“Both.”
She took the folded cloth from her table and laid it over her palm before lifting the sleeve. The green silk slipped across the white cloth. The new band at the wrist caught the light.
“Do you see how the stitches changedirection here?”
I leaned closer.
The silver thread looked like decoration until she put one finger beside it. Then the pattern broke. The leaves around the wrist were smaller than the others, tighter, crowded into a narrow ring.
“Someone opened the sleeve,” I said.
“Someone opened it, added the band, then closed it badly enough to be found by someone who knew to look.”
“Caspian knew to look.”
Cosima’s fingers stilled for half a second.
“Caspian always knows what to do. When he trusts himself to do it instead of doing as he’s told.”
Those words stirred more than I wanted to touch.
“So what is it?” I asked.
Cosima set the sleeve down.
“A quieting band. This sits over your Mark. If the thread has been treated properly, it makes resistance look smaller than it is.”
My wrist began to ache.
“Make it look smaller to whom?”
“To the basin. To anyone watching for the air around your wrist instead of the lines themselves.”
I looked at the sleeve.
My mother’s sleeve.
Not my mother’s sleeve.
“So if my Mark objects...”
“The basin may not hear it clearly.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Then they can write that your mouth refused while your Mark offered no protest.”
A choked laugh escaped me.
“They found a way to make even my own body tell the story they want to hear.”
“They are trying to.”
Cosima crossed to her table and opened the smallest notebook.
“What are you doing?”
“Writing it down before they do.”
