Rust in the Root by Justina Ireland

Author:Justina Ireland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-07-14T00:00:00+00:00

After the loss of the healer Frederick it first occurred to me that we had potentially walked into a trap. I did not know or suspect that the person who laid the trap was a member of our party, nor did I have any suspicion at the time that the bureau had Necromancers in its midst. The council may find me naive for such an oversight, but I must stress that events were unfolding quite quickly and we were all hard pressed to do what we could to keep our wits about us. . . .

Chapter

Twenty

The Skylark always wakes early. She has ever since she was little. Her mama worked in a bakery, and it was normal to see her rise before the first rays of dawn pinkened the sky, her capable hands coaxing the yeast, flour, and sugar to do their thing. Not with the mystical arts, but with good old-fashioned elbow grease. No one else in the Skylark’s family was able to ravel a lick—at least, not anyone she was aware of. If any of her grandparents or great-grandparents or anyone further back than that had natural abilities, they were destroyed by Necromancers during the Afrikan Genocide. It had been her aunt Clem, no blood relation but a cherished family member all the same, who taught her how to find wonder and meaning in the swamps of Georgia.

“Follow your instincts, child. Your talent knows more about this world than your brain. You got to learn to listen to it.” Clem had been raised a rootworker, and though her ability to work the Dynamism had been so weak as to be nearly nonexistent, she was the one to teach Estelle—how to use spiderwebs to bind wounds and a bit of redbrick dust to unravel a hex.

She taught Estelle how to embrace her gifts no matter what anyone else might say.

The Skylark is thinking about Aunt Clem as she wakes. There was no way Clem would have found herself in the middle of this mess in Ohio. She would’ve walked right up to the edge, felt the strange wrongness of the place, turned on her heel, and left.

The Skylark is beginning to wish she’d done exactly that.

There is no sense delaying the inevitable, so the Skylark climbs off her bedroll, the raveled item barely visible in the early morning gloom. Next to her the Grimalkin and her brood still snooze, the wolf lifting his head to whine a sleepy good morning to the Skylark. She gives the beast a nod of acknowledgment before going to find her apprentice, where she slumbers with the rest of the girl apprentices, the men having found a side room for themselves to sleep in.

The Peregrine sits up after a small touch on her foot, standing and kicking herself free of her bedroll. The Skylark gestures for quiet and then beckons the girl to follow her, noting that she slept in her bandolier, same as the Skylark did. The girl has good instincts. She was

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