It took me a moment, but then I remembered. The three strands of her hair that I had carried for so long, tucked away in the handkerchief in my sleeve. I almost reached for them—this was Mother, after all. Mother! I should have be happy to see her, I should have been thrilled that she was alive, even if it was in a horrible, twisted way that wasn’t really life at all … I started to back away.
“Now, Netta,” said Mother, her voice sharp with annoyance.
“I’ll make her give them up,” snarled Ban Morin.
“No, Sawl …” said Milady, and reached for him, but he shoved her aside so hard that she hit the wall with her injured arm, leaving a bright stain on the yellow stone. She cried out, cradling it to herself. I stumbled back, but Ban Morin was quick and strong. He twisted my arm behind my back with one hand before I could react, plunging his other into my sleeve and finding the crumpled wad of fabric there. I felt his heavy, hot breath in my ear and his huff of triumph when he found it, and I wanted to be sick. He let go of me, letting me fall to the floor, and turned on his heel to take the handkerchief to Mother.
Before he could get to her, Patrick flung himself on Ban Morin’s back. He was a much slighter man, but the attack took Ban Morin by surprise, and he stumbled, falling to his knees. He reached for his sword, but Patrick twisted his right arm behind his back, mirroring my own predicament a few seconds before.
It was a hopeless fight, really. Patrick was quick, but Ban Morin was larger, stronger, and more skilled with a weapon. It did not take him long to gain the advantage. With a roar of triumph, he flung Patrick from him. The smaller man hit the bone wall with a sickening crunch and slid down like a puppet with its strings cut. I screamed his name.
Before I could move, Ban Morin had run back to Mother where she stood, half buried in the book. He shook thehandkerchief over his open palm. Nothing fell out. He looked from his empty hand into the equally empty eyes of the thing that had once been my mother.
From behind him, Patrick gave a short laugh. He had managed to lift his head and was smiling, although one hand was pressed so hard under his ribs that his knuckles were white.
“Sleight of hand,” he said, flicking his eyes to me. “Those magician’s tricks you’re so fond of.”
Sleight of hand.When I took his meaning, I leaped to my feet—but before I could move further, Baldbeak shot across the room and onto Patrick’s outstretched arm, taking the three hairs from his fist and holding them delicately in his beak. He flew them back to me, and I grabbed them.
Ban Morin moved as if to run towards me, but something yanked him back. Mother—or the bone magic that was wearing Mother’s skin, or the uncanny amalgam of them both, whatever it was—had him by the hand and was pulling him towards her. Her grip on him was powerful, even though she was still half buried in the book.
“Sybil!” he called to Milady, his voice uncharacteristically high and panicked. Milady was still by the wall, nursing her bleeding hand. She watched as the Pontiff scuttled out of the room and vanished around the corner, and then looked back at Ban Morin.
“I’m terribly sorry, Sawl,” she said, binding a strip of cloth around her hand, “but I have to go.”
Somehow managing to look both dignified and still beautiful with her bloodied, torn gown, she walked out of the Tomb of Kings as if she were leaving the ballroom for some other, more exclusive engagement. I saw the moment that Ban Morin realized she had abandoned him—the panic on his distorted face turning to a sneer and then a gaping, desperate horror. His arm had disappeared nearly up to the elbow now, and those bony, ravenous fingers were scrabbling for purchase on his disintegrating skin.
I should leave him to be consumed by her, I thought. He deserved it. All the gods, real or imagined, knew he deserved it. I did not feel pity for him, exactly—although he was pitiful, as he struggled and called out for help, gibbering in horror, slack-jawed.
I watched as his hand disappeared into hers. And then I walked forward.
“Netta! No!”
I heard Patrick behind me from where he lay against the wall, but I didn’t turn. Although every instinct in my body was screaming at me to run, my Hair flowed out before me, drawing me to the book, to Mother. I obeyed it. When I was close enough, Ban Morin flailed out his free arm, trying to grab at me, but the Hair slithered from his grasp.
“Mother,” I said. She turned her head to look at me with a slow, unnatural movement. “Let him go.”
She smiled. And she released him. Ban Morin stumbled back, screaming and cradling what remained of his arm. It had been severed at the elbow joint, consumed, but the wound showed white and clean. He didn’t even look at me, but pushed me aside as he staggered out the tomb.
It was just Mother and me, facing each other.
“Netta,” she said, and the world turned to swirling white as my memories flooded back.
I am back in the Tower.
I am back at the beginning.
It has been an unexceptional day. In the morning, I gathered swan quills from the abandoned nests and spent longer than I strictly needed to, whittling them into sharp nibs, sitting on the stone steps at the entrance to the Tower in the watery winter sun. Baldbeak kept me company for some of that time, before flapping off on undisclosed business, but I am contented enough on my own.
As I shape the shafts, I think about the embroidered piece I have been working on for the past several nights, safe in my basket upstairs. There was a part I had been struggling with, not sure how to continue the design—but now I think of the swans’ nests that lie empty along the bank, brown gold, striped with white where feathers have fallen. The enormous nests—large enough that I could curl up and sleep in them quite comfortably—seem haphazard at first glance, compared to those of other birds, but there is something about their high, sloping sides and strength of construction that reminds me of the Tower itself.
As my hands move, I think about how I could mimic those strong, overlapping lines of gold in my own stitches, a counterpoint to the more varied colors and rounded shapes I had chosen.
When I remember to come inside and put the soup on the fire for our lunch, Mother climbs effortfully down the ladder from above, as she always does, made stiff and gnarled as an old woman by her long hours of labor over the spellbook.
She complains about the smell of the onions—also something she always does—and sits at her usual place at the table to eat, talking little, reading from one of her books, and glancing up at me only when necessary.
It is only after we have finished eating that it becomes clear that tonight is different.
