Lilith Blackwood's Arc

Chapter 16 of 21

Shelly's spell had held once. It would not hold forever. Lilith knew the townswoman would return, and next time no braid-swinging friend might stand near enough to trace an illusion in the air. She needed a cover story that did not depend on magic, and she needed it before the next knock. But her cover story rested on Rosalind, and Rosalind would not lie. She found the older healer on the upper floor, kneeling beside a striped creature, pressing a chart against its ribs to mark its breathing. Rosalind's white robe was smudged with ink at both cuffs. She did not look up. "You want to ask me to lie again," she said. "The answer is the same. I'll tend anything you bring me. I won't put a false word to it." "I'm not asking you to lie," Lilith said. "I'm asking you to help me find a truth that holds." That turned Rosalind's head. She set down her charts and studied Lilith with sharp, tired eyes. "Go on." "The letters," Lilith said. She drew the bundle from her satchel, the handwritten notes from healers who had vouched for her before. "You've treated animals no one else would touch. Methods no one else has tried. If an inspector asks why these creatures heal strange, you tell them what you actually do. You call it your method. Not a lie. Your work." Rosalind untied the bundle and read the top page slowly. Her mouth moved over the crabbed handwriting. "These are real," she said. "Real healers. Real cures." "Every word," Lilith said. "When they ask about the fast healing, you don't mention lions. You mention your charts. You show them your satchel. You let them believe a skilled hand did it, because a skilled hand did." Rosalind was quiet a long moment. Then she nodded, once, the way she nodded over a wound she knew how to close. "I can stand behind that. It's my name on the work." She tapped the letters. "But you keep the field out of my mouth entirely. I won't deny it. I'll only speak what's mine to speak." "That's all I need," Lilith said. Liko had watched from the windowsill, his tail curled over his paws. "A clean cover," the gray cat said. "No spell to break. She tells the truth, and the truth hides the rest." His yellow eyes narrowed. "But it holds only while she's here to say it. The story lives in her, not in the walls." Lilith felt the weight of that settle. The secret no longer leaned on Shelly's tired fingers. It leaned on Rosalind staying. If the older woman ever left Pawswell House, the cover left with her, and no letters would speak in her absence. "Then you'd best not go anywhere," Lilith said. Rosalind snorted and picked her charts back up. "At my age? Where would I go." She bent to the striped creature again, and the house was safe for now.