He put the vial back in the box. “That is forbidden magic.”
“It is only forbidden if taken by force, and that was not. It was made in payment.”
“For what?”
The air in the room had drawn taut as rope. Serival met her father’s gaze. “That is my business, not yours.”
Her mother’s chair scraped back as she stood. “This isn’t a topic fit for dinner.”
“Is it not?” said Serival, amused. “It is your birthday, Father. Fifty years, who knows how many more?”
Rosana sucked in a breath. Mirin bit the inside of her cheek. Tesali looked on in horror. All waited for something to break. Instead Forten Ranek rose, and ordered Serival into his office, taking the vial in its box as he stormed out of the room. She followed, and their mother vanished into the kitchen to help Esna, leaving the three remaining sisters at the table, dotted by empty chairs.
Tesali stared at the summer-glass, which sat, abandoned, by her father’s place.
“Anesh,” said Rosana, taking up her wine. She was only sixteen, but she had the airs of someone twice her age.
“Why does she do it?” asked Mirin, rubbing her stomach, as if to soothe the life within.
“Bait our father, or deal in dangerous things?”
“Both.”
“Does she?” asked Tesali. The sisters noticed her, which they rarely did, so she went on. “Does she actually trade in forbidden magic?”
“No,” said Rosana at the same time Mirin said, “Yes.” The two shot each other a look, but Mirin leaned forward with a grin.
“I heard she has a compass that points toward powerful things. Father gave it to her himself.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Rosana. “If Father had a compass like that, he’d keep it for himself.” A sigh. Then, as if she couldn’t help herself, “Serival doesn’t need a compass. She has a gift for finding things.”
“A gift?” asked Tesali, as her sisters’ magic swirled in the air. Could Serival have her own kind of sight?
“Why do you think she wears those gloves?” asked Rosana.
“Because it’s pretentious?” offered Mirin with a snort.
Rosana pursed her lips. “She told me once, she could know a thing’s worth just by touching it.”
“What a crock of shit,” said Mirin, turning to Tesali. “What I know is, there’s rare, and there’s forbidden, and there’s whatever Serival deals in. Sacrificial magic, possession—”
“Father wouldn’t let her,” said Rosana.
“Father couldn’t stop her,” countered Mirin. “I heard she auctioned an Antari eye at Sasenroche. They don’t rot when the person dies,” she added, plucking a grape from the center of the table, “just turn to stone. And if you have one, no one can kill you.”
“You sound like a child telling tales,” chided Rosana.
“The point is,” Mirin went on, “our sister is a hunter. She enjoys the chase as much as—” But she cut off as their mother appeared in the doorway, wiping her hands, a look of warning in her eyes.
“If you’re determined to gossip like hens, do it somewhere else.”
“Sorry, Mother,” said Rosana.
“We were just going out,” said Mirin, “to get some air.”
Tesali stood with them, but they shot her a look that said wherever they were going, she wasn’t invited. That was fine. For once she didn’t even feel left out. She slipped away down the hall and into her room, shutting the door behind her.
The small bone owl sat waiting on her bed.
“Hello,” she said, running her finger down the curve of its skull. It didn’t move, of course. There was no magic threaded through the bones.
Not yet.
IV
Tesali was good at mending a thing when the pieces of the spell were there, but she had never created one from scratch before. And yet, she told herself, she was not so much creating as re-creating. She’d called to mind every thread that wove through the glorious bird in her father’s shop below, the way they twined, the pattern and the flow.
A shelf ran along one wall of her room, and it was home to her own small collection: a dozen different charms, some gifts from her parents and siblings, others tokens bought for spare change at the dock market. Now she inspected them, plucking away the threads she needed one by one, sacrificing the spellwork for the raw material. The threads sang faintly in her hands, shuddering like moth wings, delicate, brittle, but she managed to wrap each one around the owl’s small skeleton, anchoring the magic to its skull, its wings, its feet.