Sienna Du’for's Arc

Chapter 17 of 19

Sienna sat on the low wall outside the records hall with the slip of paper flat on her knee. Clementine sat beside her, close enough that their sleeves touched. The other three steps on the list read like chores. A handwritten note. A drop of blood. A bolt of cloth. Anyone could gather those in a morning. Only the first line refused to make sense. Reclaim the crown of Lorimar. Sienna turned the ring on her finger, the small band she still wore from home, and pushed the fear down into her chest where she could sit on it. "It reads like a prank," Sienna said. "Three errands and one impossible thing." Clementine took the slip and held it to the light. "The hand is neat. Not a joke hand." "Then explain how a piece of paper older than us knows my mother's house. Whoever wrote this had no way to know a girl would come looking. It's meant for someone. It can't be meant for me." Clementine folded the slip once and gave it back. "Or someone left it for whoever came next. That is what instructions do." Sienna wanted her to be wrong. She read the line again and something under her ribs pulled. She had felt it before, standing in the nursery under the carved word Lorimar, sure a room was watching her. "I keep thinking I've seen this writing," she said. "Not the words. The shape of the letters. My mother kept a book of prayers by the bed. The margins looked like this." Clementine did not answer. She only nodded once, which was her way of saying keep going. Sienna stopped trying to make it a puzzle. She started gathering. Ink and paper from Theodore's desk for the note. A clean strip torn from the hem of her underskirt for the cloth. A pin from Clementine's collar for the blood. They walked to Konda's hall with the four things wrapped in a handkerchief. Konda was writing at her low table when they came in. She did not look up until Sienna set the bundle down and laid the slip beside it. Konda read the four lines. She read them again. Her face did not move. "Where did you find this." "In a book," Sienna said. "Theodore's hall. Tucked in the pages." Konda touched the paper with two fingers, as if to check that it was real. "I have never seen these words. I know every rite this clan has kept for six hundred years. This is not one of them." Sienna's stomach dropped. "Then it isn't a ritual." "It is instructions," Konda said. "From someone. Not from us." She looked up at Sienna for a long moment. "The first line names your house. You will have to go home to answer it." Clementine's hand closed around Sienna's wrist and did not let go.