Page 54 of The Unweaver

Sausages browned in rosemary butter. French toast smothered in a decadent sauce, garnished with clotted cream and fresh strawberries in the heart of winter.

Avoiding the sausages, Cora tucked in, ravenous. “This is good,” she said around a mouthful. “Really good. Where’d you learn to cook like this?”

Over his cup, he watched her devour toast like a famished animal. “My mum.”

“Oh?” She washed down a particularly ambitious bite with tea. “Where’s your mum now?”

“Dead.”

She glanced up. His focus was on his plate, not her. She knew better than to say sorry. “And your family?”

He was mired in thought for so long she didn’t think he’d respond. “All dead.”

Like mine. She winced at the lash of grief. “Did you have a big family?”

“Aye. Of thirteen born, nine survived past their leading strings. I was the oldest.”

Her fork stalled. A boy’s words in a sea of grass came to her.I’m the oldest. Da says I’m supposed to take care o’ them. That dream grew stranger in the light of day.

His even tone didn’t mask the ache of a loss she couldn’t begin to fathom. She’d lost one sibling—temporarily, please let it be temporarily—and he’d lost a dozen.

“Can I ask what happened to them?”

“That story requires a three-drink minimum.” He almost smiled when she set the nicked bottle of brandy before him. “Do I want to know how you got that?”

“No.”

He pushed the bottle aside. “Another time.” Gesturing to the uneaten sausages on her plate, he asked, “Not to your liking?”

“I’m a vegetarian.”

“Good lord,why?”

Necromancy was full of nuanced horrors. She could taste how the animal died. Not even the savory crispness of bacon could compensate for the phantom feeling of being strung up by your hind legs and bled dry. Beef and pork were traumatizing meats. Chicken, less so, until she’d taken a bite of a particularly self-aware bird. That final spasm after its head was chopped off had ruined the taste. Vegetarianism was the safer option.

“I don’t think anything should have to die just so I can live.”

“How moral of you,” he drawled. “But didn’t that grain die for you? And that fruit?”

“Anysentientthing.” She nudged the sausages onto his plate and stood to grab more toast.

“Vegetarian,” he said under his breath. “Likely a damned suffragist, too.”

“Of course you’re against women’s rights,” she scoffed, heaping a second serving of a meal she hadn’t prepared onto her plate.

“On the contrary. We should be grateful women only seek equality, not revenge.” He bit into a sausage. “I think it’s grand that women can vote. Prohibition has been very good for business.”

She shot him a cross look as she returned to her seat. He pulled out the Chronomancer’s silver watch, frowning. The watch hands pointed at archaic symbols in a random pattern.

“How can you read the time on that?”

“It doesn’t tell the time, really,” he said. “It’s a Doomsday Watch. It’s counting down.”

The fork stilled halfway to her mouth. “Counting down to what?”

“I wish I knew.” His frown deepened. “Whatever it is, it’s gone from being years away to weeks away since I last checked.”

Her fork dropped to the plate. “That can’t be good.”

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