“I don’t even know if wecanget back,” I said. “Not without ...” I broke off. I didn’t want to tell her how we had bought our way in. “Why can’t you take it?” I said instead. “You said magic doesn’t touch you.”
“Ah, but the king knows about me and has set particular wards to warn him of my approach if I dare to try. I would have tried, if there was no alternative, but,” she spread her hands, “here you are.”
“And even if we do get it through ... This new mold, or whatever it is, will infect the king and all his children?”
“Yes.”
“Then what about Sylvester?” I asked.
She hesitated. For the first time, a shadow crossed her face. “Well,” she said carefully, “he is a magic-worker.”
“You yourself called him a sweet boy,” I reminded her.
She laughed a little. “He’s not the worst of them,” she said. “But you have to remember, he’s not really a person at all. Not as we understand it. He is amadething, like a music box or a marionette. A toy for the king, fashioned out of the remains of a boy who will never come back to life, not as he was.”
“But just because he is a made thing does not mean he should be unmade,” I protested. “And he is helping me.”
“Yes,” she said gently, in a tone as soft as if she were telling a child that their beloved pet lamb had to be sacrificed for the family pot. “He has been helpful, I know. He is unusual. Perhaps because he is the only male magic-worker who has survived the king’s process of creation—perhaps there was a fault in his making. It is to our advantage.”
It felt wrong, to be discussing my sorcerer as if he were little more than one of the sharp-edged little animals that Da used to fold out of the butcher paper, to be crumpled and thrown away at day’s end.
But he was a toy for the king, as she had said. And a dangerous one, at that. All the same, was it right to use him as a toy for our own game?
“I understand your feelings,” she said. “You have been bound to him for a time.”
“But I am not bound to him here,” I said, “And I still don’t feel right about using him in this way, knowing that he will die along with the others.”
“Of course,” she said, spreading her hands. “And if there was another way, we would do that.”
“But there isn’t,” I said, letting my voice trail off so it was more like a question.
“But there isn’t,” she agreed. “Look, even if you do not take it, we will eventually find another way to get it there. And this way, you have a chance to save your family and friends before the king’s great harvest.”
I couldn’t think of what to say.
“Do you have some small object I could borrow?” she asked. “Some trinket?”
“Um. . .” I rummaged through my pockets and came up with the little raven seal. “This?”
“Perfect.” She enfolded it in her hand; her fingernails were caked with earth. “I will enclose a seed of the disease in this seal. Then all you have to do is will it, whenever you are ready, and it will come out. Or you can keep it sealed”—she chuckled at her own pun—“forever. Entirely up to you. Although, as I have said, we will find another way in eventually.”
21
What was left of my heart was troubled as we walked back to the cottage, but I tried to meet Sylvester’s eyes without giving away the confusion I felt. It helped that he looked so ridiculous, and it was hard to do anything but smile.
“She can’t help us with the hearts,” I told him instead. “You were right. No one can fix them.”
He unfolded himself from the chair. “I am sorry. I suspected it might be so.”
“I am sorry, too,” said the Weftwitch.
“We might still be able to stop my father, though,” said Sylvester. “I have to try, at least. Knowing what I know now.”
The Weftwitch raised her eyebrows. “Bold,” was all she said.
“You said my father managed to defy his,” Sylvester said to the Weftwitch. “Perhaps it runs in the family.”
“You are welcome to stay here for a time, until you decide,” offered the Weftwitch. She flicked her eyes to me, and I saw her fist was still closed about the seal.
