Page 40 of Sightwitch
“I apologize, my lady.” I bobbed my head. “One of my wards is … trouble.” This wasn’t entirely true, of course. Lisbet was not trouble at all, but I did not want to explain how worried she made me lately.
With eyes almost full silver, her mind was in another world.
“Ah.” Baile’s forehead wrinkled with a frown. She dropped a limestone chunk atop its pile. “I admit this was not what I expected you to say. I thought perhaps you had found someone.”
“Found … someone?”
“Hye. A new man or woman—or perhaps both.” She twirled a hand in the air. “It is just that you seem happier than I have seen you in ages.”
Nothing could have surprised me more, and Baile seemed to register the shock on my face, for she hastened to add, “Of course you also seem worried, Dysi, but we are all worried these days. What I see in you tonight is a flush on your cheek and a secret smile on your lips. Which is why I cannot help but suspect that you have found someone.”
“I … no.” I could barely swallow the chuckle building in my chest. Me, finding someone. It was truly laughable. “You mean like a Heart-Thread, don’t you?”
But Baile wasn’t laughing. “Hye, like a Heart-Thread.”
This time, I let a snort break free. “Where would I even meet someone, my lady? I spend all my time here, in the workshop, trying to build our doorways.”
Baile bounced one shoulder. “Sisters may take lovers, no?”
“Of course,” I said, “but I haven’t.”
She glanced toward the door, where I noticed a masked figure waited in the tunnel outside. “Sometimes we fall in love with those who have been beside us all along.”
Ah. So my suspicions regarding those two Paladins were true.
I shook my head. “I am afraid this is not the case for me. No Sisters have suddenly caught my eye, and no one else has entered my life …” The rest of my argument faded from my lips, for while I had been speaking, someone’s face had indeed come to mind.
Someone who would be at the Supplicant’s Sorrow tomorrow. Someone who visited once each month on the full moon.
But of course, I was happy to see him tomorrow—not forme, but for Lisbet and Cora. Of course that was why.
A skeptical “hmmm” was all Baile said before she departed.
And a matching “hmmm” was all I could offer in reply.
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MEMORIES
Lisbet was Summoned today. So, so young.
I am not surprised. She is special.
After two spirit swifts erupted from the scrying pool and landed at Lisbet’s feet, she walked to me—not to Nadya—and rolling onto her tiptoes, she whispered, “You should still go.”
Then she smiled so wide it hurt my chest to see.
When she returns, her already changing eyes will be silver through and through.
LATER
Cora is ill. Her brow scalds to the touch, and she complains that her throat aches.
“Just a winter cough,” Sister Leigh assures me. “I will keep her in the infirmary, and she will be fine in a few days’ time.”
Please, Blessed Sirmaya, let that be so. Only nine months here, yet Cora and Lisbet have grown more dear to me than I could have ever predicted. “Thread-family,” Cora said to me only last week, and I had to lift my hand to hide the tears in my eyes.
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