Unraveled (8 page)

His jaw tenses and he reaches for his glass again. It’s empty and he’s dismissed the
valet, which means he’ll be forced to speak to me. He twists his hands together, cracking
his knuckles, each one popping ominously in the quiet room.

“I’d rather not discuss work.”

“But I’m so
interested
in your job.”

“You want to know, Adelice?” he asks, and I nod, stunned by his offer. This is the
first time he’s been willing to speak directly about the situation. “Containing the
situation regarding the Eastern Sector is becoming impossible. Most of our seafood
as well as paper goods traded through that sector. We’ll have to expand another sector
to fulfill those needs and that means opening up new mining sites on the surface and
finding more girls to work in the coventries at a time when Eligibles have become
scarce.”

“It is a shame what happened in the Eastern Sector,” I murmur.

“I don’t deal with traitors.” There’s murder in his words.

“Which makes me feel fortunate,” I reply in a gentle tone. I have to remind him that
he can be merciful, because he seems to have forgotten.

He ignores the comment. Of late he’s been less argumentative, less quick with his
insults. If I didn’t know it was impossible, I would say his job is killing him.

His head tilts to the side to take a complant call. This is the only way I have been
able to learn things: that the rebellion on Earth is still strong, that Amie is being
kept in the Northern Sector. The casual asides and conversations I overhear during
our infrequent dinners paint a rough picture of what’s happening within Arras and
on Earth. He often listens for long periods on these calls, nodding solemnly, and
that is how I know things are slipping from his control.

“Lobster is not my priority right now,” he snaps, angry again. “I don’t care what
concerns it’s raising. If it’s that big an issue, do a full clean of the public. They
can’t miss something they don’t know about.”

Shellfish have never been so dangerous. Now everything feels like a risk. Each morsel
on my tongue. Each casual joke. Perhaps it’s only because I’m close to him that I
see how the questions have become fissures in his foundation. How long will it be
before they cause him to crack?

Cormac pushes his full plate away and calls for the next course. I manage a few more
bites of salad before the plate is taken and a miniature tureen of soup is placed
in front of me. As soon as I lift the lid, I can tell from the layer of gummy, melted
cheese that it’s French onion—Cormac’s favorite. He knows I dislike it. I pick at
it with my spoon.

“You aren’t eating your soup,” he says.

“I’m not fond of onion soup,” I say as mildly as possible. Silently I add,
I hate it, and I hate you.

“It’s a delicacy. Onions are scarce.”

“They are? I haven’t noticed any shortage of onions.”

“Because I ensure
you
don’t go without,” he says. Miraculously, he’s eaten almost his entire bowl already.
I shouldn’t complain since it’s one of the few things he consumes without alcohol
content. “That is my job.”

“Our job is to do what’s right for Arras and Earth.” It’s a simple reminder, not a
warning. Cormac brought me here to be his partner. I hold my gaze level with his even
as he drops his spoon into the empty tureen. It clatters ominously against the porcelain.

“I wondered when you’d raise this issue again.”

“Issue?” I repeat. “Cormac, people are dying. Your own people. We need to offer them
a chance. I’ve seen the mines. You know this situation isn’t sustainable—”

“You saw the mines when you were out playing rebel, so pardon me if I ignore your
anecdotal evidence.”

“Are you telling me there isn’t a problem?”

“I’m telling you it isn’t your place to fix it.”

Blood roars in my ears. It’s just like Cormac to bring up my place—it’s my weakness.
The one thing that I can’t pretend to tolerate. “This wasn’t our deal,” I remind him.
“I came to help you, not sit around.”

“But you’re so good at it,” he says.

As if he knows what it’s like to pretend, to play at life every second of the day.

Without thinking about it, I lift my full tureen and fling it across the room. The
porcelain shatters against the wall, spraying stringy onion against the smooth, golden
paint.

My hands splay against the wooden table and for a moment I consider using them. I
could unwind him, wipe him from existence like he casually erases those who threaten
him, but I won’t make it out of here alive if I do. Cormac has collateral to ensure
my good behavior, so I scratch my fingers across the wood’s grain to stem the trembling
in them.

Cormac presses the com near his end of the table, ignoring me. “Next course, and send
a maid to the dining room.”

“But then she’ll know about our domestic problems,” I say.

“I’ll have her removed when she’s finished cleaning up your mess,” he says, and I
fall back against my chair.

This is why I’m kept alone, because I’m always screwing things up for innocent people
like Jost and Enora. The maid enters the room and gawks for a split second at the
wall, but she replaces her surprise with practiced indifference and goes about cleaning
up the soup.

“It slipped,” I call to her. “I’m terribly clumsy.” I keep my eyes on Cormac as I
speak and he nods once like an approving master. I am but his humble servant once
more, like everyone else in Arras.

Once the maid leaves I wait for him to make the call to have her altered or removed,
but he doesn’t place it. I’ve performed to his satisfaction.

The main course is a selection of vegetables—carrots, potatoes, a squash of some sort—in
a heavy tomato sauce. The first bite reveals complex tones of red wine and I savor
it, before pointing out the obvious.

“There’s no meat.”

“I’m trying to eat less of it. Doctor’s orders,” he explains.

“You’re immortal.”

“I am not immortal.”

“You’ve used other people’s time threads to stay alive for hundreds of years,” I argue.

“That’s not immortality.”

“What is it then?” I ask.

“That’s privilege.”

It must be nice to be a man.

“And privilege allows me to choose such spirited company,” he continues.

I smile at him. “I can throw this plate against the wall if you like.”

“There’s been enough collateral damage for one evening, I think.”

I shrug and pretend to pick up the plate but he doesn’t crack a smile of his own.
The Cormac who could appreciate my spirited company seems to be fading with each dramatic
new development in Arras. At least the old Cormac was fun to fight with. Now his behavior
is unpredictable.

“Despite your behavior this evening, I have a present for you.”

“It’s not my birthday,” I tell him. Still no smile.

“You missed two while you were away,” he reminds me. “I’m catching up.” Now he is
smiling, acting sweet, his attitude totally reversing in seconds. I can’t wrap my
head around it.

“Does that count?”

“I’m having it brought with the dessert course,” he says.

“Is my present edible?” I ask. Chocolate might be worth getting excited over.

“Generally it’s considered poor taste to eat one’s presents.”

“Unless it’s chocolate.”

“It’s not chocolate.”

“Damn.”

When they arrive with the final course, my dessert is placed in front of me. I can’t
stop staring.

But my present won’t meet my eyes.

“Amie will be residing at the Western Coventry for the foreseeable future,” he says.
I look to Amie for a sign that she’s happy about this, but she’s watching her plate.

“What do you think?” he asks.

“You said it wasn’t chocolate. There is clearly chocolate on this plate,” I say, smiling.

“The dessert is chocolate,” he says.

“Amie loves chocolate.” It’s the only thing I can think to say in this moment. Her
eyes flicker up to me and she gives me a tentative smile as though a real one would
be too costly. She can’t be here. Amie is a means of distraction.

“I see you have that in common,” Cormac says. He gestures to the desserts in front
of us—
torta di cioccolato
. The same as at my first meal at the Coventry. Now I’m eating it with my sister.
The sister who was never supposed to wind up here.

“It’s delicious,” Amie says in a polite, if small, voice.

“There’s more. Don’t be shy about it,” he says. “My girls are too skinny.”

My stomach sinks at the way he casually throws out
my girls
. Neither of us belongs to him, yet we’re both in his possession.

“What else do you like to eat?” I ask Amie, at a loss for what normal conversation
would consist of between us. We can’t talk about the last two years of her life, and
I have no clue what lies Cormac has fed her about me. But I do know the surest way
to lose my sister is to try to find out. The last time I saw her, she called me a
freak. I’m not sure if time or alteration has softened her toward me, but I can’t
risk my second chance with her now.

“Curry,” she says, her lips turning up at the edge again.

“Me too.”

“And I like the onion soup.”

Cormac smirks at this revelation. I don’t tell her what I think of it. We manage a
few more minutes of awkward conversation, but it only serves to remind me of the rift
Cormac has created between us.

Once she had been my sister. Then she was Riya, a little girl rewoven into another
family, and now she is here—Amie again. But not my Amie. She would never be my Amie
after what they had done to her. She was too quiet, her bubbliness replaced by a timid
subservience. If my parents hadn’t trained me to resist the Guild, is this how I would
have wound up: an obedient girl locked away in a tower?

When the plates are cleared, the two of them stand to leave my quarters and for a
moment I want to ask Amie to stay. There’s more than enough room and more can always
be made. But I know Cormac will never allow it. He’ll oversee our interactions, listen
to our conversations, and chaperone our time together. He can’t trust me not to undo
all the work he’s put into Amie.

“Will I get to see Pryana soon?” Amie asks Cormac.

“Of course. She was asking about you,” he tells her. Amie bounces a little, clapping
her hands, and I’m taken aback. Maybe the Amie I remembered wasn’t gone. Behind her
Cormac smiles at me, revealing rows of perfect teeth.

I can’t bring myself to ask her about Pryana, the one person in the Coventry who has
a real reason to hate me. I’d been responsible for her sister’s death, at least in
Pryana’s mind. She couldn’t see the lesson Maela wanted to teach us when she ripped
most of an academy from Cypress: no one is safe from the Guild, and those at the loom
least of all. Pryana had never forgiven me for my inaction. In truth, I’ve never forgiven
myself, either.

Amie is led away from my apartment, to her own quarters, and I watch her go, wishing
I could think of something better to ask her than what foods she likes now. But the
questions I have for her can never be asked in front of Cormac.

Cormac pauses at my door, sliding his bow tie off his collar. For one horrible moment
I think he’s going to kiss me as he leans in, but instead he whispers, “Consider my
present a reminder of what you have to lose.”

I let him leave without bothering to point out that I’ve already lost her, but when
the door closes behind him I rush to the bathroom. It’s still the only place they
don’t watch me. I reach under the sink and feel around the pipes until my fingers
close over the blade. I hid it in my sleeve at my first dinner when I returned to
the Coventry, scared and uncertain of what to expect. But now I’m not thinking about
defending myself, I’m considering how and when to strike.

I can’t unwind Cormac, especially now that Amie is finally close. Attacking him like
that would only undermine Arras’s situation, and I don’t have everything I need yet.
I have to wait for the right opportunity—keep playing along until I can access the
alteration information I need to fix my mother and recover the soul strand I hope
is kept somewhere in the Coventry’s repository. Once I do that, I’ll need to incapacitate
him to put my final plan into place. Arras needs a rebirth and it must begin with
Cormac. He must change. If he refuses, I can change his mind for him. I settle onto
the floor, the knife cradled carefully in my hand. It reflects the image of my engagement
ring, and I choke back a scream.

With Amie here I’ll have another source of information. She will hear things spill
from his lips, and if I can earn her trust I will learn those secrets from her. But
to do that I must trust her as well. Cormac may have twisted her to his purposes,
but the old Amie is in there and I know how she works. I know her heart as well as
my own. Cormac thinks he has the upper hand, but two can play this evil game.

Albert’s words echo in my memory:

Destroy the looms. If you choose this path, others will follow you as Whorl. Embrace
and trust them, but know their hearts. As you must know your own.

EIGHT

I
’M UNCERTAIN WHEN
I
’LL HEAR FROM MY
sister. I’m sure she’s still scared of me after the night on Alcatraz when I unwound
Kincaid, but the very next morning a note arrives. She’s arranged for us to have a
fitting for new gowns the next day, something I’m not looking forward to. But it’s
the first time I’ll be alone with her since my retrieval, so I go with the flow and
agree to host it in my overlarge quarters.

As soon as she arrives with Pryana at her side, I know this is a mistake. Pryana’s
eyes travel along the walls of my living room, taking in the upholstered sofas and
carved tables, all the essence of elegance and wealth.

“Aren’t
you
moving up in the world.” Pryana isn’t asking me a question. It’s merely an observation—one
that reeks of annoyance. This should have been her life.