‘What about you?’ I ask as she continues to battle with my split ends. ‘Do you have siblings?’
‘I do.’ Even though she’s standing behind me, I can sense the smile forming on Llinos’s lips. ‘A little sister called Carys. She’s only nine but already runs rings around my parents. Gods, I love her to bits. I hate the fact that I’m not gonna be able to see her while I’m here. I can’t bear the thought that, well, you know …’
‘I know,’ I reply. We fall into silence, and I know we’re both thinking about how so many people here won’t get to say goodbye to the ones they love.
I hope to hell we’re not in that group. A lump that I’ve been trying to suppress in my chest all day threatens to reform, when suddenly Llinos jumps up.
‘Hold on. I’ve got another idea.’
Without waiting for me to respond, she bounds out of the door, her footsteps rattling on the stairs. Thoughts of Kay are still burning behind my eyes, and if I don’t do something soon, I’m going to chicken out, say ‘to hell with whatever fate Etta inflicts on me for desertion,’ and race back to the slums to find my sister. But that won’t help anyone in the long run. So instead, I stand and move over to the wardrobe. I’m going to have to choose my outfit eventually, although I’m secretly hoping Llinos will make the decision for me.
In far less time than I expected, I hear the rattle of the stairs again, and Llinos is back. In her hand is the smallest dagger I’ve ever seen.
‘What exactly are you planning on doing with that?’ I ask curiously. It surprises me that I don’t feel at all nervous to have her near me with that dagger.
‘Just wait. It’s gonna work, I’m sure of it. Now sit down.’
I do as instructed and let her work her way through my knots.
‘Okay, here’s my thinking. I’ll make a bunch of small braids down each side, leave half of them hanging, and pull the rest back. Then I’ll pin them and the rest of your hair up with the dagger. It’ll give a ready-to-fight, don’t-fuck-with-me look.’
‘Sounds good to me,’ I reply, only half able to visualise what she said but more than happy to have another weapon at hand, even if it is the tiniest one I’ve ever seen. ‘Does that actually have a purpose? Or is it just decorative?’
She shrugs. ‘You’d have to ask Benny. It’s one of the many things his family gave him to bring. Good luck tokens, I think. It’s meant to help motivate him, you know? A reminder of why we all need this gifting.’
‘What areyouhere for?’ I ask. ‘You said you were going to work together, right? Does that mean you all want the same gifting?’ Only when an extended pause follows my answer do I realise that the question is rudely personal. ‘Sorry, that’s none of my business,’ I say hastily.
‘I’m sure lots of us want the same things in some sense,’ she replies, sweeping past my question. ‘Now, let’s just see if I can successfully pin this up first.’ She moves to sweep up a handful of my hair when I hear her gasp. ‘Look,’ she whispers, her voice hitched with excitement. ‘A raven.’
As she drops my hair entirely, I twist around and watch as she takes a step towards the window. Sure enough, on the sill is a great black bird with beady, glass-like eyes. I expect the bird to fly off as she nears it, but it doesn’t.
‘We don’t get them in the Eastern Isles.’ Her voice is still whispered awe. ‘This is the first time I’ve ever seen one. Caz would be so excited. She loves birds.’
‘They’re meant to be bad omens,’ I tell her, certain she wouldn’t be staring at it with quite such reverence if she knew how they were viewed here. ‘Very bad omens.’
She turns around. ‘Why?’
‘My father said they whisper your secrets to Mortidem so he knows the best way to take you,’ I admit. To ease the heaviness of the moment, I ask, ‘Who’s Caz? Is that your sister?’
‘My sister? No. No!’ She lets out a laugh as if I’ve said the most preposterous thing in the world. ‘Carys is my sister. Caz is my … was my … Caz was my everything, I guess. She knows all about birds.’
‘She’s still on the Eastern Isles?’ I ask. ‘Did she also try to enterthe Retterheld?’
‘No. No, I haven’t seen her for four years now.’
There is something about the way Llinos speaks that implies Caz hasn’t passed away and been given to Mortidem to distribute her powers anew. Which is why I ask gently, ‘Where is she? What happened?’
With one last glance at the raven, Llinos moves back to the bed and drops down next to me with a huff.
‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘That’s the truth. I don’t know.’ The silence between us lingers, but eventually, she finds her voice. ‘We grew up together,’ she starts. ‘Best friends until we realised we were a lot more than that. I was twenty-one when she gave me this.’ She lifts her hand and shows me the ring on her middle finger. It’s a recognised sign of intention and is traditionally joined by two more rings on the adjacent fingers at marriage. ‘Four years. There was never a moment in my life that I could’ve envisioned her not being in it. I thought we’d do everything. Start a family. Grow old. Even have our pyres lit together. That’s how much I couldn’t imagine a life without her.’
‘So what happened?’
The saddest of smiles graces Llinos’s lips, though it does nothing to erase the pain in her eyes.
‘One day, she was gone.’
‘Gone where?’
