for an idea, for a stray army that had somehow escaped her notice—one of her fingers went to her mouth, the hardened cuticle between her teeth. Her gaze fell on the old stack of books she’d brought from the Lady’s Library: herbals, cookery books. One of them had a recipe for a salve to put on sore cuticles. Another to keep children from biting their nails. None contained an army. Although—
Eleanor had spent so many hours reading the diaries of long-dead ladies that they had started to seem alive to her, with all the quirks and faults of living people. Silly Lady Berla filled the pages of her diaries with descriptions of her wardrobe, Lady Agatha with equally exacting descriptions of her physical ailments. Bound by tradition to keep a journal but clearly uninterested, Gavin’s mother had—disappointingly—kept only the most perfunctory of notes about her day. (One page, fixed in Eleanor’s memory, read simply, Lost baby. Seneschal kept E away.)
Her favorite, though, was Lady Margarethe, whose husband had suffered a secret apoplexy, and whose sons, upon learning of their father’s infirmity, had laid siege to the House, and their mother in it. After weeks of fighting, the Lady’s surviving second son had yielded to her rule, and the Lady herself had written what Eleanor felt was one of the least known and most important historical documents in Highfall history: Mark well, you defenseless wives, who are allowed no arms at hand; do as I suggest, and keep this in silence as you do so much else, and you will have the knowledge to make a weapon of a single candle.
It was Lady Margarethe who had first ordered the Passage lined with oiled rushes: not because they were waterproof, but because they would burn. Even the most craven Ladies had soon realized the powerlessness of their position, and Eleanor had never read a single diary that did not contain the same suggestion. Look back to Lady Margarethe, daughters in Ladyship. She ruled well.
She’d also been murdered by her second son less than a year after his surrender. But all of those who came after her—including Elly—pretended a horror of damp passages and a deep respect for tradition, and made sure the rushes were well-oiled.
A weapon of a single candle. Eleanor didn’t have a candle; what she had was a single remaining match. Tomorrow she would have no matches. Today the Seneschal wanted Gavin and Judah; tomorrow he would still want them.
Wake up each day and figure out how to survive it, she told herself.
She wished she had a whole box of matches. She wished she had Theron. She wished she had an army.
She grabbed her small, lonely match, and ran out of the parlor.
* * *
“Working in the physical world takes so much blood,” the magus said, wrapping his bleeding arm.
“Gavin.” Judah could hear the high note of panic in her voice. “Get up.”
He didn’t move. He didn’t even blink. The magus glanced at Gavin as if he was of very little consequence and said, “I told you, he can’t get up. I needed him quiet. He doesn’t say anything worth hearing, anyway.” Then the magus’s eyes, which had been strangely empty, landed on Judah and softened. “Oh, Judah. What have you done to yourself?”
She knew he was talking about the stitches. “I saw you,” she said. “I saw you doing this to me.”
“I had to.” Was that guilt in his voice?
“To make sure I was bound to the tower more than to Gavin?”
He nodded eagerly, relieved that she understood. “Yes. So that you can draw on its power, and so it can draw on him.” He nodded his head at Gavin, and a note of complaint crept into his voice. “I didn’t have time. There was never enough time.”
Judah felt her head lower like an angry bull’s, her fists clench. “Why?”
“I told you. Mad Martin bound all the power in the world, and he bound it here. Right under our feet.” He practically glowed with purpose. “I never thought it would be so easy to find, but the power drew you here. It wants so badly to be free.” He stood and moved closer. Judah saw that he had a knife in his hand: not the strange one from his cuff, but the silver one he’d always used on her for Work. “We have all worked so hard to get you here. In this place. With him.” His eyes twitched to Gavin, still motionless, and his mouth curled faintly with