The headmistress's stairs are ninety-four steps long, and I'd decided to spend them arguing with my sister.
(Big Sis.)
(Here.)
I told her all of it, quickly, the way you pull out a splinter. The tin with the dent. The spark in class. The gel at dawn that should have been water and wasn't. Ambrose's thumb. Prickly. Every word cost me a drop. I'd set aside twenty for it.
(...And you want to ask him,) said Naomi. (The Bellonian.)
(Felix. Yes.)
(No.)
(You haven't heard why—)
(I heard. Bellonia. Their Queen's son. A month on the road to sit beside you in class.) A pause. (No.)
(HE'S A PRINCE FROM BELLONIA,) said Marika. (That's TWO things, Fabian.)
(Is he nice?) said Hana.
(Very.)
(Nice isn't a reason,) said Naomi.
On the bond, Naomi's voice doesn't get louder when she means something. It gets shorter.
Step forty-one. Ambrose climbed ahead of me with the tin in his coat and his notebook open, reading. He had no idea there was an argument going on. Nobody outside the henhouse ever does.
(Big Sis. Listen. The gel doesn't work without me. Ambrose's water is just water. Felix's spark is just a spark. Without a Saint, all he'd ever learn is how to make a tin of cold jelly that tingles.)
(Then why do you need him?)
(Because with him, it lasts.) I took a breath. (Long enough to carry. Long enough to reach someone who isn't standing next to me.)
The bond went quiet.
I knew what she was thinking, because I'd been thinking it since the tide. A long line, and the wounded still coming, and me running out by noon.
(They'd just take you,) said Naomi.
She'd said that before, the week I was blessed, in exactly that voice.
(They'd have to get past you,) I said.
(...They'd have to get past me.)
(Then let me ask. That's all. I'm not doing anything. I'm asking the headmistress.)
A long silence. Step seventy.
Then Liesel, quietly, from right beside me, on the stairs and in my chest at once:
(When I gave him that cake, his face forgot to grin,) she said. (I don't know what he's carrying. But I'd trust him with a tin.)
More silence. Step eighty-eight.
(Tell me what she says,) said Naomi at last. (Every word.)
That isn't yes. With Naomi, it's a door left open a crack.
"Ninety-four," I said, at the top.
Ambrose turned a page.
Ambrose told the headmistress everything in eleven words. I counted.
"Made yesterday. Dawn. Touched. Spark. This morning: not water. Prickly. Works."
He set the tin on her desk and opened the lid. In the afternoon light, the threads of white running through the gel were almost too faint to see, but they were there, moving, like frost that hadn't decided where to crack.
The headmistress looked at it for a long time. Then she looked at Ambrose, who had his hand in his pocket.
"If that is a penknife, Lord Ambrose—"
"Please stop—" I said, at the same moment.
Ambrose took his hand out of his pocket, empty, with the air of a man who has been deeply misunderstood.
The headmistress held one fingertip above the gel. Not touching it. Just close. I watched the fine white hairs on the back of her old hand stand up, one by one.
"...Lively," she said.
"Felix," said Ambrose. "Need."
She lowered her hand and turned the full weight of her pale eyes on me. I'd known she would. Ambrose doesn't explain; he points. Explaining is my job.
"The spark was Lord Felix's," I said. "An accident. He touched the tin in class. We'd like to ask him to do it again. On purpose."
"What do you know of him?"
I'd been ready for that one. I'd been counting him since the gate.
"He laughs," I said. "He's been reported for it five times, and Lady Severine didn't write Usual. He asks questions about everything and answers none of them. His Fulgor sparks when he's upset, and he calls it excited. His mother is unwell." I paused. "And the only question he asked all morning without a joke on the end of it was how long the gel lasts."
The headmistress was quiet a moment.
"You've been counting him."
"I count everything, Headmistress."
"Yes." She folded her hands on the desk. "Bellonia has sent the Queen a gift, Lord Fabian. Her Majesty has not unwrapped it yet. And you would like to carry it into the one room in this Academy I keep locked."
"Key," said Ambrose.
We both looked at him. He pointed at me.
"Key," he said again. "Without him, water."
"He's right," I said. "If Felix learned every single thing we know, he still couldn't make one tin. Not here, not in Bellonia, not anywhere. You need Lord Ambrose's water, and you need a spark. But first you need a Saint." I stopped. I didn't actually know how many Saints there were in the world. I only knew how many I'd met. "And there's me."
"There is you," said the headmistress.
She looked at me the way she'd looked at the drawing.
"Which is exactly what frightens your sister, I imagine. A key can be stolen, Lord Fabian. A key that walks about on two legs can be stolen rather more easily."
"She'll say no," I said.
"Of course she will. She has watched you pour yourself out in a garden." The headmistress picked up the tin's lid and turned it over in her fingers, running her thumb across the dent. "And still you'd like to ask him. Why?"
I thought about it. I wanted to give her the true answer, not the clever one.
"Because I can't be everywhere," I said. "I found that out at Greymark, and again in your garden. I ran out before it was over. If this lasts, I don't have to be everywhere. It does."
The headmistress set the lid down.
For a long time she said nothing at all. Behind me, Wren stood with her back against the door. Beside me, Liesel didn't move. Ambrose had opened his notebook to a blank page and was waiting to write on it, the way he waits for everything, as though the answer were already on its way.
"Very well," said the headmistress.
Ambrose wrote something.
"On conditions." She held up one thin finger. "He works with you in the infirmary, at your table by the window, and nowhere else. The board in every hall still says what it says. No more tins in class, Lord Ambrose."
Ambrose stopped writing. "...Yes," he said, sadly.
A second finger. "He is told that it heals, and that his spark helps it last. Nothing else. Not your pool. Not your eyes. Not the rest."
"Yes, Headmistress."
A third. "Every tin is counted, and every tin comes back."
"I'll count them."
"I know you will." She lowered her hand. "And you will watch him. Not the way the notice on my door asks. The way you watch everything."
"Yes, Headmistress."
She glanced, very briefly, at the flat wooden case on the corner of her desk. The one with the candle on its lid, and a page inside it lying face down.
"Someone gave Lady Amara a gift, Lord Fabian," she said quietly. "Now Bellonia has given us one. I would like to know what is inside it before it opens itself."
On the way down, I gave Naomi every word, as promised.
She listened without interrupting once, which is how I knew she was angry. When I'd finished, the bond stayed quiet for nine steps.
(I meet him first,) said Naomi. (Before he touches another tin.)
(I'LL COME,) said Marika.
(No.)
(I'll bake something,) said Hana.
(...Yes,) said Naomi, and that was the end of it.
It was somewhere around step thirty that I noticed the problem.
I'd been about to say something else on the bond. About the inner wall, and sunset, and a hundred and twelve stairs. About whether Big Sis thought I should say it standing or sitting, and whether Hana knew what you were supposed to do with your hands. I had the first word ready.
Then I looked to my left.
Liesel was on the stairs beside me, counting the steps under her breath, because she'd caught it from me. And she was on the bond beside me, too. She always is. Anything I say to my sisters in the henhouse, I say to her.
I shut my mouth on the first word so fast I bit my tongue.
"What?" said Liesel.
"Nothing," I said. "Tongue."
She looked at me sideways for three steps. Then she went back to counting.
Every plan I've ever made, I've made with my sisters. On the wall, in the war room, in the henhouse after supper. And the one plan I needed them for more than any other, I couldn't say there at all.
So that night, I wrote letters.
I still write every day; that's one of Naomi's rules. Usually it's the infirmary count and what I ate. That night I wrote three, sealed them, and gave them to Wren to send down to the second ring in the morning. Wren looked at the three letters, then at me, and hummed four notes, very quietly. I'm fairly sure Wren can read a face better than most people read a page.
All three letters said the same thing, more or less.
Don't say anything in the henhouse. Liesel can hear. I'm going to ask her. Properly. I need help.
The replies came back the next evening.
Marika's said, in letters an inch high: FINALLY. Underneath, smaller: What do you mean PROPERLY. Are you going to KNEEL? Men don't KNEEL. I want to be there. I'll hide. I'm very good at hiding. She isn't.
Hana's ran to four pages. Two of them were about the words, and how I shouldn't plan them too hard, because Liesel would know if I'd practiced, and she'd be kind about it, and that would be worse. One page was about what to wear. One was mostly crossed out. At the very bottom of the last page, under her name, she'd written one more line.
You keep saying you don't own anything. You own two hands, Fabian. Make her something.
Naomi's said one word.
Noted.
And under it, in a smaller hand, as though she'd put the pen down and then come back to the page a long while later:
Mother would have liked her.
I read that one four times. Then I folded it very small and put it in the pocket where I keep Hana's handkerchief, and sat on the edge of my bed in the dark with my pool still full, not draining it yet.
Through the wall, in the escorts' room, Liesel was asleep. I could feel her candle in my chest, the way I always can. Awake, it flickers like a candle carried out into a windy night. Asleep, it burns low and steady, a small flame in a room where no wind can get in.
Two hands.
I knew what I was going to make. I just had to find out how.