Page 25 of The Unweaver

Mother’s note had arrived then. Owens, that ornery crow, rapped his beak on the bedroom window until she opened it.

Another note. Another favor.

Mother blew the whistle and her pets came running. Cora was no different than the Doberman now sitting sentinel beside Mother. Just another pet on a leash, doing as she was told.

Mother scratched behind the Doberman’s ears, both of their eyes flashing amber. The eager young Bestiamancer had a vicious maw lined with gleaming canines. His eyes tracked Cora’s every move.

Cora shared the beast’s vigilance in these unfamiliar surroundings. The note’s address was a dodgy building in neutral territory, bowed by time and disuse. They sat in a room furnished with only a scarred table, mismatched chairs, and faded wallpaper peeling like flayed flesh. Light filtered through grimy slits of windows near the moldering ceiling.

“Go on, dear.” Mother counted out the twenty pounds Cora was owed and set them on the table. Just out of reach. “Tell Mother.”

The old bird looked harried today, her face and ugly jumper more wrinkled. Cora hadn’t seen Mother this distraught since the last mage war, when too many of the casualties had been her own. Teddy had been her favorite pet. His loss had to affect her deeply.

Cora set the tea down, untasted. The precipice of that endless emptiness loomed. The only person she loved was gone. But maybe not entirely gone. If the Realmwalker found Teddy, there was a chance. A fraying rope to climb out of the pit of sorrow before it buried her.

All her hopes, fed by desperation, hinged on trusting an untrustworthy man tolook into it.

She had relived that night countless times and failed to divine Bane’s intentions. Her deepest secret, in the hands of her most dangerous enemy, filled her with cataclysmic dread. For days, the Realmwalker’s sudden reappearance hung over her head like a scythe.

He never showed.

The silence was open-ended. She kept waiting for Bane to appear and— She wasn’t sure what. Attack her. Ravish her.Devastate her. Maybe a combination of all three and not in that particular order.

For the thousandth time, she wondered who had cursed Teddy, and if she’d ever find her twin again. The uncertainty was maddening. There were schemes within schemes she couldn’t untangle.

These miseries she pushed into the growing pile at the back of her mind. In a lifeless voice, Cora recited the modified story to Mother. Finding Teddy. Confronting Bane. Returning to Teddy’s flat—unaccompanied, Mother assumed, and Cora didn’t correct—to find his body missing. She omitted Bane’s Unweaver discovery and gave scant details of the conversation she had turned over and over in her mind.

The words felt like ash on her tongue. Cora didn’t care that the Doberman Bestiamancer overheard them. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

Mother’s mouth tightened. “If anyone could put poor Teddy’s spirit elsewhere—in another Realm, as you claim—it would be the Realmwalker. He has a torrid history with the Profane Arts, after all.”

The suspicion had dwelled in her mind, even if her gut discounted it. Bane was guilty of many things, but perhaps not this. Why would he offer to help find someone he’d disappeared? “I think if Bane had done it, he’d own up to it and come after me and Verek next. He hasn’t.”

Mother’s lips were as thin as the line between pet and pelt. “Well, my dear. As you say. Someone cursed Teddy. Someone broke the Covenantandthe truce. At this point, how could another war be avoided?” She nibbled on a gingerbread biscuit. “What a bother. There has been nothing but trouble since Mr. Bane showed up.”

Cora said nothing. Mage politics only interested her in as much as she could avoid them. Why tiptoe through a field of landmines when you could simply go around it?

“What else, pet?” Cocking her head, her eyes flashed amber. “What aren’t you telling Mother?”

“I’ve told you everything.” Cora reached for the money. Mother slid it back. Their gazes clashed in a silent contest that ended in stalemate when Owens bristled inside.

“They’re here, Mother,” Owens announced.

“And now you’ll tell them.” Mother stuffed the money away. “Send them in, Owens.”

Cora jumped to her feet like she’d been shot out of a cannon. “Who?”

“I’ve requested a parley with Mr. Verek and Mr. Bane to discuss these bothersome incidents,” Mother said. “Your testimony shall be most enlightening.”

“No! No, that is not our arrangement.” Cora flattened herself against the wall behind the door. Fear scurried across her nerves. “No one can kn—”

A bald, barrel-chested man with a curling handlebar mustache burst into the room. Two thugs flanked him, wearing the Pyromancer boss’s emblems of a burning triangle on their sleeves and a scimitar at their hips, curved with serrated edges like a smiling mouth full of fangs.

Verek and his Ferromancers.

The bottom of her stomach dropped out. Her thoughts ran in a tight, panicked circle.They’ll know. They’ll all know.

Verek stomped to the opposite head of the table. Flipping back the coattails of his fine wool suit, he hefted himself into the chair and readjusted his paunch, a laborer’s bulk since gone to fat. Gold flashed on his waistcoat, rings, pocket watch and chain. Even several of his teeth were gold.

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