The Time Weaver

But at least they had this bed, and this night. That was enough for now.

Lady Lia liked needlework. I wasn't certain why; to be honest, she wasn't very good at it. Certainly she wasn't as good as my old mother, whose embroidery had decorated Plum House with exceptional taste: cushions and samplers and even quilts, every seam perfection, every stitch utterly precise.

Josephine Carlisle would have said, in her clipped, freezing way, that Lia's efforts revealed a mind that wandered, and I'm sure that was true. Very seldom were there even two stitches in a row of the same length. She would run out of one color of thread and pick out another at random, creating swans that were half white, half green. Windmills on ponds reflecting pink and silver skies. A round moon of yellow and puce; farmhouses casting red shadows, lettering shaded every color of the rainbow.

I watched her stab the needle into the hooped fabric on a night after Zane had left us once again, about a sennight after our conversation on the steps of the great cathedral. Neither he nor Lia would ever discuss where he went when he was gone from us. His absences stretched from weeks to months, with no set pattern that I had yet discerned.

Lia and I were seated together in the drawing room, where the walls were papered in oyster silk and the curtains were snowy damask and the light from the sconces reflected best. She was embroidering. I was pretending to read. It was far more interesting to daydream about Sandu, but Lady Amalia kept distracting me.

She seemed pale. Even for one of us, I mean. Her hair had been pinned up that morning a l'Antoinette but she kept pushing a hand through it, and now it had worked its way mostly loose. She was wan and fetching and lovely. Strands of honeyed blond fell in perfect waves along her perfect face. As she drew the thread long—vivid orange, I noticed, for a pillow cover of a rabbit in a winter meadow—she could have been an etching from a book depicting the ideal notion of English femininity.

'Shit.' She dropped the needle and held up a finger, scowling at the fresh bead of blood welling at the tip. 'Verdammt! Merde.' She cupped her hand to her lips and sucked at the blood; after a second, her gaze angled briefly to mine. 'I beg your pardon. I did not mean to swear.'

'Yes, you did.' I placed my book upon my lap. 'Why do you sew?'

'Because it is better than rum or opium.'

I definitely had no response to that. After a moment she stood, tossing the hoop and cloth to the settee behind her. She crossed to the window and stared out at the street below, still sucking on her finger.

Carrer del Bisbewas popular among the aristacrates and traffic was fairly steady at this hour, all those fine nobles traveling here and there, eager for their evening festivities. Carriages careened past our little palace with horses ever squealing in dismay. Other animals didn't like the scent of us, even from behind stone walls.

'You're sad without him,' I said.

She inclined her head very slightly, still staring out.

'You deserve better,' I blurted. 'You deserve—a husband who will stay with you. Who won't stray.'

Her voice came composed from over her shoulder. 'I think I have exactly the husband I deserve. He's no stray.' She examined her wounded finger, slowly closing her hand into a fist. 'He's giving up a great deal for me, more than you could guess. The least I can do is be patient.'

I was so sick of secrets. I was so tired of all the deceptions. My temper broke.

'I wouldn't have to guess, if you would only tell me. I'm not a child, you know. Not any longer.'

'No,' she agreed, still composed. 'You're not.' Amalia turned around at last. 'Come up to the roof with me.'

'The roof? Why?'

Her eyes were very bright. 'Because I want you to. That's all.'

We occupied the upper stories of the palace. Like most of the other structures around us, the roof of it was composed of baked terra-cotta tiles, layered one atop another in an elaborate, dizzying pattern. They were very old and some of them were missing, and standing on them was a slippery proposition at best. But Lia climbed out of the window of our garret without hesitation, as if she'd done it a hundred times before.

Of course, she probably had.

I followed more gingerly. The slope beyond the sash was very pitched.

A set of bells in a nearby cathedral began to peal, followed at once by a host of others across the tip-top of the city. It was eleven o'clock, and the sky was a hazy deep dark, and the splinter moon was veiled behind a wall of sea mist rolling in from the water. I smelled salt—always salt—and fish and burning oil from the streetlamps. Wet wood from the docked ships, their massive bales of flax and cotton. Unwashed cattle. Sand.

Eleven at night back home would have found most of the shire tucked into their beds, but sleepy, sparkly Barcelona was just awakening. A soiree was taking place somewhere down the street; a quartet of strings lent a formal, musical counterpoint to the last dying echo of the bells.

'It's not very like Darkfrith, is it?' Lia murmured, standing easily in the middle of the slope, a slender figure in a dim blue chemise a la reine, her hair and skirts swaying with the wind.

'No.'

'I like that. I appreciate that about it.'

I picked my way over to her. I also wore a chemise dress—no awkward hoops or fat polonaise; she made certain we kept up with the Parisian fashions, even all the way out here—and had on slippers instead of heels, but it was still a long, daunting distance down to the street below. I could feel the grinding of the tiles with my every step.

'Here filla. Take my hand.'

Filla meant daughter. When she'd first started calling me that after we'd moved here, it felt strange, a concept as foreign as the word itself. Over the years I'd become accustomed to it, though. I'd never told her so, but secretly it pleased me. I was pleased to be a Catalan daughter.

I found her hand without looking up, unwilling to tear my gaze from my feet. Her fingers clasped mine, warm, certain. She held me steady until I was near enough that my own skirts slapped against hers.

'Look,' said my second mother, very soft. 'Look up, Honor.'

I had thought the night veiled. But I saw now that the sea mist was just an illusion of the horizon, something to cloud the eyes of all the Others on the streets below. Above us was a well of pure, sharp black, with stars that burned silver like just-minted pieces of eight flung to the heavens.

I made a sound, something wordless. Lia's hand remained firm around mine.

'Have you ever wondered what it's like to Turn?' I felt her glance to me. 'Smoke, and then dragon?'

Of course I had. Every girl of the shire wondered ... at least, every girl I'd ever known. Of all the Gifts that blessed us, it was the Turn that most defined who we were. Nearly all of the menfolk still had that Gift, but for us—for the females born to the tribe—it remained nothing more than an impassioned wish, one that ultimately faded as we grew older. Fifteen or sixteen was the usual age for the Gifts to emerge. Perhaps as old as eighteen. Male or female, by the time you were twenty, if the Turn had not come, it never would.

Once upon a time, the village schoolmaster used to tell us, every drakon, no matter their sex, was Gifted. Everyone knew the joys of scales and vapor; everyone flew. But Darkfrith was so safe and green, and we settled there so comfortably. Time began to change us. Perhaps it grew easier not to Turn, to grow more lazy in our human skins. Or perhaps we were just cursed. No one really knew why, but in the past two hundred years or so only four females of Darkfrith had managed the Turn.

One of them was standing beside me now, waiting for my response.

Just like everyone else, I'd wanted that Gift. I'd wanted it very, very badly.

'I've heard it hurts,' I said, trying to sound indifferent.

'Yes. I'd heard that, as well.'

I curled my toes in my slippers. 'Does it?'

'Perhaps at first. I'm not really the best person to ask that. When it first happened to me, the circumstances were slightly ... extraordinary. But there's no pain now. Now, when it happens, it's like ... I melt. In the most fantastic way, I melt and become nearly nothing. A nothing so light, so thin, I'm swept up and up. The stars serenade me. The moon smiles. With a single breath I become material again, but I'm aloft. I have wings. I soar. It's simply the most ...'