“Then try it now,” I pressed him. “Speak.”
His chest rose and fell shallowly with his breaths. His eyes found the battlements, the clouds stretching out beyond.
“Circle us,” he murmured. It took only a few seconds. The air stirred, and a breeze wafted against my face.
“And you,” I said to the strengthening drizzle, which had turned our hair curly and soaked into our cloaks.
As we sat there cross-legged, facing each other, the breeze picked up, swirling in a vortex around us. Flecks of dirt were whipped up with it, a few feathers left by perching gulls. The rain reluctantly trailed after the wind, encircling us in a haze of fine droplets. It spun faster, catching the edges of my clothes.
And then it came. The first genuine smile he’d given me. It was slow, spreading like dawn light over his features. It took me a second—I felt pinned, off-balance—but I flashed one back at him, my insides swooping.
But hot on its heels, that dread crept back in, the recollection of everything already set in motion. My anxiety flared like a white-hot flame.
Llir looked as though he was struggling, too. His smile had faded, and an odd look crossed his face. The wind died, sputtering out like a rushlight, and the rain once again encroached onto our heads. I blinked water from my eyes and dropped my gaze. “Sorry,” I mumbled, feeling my hair stick to my neck.
He shook his head, rolled his shoulders stiffly. “I need to focus more,” he said. “I lost it.”
“Positive emotions can spook it, too.”
He caught my eye. That strange look flashed again.
A moment later, he climbed to his feet. “Let’s go. We’re getting soaked up here.”
I hurried after him to the shelter of the doorway, where he held the door open for me to go first.
“Thank you for this,” he said as I passed him, and I paused, my elbow brushing his doublet.
“It’s nothing,” I said, glancing up at him. “Like I said, just a little trick.”
He was watching me, studying me, face etched with a small frown. Then he blinked and stepped back, and I slipped through the door, grateful to descend into the dimness.
30
Thefollowing afternoon found me in the corridor with the statues. I was strung out like wire, my whole body aching. My lack of sleep was catching up with me.
I’d managed to train in the cove in the morning—an hour in the predawn shadows and stillness—but it wasn’t enough; the archwater waves were growing fiercer. Over the past week, I thought I felt a tenuous connection, a disgruntled acceptance of my grovelling apologies, but it was frail. The tide was still capricious.
The previous day, I’d been Avrix’s lookout again.
Much of his time was taken up rehearsing, or lounging in the snug or parlor with the Shearwaters, but yesterday he feigned a headache and left—“A glass too many last night, I fear.” I lingered, jittery, within earshot of the others as Emment and Vercha argued about a scene. In the end, none of them set foot near West Tower, and Avrix reappeared later, face unreadable.
Now, as I manually washed down the floors, I stepped close to the statues, to their laconite eyes. The faint ringing I’d by now grownaccustomed to seemed quieter, intermittent, almost forlorn. Would the other Orha servants, or Llir, notice? I had to hope they’d learned to tune the noise out by now.
And then there was the treacherous sliver of me that hoped that someonewouldnotice. That this reckoning would never come.
When I peered closely at the eyes, I could see Avrix’s damage: hairline cracks, barely visible in the stone, spiralling out like spiderwebs. I thought of the armory, the bedchambers, even the gatehouse…all that laconite rendered weak, near useless.
Soon the only working laconite on the island would be the smallest beads, which were difficult to crack. In anticipation of the Cage’s arrival—the turmoil that would hit the island in a day—Avrix and I had pilfered some each: two bags of gems from the backs of dusty drawers, which I fervently hoped wouldn’t be missed before tomorrow.
“Corith!”
I jumped, dropping my washcloth. Vercha was striding determinedly toward me, and I clasped my trembling fingers behind my back.
“There you are.” She was bright-eyed, turned out perfectly in black sable. “The Cormorants’ Gustmouth has wrenched his ankle. He was out with the twins shooting birds this morning. Quite lame, poor thing. But it means we need you.”
I opened my mouth, but she pressed on, gaze glinting.
“We’re putting onCithre’s Follytonight—you know, our little theatrical? But their Gustmouth can’t walk, and he had a small part…I said you’d be more than happy to stand in for him.”
