Chapter 5

Moira's POV

I did not answer, and Lina did not need me to. She came in on her own and walked all the way to the foot of the bed, where she stopped and looked down at me. That was a great deal closer than a watcher had any business being.

Under the tallow smoke and the wolf stink, I caught rosewater. I recognized it: the best-selling rose scent in the capital, the kind that had been stacked in street stalls before we left, a single bottle worth half a month's wages.

"He was in this very room just now," she said. "Poisoned, black blood running from the corner of his mouth, one hand braced against the doorframe, the other too weak to lift his sword. If you had wanted him dead, you had only to reach out. You sat there and watched him and said nothing."

The blade had been under the skin of my wrist the whole time. I had not used it. Not because I had no wish to, but because I knew better. If he died here, I would not walk out of this keep. I would not get past the tower door. I certainly would not get south.

I had worked all of that out before she arrived, and none of it could be said out loud. The capital would not care about my death, and neither would Lina; she would only press me harder to finish the job, exactly as she was doing now.

"The capital sent you here to do a job," she said, stepping forward. She lifted her chin and looked down her nose at me. "Not to sit and nurse your temper. You know how the people in this keep look at you. A human has no business under the same roof as wolves, and you have not only moved in, you have taken the seat that belongs to the Alpha's wife. That is your crime."

"Say what you came in here to say," I said. I had grown up on that kind of talk, and I knew what it was for. It was not an argument. It was a demand, and when the demand failed she would find something else to hold over me.

She bent lower and dropped her voice. One hand settled on the bedpost. "That foolish little sister of yours is doing quite well these days. The cellar is warm, and the masters take turns visiting her. They all say she is handy, easier to use than any other instrument. If she stays obedient, she may live a few more years."

When those words landed, something in my chest wrenched. Instrument. She had used the word about a living person and used it lightly, the way a person appraises an article of household goods.

Fear and anger came up together. I was afraid it was true, afraid that my sister had been abused over and over in such a place by such men, but the anger rose faster than the fear. What right did a servant who had come down from the capital, who knew nothing, whose whole business was carrying orders from above, have to use my sister as a bargaining chip?

I had not intended to kill her. What she wanted was my submission, one sentence she could carry back and count as a result, and the fact that she was standing here at all meant the capital was still waiting for word from me. Kill her, and the thread is cut off at the far end. I had worked all of that out already.

But she should not have used my sister as a stake.

I turned my wrist half a circle. The blade slid out, so thin it had almost no thickness, a thread of dim purple light running along the edge. Her last word had not yet landed when the edge crossed her throat. Her eyes opened very wide. She went over backward and never worked out where the blade had come from.

I did not regret it. She had tried to press me down with my sister's life, and so she deserved to die. There were two watchers, after all; one was gone and another still stood outside the door, and some story could be patched together easily enough. So long as the thread stayed unbroken, the great lords and ladies up above would never trouble themselves over the death of a creature as small as this.

I looked toward the door. Miller's legs gave way. She slid down the wall with both hands clamped over her mouth, tears running through her fingers, and did not dare to make a sound. She was a small girl, narrow-shouldered, with the kind of face that had probably never learned how to lie.

"You may shout now," I said. "Say there is a witch in this room; have them tie me to the stake. Before I burn, I will shut you up first."

She knelt on the stone floor, both hands braced against it, and shook her head.

"Or you stay," I said. "Follow me and I will keep you alive. From now on, if anyone so much as lays a finger on you, I will make him pay it back double. You can slave away at the Lina's work until it kills you, or you can work for me. Choose."

She trembled for a while, then got up and went to find a rag. Her hands shook the whole time she was wiping the floor, but she did not stop. She dragged Lina into the little storage room in the corner, and when she came back the hem of her skirt was wet and darkening.

She looked at the streaks left on the floor, wiped them a second time, and only then stepped back and stood by the door. Then she knelt again, touched her forehead to the stone, and said, "I will follow you."

I looked at her for a moment. She was still on the floor, forehead to the stone, hands braced flat against the cold. She meant it. Whatever she had just watched me do, she had made her calculation and come out on my side.

That was useful, and not only because I needed someone to run errands and watch doors. I needed a subject. The contract power had fired once, on the wedding night, under conditions I had not controlled and could not fully reconstruct. If I was ever going to understand what I had done to Sorën, this was the place to start.

I cast my mind back and tried to do the same thing now.