Elsa Crane's Arc

Chapter 4 of 66

Elsa set the fourth cup down and stared at it. A cup would not stop a baker's hands. She needed something in the room that could — a witness the ledger could not see, and a warning she could trust before the knife came out. She thought of the child. Wren Kovar had come back to the village three times after they left her in the pines. The little girl with black button eyes where her eyes should be. Elsa had given her keys once. Wren had used them and set a cellar door on fire. That was enough to know the girl was not what she looked like, and that she owed Elsa a small debt. Elsa found Wren sitting on the back step of the meeting hall, feet neat in the snow, hands folded. She had not called her. The girl was simply there. "I'm having a guest," Elsa said. She kept her voice warm. "The baker. I want you at the table." Wren tilted her head. The button eyes caught no light. "He walks people down to the cellar under the village," Elsa said. "They come back quiet. I want to know if he means to walk me down too." "You want me to watch his hands," Wren said. "I want you to sit close. Close enough that if he moves wrong, you're between him and me." Wren considered this. "He won't touch a child at the table." "No," Elsa said. "He won't." She went inside and moved the vine-woven table nearer the hearth. She set out four cups now instead of two. Honey, bread, a small knife for the bread — she took the knife back to the drawer. She left the poker at the fire, where her hand could find it without looking. Jonas came at dusk. Flour still on his sleeves. He smiled at the door the way he smiled at everyone, and his smile faltered one blink when he saw Wren already in the chair beside Elsa's. "You brought company," he said. "She sits with me now," Elsa said. "Sit, Jonas. Tea's hot." He sat. He kept both hands on the table, palms flat, the whole hour. He talked about the ovens. He asked, twice, whether Wren shouldn't be home. Wren did not blink. Neither did Elsa. When he left, he had not touched his cup. Elsa closed the door and leaned against it. Her hands shook only after the latch caught. "He came to look," Wren said, still in the chair. "He'll come back when I'm not here." "Then you'll be here," Elsa said. Wren turned her button eyes to the fire. "I can't be here every hour. And now he knows you know." Elsa looked at the untouched cup on the table. She had survived the tea. She had also told Jonas, without a word, that she was hunting him. The next move would be his, and it would not be at her table.