After offering me her room after Papa died, Lora gives me no concessions. It seems that she, like Hinton, believes in hard work as an antidote to grief. I try to lose myself—every time the Queen’s retinue requests something from the kitchen, I volunteer to deliver it myself, only to find a closed door and the buttress of a steel-faced guard—but no matter how I run myself ragged during the day, trying to please Lora and brooding over the Queen, sleep eludes me for hours at night. The days are a blur, melting one into the next. I can’t say what day of the week it is when Lora approaches me in the kitchen, her face tight with concern.
“I’ve arranged for you to have the afternoon off,” she says quietly. When Ingrid, beside me, looks up curiously from her chopping, Lora snaps, “Back to work!”
She pulls me out into the hallway and leans close. “You’ll take a cart and horse back to Crofton and—and—collect your father’s things from the time lender,” she finishes, patting me with a flour-caked hand.
As I make my way down to the stables, I wonder what awaits me at the time lender’s—my father had nothing but debts. Will they make me watch them strip the cottage down, tile by tile, plank by plank? Will Duade—if he’s recovered from having his own time taken—bleed me in the shop, to account for what my father might have owed? The thought dissolves in my grief like a blood-iron into tea. It takes all the strength I have to put one foot in front of the other.
As Lora promised, the horse and cart are waiting for me in the stables, my old friend Tam at the reins. He gives me a brief, tight hug; maybe he’s heard what happened. He grasps my shoulder, steadying me as we climb into the cart, and I lean against his rough wool coat in return, wishing I could absorb some of his strength.
The day is unseasonably warm. The snow has turned to mud around us, and a few birds chirp bravely into the wind—the weak sun glitters against the slush of white and brown. It’s almost beautiful.
It’s been about a week since I left Crofton, but it seems like years. When we finally go through the broken gate, the low stone wall on either side strikes me as pathetic. It couldn’t keep out a cow. In the streets, the town seems shrunken, small and quiet and gray. Distantly, I wonder what our lives would be like, Papa’s and mine, if we had never come to this village after fleeing Everless. If we lived in a different world where the Queen had never cut Sempera off from other kingdoms to protect the secrets of blood-iron. Where we could simply walk until we reached the sea, then get on a ship and go—elsewhere. I know there must be an elsewhere, somewhere without bleeders or Gerlings or the Queen. But the fantasy, reaching the limits of my knowledge, dissolves into fog.
When we get into town, Tam ties the horse to a post close to the butcher’s shop. I consider running to Amma—but I don’t have the strength to tell her. Does she already know too?
I wave to Tam, who brushes down the mare. I’m grateful that he’s understood, without my having to explain, that I need privacy.
I arrive at the time lender’s store and freeze, my hand on the doorknob. The neck button on Lora’s black hand-me-down dress suddenly feels too tight. After wages, even after my gift to Hinton, I have more money in my purse than I’ve had in years, but I’d trade away Everless and everyone in it for the chance to return to the last time I stood in this square. I’d never have left for the marketplace, the waiting cart. I’d let Papa sell a few months, or I’d convince him to let me do it. We would have survived. Just as we had always done.
I steel myself and enter the store—this store I’ve passed a thousand times, peered into a thousand times, but never been in. It’s tight inside, drowning in the smell of copper, the packed-dirt floor spattered with old blood.
Shivering in spite of the heat from the hearth, I walk to the counter with my head high. An older couple, two women with backs curved with too much work and too few years, hunches over a small table in the corner, taking turns cutting each other’s palms and letting the blood flow into empty vials. I wonder if they’re putting time away for their children. They watch me as I approach—with curiosity and pity. I suppose I still look too young for a place like this.
“My father died four days ago,” I tell Edwin Duade, hoping my voice doesn’t crack. “I’m here for his things.”
His eyes flick up to mine, then back to his ledger. “His full name an’ yours.”
No words of comfort, no nonsense. I notice the red line drawn across Duade’s palm. Another reminder that only a week ago, everything was different, when Liam ordering Duade bled was enough to shake me.
“Pehr Ember.” This time, my voice does crack. “And I’m Jules.”
Duade disappears into a back room, and a tear—two tears—escape and trickle down my cheek. I wipe them quickly away when he emerges, holding only a letter and a canvas sack as big as my two fists—a sack that, by the sound it makes against the counter, I can tell is full of blood-iron.
“You got more ’an a pint of luck, girl,” he says. “His debts have been paid. To the collectors.”
I blink in confusion. “But . . . by whom?”
Duade’s laugh is unkind. “All been paid good an’ square. That’s the only thing ought to concern you.”
Could Lora have paid? But more important—“Where are the rest of my things?”
He cocks his head at me. “This’s all.”
I blink. “What do you mean?” I think of our cottage—our home. “There was the cottage. Drawings on the wall.” Never enough, but . . . “A broken pocket watch. Did you take those?”
He scoffs again, jerks his hand in the air like I’m a fly he’s swatting off. “Those things aren’t for you.”
“What—” The tears threaten to surge again. I take a deep breath, composing myself. “There must be a mistake. You said his debts were paid, which means his possessions belong to me.” I grip the counter. “There was no one else. I was all he had.”
Duade sighs. “Rest belongs to the Gerlings, sweet. You say Pehr Ember was your father? Well, I’ve no record of that. No record of you at all.”
The silence rings, broken only by the couple shuffling away, emptied of their years. My voice comes out faint. “No . . . record?”
He nods at the envelope on the counter. “Just this,” he says. “Nothing more I can do for you.”
As soon as I’m out of sight of the shop, I duck beneath a store’s ragged awning and examine the letter. My name is written across the front of the envelope in my father’s careful handwriting. My hands shake as I slice it open with one finger and slide out the note inside. The dense wall of writing blurs in my vision; I wipe away the tears to read.
Jules,
I’m off to Everless this morning, to fetch you. I hope you will come home with me and that I will, at this time tomorrow, be dropping this letter unopened into the fire. But Everless is a dangerous place, now more than ever. So I have no choice but to face the possibility that I might not return.
If this is so, and you are reading this, Jules—I wish I could give you more than this letter, my girl. You deserve so much more. But I fear that now, this is all I can offer you.
By this time, you might have begun to suspect the truth—that I am not your father by blood or by law. I’ve asked Duade if he can pass our things along to you anyway, but I know he will not. The law is the law, as the world is so fond of reminding us. I thought of you as my daughter—you are my daughter—so I have never told anyone otherwise. I ask that you do the same, Jules. Keep our secret. Life will be a little easier with a family name, even one such as mine.
And I shall tell you this when I see you, but in case I only live long enough to say it once, let me repeat myself here: Stay away from Everless. Stay away from the Queen. I cannot explain myself, not in a letter that can fall into anyone’s hands, but you’re not safe with Her Majesty there. Please—I know you must have so many questions, Jules, but trust me now.
Before you left for the estate, you said you needed me, but you’re wrong. You’re strong—brave—kind, and I know that you’ll keep going forward when I’m gone. Every day, every hour I’ve given has been more than worth it. I just wish I could have seen the woman you will become.
My girl—you are my daughter, and I your father, in every way but blood. Never forget that. Keep our secret, and keep safe. I love you.
Papa
I pace the back streets of Crofton like a madwoman, avoiding the main marketplace, though I long to see Amma. Tam can stay a while longer with the cart. It’s bitterly cold despite the sun hanging in the cloudless sky, but the thought of ducking into a shop or tavern, acting like nothing is wrong makes me sick.
Instead, my feet, only half-healed from when I ran barefoot to the lake, slip on the dirty, melting snow. A few people glance my way as they pass, but they avert their eyes, giving me a wide berth. I can tell they fear me in the same way I once feared the Ghost. They must see the same desolate wildness in my face, how grief has torn away my humanity.
My hand clutches Papa’s letter. Lines come back to me as if they’re refrains of a song: I am not your father by blood or by law. I am not your father by blood or by law. And images, as Hinton described them—the stain on my father’s hands, his blank stare, drained of time.
His words, so full of meaning, are not the words of a man losing his wits. Though I don’t understand it, I can feel a terrible truth lurking in his sentences, curling with the ink.
I feel his hands on my shoulders, their grip tight, shaking me, demanding that I leave—until I realize that they’re my own hands, my own fingers digging into flesh. I’m trembling, but it has nothing to do with the cold.
The bag of blood-iron hangs like a lead weight on my hip. Another puzzle. Perhaps Duade was wrong, and Papa had been hoarding this blood-iron, but why didn’t he use it to save himself?
Someone calls out to me. “Jules!”
I know the voice. Amma. I turn around.
Amma hurries down the alley toward me, shouldering her way through the people with their heads down and coats pulled up over their cheeks. Her bloodstained butcher’s apron is rolled under her arm. She stops two strides away, her other arm outstretched to embrace me, then pulls back. She studies my face.
“Jules,” she whispers. “What—?” The color drains from her. “Did something happen at Everless?”
I can’t speak, but the sympathy in her eyes starts my tears flowing again. For a second, she stares at me, horror-struck. Then she takes my elbow and guides me to a nearby doorway, where we huddle. She puts an arm around me, pulls me into her. My voice is still weak, so I hand her the letter to read.
Her eyes skim over it, filling with tears as they do. “He must have sold his time,” she whispers in stunned understanding. “I’m so sorry, Jules.”
My voice, raw from crying, cracks when I speak. “It’s more than that,” I croak. But my next words catch in my throat. How can I explain the truth to Amma—that he spent his last hours traveling to the estate, and then, when I ignored his pleas to come home, he tried to enter the Gerling vault, and I don’t know why? That because of it, he died outside Everless’s walls with only Hinton, a stranger, by his side?
I fear she’ll tell me what Lora did: The mind flows from the vein as well as years.
“I need him,” I say instead, the words tangled up in a sob.
Amma pulls me to her. Now, closer, I smell the animal blood on her, but it doesn’t matter—she’s land, and I’m drowning. Sobs rack me again, echoing down the narrow alley, until I’m too exhausted to cry any more. Amma keeps her arms around me, holding me up, as the village gradually grows dark around us.
“What does he mean, about Everless and the Queen?” she says at length.
I wipe my eyes.
“He never liked her, or the Gerlings.” And for good reason—we wouldn’t be destitute if not for Liam. But the letter in my hand weighs heavy, screaming something more. “Still, danger . . . I don’t know what he means.”
The truth of it tears at me—I don’t know, I don’t know.
Amma is quiet for a moment. Then: “Jules, maybe you shouldn’t go back.”
I shudder. “No. I don’t have a choice.” It’s half true. The thought of Everless, its warm kitchen and roaring fires, is a comfort, but the idea of the Gerlings and the Queen inside is poison. Danger, in my father’s words. Yet if I leave now, I’ll never know why.
Amma nudges the bag of blood-iron at my belt. “This looks like a choice to me.”
Her words hang in the air before us. Suddenly, the bag of coins feels much heavier as they take on a new meaning—a new future, perhaps. What could I do with the years inside?
“You don’t have to go back,” Amma says. Her face glows with possibility. “Alia wrote to me that she wants to come home. She hates it there. She’s made enough money for us to get by a few months.” She pauses, her voice full. I wonder if Alia is still afraid of the Alchemist’s spirit chasing her through Everless’s halls, or if it’s something else. “I was wrong, Jules—Everless isn’t worth it. What good are the years, if you have to spend them like that?”
Possibilities float through my mind too, their shine dulled by grief. I could return to Crofton, rent a new cottage, use the money to get a little farm running. I could go back to the schoolhouse and learn a trade. I could travel, try my fortunes in one of the prosperous cities on Sempera’s shores, finally see the ocean.
Or—I could return to Everless. Work as hard as I can, all while listening in the halls like Roan and I used to do, and hope that something can lead me to the truth in Papa’s letter. After Lady Gold is married, the Queen will retreat to her palace by the sea. If I don’t act now, I’ll lose my chance.
The cottage would be empty and worthless without Papa. The whole village would be. And I can’t imagine traveling anywhere without turning over the question of Papa’s last actions. I need to know why he did what he did, and what he meant by warning me away from the Queen. In fact—a chill dances down my spine as I realize I already know the first step. Replace Addie in the Queen’s retinue. And if I’m banished too—well, I’ve survived it before.
“I don’t have to go back,” I say, my voice a quiet rasp. “But I want to.” I detach the bag of blood-irons from my belt, take out a handful to slip in my pocket, and hold out the rest to Amma.
Immediately, her eyes turn hard. “Jules, no.”
“I don’t need it anymore,” I say. “Take it for Alia, if you won’t take it for you.”
This is what makes her accept the money. I know Amma well enough to know that she’s like me—proud, but not too proud to do what is right for her family.
My family is gone. Hers is not.
Amma closes her eyes, letting the tears spill down her cheeks. “Thank you,” she breathes, burying her face in the crook of my shoulder. “Thank you, Jules.”
I rest my head gently against hers. I wish so badly that this were enough, that I could do as Papa wished. Let the questions buried between the flagstones of Everless stay there, or fly away like a scrap of silk in the wind. I could go on with my life here, with our cottage and garden, the schoolhouse, my friend.
But the mystery of Papa’s warning, his stained hands and his death, would drive me mad.
I’ll go back. I must.
I have business with the Queen.