JUST PUT IT THERE

I woke at twenty to five, before any bell that existed in this house, with my back against the wall and my hand already curled against my ribs.

I had slept on the floor. The bed hadn't been touched.

Mama's morning began at six. Tea at six: willow bark, honey, a pinch of dried mullein, brewed exactly four minutes. Foxglove tincture at half past, two drops in a glass of water, never three. Cold flannel for her wrists if the heart was fluttering. Ankles checked when the weather turned. I knew that schedule the way I knew my own name. I had been the one who wrote it down, at fourteen, when the doctor had said that someone ought to.

It was the whole reason I had come back. If I could do that one thing, I could bear the rest.

The still room off the kitchen was where I'd left it. Almost. The jars were on the same shelves, but every label had been rewritten in a round, careful hand I didn't know. I read them anyway.

They were all correct.

Not one dose was wrong. The tincture was where it belonged, in a locked cabinet with a small notebook beside it, every entry dated and initialed. *Dosage given 6:30, no palpitations noted. Ankles slightly swollen. Consult Dr. W.* Her handwriting. Neat as a copybook. Celeste had spent two years learning everything I'd known, and she'd learned it well.

I don't know why that was the part that hurt. She hadn't done anything wrong.

I made the tea anyway. Four minutes exactly, willow bark first, honey after. I carried the tray up the back stairs and down the long corridor to Mama's suite.

Nurse Halvorsen was outside the door with a folded towel over her arm. She saw the tray and something crossed her face that was almost pity.

"Miss Celeste did the morning already, dear. She's been in since half five."

"I made the tea."

"That's very kind." She said it the way you'd say it to someone who'd brought soup to a house with a full pantry. "Go on in. Your mother will be glad."

Mama was sitting up against the pillows with Celeste perched at the edge of the bed, braiding her hair. On the nightstand sat a cup of tea, half drunk, steaming faintly. Celeste's blend. I could smell the lavender in it.

"Wren, dear." Mama looked up, pleased and a little startled. "Oh, you brought tea. That's sweet. Cece already made mine. Just put it there, dear, it's fine."

I put the tray down on the dresser. The second cup sat beside the first, both of them cooling.

Dr. Whitlow came in ten minutes later, gray-haired and brisk, black bag in hand. He'd been the family doctor since before I was born. His eyes passed over me and I watched him remember who I was. His mouth tightened a fraction. Then he turned to the bed.

"Miss Celeste, her ankles were up again yesterday. Do we want to hold the diuretic another day?"

"I think one more day, Doctor. She didn't sleep well."

"Then one more day." He made a note on his pad.

"She always swells when the weather turns," I heard myself say. "The barometer's dropping. She'll be worse tonight, not better, if you skip it."

Dr. Whitlow paused with the pen in his hand.

"Mm," he said, and he wrote what Celeste had said.

I stood in the doorway of my mother's room and looked at the three of them, and nobody looked back. Celeste smoothed a strand of Mama's hair. Mama patted her hand.

I went looking for anger, because that seemed like the thing to do. I patted my pockets for it the way you look for your keys. What I found was smaller and colder. A plain fact, laid down on the table between us. The job I'd come back for was done. It had been done well, and by the person who mattered.

I took the tray and left.

---

I couldn't go back upstairs. Sitting in a guest room waiting to be needed is its own particular hell, and I'd had two years of waiting for things that didn't come.

I was crossing the kitchen when someone grabbed my sleeve.

I went rigid. She let go at once. She was a girl my own age with a red face and flour to the elbows, and she looked at my expression and took two steps back. "Sorry. Sorry, I didn't mean to—you're with the Ashgrove agency, aren't you? The temps? Thank God. Housekeeper said three were coming and only one's turned up."

I didn't say yes.

I didn't say no either.

"The silver's in the dining hall," she said, already shoving a tray at me. "The King's people want the long table done by noon. Sleeves up, love. Don't scratch anything."

So I rolled up my sleeves and went and polished the Ironwood family silver.

It was easy work. That was the surprising part. Harrow Ridge had taught me one useful thing, which was that if your hands stay busy, your head stays quiet. I knelt on the floor of the dining hall with a rag, a pot of polish and a pile of forks, and I worked slowly through them, and for the first time in two days nobody asked me to be anything at all.

There were four other servants in the room. They talked the way servants do when they think the temp doesn't count.

"Miss Celeste is an angel, honestly. She sat up with my sister when she had the fever, all night, didn't say a word about it after."

"They say the other one's back, though."

"The one from prison?" A low, delighted gasp. "Poisoned a Council elder, didn't she? Out of spite. Because Miss Celeste came home and got all the attention."

"Sleeping in the same house. Imagine."

"Ugly things don't last, that's what my nan says. Ugly on the inside, I mean. It shows sooner or later."

I picked up another fork. The rag went round and round the tines. I did it carefully, one tine at a time, and my hands did not shake, and I was proud of that.

I heard the door open. Heard the room go quiet. The servants scattered like pigeons. There was a heavy, even step across the floor, then the rustle of paper. A seating chart, probably.

The steps stopped.

"Wren Hollis."

I knew that voice. I'd heard it in a courtroom, over the top of a stranger's shoulder. He'd been in the third row at my trial, arms folded, and he had not looked at me once. He had looked at Celeste the entire time.

Damon Rourke was Ezra's Beta and Celeste's oldest friend, and he'd always had the kind of face that looked like it was disagreeing with you even when it wasn't. His jaw had been broken once and set slightly crooked. He was tall, dark-eyed, dressed for the dinner he'd already sat through. He was looking at me on my knees with a fork in one hand, and I watched his expression go from disbelief to something I recognized.

"Beta Rourke," I said.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"Polishing the silver."

"I can see that." He glanced around at the empty room, the servants he'd scared off, the long table laid out with cloth and candles. "You got out of prison yesterday. Today you're on your knees in the one room where every Council member and every man on the King's staff will walk through in six hours. Where Ezra will walk through. Where Celeste's guests will see you, in an apron, working."

"It's a rag."

He didn't hear it. He put the seating chart down on the table, very gently, like something he didn't want to break.

"The poor girl, forced to scrub floors in her own home." His voice was soft, almost admiring. "It's clever. I'll give you that."

I looked up at him.

"Go on, then," said Damon. "Who's the audience today?"