Page 52

"You came here tonight." Idonea's voice sharpened. "In the middle of the night, knowing there's a daemon out there that just murdered a witch on the chapel steps."

"Yes." Kitsa's voice barely carried. There was no fear in it, which was worse. "That's why I came underneath."

Kitsa swayed again. Idonea exhaled sharply through her nose.

"Close the hatch," she said, gentler now. "And get away from the doorway. You look like you're going to faint."

Kitsa pulled the rug back over the hatch with one foot. She didn't move from her spot, exactly. She swayed once, caught herself on the table's edge, and lowered herself into the chair beside it with the careful grace of someone whose legs were no longer entirely trustworthy.

The fire had been banked low for the night. Idonea crouched in front of it, stirring the embers with the poker until they brightened, and added two splits of pine from the basket. The flames caught with a hiss, the resin in the wood waking up. She swung the kettle over the heat.

"Your hands are blue," she said over her shoulder.

"My hands are fine."

"Your lips are blue, Kitsa."

A pause. "My hands are also a little blue."

"Come over here."

Kitsa came and sat on the stool by the fire. Idonea took the girl's hands between her own and held them. They were not warm, not even close. The Current would've fixed this instantly. Instead, Idonea sat there rubbing warmth into her skin like an ordinary person.

It took longer than she liked. After a while the blue went out of the girl's fingers and her lips pinked again, and she did not, blessedly, say anything about it.

"I hate this cottage," Idonea muttered.

"I know."

"It's like wearing a hood that no one will let you take off."

"All the cottages are like that."

Idonea let the girl's hands go and rolled her shoulders against the ache that had settled there. She busied herself with the tea, grateful for the ritual of it. She warmed the pot first with a splash of hot water, swirled it, tipped the water out. The leaves went in next. She poured the boiling water in, watching the leaves lift and turn, and set the lid on with care. It was the way Nellith had taught her when she was young. The first thing her mother had ever taught her, she sometimes thought, that wasn't magic.

Her throat tightened around the memory. She forced it down.

"So, why are you here?" she asked.

"I had to come."

"Kitsa."

"Don't."

Idonea didn't push. The word had come out broken at the edges, and she knew that tone, knew it from her own mouth, from a hundred conversations she hadn't been able to bear having.

She left the pot to steep and went to the front door instead. The salt line she'd laid along the threshold that evening was scuffed in two places where Kitsa's feet must have crossed the floor above. The Lodamante had eaten the salt's edges into a fine grey dust where the line had been laid against the iron-veined wood.

She took the salt jar from the mantel and knelt to mend the line.

"It won't do anything," Kitsa said behind her.

"I know."

"Not without the Current."

"I know, Kitsa."