“I don’t know why I reacted like that, after you said—” I stared into my coffee. “I didn’t want to start crying. It’s embarrassing. I’m sorry.”
He caressed my cheek, my neck. “There’s no reason to be embarrassed or sorry. It’s fine. I think…I think I understand.”
“Can you explain it to me?” I choked a laugh. “Because I don’t understand at all.”
“No, because if I’m wrong, I’ll be really embarrassed.”
“Thank you.” I leaned on his shoulder.
He kissed the top of my head, and we stayed quiet as sunlight moved across the floor. “After someone followed you home, I gave you a knife.”
“Yes.” I shivered closer to him.
“Did it make you feel safer?”
I considered. At first, I’d tried to squirm away from the weapon, but it was beautiful and had later saved me from Meuric. I carried it everywhere now, though I tended to use it for holding down paper more than stabbing.
“Yes,” I said at last.
“All right.” His voice grew distant, disturbed.
“What is it?”
“Nothing you need to worry about.” Sam was a rule follower. He didn’t do things that might get him in trouble. He plain didn’t think about trouble at all.
But whatever he had in mind now, it was as un-Sam-like as the sylph outside.
6
GRATITUDE
A COUPLE OF hours later, the sylph watched us go. They stayed by their trees, moaning pitifully and huddling together when a chill wind snapped through, but they made no motion to follow us. I had pockets full of sylph eggs, just in case.
As Sam and I headed west into the woods, the pony on a lead behind us, the sylph wailed and sang part of a symphony we’d been listening to the other night.
I shivered deeper into my coat. What did they want? Nothing in the lab had offered an explanation. Aside from the poison, I was just as confused as before.
“Come on,” Sam said, gentle as ever when pulling me from fearful contemplation. “We need to decide something very important.”
“What’s that?” I tugged my hat over my ears and adjusted my fingerless mittens, trapping in as much heat as possible.
“Which duet we’ll play for Sarit first. Do you have a preference?”
I grinned and let him distract me with talk of music for the next several hours, though both of us kept checking over our shoulders for shadows that didn’t belong.
During our hike from Purple Rose Cottage to Menehem’s lab, autumn had only been creeping into the leaves, weaving red and gold and russet with the green. Now, as we pushed toward Heart, an autumn carpet crunched beneath our boots.
A deep roar sounded, long and rumbling. I stiffened and reached for my knife—as if it would do any good if we were about to encounter a bear—but Sam just took my forearm and drew me off the road.
“Stand back here.” As the roar grew louder and higher, Sam slipped one hand around mine and held tight to Shaggy’s harness with the other.
It wasn’t a bear growl; the sound was too long and even and mechanical. A low-flying air drone approached in a torrent of leaves. Metal glinted in dappled sunlight, the only thing I could see through the leaf storm, and the noise grew so shrill I covered my ears.
Then the drone was gone, its sound falling lower as it vanished down the road. Leaves rained down on the sides of the road, showers of gold and red and russet, leaving the cobblestones mostly clear.
“It’s safe now.” Sam drew Shaggy and me back onto the road.
“A drone to clear the roads?” I gazed after the thing, but it was long gone. Only flurries of autumn leaves gave evidence to its passing. “How does it know where to go? And why is it so loud?” Labor drones were typically quiet.
“There are sensors under the roads, which tell if there’s anything covering it for long periods of time. Rain doesn’t matter, and moving traffic doesn’t set it off, but snow and lots of leaves do. Even dead animals. It can tell what kind of material is covering the stone, and appropriate drones get sent out.”
“Stef’s idea?” It sounded like something she would insist on, keeping the roads clear even when traffic outside of Heart was uncommon.
“And the noise they make.” Sam tugged Shaggy’s lead and the pony snorted, ears twisting to listen to the retreating drone. “We found out quickly that with the quieter models, animals didn’t know what to do. With the noise, they tend to run.”
“Instead of waiting to get hit on the head?”
“Exactly. Now,” he said, “we need to talk about your posture when you play your flute. You keep letting the end drop. Is it too heavy?” His tone was teasing.
“No,” I mumbled, because he was right. It was just laziness.
“You’ll get a better sound if you hold your flute straight.”
“I know, I know. Do you keep yourself up at night coming up with new things to correct me on?”