I didn't drain that night. I didn't sleep much, either.
Sometime before dawn, with the lamp turned down to a bead and Liesel's candle low and steady through the wall, I sat cross-legged on my bed and did what I'd done the morning after the tide, and the morning after the garden. I closed my eyes, and looked inward, and read.
It's hard to explain to anyone who hasn't been blessed. The skills aren't written anywhere. They're just there when you look for them, the way you know where your own hands are in the dark. When something changes, it feels like coming home and finding the furniture moved.
The furniture had been moved.
「Heal」. White. Green. Blue.
「Cure」. White. Green. Blue.
Three mana for a Blue pour. I did the sum without meaning to. Twenty-seven splashes in my pitcher, nine Blue pours if I spent nothing else. Nine. It sounded like very few, and like a great deal, depending on what you needed them for.
「Mass Heal」. Green. Blue. 「Vigor」. Green. Blue. The same as they'd been, only reaching one step higher.
Then something new.
「Mass Cure」. Blue. Cleanse every body within the circle of what should not be in it.
I read it twice. Every body within the circle. Venom, fever, rot in a wound. A whole line of wounded on a wall, cleared at once.
Then another.
「Discern」. Blue. Lay your hand upon them, and know what is wrong, and for how long.
And under that, as if someone had come back to add it, the way Naomi had come back to add a line to a letter:
Not who.
I sat with that one for a long time.
Then I went to 「Covenant」, because I always go to 「Covenant」 last. It's the one I'm most careful with.
「Covenant」. Blue.
Places: five. Bound: four.
Four candles in my chest. Naomi's still and straight, Marika's blazing, Hana's wavering. Liesel's, right through the wall. And next to them, where I'd never noticed anything before, a space. Not a candle. Just the shape where one could go, the way a table set for dinner has a place laid for someone who hasn't come.
And under the regeneration I already knew about, a line I'd never seen.
「Borrowed Light」. Those you hold may carry your light. White only. Every drop is yours.
I read that one five times.
Then I opened my eyes, and found the window had gone gray, and found that I was holding my own hands very tightly in my lap, the way I hold them when I'm trying not to do something.
(Big Sis.)
She answered at once. Naomi wakes before the sun.
(Here.)
(I need to come home today. Full pitcher. Everyone in the room.)
A pause. I could feel her decide not to ask.
(...Come,) said Naomi.
It was the rest day, which helped. By the middle of the morning, we were in the front room of the gray house with the door shut: Naomi in her chair by the cold fireplace, Hana on the edge of the settee with her notebook on her knees, Marika standing, because Marika was leaving for Greymark in two days and hadn't sat down since she'd been told. Liesel sat beside me with her spear across her knees and the tassel hanging off the end of it.
Wren waited in the hall. She knows about 「Covenant」; she doesn't know about the henhouse, and some of what I had to say would come close to it. When I'd asked her to wait outside, she'd nodded once and gone to stand with her back against the door, the way she does at the headmistress's.
"Full pitcher," said Naomi. "Everyone in the room. Go."
I went.
I told them about the circle that had come up blue over my chest, and about lying awake afterward, and reading. I told it in order, the way I'd found it, because Naomi likes things in order.
"Blue," said Naomi, when I'd got as far as 「Heal」.
"Blue."
"BLUE," said Marika. "Blue like Cassian? Cassian took two years—"
"Cassian didn't drain himself every night," said Hana, very quietly. She was already writing. "How much does a Blue cost? Three? So if you only had Blue, that's nine, and if you do ten for appearances first—" She stopped, pen in the air, and looked at me. "You'll keep pouring Green in the infirmary."
"The Crown knows Green," I said.
"Then the Crown can keep knowing Green," said Naomi.
I told them about 「Mass Cure」. Marika liked that one. I told them about 「Discern」, and when I got to the last line, Not who, nobody said anything for a while. Naomi looked at the window. Liesel looked at the tassel. I think we were all thinking about a cup in another kingdom that none of us had ever seen.
Then I told them about 「Covenant」.
"It's Blue too," I said. "And it's got five places now. Not four."
The room went still.
"Five," said Naomi.
"Five. Four of them are you. The fifth one's empty."
I could feel it in my chest even as I said it, that space beside the four candles, like a chair pulled out from a table.
Naomi looked at me for a long moment. She didn't look angry. She looked the way she looks at a map before a patrol, with all the roads on it.
"Do you have a plan for it?" she said.
Beside me, Liesel didn't move.
She didn't say anything. She didn't look at me. She looked down at her own left hand, lying on the shaft of her spear, at the pale ring on it, and turned it once with her thumb. That was all. If I hadn't been holding her candle in my chest, I wouldn't have known anything at all.
But I was. And it was flickering. Not the windy-night flicker it had always had, or the gale on the inner wall. Something smaller and more careful, like a flame somebody has cupped their hands around in a draft.
Her heart wasn't racing. Her hands weren't shaking. There was nothing in her body for the bond to carry, and I felt it anyway. That was new. Blue, it seemed, had brought that too.
I knew why. Everyone in that room knew why. In Octavia, a man is expected to take more than one wife. The court expects it. The Crown expects it. Mothers shout it out of upstairs windows. A man with a fifth place in his 「Covenant」 is a man with room for someone else, and nobody in this kingdom would think it was strange.
Liesel knew it better than any of us. She'd been raised in the palace. She didn't say a word.
I put my hand over hers on the spear, with the ring under my palm.
"No," I said. "No plan. Right now there's nobody. I didn't ask for the place, and I'm not looking for anyone to put in it. It's just there, the way the Blue was just there."
I looked at Naomi, and then at Liesel, and kept my hand where it was.
"If that ever changes, you'll hear it from me first. Out loud. Not from a court, or a mother at a window. From me."
Liesel still didn't say anything. But under my hand, very slowly, her fingers turned over and laced through mine. And her candle, in my chest, settled back to its usual flicker, which I have never been so glad to feel.
Naomi nodded once. "Noted."
Hana let out a breath she'd clearly been holding since five.
Marika, who had been frowning at the ceiling with great concentration, cleared her throat.
"Could you bind a goat?"
"No," said Naomi.
"I'm only asking. Hypothetically. For the fifth place. A goat can't marry anyone, so there'd be no—"
"No."
"General is very loyal—"
Liesel laughed. Out loud, suddenly, the way she had in the pie shop, and squeezed my hand so hard I felt the ring press into my palm.
"There's one more," I said, when everyone had stopped looking at Marika. "A passive. Under 「Covenant」." I took a breath. "I think you'd better all sit down."
"We are sitting down," said Naomi.
"Marika isn't."
Marika sat down.
"Those you hold may carry your light," I said. "White only. Every drop is yours."
Nobody understood it. I hadn't, either, the first five times.
"Carry your light," said Hana slowly. "Like... a lamp?"
"Like a circle."
Silence.
"Say it plainly," said Naomi.
So I did. "You can heal. All four of you. White 「Heal」 and White 「Cure」. Through me."
The front room of the gray house went so quiet I could hear the kitchen clock.
Women don't use magic. Not in Octavia, not in Bellonia, not anywhere. Not one, ever, in any story anyone has ever told. Every man is blessed at seventeen, and every woman is born strong enough to carry him out of a burning house, and that's the way the world is made. It's the first thing a child learns about the world, before letters. Hana had read me a hundred storybooks when I was small, and in every one of them the heroine had a sword, and none of them had ever opened a circle.
Hana's pen had fallen out of her hand. She didn't pick it up.
Marika said, "...What?"
Liesel's hand had tightened on her spear until her knuckles went white.
And Naomi sat very straight in her chair, and looked at me, and for the first time in my life I watched my eldest sister not know what to say.
It lasted about three breaths. Then she was Naomi again.
"If anyone sees one of us open a circle," she said.
"They'd know about 「Covenant」," I said. "And about you."
"They'd know a woman had done what no woman has ever done." Naomi's voice was very level. "Nobody sees. Ever."
"Can I—" said Hana. Her voice cracked. She tried again. "May I try?"
I looked at her. Hana, who has run every healing post Greymark has ever had with nothing but bandages and boiled water and her own two hands. Hana, who counted my patients for me from the first day because she couldn't heal any of them herself, and wanted to be useful anyway.
"Reach for me," I said. "The way you reach on the bond. Then a little further, past me. There's a pitcher. Take a splash."
Marika held out her hand without being asked. Her knuckles were scraped raw from the practice yard that morning; they always are.
Hana laid her palm over them. Her hand was shaking. She closed her eyes.
I felt her reach. It's hard to describe. It was like standing beside a well and feeling someone lower a cup into it, very carefully, so as not to spill.
Then a drop left me.
A circle opened under Hana's hand.
It was small and White and a little crooked at one edge, and all the way through it, like threads in a weave, ran fine bright lines of gold. It turned once, slowly, over Marika's knuckles. When it closed, the scrapes were gone.
Hana opened her eyes.
She looked at Marika's hand for a long time. Then she looked at her own. Then she burst into tears, so hard and so suddenly that Marika grabbed her by both shoulders.
"I've cried twice this week," Hana said, through it. "At least this time there isn't any bread."
Marika went next. Nobody was hurt, so she took the knife from the cheese board and pricked her own finger before Naomi could stop her. Her circle came up much too big, lopsided and flickering at the edges, as though she were trying to punch it open. It worked anyway. It was the ugliest circle I've ever seen, and her finger healed, and she stared at it with her mouth open.
"I DID MAGIC," said Marika.
She whispered it. For Marika, whispering means only the hall heard.
Through the door, very faintly, Wren hummed. One note. A question.
"Marika," said Naomi.
"I said magic," said Marika loudly, toward the door. "Fabian does magic. That's usual."
The hall went quiet. I'm almost sure Wren didn't believe her.
Naomi went third. Hana had burned her wrist that morning on the bread oven, a small red mark she hadn't mentioned. Naomi took Hana's hand without a word, and the circle that opened under her palm was small and perfectly round, White and gold, steady as a coin. It closed. The burn was gone. Naomi let go.
"Noted," she said, and that was all, but her hand wasn't quite steady when she put it back in her lap.
Liesel went last.
She took a long time. She looked at her left hand, and the ring, and at me. Then she held her palm out flat over the blister the spear always leaves at the base of her thumb, and closed her eyes.
I felt her reach. It was different from the others. Hana's had been careful, Marika's like a door kicked in, Naomi's exact. Liesel's felt like someone taking my hand in the dark.
A drop left me. The circle opened, White threaded with gold, right over her own palm. The blister went. She opened her eyes and looked at her hand for a long time, without saying anything.
Then Marika said, "Again."
I should have stopped her. I'll be honest: I didn't want to. I wanted to know what would happen, and so, I think, did Naomi, because she didn't stop her either.
Marika opened another circle over nothing at all. Then another. Then she showed Hana how she was doing it, and Hana tried it her own way, and they started arguing about it, and Liesel opened one beside them just to see if hers would come out the same shape. I sat on the settee and felt every drop leave. I counted. Fourteen of them were Marika's.
I felt the pitcher go down, splash by splash, the way you feel the level drop in a bucket you're carrying.
Then Marika reached for another circle, and nothing happened.
She frowned at her hand. She tried again. Nothing. No circle, not even a flicker.
"It's broken," said Marika.
"No," I said. "I'm empty."
They all turned to look at me.
The headache had come and gone already. 「Mercy of Elysia」: it knocked once, politely, and left. I felt fine. I felt like someone who'd been rained on and dried off again. But the pitcher was dry, all the way to the bottom, and there was nothing left in it for anybody.
"How many did we use?" said Hana, very quietly.
"All of it."
Marika looked at her own hand as if it had betrayed her. Then at me. "Sorry," she said. It might be the first time I've ever heard Marika say it without being told to.
"It's fine," I said, and it was. "I'd have drained it tonight anyway. And it still counts. For growing."
Naomi hadn't said anything. She was looking at the floor, at the place where all those small circles had opened and closed, and I could see her doing the sum.
"Every circle we open," said Naomi slowly, "is one he can't."
Nobody said anything to that.
"Then this is the rule." She looked up, at each of us in turn. Hana. Liesel. Marika, longest. "Nobody opens a circle unless someone is dying. And nobody sees. Ever."
"What if I'm the one dying?" said Marika.
"Then you may open one."
Marika thought about it.
"Tactics," said Marika.
Naomi closed her eyes. Hana laughed, and wiped her face.
I sat back and looked at the four of them, my three sisters and the girl I was going to marry, and thought about the space in my chest beside their candles. And then about a long road around the edge of a dark forest, where riders in dark armor had come and gone without a banner.
Marika would ride out onto that road in two days, with my light in her hands. I'd feel every drop she used, from all that way. I'd know, the moment it happened, that somebody on that road was hurt.
For the first time in my life, I hoped I wouldn't feel anything at all.