Chapter 76: Maeve Draws the Knife

The nursery door stayed cracked enough for Nora to see Maeve's silhouette against the lamplight. Hope's breathing had settled into the soft rhythm of milk-sleep, and Maeve had not moved from the rocking chair in over an hour. She held Nora's knife in her lap. Not Darius's. Nora's. The blade she had used to cut bandages and open seal-wax envelopes in five years of serving a pack that never saw her. Maeve had taken it from her belt while Nora was not looking. Nora let her keep it. "She will not sleep through the night," Darius said from behind her. His voice was quiet, pitched for her ear alone. They stood in the narrow corridor that connected the birthing tent to the cold storage lean-to. The packless women had spread through the hollow like roots seeking warmth, but this corner belonged to them. "You should rest while she does." "I can't rest while Lorna Vale is breathing the same air as my daughter." Darius did not argue. He simply moved closer, and the heat of him pressed against her back like a second coat. "She is under guard. Three women I trust. Maeve is inside. Hope is wrapped in wool and fur." "Lorna Vale took her blanket this morning. She touched the fabric. She smiled." Nora turned to face him. "She is not a victim. She is a door. And I left that door standing open while we argued about ledgers and mothers." "Then close it." She stared at him. "You sound like you already know how." Darius reached past her and pushed the nursery door wide. Maeve looked up, her hand already wrapped around the knife's hilt, her eyes sharp and ready. Hope stirred in the sling across her chest but did not wake. "She is the vessel," Darius said. "Vessels are not sealed by force. They are sealed by witness. If Maeve can make Lorna speak her true name, the patron loses the thread that binds her." "Make her speak how?" Maeve asked. "You have a knife." Maeve's jaw tightened. "I'm not torturing an old woman." "You're not," Nora said quickly. "But you can make her believe you will. If she thinks Hope is in danger, the vessel's instinct to protect might break the patron's hold." Maeve looked down at the blade in her hand. Then she looked at Hope, whose small fist had curled around the edge of the sling. "I need to get inside the room," Maeve said. "Alone. If the patron is listening through Lorna's ears, she already knows how many of us are here. But she might not know what I am willing to do." "What are you willing to do?" Nora asked. Maeve stood. The knife caught the candlelight as she adjusted her grip. "Whatever it takes to make sure that woman never touches Hope again." Nora stepped aside. Darius moved to the corner where the shadows pooled thickest, and she watched Maeve walk into the vessel's room with her knife in her hand and her daughter still breathing sweetly against Maeve's chest. The door clicked shut. Nora pressed her ear to the wood and heard Maeve's voice, low and steady. "You took a blanket from a baby this morning. I want to know why." Silence. Then a rustle, like old bones shifting under thin skin. "Because the patron told me to." Lorna's voice was not her own. It came from her throat, but the cadence stretched and bent like water moving uphill. "She said the child would remember the scent. That the wool would carry me into the nursery, through the walls, into the space where the mother cannot follow." Maeve's shadow moved across the gap beneath the door. "Where is the patron now?" "She is everywhere." "Then tell her I am here. Tell her I have a knife, and I am not afraid to use it." The silence stretched so long Nora stopped breathing. Then the wall beside her breathed. Nora jerked back as the wood rippled, not from wind but from something inside it. The grain warped, twisted, formed a mouth that had no lips and a voice that had no body. "She is not afraid to use it," the wall whispered. "But I am not afraid for her to try."