Page 171 of Zenith Court

A few days later, Sadie stood at the mill’s long table with flour to her elbows. She rolled dough beneath the heel of her hand while Kieran sat opposite her, halfway through the bread-basket story from Zenith Hall.

“Then the prefect said⁠⁠—”

“She didn’t say that,” Sadie said, folding the dough.

“She should have.”

“You’re making her cleverer.”

He looked delighted.

Sadie reached for the flour bowl, then stopped. “My mother put nutmeg in everything. Even bread. She said a house that smelled like nutmeg was a house nobody wanted to leave.”

Her hand remained above the bowl. Edda set the nutmeg grater beside it without speaking.

Sadie drew the nutmeg once across the grater. Its warm, bitter sweetness rose over the flour. Across the table, Kieran rubbed flour from his thumbnail and said nothing.

Sadie closed her eyes and waited. When she opened them, she dusted the spice from her fingers and asked Kieran whether he intended to help or merely interfere. He stood and took the flour bowl from her without attempting a joke.

Later, Edda stood with me at the mill door and wiped flour from her hands. “That’s the fourth thing this month.”

“Do they come in any order?”

“None I can find.” Edda watched Sadie through the doorway. “She isn’t finished.”

We passed Zenith Hall on the road south. The same ridge had once hidden us in a widow’s hayloft while we watched the Hall from a distance and waited to learn whether our names had reached it.

No one needed hiding now. The west door stood open, braced by a bucket of nails. Students crossed between the salle and kitchens without looking toward the road. A practice blade struck another inside, followed by Juno’s voice correcting someone’s feet.

Kieran stopped his horse on the rise. “They’re using the west door.”

Jonah looked down at the students crossing the yard. “Good.”

Delphine rode behind us with Lior’s letter tucked in her saddlebag. She did not look down at the Hall. Her face stayed turned south, toward the farm.

We remained on the ridge only long enough to water the horses. The Hall would still be there when any of us wanted to return.

By late afternoon the valley opened below us. Smoke rose straight from the farmhouse chimney. The orchard fence still held along the rail I had replaced before we left, and the goat had pushed her head through the gate to reach grass growing on the wrong side.

She withdrew long enough to inspect our horses, then returned to the grass.

Kieran dismounted too quickly and swore when the reins pulled across his stiff wrist. Jonah caught his horse before it sidestepped into Delphine’s. Caspian swung down more carefully, stood with one hand on the saddle, and looked from the barn roof to the kitchen window. Cosima rode straight to the porch and sat there for a moment without getting off, both hands resting on the pommel.

Rev came out wiping flour on her apron. A brown dog appeared behind her, barked once at the returning horses, and then chose Kieran as the person most likely to drop food. Delphine reached the porch first. Rev opened both arms, and Delphine went into them hard enough to drive them back one step.

The wren had reached me weeks before. Once the vault opened, a clerk had matched its numbered chit to the bird wrapped in cloth at the back of a drawer. The brooch still had its bent fastening and the tilt of its head.

I had carried it in my coat pocket ever since, waiting for home.

Caspian built up the kitchen fire. Kieran resumed his argument with the goat through the open window and lost when she walked away. Cosima laid the old watch roster on the table, stared at it, and put it in the drawer beneath the spare candles.

Delphine took the chair nearest the window and read Lior’s letter again in the last of the light. Rev’s bread went around the table before anyone remembered plates. A dog none of us owned sat beneath Kieran’s chair. Kieran fed it scraps until it stopped looking toward anyone else.

A new crack ran through one kitchen tile. Somebody had mended the curtain with green thread and replaced the broken cup by the pump with a tin dipper. I found the changes one at a time.

No one assigned a watch. Darkness gathered beyond the windows, and the track remained empty.

I stood in the doorway with the wren in my palm. Its pin had left a rust mark along one wing. I turned it once between finger and thumb, hearing my mother call it foolish and seeing the smile she had tried to hide when she gave it to me.