The sugar-crusted almond on the bookshelf caught the draft from the hall. It wobbled once, rolled half an inch along the oiled oak, and fell into the gap behind the encyclopedia volumes.
Klee did not reach to save it. Food left on shelves belonged to the mice. If you took food from mice, they chewed through your pack straps while you slept. She knew that rule. She had known it since the second winter in the cellar, after the grain elevator at Springvale collapsed into the river.
"Sit down, Klee," Jean said.
Her voice was too thin. It did not carry the weight it usually had when she caught someone carrying detonators into the cathedral plaza. She stood behind her walnut desk with both palms flat against the blotter, her shoulders locked rigid beneath the blue epaulets.
"I am sitting," Klee said.
"On the chair. Not the floor."
"The floor doesn't tip over when the floorboards shake," Klee told her. She pressed her heels hard against the baseboard. Her knees were drawn up into her chest, locking the sailcloth Dodoco against her sternum. The doll’s belly felt cold against her ribs. It felt like a stone dragged out of the creek before sunrise, heavy and wet-centered.
Albedo did not move from the middle of the carpet. He had set his brass calipers on the desk, but his hands remained out of his pockets, his fingers loose and ready to seize something falling. His eyes moved from Klee’s boots to the circular brand on her wrist, then to the closed door behind him.
"The air pressure in the lower corridor has changed," Albedo said.
Jean frowned. "The draft from the courtyard?"
"No," Albedo replied. "The stairwell smells like dry elderberries and zinc. It is an alchemical reaction, not a chimney downdraft."
A muffled *whump* traveled through the pine planks beneath Klee’s boots.
It was not a loud noise. It lacked the sharp, tearing crack of yellow powder packed inside iron pipe. It sounded like an unwashed feather pillow being dropped from the top of the ramparts into a wagon of hay. A dull, soft blow that shuddered directly through the stone footings of the headquarters.
Jean’s head snapped toward the threshold. "The detention room."
"The bolt failed," Albedo said quietly.
"I ordered Huffman to fit the steel bar," Jean said. She was already moving around the desk. Her hand went to the gold-wire grip of her longsword, her fingers settling over the leather wrap with mechanical precision. "The lock was three inches of tempered iron. Alice herself couldn't have picked it without tallow and acid."
"She didn't pick it," Klee murmured into the wool of her knees. Her thumb stroked the seam behind Dodoco’s ear. "The pin on the top hinge has an air pocket inside the iron. If you wedge a copper coin under the knuckle and hit it with the heel of your boot, the air pocket pops. The whole door tilts outward. Then you just... slip out."
Jean stopped three paces from the door. She looked back at Klee. The skin beneath Jean’s eyes looked gray in the yellow tallow light. "How do you know about an air pocket in the armory masonry?"
"Because I found it," Klee said. "When I was little."
The latch rattled.
It did not lift with the measured, respectful click of a Knight delivering a dispatch. It bounced against the brass striker plate four times in rapid, chaotic succession, accompanied by the wet scuffling of small boots slipping on polished hardwood.
The heavy door did not swing open. It slammed back until the brass knob struck the plaster wall with a violent thud, dislodging a white flake of lime that drifted down through the lamplight.
"Master Jean!" a voice shouted.
It was shrill. It was loud enough to make the crystal ink-flasks on the desk ring against their brass stands. It carried none of the gravelly rasp that came from breathing wood-smoke in a drafty shelter for three years. It was clean, bright, and completely unchecked by caution.
Past Klee stood on the threshold.
She was seven inches shorter than the girl on the floor. Her red coat was brilliant, dyed the vivid scarlet of fresh snapdragons, without a single oil stain on the lapels. The white fleece lining her cuffs was plump and soft, catching none of the gray soot that coated the girl by the baseboard. Her hat sat crooked on her hair, the four-leaf clover feather bouncing wildly with every ragged breath she took.
Across her nose was a jagged smudge of fresh black powder. Her knees were bare, pink, and scraped from the stone steps, and tucked under her left arm was Dodoco.
The real Dodoco.
Its fur was thick, cream-colored wool, brushed clean and scented with dried sweet flowers. Its button eyes were polished horn, catching the lantern light with bright, innocent dots of amber. It was light. It had no lead shot inside its guts, no quicksilver paste stiffening its tail, and no ticking iron heart coiling beneath its stitches.
Past Klee stopped dead in the doorway.
Her mouth was open to deliver an excuse. Her round cheeks were flushed bright pink from running up three flights of stairs, and her small hands were clenched into fists. But the words died before they reached her teeth.
The room went entirely silent.
Even the tallow candle stopped spitting, its small yellow flame freezing upright as if the draft had forgotten how to blow.
Past Klee’s eyes moved down. They skipped past Jean. They ignored Albedo entirely, though she usually lunged for his coat to hide from reprimands. Her brown eyes landed directly on the child huddled against the pine wainscot by the map chest.
Older Klee did not look up. She kept her face tucked behind her knees, but her fingers tightened until the dirty sailcloth of her own doll groaned along its seams.
*Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.*
The lead-weighted Dodoco ticked once, twice, three times. The sound was tiny, like an iron beetle tapping against the inside of an empty brass kettle.
Past Klee took one hesitant step into the office. Her little leather boots made a sharp *clack-clack* on the floorboards. She reached up with a soot-stained sleeve and wiped her nose, leaving a dark streak from her lip to her cheekbone.
"Why is she wearing my clothes?" Past Klee asked.
Jean did not answer. She stood completely still between them, her tall frame cutting the room in half, but she did not drop her hand from the sword hilt. Her jaw worked, her lips parting slightly, but no reprimand came.
Past Klee stepped around Jean’s hip. She tilted her head, her bright clover feather dipping sideways until it brushed the velvet drape. "Her coat is dirty. Master Jean, did she get stuck in the cider vats behind the tavern? Kaeya told me the vats have big spiders that turn your clothes black if you don't use a torch."
Older Klee shrank further into the wall. Her back pressed hard against the knot in the pine planking.
"Don't look at me," Older Klee whispered.
The voice was wrong. It sounded like Past Klee’s voice, but stretched thin across jagged gravel. It sounded like an instrument that had been left out in the rain until the wood warped and the strings grew rusty.
Past Klee frowned. The small crease between her eyebrows was deep and stubborn. "You sound funny. Did you eat the white berries by the Whispering Woods? Big brother Albedo said the white berries make your tongue get fat like a toad."
Albedo stepped forward. He did not touch either of them. He placed himself three feet to the left of the desk, forming a third point in an invisible triangle. His gaze was fixed on the space between the two pairs of boots.
The air between them was shivering.
It was not heat shimmer. The room was not warm; in fact, the temperature near the floor was plunging. Frost was beginning to bloom along the brass heads of the floorboard nails. Delicate, six-pointed stars of ice crept outward across the dark oak wax, spreading from the soles of Older Klee’s scuffed suede boots toward the pristine leather of Past Klee’s toes.
"Klee," Albedo said to the younger girl. His voice was lower than usual, level and completely devoid of inflection. "Step back into the hallway."
Past Klee ignored him. She was looking at the doll in Older Klee’s lap.
Her round face lost its childish petulance. Her lower lip began to tremble, not with rage, but with the specific, proprietary terror of a child who believes her favorite thing has been mutilated.
"What did you do to Dodoco?" Past Klee demanded. She raised her voice, pointing a small, grubby finger at the gray sailcloth bundle. "Why is his tail flat? Why did you take his ears off? Dodoco has pink ears! Master Jean made them out of an old scarf!"
Older Klee did not answer. Her breath came in short, dry hitches against her collar.
"Give him back!" Past Klee took two stomping strides across the frozen oak. "You stole him! You're a thief from the Treasure Hoarders! I'm going to tell Master Jean to put you in the big cell under the moat where the frogs are!"
She reached out.
Her small, plump hand, grayed with sulfur and charcoal, lunged toward the lead-weighted toy.
Older Klee did not flinch away this time.
Her right arm shot out with the speed of an iron spring uncoiling from a trap. She caught Past Klee’s wrist by the small of the bone, her thumb sinking into the tendon above the palm.
The circular brand on Older Klee’s forearm flared.
It did not burn yellow or orange like Pyro fire. It burned a flat, dull chalk-white, the color of limestone ground to flour. The three interlocking rings of flattened gear-teeth sank deeper into her flesh, appearing as though they were being pressed down by a hydraulic ram from somewhere behind her skin.
Past Klee screamed.
It was not a tantrum scream. It was the shrill, animal shriek of a creature touching an exposed wire.
The air in the office buckled. A concussive snap tore through the room, cracking the top pane of the casement window with a sound like a rifle shot. On the desk, Jean’s inkwell did not spill—the black fluid simply leapt six inches straight up into the air, suspended for a single second as a spherical droplet of wet night before it splashed down across the blank reports.
Jean moved instantly. She did not draw her blade; she threw herself forward, dropping to her knees between the two small bodies, her long arms wrapping around both of them at once.
"Enough!" Jean roared.
The contact did not break. Jean pulled them together, intending to shield them, but the moment her heavy leather tunic touched both shoulders simultaneously, the frost on the floor exploded into fine white powder.
Older Klee’s grip broke.
She tumbled backward against the map chest, her shoulders hitting the cedar drawers with a heavy thud. Her chest heaved. The white light in the brand on her arm sputtered, turned the color of stale milk, and then went dark, leaving the pale, raised scar cold once more.
Past Klee fell back into Jean’s lap. She was sobbing violently, her face buried against the gold embroidery of the Acting Grand Master’s collar, her small fingers clutching the clean, plush Dodoco against her ribs until the seams strained.
"It bit me," Past Klee wailed, her voice muffled by Jean’s tunic. "Master Jean, the cold girl bit me with her hand! It felt like the ice in Dragonspine! Make her go away!"
Jean did not speak. She could not.
Her arms were shaking. Her head was bowed over Past Klee’s red hat, but her eyes were fixed on the palm of her own right glove. The thick cowhide, treated with oil to resist blade-edges, was charred black along the inner seam. A faint wisp of white smoke rose from the leather, smelling not of sulfur, but of cold river mud and ozone.
Across the room, Older Klee pulled her legs back under her body.
She did not cry. Her eyes were wide, the pupils narrowed to tiny black pins in the center of her pale irises. She looked down at her own hand, then at the girl sobbing in Jean’s arms.
She had forgotten how clean the wool had been.
In her head, she had spent three winters remembering Dodoco as something soft, something that smelled like sugar and clover leaves, but looking at it now, in the arms of the child who hadn't seen the sky split open, it looked ridiculous. It was too light. A breeze could carry it into the river. A single ember from an unraked stove would burn it to gray lint in three seconds.
It couldn't keep anything down. It couldn't hold a memory to the earth.
"She doesn't have the mark," Older Klee said to the floorboards.
Albedo knelt beside her. He did not touch her arm, but he bent low enough that his blonde fringe nearly brushed the shoulder of her dirty dress. His calipers were open six inches, measuring the distance between the frost pattern on the wood and the heel of her boot.
"The resonance did not originate from her," Albedo said, his voice entirely steady despite the smoke rising from Jean’s glove. "It originated from the container. When she touched your wrist, the displaced mass attempted to equilibrate."
"What does that mean?" Jean asked. Her voice sounded cracked, like dried leather left in the sun. She still held the sobbing child against her ribs, but her eyes were fixed on Albedo.
"It means two stones cannot occupy the same hole in the wall," Albedo said. He closed the calipers with a small, brass snap. "If you force them together, the wall cracks before the stones do."
Past Klee sniffled, her wailing subsiding into the ragged, rhythmic gulps of a child running out of air. She turned her head slightly, peering over Jean’s shoulder with one swollen, red-rimmed eye.
She looked at Older Klee’s boots.
She saw the copper wire twisted through the brass loops where the tongues had rotted away. She saw the gray suede on the toes, worn down to the backing cloth where the child had kicked against frozen cellar doors that wouldn't open.
"Your boots are broken," Past Klee whispered, her voice tiny and wet.
Older Klee did not pull her feet back this time. She let the dirty leather sit in the puddle of melting frost.
"They aren't broken," Older Klee told her, her voice flat and steady as an iron bar. "They just don't have anywhere else to walk."
Outside the high, cracked window, the bells of the cathedral began to toll the fourth hour of the afternoon watch. But the brass did not ring clear. The iron clappers struck the bells with a muffled, leaden clang, as if the air over the plaza had turned as thick as ditch-water.
Older Klee felt the plum stone in her pocket. It was cold now. Cold as a tooth pulled from a dead man’s skull.
She reached out and picked up her own Dodoco from the puddle. The wet sailcloth dripped dirty water onto her lap, but she didn't wipe it off. She settled the iron-weighted belly against her stomach, took a breath that tasted like burnt grease, and listened to the slow, heavy tick inside the cloth.
It was four beats faster than the bells.
***