(...Hello, Big Sis,) said Marika.
Nobody in the henhouse breathed. I could feel all of them: Hana's candle shrinking down as small as it would go, as if it could hide behind its own wick. Liesel's sitting bolt upright on the other side of my wall. Marika's, nine days' ride away, flickering like someone who has just heard her full name called from the bottom of the stairs.
And Naomi's. Still and straight and so bright it hurt.
(A hare,) said Naomi.
(...It was a very good mask.)
(It had ears, Marika.)
(Nobody saw my face. That was the point of the ears. People look at the ears.)
(People looked at a woman opening a circle.)
Marika didn't have an answer to that. Neither did I.
(Do you know what happens,) said Naomi, and her voice in my chest went short again, shorter than I'd ever heard it, (if one person on that road works out who Mari is? One. A carter with a good memory. A girl who's heard a Valcrest laugh before.)
Nobody said anything.
(They don't come for you,) said Naomi. (Nobody cares how a woman heals. They come for where the light comes from.)
I felt it land on all four of them at once. They'd come for me.
(Big Sis,) I said.
(I know what you did, too.)
(I know you know.)
(Eleven.) Her voice didn't change. (You could have told me at one.)
(I could have.)
(Why didn't you?)
There's no lying in the henhouse. I thought about it for a while before I answered, because I wanted to give her the true thing and not the easy one.
(Because she sounded so happy,) I said. (At the ford. I could feel it from here. She's never been the one who heals, Big Sis. Not once in her whole life. I wanted her to have it for a little while before you took it away.)
The henhouse was very quiet.
(She healed a little girl's fever,) said Hana, in a very small voice. (On a doorstep. The village didn't have a physician. The miller's girl told me.)
(And a carter's hand,) said Liesel. (And three girls at a mill, the rumor says, who all cut themselves on the same blade. Which I don't understand.)
(Nobody understands that,) said Marika.
Naomi didn't say anything for a long time. When she did, her voice was still short, but it wasn't as sharp at the edges.
(Did they get better?)
A pause, from a long way down the road.
(All but one,) said Marika. (A girl with a broken leg. White can't. I set it with my hands.)
Another long silence. I could feel Naomi thinking, the way you can feel a heavy door deciding whether to swing.
(Mari is finished,) said Naomi.
(...Yes, Big Sis.)
(The mask goes in the fire.)
(Can it go on General instead? He'd look very—)
(Fire, Marika.)
(...Yes, Big Sis.)
(And from now on,) said Naomi, (every drop you take from our brother, for any reason, you write down. The name, the wound, the place, the hour. In ink. And you send it to me.)
The silence from Greymark was the longest yet.
(Write?) said Marika, faintly.
(In ink.)
(Big Sis, I'd rather fight a Broodmother.)
(I know,) said Naomi. (That's why.)
Hana made a sound that might have been a laugh or a sob or both. Through the wall, I heard Liesel lie back down.
Then, before anyone could say goodnight, Marika spoke again. Not loudly. Her voice had changed.
(Big Sis. While I've got you. The riders came back.)
Everyone's candle went still at once.
(Where?) said Naomi.
(The forest road. Same place, near where it bends toward Greymark. More of them this time. Thirty, maybe. Dark armor, still no banner. They sat on their horses at the edge of the trees for an hour and looked at the wall.) A pause. (Then they went back into the Gloamwood. Like they knew the way.)
Nobody said anything to that. Nobody needed to. Nobody knows the way through the Gloamwood. That's what the Gloamwood is for.
(Not yet,) said Naomi at last, very quietly, as though she were talking to herself. (Not yet. If they come again, I'm coming home.)
Marika's first report came eleven days later, in ink, in a hand so furious it had gone through the paper in two places.
Day one. Nobody. I didn't take any. Marika.
The second said the same. So did the third. On the fourth day there was one line: Guard on the wall, splinter, wouldn't come out, one drop, I'm sorry, it was a big splinter. On the fifth, she'd drawn a small, angry hare in the margin and then crossed it out so hard the nib had snapped.
Hana told me Naomi read every one at breakfast without a word, folded it into thirds, and put it in her coat.
I counted the days in the infirmary instead.
The bottle chalked DO NOT sat on the windowsill above our table through the whole of that month, through sun and rain and one afternoon when Mistress Salvia, the infirmary mistress, opened the window too wide and it rocked and Felix caught it one-handed from across the room without spilling his own tea. Every afternoon, he held it to his ear. Every afternoon, it hissed.
On the twenty-ninth day, he didn't pick it up at all. He just sat and looked at it, with his chin on his folded arms.
On the thirtieth, Ambrose took it down.
He didn't say anything. He set it on the table between the three of us, and laid his hand flat on top of it for a moment, the way he'd held the water still on the very first day. Then he looked at Felix, and slid it across.
"Yours," said Ambrose.
Felix looked at the bottle. Then at Ambrose. For a moment I thought he was going to make a joke, because I could see him reaching for one. He didn't find it.
He snapped the wire bail back with his thumb.
The cork came out with a soft pop, louder than the first one, as if it had been waiting. A breath of something like a thunderstorm came out after it. And inside the stone bottle, when Felix tipped it to the light, the water was fizzing. Still fizzing, after thirty days in the dark, silver threads coming up from the bottom, and in among them, turning slowly, round and round, a faint green light.
Nobody breathed.
Ambrose reached for his penknife.
"Please—" I started.
"No," said Felix.
He held out his own hand. Ambrose looked at it, then at him, then, very gravely, handed him the knife.
Felix cut his thumb. Not deep. He looked at the blood for a moment, as if it belonged to someone else. Then he poured a little of the fizzing water over it, and closed his eyes.
I watched his light. The new thread of yellow at his thumb, bright and small. And then, slowly, the way it always does with the bottles, it faded, until there was nothing at his thumb but white.
Felix opened his eyes and looked at his hand.
"Prickly," he said. His voice cracked straight down the middle. "Inside."
Then he put his face down on his folded arms on the table, and his shoulders shook, and none of us could tell whether he was laughing.
I don't think he could, either.
Ambrose opened his notebook. He wrote for a long time, longer than I'd ever seen him write anything. When he turned it around so I could read it, it said:
Day thirty. Corked. Opened. Fizz. Works.
And underneath:
Yes.
Mistress Salvia, at the far end of the room, had stopped rolling bandages. She stood with a roll in each hand and looked at the three of us, and the bottle, and Felix, for a long time. Then she put the bandages down, came the whole length of the infirmary, set a clean cloth by Felix's elbow, and went back without a word.
That evening, after supper, Marika spoke in the henhouse before anyone else could.
(They came back.)
Not loud. Never loud, now, when it was about the riders.
(Forty. Maybe more. In the open this time, at the bend in the forest road, in a line. And they've got a banner now.)
(What kind of banner?) said Naomi.
(Black. With a bird on it. Bronze, I think. Big, with its wings out.) A pause. (It's holding something in its claws. A lightning bolt.)
I was sitting on the edge of my bed. I stood up without knowing I'd done it.
I'd seen that bird every day for a month. On a small bronze pin, at the throat of a dark coat, on the boy who sat beside me in class.
(Big Sis,) I said.
(I know,) said Naomi. (I've seen his pin too.)
She was quiet for three breaths.
(I'm coming home,) said Naomi. (I leave at dawn.)
Felix knocked on my door a little before midnight.
He'd never knocked before. He came down the stairs and knocked, very quietly, and when I opened the door he was standing there with the stone bottle in one hand, the one from the afternoon. Its cork was in his pocket. It had gone flat hours ago; I could tell from the way it sat in his hand, heavy and still.
His two escorts stood on the landing behind him. Wren stood beside them, because Wren had heard the knock before I had.
"Wait here," said Felix to his escorts, pleasantly. "Lord Fabian's going to make me tea. It's an Octavian custom. I'm told it's very dull."
One of them opened her mouth. Wren looked at her. She closed it again.
I made tea, because Hana would have. I put the kettle on the stove in my little kitchen, and it began to tick and mutter as it warmed, and Felix stood by the window and watched it as though it were very interesting. Through the escorts' room door, Liesel came out in her nightdress with her spear in one hand, took one look at his face, and sat down at the table without a word.
Felix looked at her.
"She can stay," he said, to me. "She gave me a cake."
The kettle began to sing. Felix waited until it was singing properly, loud and high, and then he sat down across from me and put the flat bottle on the table between us, and spoke under the noise.
"You asked me who it was for."
"Yes."
"My mother."
I'd known. I'd known since the balcony, really. It still landed like a stone in still water.
"She's been asleep since before the winter," said Felix. "She doesn't wake up. Her physicians say it's a fever. They've said it's a fever for months. It isn't a fever." He turned the bottle a quarter turn on the table. "It was a cup. At the end of a long dinner. Someone poured it for her, smiling, and handed it to her across the table, and she drank it, and laughed at something, and went to bed. And didn't get up."
The kettle sang. Liesel's hand had found mine under the table. Her ring was cold.
"I know whose hand it was," said Felix. "I can't prove it. The cup was washed. The servant who carried it went home to a village nobody could find. And in Bellonia, a man who says a woman of the Crown poisoned the Queen, with no proof, doesn't get listened to. He gets put somewhere quiet for his own good."
"Who?" I said.
Felix looked at me for a long moment.
"My aunt," he said. "The one who speaks for the throne now. The one who writes me such lovely letters." He smiled. It was the worst smile I'd ever seen on him. "Make friends, she says. Every letter."
I thought about the eagle on the black banner at the bend in the forest road. I didn't say anything. I'd promised Naomi. I hated myself for keeping it, there in my own kitchen, with the kettle screaming.
"She sent me here the moment Octavia said yes," said Felix. "Before the ink was dry. I've wondered why she was in such a hurry ever since." He shrugged, one shoulder. "I thought it was to keep me away from anyone in Bellonia I might marry. Now I think..." He stopped. "I don't know what I think. I just know I came to find a Saint, and the Saint's best friend turned water into something that stays alive for a month in a bottle, and I thought: that could get to her."
He looked down at the bottle.
"But you're Green," he said quietly. "And I'm not a fool. I asked Mistress Salvia, the first week, what Green could do. She told me. Anything that's settled in the body long enough comes back. And this has been settling for months."
He was right. I'm a healer; I'd known it too, for weeks, in the careful way you know something you've decided not to look at. Green would ease her. It wouldn't wake her.
But I wasn't Green.
The word sat behind my teeth. Blue. Nine pours, and one splash over. A circle the color of the sky over the inner wall. I could feel it there, as plainly as I could feel Liesel's hand in mine. All I had to do was open my mouth.
And I'd promised the headmistress: not your pool, not your eyes, not the rest. I'd promised the Crown nothing, but the Crown believed Green. And a Bellonian prince, however much I liked him, whose house's banner was sitting at the edge of the Gloamwood tonight, looking at my sister's wall.
I didn't say it.
Liesel's hand tightened on mine until the ring bit. She knew. She was the only one at that table who knew. She didn't look at me, and she didn't let go.
"I've been making bottles anyway," said Felix. "I know they won't wake her. I know. But maybe they'd make her less cold. Maybe her hands wouldn't—" He stopped. He picked the bottle up and put it down again. "I'm sorry I lied to you."
"You didn't lie," I said. "You said next question."
He laughed. It came out wet.
"Will you keep making them with me?" he said. "Even if it's no good?"
"Yes," I said.
It was true. It just wasn't all of it.
Felix nodded. He stood, and picked up his flat bottle, and went to the door. With his hand on the latch, he turned back.
"Fabian," he said. "Thank you for the tea."
We hadn't drunk any. The kettle had boiled half dry. I took it off the stove after he'd gone, and stood there holding it, and Liesel came and stood beside me and didn't say anything for a very long time.
"You have it," she said at last, very quietly. "Don't you."
"Yes."
"Will it work?"
I thought about 「Discern」. Not who. I'd have to touch her to know. I'd have to be there.
"I don't know," I said. "I think so. I think it's the only thing that would."
Liesel put her head against my shoulder.
Upstairs, very faintly, the bath began to run. A moment later, the singing started: loud, cheerful, terrible. The miller's three daughters, all eleven verses.
I listened to every one of them, standing in my kitchen with a burned kettle in my hands, and for the first time I knew exactly what he was singing over.
Naomi left from the gate of the outer ring, in the gray hour before sunrise, the same gate Marika had gone out of a month before.
She was in full plate, with the navy cape mended where the thorns had torn it, and six Greymark riders behind her, already mounted, their breath smoking in the cold. Hana had packed a basket even bigger than Marika's. Hana was staying. Someone had to keep the gray house, and someone had to be near me, and Naomi had said both of those things in one sentence the night before in a voice that didn't leave any room.
I'd gone with Liesel and Wren. I hadn't slept. I'd lain awake until the singing stopped upstairs, and then for a long time after, and then I'd got up and dressed in the dark.
Naomi took one look at my face and stepped away from the horses.
"Wren," she said. "Hold these."
She handed Wren her reins and her gauntlets. Wren took them, and turned around, and went to stand with the riders at the gate, well out of earshot, with her back to us, looking at the road as if it might try something.
"Tell me," said Naomi. Out loud, not in the henhouse. With Liesel standing right there.
So I told her. All of it, fast, before I could lose my nerve. The cup at the end of a long dinner. The aunt who speaks for the throne and writes make friends. A queen asleep since before the winter, with cold hands, who doesn't wake up. Felix asking Mistress Salvia, the first week, what Green could do.
And then the part that was mine.
"Green won't wake her," I said. "Blue might. Blue's the only thing that might. And I'm Blue."
Naomi didn't say anything.
"To make a bottle," I said, "I need Ambrose to hold the water and Felix to spark it. They'll both see the circle. They'll both know." I took a breath. "And I promised the headmistress, and the Crown thinks I'm Green, and his house's eagle is sitting at the edge of the Gloamwood looking at our wall. I know. I know all of it. I didn't tell him last night. I sat in my kitchen and let him think there was nothing anyone could do."
My voice did something on the last word. I let it.
Naomi looked at me for a long time. Not the way she looks at a map. The other way, the way she'd looked at me across the supper table when I stood up to ask her for something.
"His mother," she said.
"Yes."
She looked away, out through the gate, at the gray road toward Greymark. I knew what she was thinking about. I was thinking about it too. A tide, ten years ago, and a water mage who married one woman and rode out beside her into it, and two people who didn't come home. Nobody had had a bottle for them.
Naomi looked back at me.
"Your call," she said.
I stared at her.
She'd never said that to me. Not once. About anything that mattered. His call, she'd told the Queen, about Liesel. But never to me, about a thing that could get me taken.
"Big Sis—"
"You heard me." Her voice was short. It was also, very slightly, not steady. "You've made the hard ones on your own for a while now. On the wall. In the garden. On your knees, I'm told." Liesel went red to the collar. "So. Your call. But—"
"Tell you first," I said. "Out loud."
"Before you open the circle."
"Before."
Naomi nodded once. "Noted."
She turned toward the horses. Then she stopped, because I'd done something I'd never done in my whole life.
I'd put my hand on top of her head.
I had to reach up to do it. I'm still the shortest Valcrest by a head, and Naomi in full plate is taller still. But I reached anyway, and laid my palm flat on her cold hair, the way hers had been on mine at supper, and on Marika's at this gate.
She stood very still under it. Then, slowly, she bent her head a little, so I wouldn't have to stretch.
"Come back," I said.
Naomi didn't say anything for a moment. Then she reached up and took my wrist, not to move my hand, just to hold it there a little longer.
"Noted," she said, and let go.
She took her gauntlets back from Wren, and mounted, and rode out through the gate without looking back, the six riders falling in behind her, the sound of the hooves going away down the road until I couldn't hear it anymore. I could still feel her candle. Still and straight, going down the road, getting smaller in my chest.
Not dimmer. Just farther.
Liesel stood beside me until the road was empty. Wren came back and stood a pace behind us both, holding nothing now, looking at the gate.
"Your call," said Liesel quietly.
"Yes."
She didn't ask what I was going to do. She just fell in beside me, and we walked back up through the waking city, ring by white ring, toward the Academy on the hill, with the bells beginning to ring for morning.
I counted them. I count everything.
A bottle needs three of us. Ambrose's hands to hold the water still. Felix's spark to keep it alive. And mine, to pour.
And this time, when I poured, both of them would see the circle come up blue.