Chapter 5: The Pawn Ticket

I had written eighty-seven chapters of The Great flood apocalypse, and in none of them had a peacock ever spoken to anyone.

"You are not Nora," the chick said again, in the narrow side chamber where Elder Hugh had dragged me away from the staring crowd. "Her soul is gone. I felt it leave. Who are you?"

I sat down heavily on a stone bench with the chick cupped in my hands. My heart was pounding.

I should say that, before this, I had managed to watch Daisy's choosing. It had been the last thing I saw before the elder hauled me out by the elbow, and I had seen it with only half my mind, but I would remember it for the rest of my life. When the crystal had gone white, the whole hall had turned to stare at me, and Daisy had stepped forward for her own turn, pale with fury.

And a small black snake with a bandaged tail had slid out of its basket in the third row, flowed across the marble in a glossy ribbon, passed straight by Daisy's feet, and then, with perfect clarity, turned around and wound itself up her arm.

"Oh!" Daisy had cried, bright and delighted. "He chose me!"

I had written it so that she never touched the snake. I had written it so that Jax never even looked at her until he was a dragon.

Nothing in that Temple had gone according to my outline since the moment I walked in.

"My name is Nora," I said to the chick, in the stone chamber. "Nora Brooks. I'm an author. I wrote this world. All of it. The Temple. The Academy. The Flood. I was in an accident, and I woke up here."

The chick was silent for a long moment.

"That," it said finally, "is the most absurd thing I have ever heard."

"I know right."

"It is also, I believe, true." The small blue eye studied me. "The woman who sent you said someone would come in Nora's place."

I froze. "The woman who sent me?"

"She was in the dark water, when I was dying. She said I would know you by your kindness." The wing against my palm tightened. "She told me that you must never be allowed to learn why you were brought here."

"I never wrote a woman in the water," I said, very quietly. "I never wrote any of that."

"Then someone else is holding the pen."

The door swung open.

Elder Hugh stood there, grey-faced. He shut it behind him with a soft, decisive click. "White Blood," he said, low and urgent. "The Divine Beast Nurturing Blood. Do you understand what that means, girl? The old records say the White Beast Tamers could raise any creature to greatness. They were hunted for it. The last one died locked in an Imperial vault."

"I know," I said.

I did. I had written that vault.

"Elder, please. Call it a faulty reading. Keep it quiet until I'm ready."

He studied me for a long time. In my outline, Hugh was a stern man with a soft spot he hid behind rules. I had written him that way on purpose.

"The crystal malfunctioned," he said at last. "It happens. Old crystal, old magic." He met my eyes. "But I will be watching, Miss Wells."

"Thank you," I said, and meant it.

• • •

The Wells house had not changed since I had left it that morning. It was a pale stone mansion at the end of a long drive lined with elms, with tall windows that had never once been lit for Nora. I had written the cold marble hall, the sour smell of lilies, the third stair that creaked. I was not prepared for what it felt like to walk through it.

"A peacock," said my stepmother, from the stairs.

Her fan snapped open and shut, faster than before. Her face was tight and white. "Gordon, I must speak to you privately. About the girl's absurd accusations. She has clearly been listening to servants' gossip."

"I would like to hear the accusations," said my father.

"There is nothing to hear!"

"Then there is nothing to fear," I said, from the foot of the stairs.

Daisy had appeared at the top, with the black snake draped around her wrist. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her expression wounded. It was a very good expression. I had written her to be a good actress.

"Father," she said softly. "Nora has always been jealous of us. She's making things up to make Mother look bad."

"Is she?" I tilted my head. "Then let's visit Master Pell's pawn shop tomorrow morning and ask him. We can take a carriage. It's only a short ride."

Helen went very white.

In chapter three of my novel, Nora had found a pawn ticket by accident, crumpled at the back of her stepmother's jewelry case. She had been too frightened to say anything. I had written it that way, and the little paper slip had sat in the plot for eighty chapters like a loaded gun that I never fired.

I knew exactly where it was. I knew exactly how afraid Helen would be.

"Father," I said gently. "Would you check the second drawer of Lady Helen's jewelry case? At the back, behind the green velvet box."

"How would she possibly know—" Helen began.

"I'll check," said my father.

He climbed the stairs. He walked into his wife's dressing room. The silence stretched, thin and terrible, for the length of a long breath.

When he came out, he was holding a small, creased slip of paper, and his face had gone very still.

"Eleven gold pieces," he read. "Pearl necklace, one strand. Redeemable within ninety days." He looked at his wife. "Helen. That was Elise's necklace."

"I can explain—"

"It was Nora's mother's necklace."

"The household had debts, Gordon, you were never here, someone had to—"

"For six years," said Gordon Wells slowly, "you have told me our daughter was too ungrateful to wear it."

Helen's mouth opened and closed. For the first time in the entire history of The Drowned Beast Kingdom, she had nothing to say.

"Mother," Daisy said, in a small, strangled voice.

I folded my hands. I thought, with dizzy delight, of a hundred comments. Finally. FINALLY. I knew I should not be enjoying it so much. I enjoyed it anyway.

"I would like my mother's pearls returned, Father," I said. "And I would like my old room. The garden shed is cold, and Pip does not do well in the damp."

"Pip?"

"My peacock."

For a long moment, Gordon Wells looked at his daughter as if seeing her for the first time. "Of course," he said hoarsely. "Of course. I am sorry, Nora. I should have noticed."

Behind him, Helen was shaking with fury, and the snake on Daisy's wrist was hissing like a kettle.

I walked up the stairs past them, calm as a guest.

Not bad, I thought. And I had barely begun.

• • •

Gordon came to the nursery at dusk with a velvet pouch in his hands and the look of a man who had not slept in six years.

"I went to Master Pell myself," he said, awkwardly. "I paid the eleven gold and then some. It is all there." He held out the pouch. "I'm sorry, Nora. I thought that if I did not look at what was wrong, it would not be there. That was cowardice."

I opened the pouch. The pearls lay inside, small and cool and perfect, exactly as I had described them. I held them against my cheek.

I had written Gordon as a man who never changed. I had not written the version of him who could stand in a doorway and apologize.

"Thank you, Father," I said, and meant it. "It's a start."

He nodded, and left, and did not look back.

• • •

That night, in the old nursery that had been hers by right, I set the chick down on a clean cloth and pricked my finger.

"This is the part I'm sure of," I told him. "Three drops of blood. I wrote it in chapter fifteen. White Blood can feed any beast, and a beast that is truly bonded to its tamer will bloom."

"Then feed me." The chick's voice was dry. "I have been hungry for longer than you have been alive."

I tilted a clay cup of spring water against his beak and let three drops of red fall in. They turned faintly, wonderfully white.

The chick drank. A glow ran through it from beak to tail like warmth through frozen skin. The twisted wing straightened with a soft click.

"Pip," I said, on impulse. "Can I call you Pip?"

"It is acceptable."

I laughed. It felt like the first real laugh I had had in months.

"Mistress," Pip said after a moment, in a very different voice. "There is something else I must say."

"What is it?"

"The one who sent you. The woman in the water." The small blue eye turned toward the window. "I do not think she is a goddess."

A cold breath ran down my spine.

"Then what is she?"

"I do not know." Pip's voice dropped to a whisper. "But I can hear her, even now. And Mistress, she is laughing."