Page 86 of Son of a Witch (The Wicked Years 2)

Indeed she was. Her hands were composed upon her lap, and her eyes closed in prayer. “Forgive me, sisters,” she said when they came forward. “Obligation before devotion, I know. Won’t you sit down?”

“We hear that Liir is back,” said Sister Doctor. “We should like the chance to see him.”

“To inspect him. To meet with him.”

The Superior Maunt raised her eyebrows. Sister Apothecaire blushed. “I merely meant that it would be useful in our professional practice to know what the cause of his peculiar ailments actually was. Likewise we are quite in the dark as to the treatment Candle applied that helped him to recover so.”

“Of course,” said the Superior Maunt. “And I’m eager to know as well. But I have other responsibilities this morning. The unexpected arrivals are breaking their fast in the refectory, I believe, but I have made an appointment to counsel our other guest in the small chapel. I don’t believe I should break my appointment with her. So you will conduct the interview jointly and report to me.”

“Yes, Mother.”

She dismissed them, but then called after, “Sisters.”

They turned.

“In women of your age and station, it is unseemly to pelt so. The young men will not have left.”

“Pardon us,” said Sister Doctor. “But of course the last time we hoped to find him, he had left.”

“He hasn’t asked as much yet, but I believe he’s requesting sanctuary,” said the Superior Maunt. “I’m afraid he won’t be leaving very soon. You have time. Practice continence in your expression of enthusiasm.”

“Yes. Indeed. Quite.”

“You may go.”

They stood there. “Go!” repeated the Superior Maunt wearily.

She closed her eyes again, but this time not in prayer. The new winter was approaching. Another winter in the mauntery of Saint Glinda. Fires that would not warm her papery skin. Fruit that would grow mealy in the larder. Increased agitation among the maunts, for when there was less work in the gardens there was more gossip and bitchery in the sewing compound. There would be new leaks to repair, and ague would knock a few of the old ones into the grave. She wondered if it would be her turn.

She couldn’t hope for this. She didn’t hope for it. But the rewards of the winter season seemed richer in her childhood memories, back before she had these tiresome women to govern—the silly affectations of Lurlinemas, which even professed maunts in their strictness remembered with pleasure—the spectacle of sunlight staining birch shadows into the snow like laundry blueing—the way snow fell up as well as down, if the wind had its way—of course, the way birds returned, stitching the spring back into place by virtue of melody.

It was the gardens of her girlhood she remembered most, the earliest blossoms. Jonquils and fillarettes and snowdrops, perfect as the Dixxi House porcelain bibelots that had adorned her mother’s dressing table. She had not seen a fillarette in years, except in her mind. How sweet it was to regard!

She prayed for strength to last the winter out. These days, though, she rarely got into the fourth line of a beloved old epiphody before her mind skipped back through some pasture or garden walk of her youth.

Attend, she barked at herself, and stood with difficulty. The cold was already at work in her joints. She creaked as she readied herself for the morning conversation. Noting the raggedness of the face flannel with which she wiped her brow, she hoped that the mauntery’s guest might have come to propose a sizeable donation. Or even a little one. But this was beyond what the Superior Maunt thought it was proper to pray for, so she didn’t spend her prayer in that direction.

Wisdom is not the understanding of mystery, she said to herself, not for the first time. Wisdom is accepting that mystery is beyond understanding. That’s what makes it mystery.

THE FELLOWS WERE NEARLY KEELING OVER into their coffee cups. “You’ve had no sleep, you’ve been riding all night,” said Sister Doctor, disapprovingly. “It’s a dangerous track at best, and foolhardy to venture upon if you don’t know your way. Have you come from the Emerald City?”

“We’ve been round and about,” said Liir.

Sister Doctor explained that she and Sister Apothecaire had briefly tended to Liir when he’d been brought in by Oatsie Manglehand, the captain of the Grasstrail Train. “Have you any recollection of that?” she pressed.

“I know very little about anything,” he said. “I’m useless, pretty much.”

“Any more cheese, d’you think?” asked Trism, draining his noggin of ale.

“You were here for weeks, I’m afraid,” Sister Doctor remarked to Liir. “Without the ministrations of our community you should certainly have died.”

“Perish the thought. I’m alive, for what it’s worth.”

“What Sister Doctor is trying to ascertain, in her skittery way, is how Candle did it,” interrupted Sister Apothecaire. “She was mute as a lilac, and seemed not overly canny. Yet she managed a miracle with you.”

“Professional curiosity requires us to ask how,” inserted Sister Doctor.

“Professional jealousy requires it, too,” admitted Sister Apothecaire.

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