real or imagined. “He used a device invented by the Collegium during the Reforms, designed to control rebellious sorcerers by capturing their servants. I did not expect it. I had not seen one since the days that I served Master Thorn’s great-grandfather.”
“I’m sorry.” Guilt twisted her stomach. “If I hadn’t asked you to go—”
“Do not apologize to me, Miss Scrivener.” His voice sounded clipped, as close to anger as she had ever heard him. “It was my own carelessness at fault.”
Elisabeth doubted that. Silas was never anything but meticulous. However, she received the impression that he wouldn’t appreciate her saying so out loud.
Finally, he spoke again. “You came downstairs to ask about the life you bargained to me. You wished to know how it works.”
She sat up in surprise. “Yes.”
“But now you are having second thoughts.”
“I’m wondering if—perhaps it would be better not to know.” She hesitated. “I could still live to be seventy, or I could die tomorrow. If I knew—if you told me—I think that would change the way I lived. I would always be thinking about it, and I don’t want that.”
Silas continued chopping, aware she wasn’t finished.
“But I would like to know . . . how it happens. Do you do it yourself? Or do we just . . . ?”
She imagined herself toppling over dead, her heart stopped in an instant. That wouldn’t be so terrible, at least not for herself. The thought of Nathaniel dying that way—
“No,” said Silas. “It is not like that.” Now it was his turn to hesitate. He went on softly, “It is impossible to know how many years a human will live, or in what manner they will die. Life is like the oil within a lamp. It can be measured, but the pace at which it burns depends upon how the dial is turned day by day, how bright and fierce the flame. And there is no predicting whether the lamp might be knocked to the ground and shatter, when it could have blazed on a great while longer. Such is the unpredictability of life. It is good you do not have many questions; I do not have any answers. A portion of the fuel, the life force that once belonged to you and Master Thorn—I hold it now within myself. That is all I can tell you. The rest remains uncertain.”
Thoughtfully, Elisabeth leaned back against the fireplace’s warm stones. “I see.” She found his explanation strangely comforting—the idea that she had no preordained number of years remaining, that even Silas didn’t know her fate.
The warmth of the stones soothed her bruised and aching muscles. Her eyelids drooped. She felt as though she were half in the kitchen, listening to the quiet rattle of pots and pans, and half back in Summershall, dreaming of the apples in autumn, the market saturated in golden light. Eventually, she was roused by Silas setting the table in front of her. Her stomach growled at the rich aroma of thyme emanating from the pot on the fire. She blinked the rest of the way awake, watching him lift the pot’s lid and glance inside.
She wondered how he could tell whether it was finished, finding the taste and presumably the smell unappetizing. “Did one of the servants teach you how to cook?” she asked drowsily.
“No, miss.” He straightened to fetch a bowl. “The human servants did not speak to me, nor I to them. I learned through practice, as a matter of necessity. The appetite of a human boy of twelve is almost as frightening as that of a demon. And the lack of manners; I shudder to recall it.”
Guiltily, she took the napkin and placed it on her lap, conscious of the look he had just sent her beneath his lashes. “So you didn’t start until after Alistair died.”
He nodded as he ladled soup into the bowl. “Initially, I didn’t have the faintest idea how to care for Master Thorn. He came to me in poor condition; he had badly cut his arm drawing blood for the summoning—that is the scar, which I had not the knowledge to tend properly. . . .”
Silas’s movements slowed, then stilled. His eyes were distant, gazing not at anything in the kitchen, but far into the past. Firelight flickered across his youthful face, lending his alabaster features the illusion of color. Even that wasn’t enough to make him look mortal. She was aware of the vast gulf between them: his unfathomable age, the inscrutable turning of