Chapter 20: Left Hand

Linnet's left hand came out of her sleeve with a thin silver blade in it.

It was a surgeon's blade, short and bright, and she had it strapped along her forearm.

She leapt for the dais steps.

Every fighter in the hall moved a half second too late.

I did not move at all, because I had seen this before.

I had seen it in the first life, on the last night, in the dark of my own room.

She was left-handed.

She always struck from the left, low, under the arm.

I stepped into it.

I caught her wrist in both my hands and turned it out, and the blade went wide of my ribs and bit the air.

"Let go!" Linnet screamed.

"No."

I twisted.

The blade fell on the boards between us and rang.

I kicked it off the dais, and it spun into the aisle and stopped at the feet of an old woman on the front bench.

Linnet fought me with her whole body.

She clawed at my face, and her fingers were claws, black and curved, and they raked my cheek.

I let them.

"Look," I said, loud, to the hall. "Look at her hand!"

Three hundred and seventy people looked.

"Her claws are out. Nobody has shut a door. Nobody's in the room."

Linnet froze.

She looked at her own fingers and then at the benches.

At the faces.

The elder with the cane had risen to his feet, and the elder from the east lodge beside him.

"They're always out," I said. "She only ever needed a shut door. She needed me alone, and she needed someone to come and find her kneeling."

"It was Mother!" Linnet shrieked. "Mother told me! She told me to be ill! I did what I was told!"

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