He never apologized, Katie realized suddenly. All these years and he never apologized for stranding me there and leaving me for that thing—
The thought tried to crystallize, to become anger, but before it could, Katie shoved it away. She still loved Row; she always would. She would miss him while he was in the mountains.
But why is he going to the mountains? her mind demanded, hammering her with the question, refusing to relent. Why is he going to the mountains, Katie? Why is he going to the—
“Shut up,” Katie whispered, and picked up her book.
Three weeks passed, then four, and still William Tear did not return.
Katie knew that Tear was dead. She had no gift of vision; the answer was much simpler. She knew because Jonathan knew. He still kept himself very close, but by now, Katie had learned to read him better than anyone, to parse his words, to extrapolate from the little he revealed. In the fifth week, when the knock came on Jonathan’s door in the middle of the night, it was Katie who answered, because she knew.
The woman outside the door was almost unrecognizable as Aunt Maddy. She was in the final stages of starvation, each bone visible in her pallid face, even by candlelight. When Katie grabbed her arm, Aunt Maddy’s skin burned beneath her fingers. Katie’s mind registered these things, but even then her first priority was to get Aunt Maddy inside, to get the door closed. She knew that Aunt Maddy was dying, because no one could survive the condition Katie saw before her. But even in that early moment, some part of Katie had already focused on the greater priority: keeping a secret.
Aunt Maddy told them her story in a hoarse, rasping voice, her skeletal hands clasped in front of her. All of the muscle that had roped her body was gone now, and her forearms were little more than twigs.
“He couldn’t do it,” she murmured, and though she didn’t look at any of them, Katie knew that she was talking to Lily. “You remember last time, it almost took everything out of him. Whether he was too old, or whether it was harder in the other direction, I don’t know. But I saw that he wasn’t going to make it, that he would kill himself trying. I tried to help him, grabbed his hand, thought he could draw on me for some of it. And he did. But it still didn’t work. The door wouldn’t open.”
Katie didn’t understand much of this, but a quick look around showed that she was the only one in the dark. Jonathan and Lily wore identical expressions of resignation, their eyes downcast.
“In the end, I saw that it was killing him. He knew it too, because he shoved me away. But before he died, he gave me this.”
She reached into her pocket and came up with Tear’s sapphire, dangling on its fine silver chain. The chain had become tangled, the silver dulled by tarnish, but the jewel gleamed as brightly as ever.
“He told me to give it to you,” Aunt Maddy croaked, offering it to Jonathan. “And now I have.”
Jonathan took the jewel on his palm and stared at it for a long time. Katie could usually tell what he was thinking, but in this moment, she had no idea. At some point, Lily had gotten up and left the room, and now she came back with a plate, piled high with bread and cheese. But Maddy only stared at the food for a moment, then looked up at them, her eyes dark and flat. “I’m dying. I know I am. I made it back here because I had his share of the food, but whatever he pulled out of me, it’s gone forever. Every day I weaken.”
“What about his body?” Lily asked.
“Gone,” Aunt Maddy replied. “I had to dump it overboard.”
At this, Lily turned away and didn’t speak. Jonathan was still staring at the jewel in his hand. Katie longed to grieve for William Tear, but she could not, for Tear himself had already directed her thoughts toward the more important issue: how would this affect Jonathan? What would the Town do when it found out that Tear was dead? The others might not have traveled so far in their thinking, but a deep part of Katie’s mind had already grasped the implications and begun to think of concealment.
“We can’t tell anyone,” Aunt Maddy announced, and Katie looked up gratefully.
“What are you talking about?” Lily asked. “We can’t keep this a secret.”
“Of course we can,” Aunt Maddy replied, her rasping voice closing off all argument. “This is the last thing the Town needs right now.”
Katie nodded. William Tear had always been the stopgap for the worst impulses of the Town. Without him, there would be nothing to stand in the way of Paul Annescott or any one of the countless other forces grappling for influence. Sooner or later, people would conclude that Tear was dead, but even uncertainty was preferable to the facts.
“How can we keep something like that a secret?” Lily demanded. “What will people say when they see you’ve come back without him?”
“They won’t see anything. I don’t have long.” Aunt Maddy pushed herself up from the sofa. Even in the soft candlelight, Katie fancied that she could see the bones of Aunt Maddy’s arms through her skin. “I’m leaving. Now, before the sun comes up.”