Mrs. Gable was in the kitchen, occupying the space with the natural authority of a woman who had grown into her domain the way a tree grows into a hillside. She looked up when Florence appeared.

  "How is she?"

  "Feverish. But awake. Would you mind if I used the stove?"

  Mrs. Gable waved a hand that encompassed the entire room. "Pantry's yours, dear. Help yourself to whatever you need. There's stock in the pot from last night."

  Florence worked quickly. She knew this recipe the way she knew the sound of her own breathing—not from a book, not from instruction, but from the accumulated memory of every Sunday morning in the Bannerman kitchen in Briar's Crossing, standing on a stool beside her mother while the pot bubbled and the windows fogged and her father read the paper aloud at the table.

  It was porridge, technically. But calling it porridge was like calling the Cathedral a building. The oats were toasted first, dry in the pan, stirred until they darkened to the colour of wet sand and the kitchen filled with something warm and nutty that smelled like home. Then the stock—not water, never water, because her mother had been firm on this point and Florence was not about to dishonour the dead by taking shortcuts. A pinch of salt. A knob of butter, the largest Mrs. Gable's pantry could spare. And at the end, when the mixture had thickened to a consistency that held a spoon upright, a generous pour of honey and a crack of black pepper that made the whole thing sing.

  Florence carried the bowl up the stairs, a spoon tucked into her apron pocket.

  Alice had not moved. She was sitting exactly where Florence had left her, propped against the wall, her legs stretched beneath the blanket. A book lay open face-down on the bed beside her—one of the volumes from her satchel—but the effort had apparently defeated her, because Alice's eyes were closed.

  They opened when Florence's foot hit the creaking board at the top of the stairs.

  "It's important to eat when you're sick," Florence said, settling onto the edge of Alice's bed. "Even if you don't feel hungry."

  Alice eyed the bowl. "What is it?"

  "The Bannerman family recipe."

  "That tells me nothing, Florence."

  "It tells you everything you need to know." Florence dipped the spoon and held it out. "Open up."

  Alice looked at the spoon. She looked at Florence. The expression that crossed her face was a negotiation between pride, hunger, and the specific indignity of being spoon-fed by a girl from Briar's Crossing.

  "I am not an infant, Florence."

  "Then feed yourself."

  Florence turned the spoon around and offered the handle. Alice took it. Her fingers closed around the stem with careful deliberation, and for a moment the grip held steady. She dipped into the bowl, scooped a reasonable portion, and raised it toward her mouth.

  The tremor hit halfway up. Her hand spasmed—a small, involuntary jerk, the mana sickness pulling her strings—and the spoonful departed its intended trajectory. A warm, honey-scented glob of porridge landed on the front of the pyjamas Florence had given her less than twenty minutes ago. A second, smaller droplet struck the blanket.

  Alice stared at the stain on her chest.

  Florence said nothing. She took the cloth from her shoulder, leaned forward, and dabbed the porridge from Alice's front with the brisk, unsentimental efficiency of a woman who had been cleaning up after people her entire life and was not about to make a fuss about one more.

  Alice surrendered the spoon without a word.

  Florence reloaded it, brought it up, and Alice opened her mouth with the expression of someone accepting a verdict from a judge. She chewed. Swallowed. Her eyes drifted shut for a moment, and something in her face—the tight, guarded architecture of it—loosened by a fraction.

  "Well?" Florence asked.

  Alice was quiet for a moment.

  "...Not bad," she said.

  Florence beamed. She dipped the spoon back into the bowl, already loading the next mouthful.

  "That's high praise, coming from you, m'lady," she said, her voice light and teasing, the title landing with the same playful weight it had carried on a muddy forest path a lifetime ago. She brought the spoon up, her eyes bright. "Wait until your taste buds are working properly."

  Alice swallowed another spoonful. Then another. The colour was returning to her face in slow, uneven patches, the mana-flush competing with the pallor of exhaustion for dominance across her cheekbones.

  She watched Florence reload the spoon.

  "So," Alice said, her voice still rough but steadying. "How was the grand tour? Thomas seemed quite enthusiastic about his itinerary."

  The question was light. Conversational. The kind of thing you asked a friend over breakfast because the silence had gone on long enough and you needed to fill it with something that wasn't the sound of your own chewing.

  Florence recognized the tone.

  It was Alice's probing tone—the one she used when she wanted information but didn't want to look like she wanted information. It always started the same way. Casual. Airy. A question lobbed with one hand while the other was already reaching for the answer.

  She'd heard it on the road from the bandit's shack, when Alice had asked how long she'd been practicing magic. She'd heard it in the hansom cab to the Registry, when Alice had steered the conversation toward Thomas with the affected nonchalance of someone who absolutely needed to know what kind of man Florence's brother was. And she'd heard it again at the Admissions Hall, when Alice had leaned toward Thomas with wide, fascinated eyes and asked about his recent cases—fishing for what the D.A.A. knew about a certain destroyed carriage on the Old King's Road.

  Florence decided to go along.

  "It was wonderful," she said, and meant it. She brought the spoon up. Alice opened her mouth without being asked this time, which Florence chose to interpret as progress. "It was really wonderful, actually. Thomas had the whole day planned out. He'd made a list."

  "Of course he had," Alice murmured around the porridge.

  "We started at the chophouse on Mulberry Lane. The one he'd been talking about since the Admissions Hall. He was so excited about this pie, Alice. He practically dragged me through the door." Florence smiled at the memory, scooping another portion. "And he was right. The crust was—I can't even describe it. Flaky, golden, the butter ratio was perfect. I kept trying to reverse-engineer it in my head. He caught me staring at the pastry instead of eating it and told me I wasn't allowed to turn lunch into a lecture."

  Alice's lips twitched. "What kind?"

  "Steak and kidney."

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  "Acceptable."

  "Then the tram." Florence's voice brightened, the enthusiasm surfacing the way it always did when she forgot to be self-conscious about it. "Have you ridden it yet? The Dunwick Tram? We took the upper deck across the iron bridge. You can see the whole city from up there, Alice. The rooftops go on forever. And the river—the Thein—it's so wide. Thomas was pointing out all the districts. The Docklands, the factory quarter, the spire of Parliament." She paused, the spoon hovering. "He knew the name of every bridge. Every single one. I think he'd memorised them just so he could tell me."

  She brought the spoon to Alice's mouth. Alice took it. Her expression had softened into something that wasn't quite a smile but lived in the same neighbourhood—a loosening of the jaw, a slight easing around the eyes.

  "And then the Cathedral," Florence said. Her voice dropped half a register, the way it did when she talked about things that had touched something deeper than her appetite for detail. "St. Silas. We went inside and it was… Alice, I've never been anywhere like that. The ceiling just went up and up. The sound disappeared into it. And the stained glass in the west window—when the light came through, the colours spilled across the stone floor like something living. I just stood there. I couldn't move."

  She was quiet for a moment.

  "There was a Reverend there. Sophia. She walked us through the eastern wing, told us about the arches. They took forty years to build. She said I could come back whenever I needed quiet." Florence reached for the bowl, stirring slowly. "I think I will. It felt safe."

  "Sounds like you've found your church," Alice said. There was no mockery in it.

  "I lit a candle for our parents," Florence added. Quieter now. "Thomas stood behind me. He didn't say anything. He never does, when it matters. He just put his hand on my shoulder."

  The spoon came up. Alice took it without comment. Florence was grateful for that.

  "And then," Florence said, straightening, "he took me shopping. Insisted I couldn't celebrate in secondhand wool. His words. He found this dressmaker's shop on the high street and sat in a chair by the door for forty minutes while I tried things on. He kept giving the seamstress his opinion. She hated him."

  Alice made a sound that was too weak to be a laugh but carried the shape of one.

  "And then dinner," Florence said.

  Something shifted in her voice. Not a break, not a crack. A settling, like a foundation accepting weight.

  "He took me to the Lacquered Swan."

  Alice went still. Her eyes, which had been drifting in the glassy, unfocused way of the feverish, sharpened by a fraction.

  "The Lacquered Swan," Alice repeated. "I heard about that. Something about a bombing?"

  "You heard correctly."

  Florence set the spoon in the bowl and rested it on her knee. She looked at the window, where the grey light of Dunwick pressed against the curtain.

  "We were there," she said. "When it happened."

  Alice said nothing. She waited.

  "It was the most beautiful place I'd ever seen." Florence's voice was careful now, each word chosen and placed. "Candelabras on every table. More silverware than I knew existed. The air smelled like roasted garlic and wine and caramelised onions. I felt completely out of place. The woman at the next table was wearing pearls. Actual ropes of pearls. And I was sitting there in a plum dress from a high-street seamstress, trying to work out which fork was for what."

  She paused.

  "Thomas didn't care. He just seemed happy. He'd made the reservation three weeks in advance. He said I only get accepted to University once, and he wasn't going to let me celebrate with cold mutton."

  The spoon came up again, automatic, Florence's hands working the porridge without her eyes leaving the window. Alice opened her mouth and accepted it.

  "The menu was in a language I didn't speak. I asked him what a consommé was. He said it was fancy for soup." A ghost of a smile. "The prices nearly killed me. I told him the stag cost sixteen Stags and he just said they raised them on a specific diet. Very calm about it. I wanted to leave. I told him the chophouse was fine. He wouldn't hear it."

  She was quiet for a moment.

  "He'd been saving for months. Every overtime shift, every hazard bonus. All of it set aside for one dinner." She stirred the porridge slowly. "We talked over the bread and wine. He told me about his first month in the city. He got on the wrong tram three days running. Ended up in the Docklands at midnight." She let out a small breath. "He asked me about my thoughts on the day, and I told him about the Cathedral, and the tram, and he just sat there listening with this look on his face like…"

  She trailed off.

  "Like what?" Alice asked. Her voice was very quiet.

  "Like he was proud," Florence said simply. "Just proud. Of me."

  The room held the words for a moment.

  "And then everything went wrong."

  Florence picked up the spoon again. The motion was deliberate—something to do with her hands, something to focus on that wasn't the memory.

  "Thomas stopped talking mid-sentence. One moment he was smiling, and the next his face just… emptied. Like someone had blown out a candle behind his eyes. He told me to be quiet. Not asked. Told. In a voice I'd never heard him use before. And then he threw the table aside and tackled me to the floor."

  Spoon up. Alice took it.

  "The wall exploded. Half the building came down. The chandelier fell. People were screaming, and there was dust everywhere, and Thomas was on top of me with his coat spread over us both." Florence's grip on the bowl tightened. "He dragged me behind a section of the bar counter and told me not to move. Then he went out there."

  She stopped stirring.

  "Men came through the breach in the wall. They were wearing burlap hoods with a white symbol painted on them. They had guns. They had magic. And Thomas just…" She shook her head, the motion small and tight. "He went at them. Alone. He shot one before they even knew he was there. He was nullifying their spells and returning fire and I was crouching behind a counter watching my brother fight for his life against a dozen men."

  Her voice was steady, but the steadiness had a cost. Florence was spending something to keep it level.

  "He saved so many people, Alice. The survivors—the ones who made it—they're alive because Thomas was there. He drew their fire. He broke their spells. He kept fighting even after his ankle gave out. He could barely stand, and he was still shooting."

  Alice was watching her. The fever-flush on her cheeks had not changed, but something behind her eyes had gone very alert.

  "I'm glad we were there," Florence said. "Even though the dinner was ruined. Even though it was the worst night of my life. If we hadn't been at that table, those people would be dead. Thomas would say it was his duty, and I suppose it was. But it wasn't duty I saw on his face when he threw himself on top of me. It was just…"

  She didn't finish the sentence. She didn't need to.

  Florence lifted the spoon. Her hand was steady.

  "There was someone else, though," she said.

  The air in the attic room changed. It was a subtle thing—not a drop in temperature, not a shift in the light, just a tightening. The quality of Alice's attention, already sharpened, narrowed to a point.

  "Someone in a mask," Florence continued, her voice neutral, descriptive, the voice of a witness giving testimony. "A metal mask. Featureless. They were wearing a tablecloth as a cloak. They came out of nowhere during the fighting, and they helped. They shot cultists, saved civilians. Thomas said afterward that he'd have been dead without them."

  She scooped another spoonful. Brought it up. Alice took it, but the mechanical ease of the last few minutes was gone. She chewed slowly.

  "Thomas tried to talk to them after it was over. He approached them, hands open. Introduced himself." Florence paused. "Then he grabbed their wrist."

  She said it without judgement. A fact, reported.

  "They fought. Thomas and the masked person. It was…" Florence searched for the word. "Violent. The person stomped on his bad ankle. They punched him. They pulled a gun on him. Thomas was—he was furious. He charged them, and they wrestled through the wreckage, and at some point…"

  Florence looked at Alice.

  Alice looked back. Her face was very carefully blank, the kind of blank that took effort to maintain, and the effort was visible in the tendons of her jaw and the stillness of her hands on the blanket.

  "Thomas managed to pull the tablecloth off," Florence said.

  She let the sentence sit.

  "They were wearing a dress underneath. A black dress. High-collared. Fitted at the waist." Florence's gaze was steady, unhurried, moving across Alice's face the way one reads a page. "It was a nice dress, Alice. Fine-woven. Not the sort of thing you pick up at a secondhand shop. It looked new. The kind of thing someone might have put on that same evening."

  She paused.

  "It wasn't the dress you were wearing when you left us outside the admissions hall yesterday afternoon."

  The silence that followed was the loudest thing in the room.

  Alice's jaw worked. Her eyes, glassy with mana sickness, met Florence's and held. The fever-flush on her cheeks deepened by a shade—or perhaps that was something else entirely.

  Florence waited. Against Alice, silence was the only tool that reliably got past her defences. Words she could parry. Questions she could deflect. But quiet, patient, unhurried quiet—the kind that simply sat and breathed and refused to fill itself—that was the one thing Alice's considerable arsenal had no answer for.

  Alice exhaled. It was a long, slow breath, the kind that carried the weight of something being set down.

  "Well," Alice said. Her voice was hoarse, stripped of its usual arch. "I was about to explain."