Dot’s mouth wobbled. She shut her eyes and, after a moment, nodded. Theodora let out a heavy breath.
‘Have you noticed,’ said the witch, ‘that the outcomes of your illness have been getting worse over time? Especially since the incident in the River Lourdes?’
‘No,’ said Dot.
‘Think carefully,’ said Theodora. ‘You said to me yourself that your memory can be haphazard.’
‘Sometimes,’ said Dot. ‘But my illness is often inconsistent. Some days it is simply worse or better, and I don’t know why.’
‘On the whole, Dorothy, is there a trend? Remember, I made your tonic stronger.’
Dot’s brow furrowed. ‘I suppose I have been sleeping more, but that is simply because I’m working hard in the tea shop and the Raven’s Attic. I’ve been staying up late to study spells—’
‘Did you stay up late in university? Or back in Seafarthing?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you need to sleep fourteen, fifteen hours a night to make up for it?’
‘Rarely,’ Dot admitted.
‘Your magic is unlike anything I’ve tested before,’ said Theodora, pressing on. ‘Rupert’s, Lio’s, my own. It seems there aretwostreams of it.’
‘Two?’ asked Dot. ‘Surely that’s a good thing.’
‘I do not know,’ said Theodora. Her brow furrowed and she spoke faster. ‘Something happened to you that night you were fourteen, Dorothy. Something fundamentally altered the systems that regulate your magic. Perhaps it was your own magic splitting and transmuting in some strange way or perhaps something else has occurred but, nevertheless, the magic you began with is now being consumed, bit by bit, by the second pool. It is that secondary stream of magic that gave you these scales, Dorothy. That is what eats away at the rest of you every moment of every day.’
Dot watched Theodora, who fidgeted fiercely and stared out the window.
‘Tell me,’ said Dot in a hush.
‘If we don’t find a way to halt it, you will be dead before your twenty-fourth birthday.’
CHAPTERTWENTY-ONE
It was the eldritch hour – the sixty minutes between three and four o’clock in the morning when the night was deep and the earth remembered her childhood. Theodora sat in the alcove of her attic room window backdropped by the starry, night-time city. She wore the parliamentary robe of Minister De León over the gown of Doctor Edyth Evans-Pritchard, and visible upon her wrist was a smear of paint from the palette of Justine Allonse. In her hands was a scrying glass and, through it, Theodora watched the witches of Acanthi.
Cate and Moira were inside their linen tent and Theodora, due to the design of Acanthi’s own wards, could not spot any discernible landmarks which might reveal their location. Moira was asleep against the tent pole, her hands on her belly, her head tipped forward. Her deep breathing filled the room with a methodical wheeze.
This was the woman who Opal had called ‘Aunty’. Agytha, too, shared that epithet, though Theodora was certain that the two were at best barely related. Agytha Meikle was Cate’s fourth cousin, perhaps twice removed, and Moira O’Cleary had been the village Cunning Woman in whatever conservative West Calléan town Cate had been born in.
Still, Theodora looked at her and heard the half-forgotten cry of ‘Aunty Moira’. She heard a similar echo now looking at Catethrough the scrying, haunted by the memory of her most beloved friend calling that woman ‘Mother’.
As if Cate had heard her very thoughts, her eyes snapped upward.
Theodora almost dropped the scrying glass.
‘Is that you?’ asked Cate to the darkness of the tent, her eyes boring into Theodora as if she could see her. ‘Ah, it isTheodoraspying on me. That’s what you like to be called, isn’t it?’
Moira did not stir.
Theodora’s heart tremored but she held the glass steady.
‘I sense some surprise,’ said Cate. ‘You might be almost thirty, but I am twice your age. After all, who was it who taught you the scrying in the first place?’
There came a long pause as Cate stared patiently up at her.
‘Your wards are clever,’ Cate went on. ‘Even when you were young, they were clever. But they are not clever enough to keep me from discovering what you have done. She—’
