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“Why won’t you take off the mask?”

He lifts a hand to it. He touches the edges and the clasp at the back of his head. Then he brings his hand down and writes.

My mouth. I’m embarrassed by it.

I think of my own face and how I always try to hide the side that’s marred. I have no right to judge him or insist that he shows me his face.

“All right,” I say. “You didn’t eat this morning. Why not?”

He writes again.

I don’t need human food.

I look at the kitchen with its pots and its shelves, and at the table with two plates on it, one used and one clean. I don’t ask anything else.

He leaves me for a moment, walks to the door, then comes back with his cloak on. He writes on the piece of paper and hands it over to me.

Come out on the boat with me.

I follow him out without asking where we’re going or what we’re doing.

We cross the eerie garden at a measured pace, and when we reach the dock, he offers me his hand to help me down the slippery steps. He holds the boat steady while I step in, then he takes the oar and starts rowing standing, moving the oar from one side of the boat to the other, so it glides in a straight line. The lit lamp at the front barely breaches the darkness.

I sit facing him. I’m not shaking this time, I just look at the water. It’s black on every side, and the island lamps fall behind us until they’re mere points in the distance. I count his strokes. I try to keep the direction in my head, but there’s nothing to fix it to.

The platform comes into the light, hanging at the end of the rails that run up into the broken ceiling far above us. There’s no cage on it now. There’s a tray with a lid on it, and from the boat, I can smell meat, bread, and something sweet.

Mordred ties the boat to a rail. He lifts the tray with both hands and sets in the boat, at my feet. Then he takes the rest – cards folded and tied with a string, a book, and loose paper. He gathers them but doesn’t show them to me. He opens a wooden box under the bench and lays them in it, one at a time, then closes the lid. I watch him and don’t ask. When he’s done, I look up instead.

The rails go up through the hole in the vault, and next to the platform, a line hangs. I follow it with my eyes. Mordred pulls the line to send the platform back up. It’s a pulley, and it works from either end. A person could stand on the platform and pull herself up into the House of Voices. And by a person, I mean… me.

I’d need the boat first. I’d have to take it while he slept, find this place in the dark, tie it to the rail, and haul. I look at the line and at my own arms in their lace sleeves. I wouldn’t be able to move the iron platform. And if I could, I’d rise into that hall, and I wouldn’t know who waited at the top of it. I doubt the people of Nivallia don’t watch over the altar they built on the stage.

It’s too much risk for what I’d gain, so I’ll wait, watch, and see what Mordred wants from me.

He unties the boat and turns us around. I keep the tray between my feet, so it doesn’t slide. As we slowly approach the island, all I can do is think. I’ve seen the house now, or the parts of it that he wanted to show me. A room of his I can’t enter, a bath kept for someone, a library, a room full of music instruments, a workshop where he builds things. I’ve seen the lake and the only way up, and it goes to the people who put me in a cage.

There’s no door in this place I could leave through by myself. Mordred never locked one, and I understand why. He doesn’t need to.

The island lamps come up ahead of us, small and then larger. I watch them and not the dark behind me. The tray is warm against my ankle. I keep my hands folded in my lap and my heart steady in my chest.

Chapter Nine

Mordred

Aveline waits until her plate is half empty before she asks me what she is to me.

I set two places at the table earlier, lifted the lid, and motioned for her to take as much as she wanted while I sat across from her, my own plate empty and my hands folded in front of it. She ate the way she’d eaten this morning, with nothing wasted, only pausing to frown at me, making me avert my gaze, realizing that I was staring.

Now she’s staring back, asking me something I hadn’t thought of.

“I’ve been thinking about it since the bride market,” she says. “I signed the contract without asking Callum. Not that he would’ve answered honestly. Am I here to be your wife, or your servant?”

I take the paper from beside the lamp and write: Neither.

She reads it and waits, so I write more.

I didn’t ask for you. I don’t know why they sent you down to me. I won’t assign a role for you.