A PET WORTH MORE

I put down the veil.

I did not need to. It was already down. But it was a thing to do with my hands while I considered him, and Hawk had taught me that when a man has found you out, the worst response is haste. I lifted the black silk off my face, folded it once, and tucked it into my sleeve.

"Hello, Alden," I said.

He stared at me. Something ran through him like a current, from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet. He took a half-step, and checked, and stood there in the corridor with his coat open and his chest heaving, as though the floor had tilted.

"You were behind the curtain," he said. "All night. You were... you were the Widow."

"A girl must make a living."

"You made the pieces. The Rank S. Those were yours."

"Mine and Josie's."

"The Cinder-mail." His eyes dropped to my coat, to the high collar, to the seams where the red tracery glinted. "I should have known. The runes. The signature. The way the Patriarch—" He swallowed. "My father said it could not have been done by any living mage. He said it must have been an old piece, a relic. I said—" He broke off with a laugh that was not a laugh. "I said I knew someone who could."

"And?"

"He said you were dead."

"He is mistaken."

A silence.

"Tamsin." He took a breath. His voice was low and raw. "I need to speak to you. Please. It won't take long."

"Speak."

"Not here."

"Here."

His eyes flickered. He glanced down the corridor, at the guard in scarlet at the far end, and at the curtain hung with gold, and back at me. He drew himself up. And then, to my very great surprise, he did something that I had never seen him do, in two lives, in any circumstances whatever.

He knelt.

…

It was a clumsy kneeling. He went down on both knees at once, with a thud, on the red carpet. His hands came up in front of him, open, shaking. His golden head bowed. For a moment he stayed there, motionless, like a penitent in a cathedral, and I saw the nape of his neck, white and vulnerable, below the collar of his coat.

"Please," said Alden Whitlock.

I said nothing.

"I know what I am. I know what I've done. I know that I've no right to ask you for anything, and that you have every reason to leave me to rot." His voice shook. "I'm not asking for myself. I'm asking for Cordelia."

"Ah."

"She's dying, Tamsin."

"I thought she was only injured."

"It's the channels." He lifted his face. His eyes were wet. They were truly wet; this was not performance. The tears ran down his cheeks, unchecked, and dripped from his chin. "The Sigil lines in her arms are severed. The healers say the damage is spreading. Another month, two, and it will reach the heart. She'll lose the use of her Sigil, and then her magic, and then she'll waste." He was gasping now. "She cries all night. She can't sleep. She says it burns. I sit with her, and I hold her hand, and I can't do anything—"

"You could have bought the crystal."

"We tried!"

"With seven million."

"It wasn't enough! It was never going to be enough!" His voice cracked. "You knew that. You knew it. You bid until we broke, and then you took it, and you didn't have to. Nobody could have—" He bit it off. "Please. Please. I'll do anything."

"Anything."

"Anything. I'll give you the Manor. I'll sign it over tonight. The title, the lands, the vaults, everything my father owns. I'll tell the Senate I lied. I'll go before the Relay. I'll say you were right. I'll say I wronged you." He was crawling toward me on his knees, his hands outstretched. "Anything you want. Only give her the crystal."

I looked down at him.

The corridor was quiet. Somewhere far away the orchestra was playing a waltz. The gaslight hummed. The Shade stood at the end of the corridor, in the shadow, with his arms folded, utterly silent, watching.

I thought of the girl in the white dress, and the sand, and the roar.

I thought: This is what I wanted.

I waited for it to feel like something.

…

"Alden," said a voice.

It was very small.

I looked up. In the curtained archway at the end of the corridor, a wheeled chair had appeared, pushed by a nurse in a gray uniform. In the chair sat a figure in pale lace, with her arms in slings, her hair unbound over her shoulders. She was thinner than I remembered. Her face had the transparent, waxen look of a person who has not slept for weeks. Her eyes, huge, brown, and sunken, were fixed on me.

"Cordelia," I said.

"Don't." She was trembling. Her voice was thin and high, and it shook with something I took, at first, for hatred. It took me a moment to understand that it was fear. "Don't hurt him."

I raised my eyebrows.

"Please." The tears were running. "Don't hurt him. He's not... he didn't..." She faltered. "He's only trying to help. It's my fault. It's all my fault. I know that. I did it. I did it, I started it, I put the idea in his head." She was babbling. "Please. Take it out on me."

"Cordelia, be quiet," said Alden, hoarsely.

"I won't!"

I heard it with some curiosity. It was the first time I had ever heard her speak a sentence that was not arranged. I wondered, idly, whether it was true. Whether, beneath the sweet face and the flat cold eyes, there was something that could be frightened for another person. I examined the thought. I found, to my surprise, that I did not much care.

"Nurse," I said. "Bring her in."

The nurse hesitated. Alden nodded, helplessly. The chair rolled forward. It stopped a few feet from me, beside him. Cordelia's eyes went to the covered tray under my arm, and stayed there. Her lips parted. They were cracked and dry.

"Is that it?" she whispered.

"Yes."

"May I... may I see it?"

I should have said no. I did not. I set the tray on a gilt table beside the wall, and lifted the cloth.

…

The Phoenix Blood Crystal glowed in its cage.

In the dim corridor it was extraordinarily beautiful. A small sun, red and gold, pulsing softly. The light fell across the faces of the two on the floor and in the chair, and turned them to old bronze. Cordelia's eyes filled. She leaned forward, as far as the straps would allow, and the glow lit the wet tracks on her cheeks.

"It's so warm," she breathed.

"Yes."

"I could feel it from the box. All night. It was pulling at me." She shivered. "It's like a heart."

"It is a heart. Or part of one."

She looked up. For a moment our eyes met, and I saw in hers the girl I had braided hair for, in a dormitory, in another life. Seventeen, and frightened of thunder. She reached for me, in the dark, and I had held her hand.

I looked away.

"You want it," I said.

"Yes."

"You want it more than anything in the world."

"Yes."

"More than you want to be forgiven."

She hesitated. "I... yes."

I nodded.

I took the cage from the tray. The wires gave way at my touch, singing, like harp-strings. I drew the crystal out into my palm, and it lay there, pulsing, heavy and hot, as though a small animal were curled in my hand.

I heard Alden's breath catch. I heard Cordelia sob.

"Nimbus," I said.

…

He came out of my coat like a snow-flurry.

He had been lying against my ribs since the first lot, bored into insensibility, and he had slept through most of the evening's drama with the expert apathy of a cat. Now he unfolded, stretched, and shook himself in a ruffle of pale fur. He leaped lightly onto the gilt table. His silver eyes took in the scene: the kneeling man, the chair, the nurse, the cage. He yawned.

"Are we done?" he inquired.

"Nearly."

"I would like it known that I have been very patient."

"It's been noted."

"I would also like it known that this room smells of tears, and I dislike it."

I held out my palm.

He sniffed. His whiskers quivered. His eyes widened, a little, and his tail came up in a slow curve. He looked from the crystal to me, and back, with an expression of dawning, astonished delight.

"This," said Nimbus, "is edible."

"Yes."

"This is the finest thing I have ever smelled."

"I thought you might say that."

"Is it for me?"

"It's yours."

He did not wait to be asked again. He lowered his head and licked the crystal, once, delicately, with a pink tongue. A shiver ran through his body from nose to tail. His wings, folded at his back, quivered. Then he opened his mouth, took the Phoenix Blood Crystal between his teeth, and bit.

There was a sound like breaking glass.

The crystal cracked. A thread of gold light leaked from the fissure, pouring into his mouth, and he crunched it down, and swallowed, and crunched again, closing his eyes in rapture. The light ran down his throat. It seemed to flow through him, along his spine, out through his wings; his fur gleamed, his silver eyes flashed gold for a moment, and a faint heat-haze shimmered at his flanks. When he opened his eyes again, the shadow had gone from his wing. The old gash across his ribs had sealed. He looked, if possible, larger.

"Excellent," he said, and licked his chops.

…

I do not think I shall forget the silence.

It was the silence of a shock so complete that it could not find a voice. Alden knelt on the red carpet, his mouth open, his eyes fixed on the cat. He had gone quite white. His hands, still held out before him, trembled in the air. Cordelia's face was a mask of blank incomprehension. She seemed not to have seen it. She seemed to be waiting for the thing to be put back.

"You—" said Alden. "You—"

"Yes."

"You fed it—"

"Yes."

"To a—to a cat?"

"A Wingborn Snow Panther," I said, "is worth considerably more than a Phoenix Blood Crystal. He is a bonded companion, a scout, a mount-in-training, and a very good friend. The crystal has made him, I am told, eighteen months older. He will be a full-grown adult by spring." I turned to look at the creature on the table, who was washing a paw. "I think, on the whole, it was a fair price."

"But Cordelia—"

"It is true that I could have cured her."

He stared at me.

"It is also true," I said, in a clear, even voice, "that giving my pet a snack was a more useful thing to do with it than saving the two of you."

I let the words fall into the silence, and I watched them land.

Cordelia made a sound.

It was not a scream. It was a little high thin whimper, like a kitten's. She sat very still in her chair, with her eyes wide and blank, and the tears ran slowly down her face. She did not seem to know she was crying. She turned her head, very slowly, and looked at her arms in their slings, and at the empty cage on the table, and at the cat.

Alden put his hands over his face.

He did not weep. He just folded, from the waist, bowing over his knees, and pressed his palms against his eyes. His back shook. His shoulders heaved. There was no sound at all. It was the most dreadful thing I'd ever seen him do, and in some cold corner of me I felt the faintest, remotest flicker of regret, which I observed, and logged, and dismissed.

I took the veil from my sleeve and drew it down.

…

"Excellent."

The voice came from the shadows at the far end of the corridor, very low, very soft.

I turned.

He had been standing there the whole time. I had known it. I had felt him watching, a cool presence at my back, a steady dry attention. I had not expected him to speak. He stood with his arms folded in the gloom, pale and tall, his cropped hair silver in the gaslight.

"Excellent," the Shade said again, in the dry low voice I knew so well.

I looked at him.

He was smiling.

It was not a smirk. It was not the thin cold ghost of amusement that I had seen on him in the Gorge. It was a broad, real, devastated grin, wide and astonished, like a man who has watched a thing he did not know was possible. It lit his face from within. The scar on his jaw creased. He looked, for the first time since I had met him, like a person.

"That," said Declan Marrow, "was the finest thing I have seen in forty years."

I did not answer. I did not trust my voice.

I turned my back on the ruin in the corridor, and picked up the empty tray, and tucked Nimbus under my arm, and walked away.