A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher

Author:T. Kingfisher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tor Publishing Group

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A stone-faced maid let her into her mother’s suite. She was a good deal older than Alice, her eyes downcast. Cordelia wondered what she had suffered in her mother’s employ. Not that Mother will do anything that you could complain about, not really. But I doubt it’s easy either.

She certainly had enough to say about my cleaning back home.

A pang of longing swept her at the thought, for the little room in the ramshackle house, the windows barred with wunderclutter, the two boards that squeaked when you stepped on them, but in different notes, so that you could stand with your feet apart and bounce and draw a creaky call-and-response from the bones of the house.

She had not been happy there, but she had only had herself to worry about. Worrying about other people was becoming exhausting.

The suite was a mirror of Cordelia’s, in rich greens instead of blues. “Who’s there?” her mother called from the bedroom, in a trembling voice that still carried remarkably well.

“It’s only me.” She went to the doorway and looked in.

Evangeline lay propped up in the bed, pale and wan, her hair artfully disheveled around her face. She wore a dressing gown that looked too big for her, making her look small and fragile in the vast expanse of dark green damask coverlet.

She tilted her head to look at Cordelia and didn’t bother to hide her disappointment. “Ah.” Her gaze went past her, to the maid, and then she stretched out a hand. “Come here, my darling. Mildred, will you fetch us a fresh pot of tea?”

The maid, presumably Mildred, dipped her head and turned away. Evangeline waited until the outer door had clicked shut, then sat up, scowling. “Close the door,” she said, “and lock it. I still don’t trust these servants. They all answer to that dreadful butler.”

Cordelia closed the door and stared at the lock. It was the simplest kind of lock, a little bent hook that dropped into a metal eye. She had never locked a door before. She had never been allowed to lock one. There were no locks on the doors at home.

“Hurry up,” said her mother, voice no longer trembling. “The Squire’s promised to come by later, and I don’t want him to be standing around waiting.”

She lifted the little hook. She could not shake the feeling that it should have been enormous, a weight that she could barely lift with both hands, instead of a little piece of iron that she could pinch between her thumb and forefinger. She fed the hook into the round metal mouth and it made the softest clink, barely heard over the sound of the ice breaking inside her, cracks running in every direction, ready to split apart at the slightest pressure and cast her into an icy sea.

She schooled her face to dull amiability before she turned back. Mother can’t read my mind. She can’t. Even though it felt as if her guilt must surely be emblazoned on her

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