Chapter 8: The Tea

The person on the stairs was Tobias, carrying a lamp and a cheese rind.

"Keepers walk in their sleep," he said mildly, to nobody. "I'm told it's very common. I came to see that the vault was locked."

He looked at the open door, then at Cassian's shirt, then at me.

"It's locked now," he said, and shut it, and went back up the stairs whistling.

I took my candle and went to bed with a stolen fact and a hot wrist.

In the morning Odette brought tea.

She knocked, and she carried the tray herself, with a cup, a pot and a plate of small honey cakes.

"I couldn't sleep either," she said. "I thought you might be lonely."

Nobody had been this kind to me in two days.

I had a strong urge to forgive her for everything.

"That's thoughtful," I said.

"You don't have to talk," said Odette. "I know it must be very strange." She set the tray on the table and poured, and the steam rose between us.

Then it reached my nose.

Green. Bitter. Sharp as a cut stem.

My body knew it before I did.

I was standing at the Mirror with a numbed palm and a rag, and a cold voice saying, "Hold still." I had no face for the voice. But I knew the smell.

Bloodroot.

It was in the tea.

Odette's smile never moved.

She held the cup out to me with both hands.

"Drink," she said gently. "It will take the edge off."

"Thank you," I said.

I took the cup. I held it, and I did not drink.

She waited a moment longer than she needed to. Then she nodded and left, and her footsteps went down the stair.

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