n some sense. His grim look cracked; he smiled for just a moment, though he wasn’t sure if he should have. He wasn’t sure what sort of smile it was, either, only it didn’t last. He watched her run a hand over the portfolio, lacquered nails dark against the calfskin, fingers leaving soft light marks. She found the edge and opened it up; he took one last sip of tea, set the cup on the saucer, and leaned to set the saucer and cup on the table by the pot.
He shifted, turning to watch her take out the stencil.
“Like a knife,” he murmured; he didn’t play at the way he used to speak or the way he used to sit, but he glanced over at her with a spark of that smile. It fell, slowly. Or a friend. He watched her unfold the stencil with care. The lamplight shafted across the crackling paper, threw shadows and strange arcs of light over the table, where the lines had been cut.
She set it on the table, and he bent to move the tea tray and his cup out of the way. The back room still smelled of bohea and flowers and crisp clean cloth, and now leather and paper, too.
When she turned to look at him – when she answered – she’d lifted one dark brow. She wasn’t smiling, but he thought she’d caught what he was driving at, whether he’d meant to or not. He felt a slight prickling in his cheeks; he glanced away from her and down at the plot. He scratched at his jaw, thinking what to say and how to say it. He sucked at a tooth.
He supposed she wouldn’t’ve; he doubted she’d let any of them see her backlash, and he doubted Ava’d had much chance of seeing it otherwise, in any qalqa of hers. Backlash or fizzling was a reprieve you couldn’t count on, and the hope, he suspected, was that you never had to see a golly cast at all.
He felt a pang; he grunted. “I’ve backlashed,” he said, “before. Only once or twice. I’ve seen it more often than I’ve done it.”
The drafting paper was white; the plot was drawn in the holes, in the lines where the smooth wood of the table showed through. There was very little monite to be stitched – he wasn’t sure he could trust his hand, especially as he’d had to shrink the spell circles down to fit on the agreed-upon cloth – and most of what was scrawled in the corners, at the sides, along the arcs, was what he would speak aloud when the stitching was done.
He leaned to smooth the paper out against the tabletop, tracing a line, tapping a block of written monite.
“If I backlash, you’ll feel some runoff. Most of it will be me, but you might… feel strange, or hear things. The mona will leave; you’ll know, because I won’t have a field.” He leaned back and looked at her. “If the spell doesn’t work, it’s most likely I’ll fizzle. It’s – taxing,” he went on. “I’ll look like shit, no matter what. I might need to rest awhile afterward.”
He felt coarse, but there was no point beating around the bush. She hadn’t, and he was damned grateful for it. “Whatever happens, I’ll do my best,” he said. “I’ve warded many times, and you’ve more intent in your smallest finger than half Brunnhold put together.”
He straightened up, took a deep breath, and set his jaw. He smiled slightly.
“Whenever you’re ready,” he said, “I’m ready to start stitching.”