“And while everyone is arguing about the brooch...”
“I look at the sleeve in front of witnesses.”
“You’ll be at the fitting?”
“I will be asked to be.”
“You sound very sure.”
“I sent the request before breakfast.”
“Before you knew about the sleeve?”
“I knew enough to suspect.”
She closed the box.
“They want me there because they think I will make you behave.”
“Will you?”
“I will give the impression that I’m making you behave.”
“And I’ll give the impression I’m listening to you.”
I looked at the black box between us.
For the first time since Caswell had knocked, the dress felt less like a hand around my throat and more like a problem that could be solved.
Still poisoned.
Not necessarily deadly.
Cosima picked up the box.
“You should not carry it back alone.”
“I carried it here alone.”
“Yes. But that part is done now.”
“And this part?”
“This is the part where you let someone help you before pride does the Council’s work for it.”
I was irked by how reasonable that was.
“Fine.”
Cosima opened the door.
She took one end of the box, and I took the other.
We carried my mother’s dress between us, down the upper east corridor, toward the room where the Council had expected it to wait for me alone.
This time, the dress did not go back alone.
36
