that Judd didn’t. Something about the bell?
“It was on a ship,” he heard himself protest incoherently, he thought, but somehow Ridley knew exactly what he meant.
“Was it?” he only said, and the town that Judd had known all his life changed in his head, transformed by the words of a stranger. Who had also, in that moment, transformed himself under Judd’s nose.
A word sprang alive in his head; recognizing it, he began to understand what it meant.
Magic.
Five
Ysabo was on top of the tower, feeding crows again. It was only bread from last night’s supper, and a few scraps of meat; the knights had eaten everything else. As always, gulls circled and wove among the crows, crying in their piercing, tormented voices as though they had eaten every fish in the sea, every plump morsel in its shell on the shore, and were on their last breaths with hunger. But they were wary of the crows and rarely snatched a mouthful. Ysabo had seen why the first time she had fed them, when she was a little girl. The gull that had caught a crust out of her bowl had been transformed instantly into a raging tumble of black feathers and beaks. The midair brawl had quickly flown itself over the sea, where, as the black knot had untangled itself into birds again, something ragged, limp, and bloody had dropped into the waves. The crows flew back to the tower, landed peacefully at Ysabo’s small, slippered feet. She had stared at them; they had looked back at her, beaks clacking, something knowing, mocking, in their black eyes. She had dumped the rest of the scraps over their heads and fled.
But Maeve had made her go back. “It’s your duty,” her grandmother said, “from this day. We all have our duties. They must never, ever, ever be neglected. Not one. Don’t be afraid of the crows. They are wise and powerful, like the knights. Like the knights, they kill their enemies. But they would die to protect us. All they need is that we never fail our solemn responsibilities.”
“Why?” the very small Ysabo asked. “What would happen?”
“We are sworn,” Aveline had said in her rich, husky voice, shaking her bright head, her great gray eyes seeming to see, in that moment, all the sorrows of the world in the sunny morning. “That is enough for you to know. Never ask again.”
Ysabo had looked to Maeve, who had long hair like cobweb and pale green eyes. Her voice was wavery and frail, no contest for Aveline when she was in a mood, but the right word from her, fragile though it might be, was usually the last word in any argument between them. Then, Ysabo had no concept of age. Maeve looked the way she did because she was Maeve. As years passed, she finally saw Maeve in Aveline’s face, and Aveline’s in Maeve: the regal bones, certain expressions. But though she searched every mirror in the castle, Ysabo couldn’t find her mother’s face in hers.
That was one thing she understood now, after more than a decade and a half of growing up Ysabo. She had lost her fear of the crows; they truly needed her, she understood. And she knew why she didn’t resemble Aveline. She took after her father, instead. And if she had questions about the rigorous and exacting ritual of their lives, she had learned to keep them to herself.
Three rules were simple, and made very clear to her, very early.
She had no idea how. It was enormous, so many halls and stairs and doors, she could get lost for hours just turning a corner. The idea of a door that actually opened to trees, earth, the lairs and paths of animals seemed wildly improbable. Anyway, Maeve explained, everything they needed or might want could be found within the walls.
If you have to write them down with your own blood to remember them, do it, Aveline had told her passionately. Never forget them. At first, there were only candles to be lit, doors to be locked or unlocked, certain goblets to set at certain places for the nightly feast. Gradually her duties multiplied, became more complex, their exact timing governed by the ringing of the bell. These things must be done, in this order, before it rings; these after. Nothing must be forgotten; the proper order must be rigorously maintained. She did write them down eventually, in ink rather than in blood. She carried the paper with her for years until she realized nothing had been added for a very long time. She had come to the end of learning the ritual, and it was written in her heart.
That was the hardest rule. But when she forgot and broke it, punishment was swift: a heart-freezing stare from Aveline, some tedious, endless task from Maeve. Sometimes a blow. So she stopped asking, early, except in her head.
Except two nights ago, on her birthday.
“But why?” she had asked the knight. “Why must I marry anyone? Why must I marry you?”
The bruise his fingers left burned on her cheek like a brand.
Little had been said about it during the feast. Afterwards, in their chambers, Aveline had wept, of course, but not over the knight’s behavior.
“How could you?” she stormed at Ysabo. “After all you have been taught?”
“But, Mother—”
“The knights have their rituals, as we do; they dare not deviate. It is immensely dangerous.”
“He didn’t have to hit me.”
“You questioned him. He had no proper recourse but that. No other words.”
But why? Ysabo wanted to shout, to weep, to kindle her own storm, set it raging against Aveline. But why but why but why why why?
Maeve, sitting beside the fire, listening, raised her white head as though she felt the silent storm. Or sensed something of it in Ysabo’s wide, glittering eyes, her tense face, livid but for the burning shadow of the knight’s hand.
“Come here,” she said.
For a breath Ysabo stood motionless, staring at her grandmother, fearing another blow. Then she forced herself to move, her mouth tightening so that her thin lips all but disappeared, left a snake’s mouth, a toad’s mouth in her face.
Maeve only tugged at her wrist gently, until Ysabo sank to her knees on the soft skins under Maeve’s chair. Maeve patted her shoulder; Ysabo’s brow came to rest finally against her grandmother. Behind them, Aveline opened a casement, let in the wind. Ysabo heard the distant thunder of the sea, a gull’s lonely piping in the dark.
“Our world will not come to an end because you asked a question,” Maeve said. “But it will, without the ritual. Think of the ritual as something powerful enough to call up the sun, to set the waves in motion, bring down the moon. If you forget, or willfully abandon any part of it, imagine that the sun will not rise out of the sea; the sea itself will stop, lie silent and idle as a puddle in the perpetual black. Imagine that your blood will stop flowing, lie as stagnant in your veins.”
“But he does not love me,” Ysabo whispered. She heard a sharp sound, very like a snort, from Aveline. But Maeve only stroked her hair a moment, quietly.
“Then look to us for love. Look to the knight for your child. What you do not expect, you won’t miss.”
Ysabo felt a sudden flash of cold throughout her body, as though she had drunk moonlight or swallowed the icy prick of light that was a star. “My child.”
“If it is male, he will become a knight. If female, you will teach her the ritual, as Aveline has taught you.”
Ysabo closed her eyes. She felt hot tears well behind her lids, the first she had cried all evening. Poor poppet, she thought numbly. Poor unborn thing.
“Best it be a knight, then,” she whispered. Maeve’s fingers found her chin, drew up her face to see her eyes.
Before her grandmother could speak, Aveline whirled away from the window, demanded, “Has your life here been so terrible? You have wealth and status; everything is given to you, done for you. All that is asked of you is the
