handful of dried beans. I’m about to leave my little piney sanctuary when I hear her voice again, soft and coaxing, and the rattle of the wooden latch to the dogs’ enclosure. The hounds have stopped barking, and while there’s nothing for me to fear from the dogs, I suddenly wish that I had spent less time with them.

The first comes haring up the pathway, claws clicking on stone. I close my eyes again and tip my head back against the wall in resignation. A few seconds later a cold nose is touching my hand. The bitch whines and licks at my fingers.

“Go away, Mar,” I whisper. “Shoo!”

Mar sits down on her haunches and gazes up at me with brown-eyed devotion, her long red tail sweeping the paving.

“No treats,” I hiss. “Go on! Shoo!” I flap at her with my hands, but the dog is used to getting little tidbits or scraps of meat from me, not being shoved away. She just sits there and whines low.

“What’s there, girl?” Firell’s voice is nervous. She must have a lantern because a warm orange spill of light is bouncing along the ground, lapping at my hiding place.

It’s no use. I push my hands against the wall in anger and then step out into the light.

Firell almost drops the fatcandle lamp. “Miss!” She presses one hand to her mouth and then lets it fall again. Her eyes narrow. “What are you doing out here? You’ll catch your death.”

“Firell.”

She stops her solicitations over my health and takes in the clothes I’m wearing. A frown gathers across her face. “I don’t understand,” she whispers.

“Can you keep a secret?”

“I-I—”

“Look,” I snap. “It’s simple. You’re not to say you’ve seen me here tonight, no matter who asks.” I smile at her. “Come now, Firell, sweet. I brought you a gift. Are we not friends?”

The Hob stares at me, her free hand going automatically to the little bulge in her apron pocket.

“Please,” I say, resorting to begging. “I just can’t stay here.” I look wildly about me, expecting that any minute now, alerted by the noise, my mother will come trundling down from the house with her clothes in disarray and servants following her like the tide.

“Miss,” she says again. “Miss, I can’t lie to your mother.” Her face is almost pale in the darkness, ashy with fright. “You know I can’t.”

“You’re a Hob,” I say. “You lie to her all the time—about how much sugar you put in your tea or how many slices of bread you’ve taken.”

“That I don’t,” Firell says. “Here.” She pulls the necklace from her pocket and throws it at my feet. “I don’t want none of your gifts.”

“Firell, please.” I’m desperate now. “I’m sorry, sorry. I didn’t mean it, truly. Keep the necklace, but please just do me this one thing, and I’ll never ask anything more of you.” I hug myself, shivering at the thought of being forced into a future I don’t want. Or of the punishment that waits for me if I don’t do as I’m told. Owen is not a man prone to forgiveness.

She looks at me with sudden understanding. “When I was just a Hobling,” she says, “my mam told me I’d be coming here to help look after a little girl—a little high-Lammer girl. And I didn’t have no say in the matter.”

I stay quiet, watching her, my fingers tightening on my coat lapels.

“I thought you were lucky—no scrubbing nothing, clothes laid out for you every morning, tea in bed. And all I wanted was to go back to being a Hobling in Stilt City, at play. I hated you so much, every day for years.” She kneels and takes Mar by the collar, holding her still. “Go on then,” she says. “I didn’t never see you here tonight.”

“Thank you.” But the Hob woman has already turned away, dragging the dog with her. On the ground, the little gift still lies. I drop to one knee, scoop it up, and jam it deep into my coat pocket.

I wait a few heartbeats, letting the silence of the night drift around me in a thick mist before I set off again. This time I keep to the long shadows where the darkness gathers thickest, picking my way across the silvery damp grass until I reach the edge of the world. Below, the rocks and waves are grinding against each other, and the wind sucks at me, begging me to take one more step, to throw myself down. Sacrifice, the water says in its sea-witch voice, full of whispers and promises. Sometimes I have to wonder if the Hob belief that the sea is animate, alive and full of magic, is more than just primitive nonsense.

Instead, I kneel and pull a rock free from the cliff edge. The wind tugs at the golden-brown silk as I unwind and rewrap the shawl around the shoes and the lump of pale chalk. Then I stand, take a careful step away from the edge, and hurl the shawl out into the ocean.

That’s all the sharif will find of me.