able to think of anywhere else that might help ease the offense, Auri carried the blanket all the way down to Wains and into her new perfect sitting room. She draped it over the back of the couch. She folded it and set it in the chair.
Finally, in true desperation, Auri set her jaw and spread her blanket flat across the lush red rug in the center of the room. She smoothed it with both hands, careful not to let it touch the stone of the floor. It overlapped the rug almost perfectly. And for a second she felt hope rise in her chest that—
But no. It didn’t fix things at all. She knew it then. She’d known all along, really. Nothing was going to make the blanket right again.
Scowling, Auri snatched the blanket up, wadded the ungrateful thing into a ball, and headed up the unnamed stair. She felt flat and scraped as an old hide. Dry as paper written on both sides. Even the playful teasing of the new stone stair could stir no breath of joy in her.
She climbed over the debris, through the broken wall, and into Tumbrel. The room looked different in the yellow flickerling. Full of looming fear and disappointment.
And when her eyes passed over the vanity, she saw it differently. It was not rakish now. In the shifting light she saw it had a sinister bent, and caught a glimpse of what was turning it from true. She could feel the tattered edges of its disarray.
But tanglehaired and sticky, all unwashed and hollow as she was, she was hardly in the proper state for mending. She was in no mood to tend to the ungrateful thing.
Instead Auri knelt before the wardrobe and set the spirit lamp beside her. Her knees were chilly on the stone floor as she pulled open the drawer and looked down at the creamy folded sheets inside.
Auri closed her eyes. She took a long, stiff breath and sighed it out again.
Eyes still closed, she stuffed the blanket hard into the drawer. Then she lay her hand upon the topmost sheet. Yes. This was fair. Even blind she could sense the sweetness of it. Her fingers trailed across the creamy surface. . . .
She heard a tiny frizzling noise and caught the scent of burning hair.
Auri sprang back, scrabbling madly backward on all fours, away from the vicious spitting yellow flame. Catching hold of her hair, it was cold comfort to see only a few stray strands were charred. Auri stomped back to the wardrobe, snatched her blanket up, and slammed the drawer, too furious to even think of being properly polite.
Then, climbing through the broken wall, Auri stubbed her toes against a jutting block of stone. She didn’t drop her lamp, but it was a near thing. Instead she merely cried in pain, staggering to catch her balance.
Auri sat down hard upon the floor, clutching her foot. It was only then she realized she’d dropped her blanket. It was laying on the naked stone beside her. She grit her teeth so hard she feared that they would break.
After a long moment she gathered up her things, trudged back to Port, and stuffed the blanket angrily into the wine rack. Since that’s where it belonged now. Since that’s the way things had to be.
Auri spent a long time sitting in her thinking chair, glaring at the brazen gear. It was all glimmer and warm honey in the yellow light. She glared at it all the same. As if it were to blame. As if it were the one that made a mess of everything.
Eventually her sulk burned out. Eventually she calmed enough to realize the truth.
You couldn’t fight the tide or change the wind. And if there was a storm? Well, a girl should batten down and bail, not run the rigging. How could she help but make a mess of things, the state that she was in?
She’d strayed from the true way of things. First you set yourself to rights. And then your house. And then your corner of the sky. And after that . . .
Well, then she didn’t rightly know what happened next. But she hoped that after that the world would start to run itself a bit, like a gear-watch proper fit and kissed with oil. That was what she hoped would happen. Because honestly, there were days she felt rubbed raw. She was so tired of being all herself. The only one that tended to the proper turning of the world.
Still, it was sulk or sail. So Auri stood and rinsed her face and hands and feet. There was no soap, of course. It was no kind of proper wash. It didn’t make her feel even a little better. But what else could she do?
She brought the lamp to her lips and puffed out the yellow tongue of flame. Darkness flooded in to fill the room, and Auri climbed into her narrow, naked bed.
Auri lay in the dark for a long while. She was tired and tangled and hungry and hollow. She was weary in her heart and head. But even so, sleep would not come.
She thought it was the loneliness at first. Or the chill that kept her gritty-eyed and shifty. Perhaps it was the dull ache of her twice-bit hand. . . .
But no. Those were no less than she deserved. They were not enough to keep her all wide eyed at night. She’d learned to sleep with worse than that. Back in the times before he’d come. Back in the years before she had her sweet new perfect name.
No. She knew what the problem was. She slid out of her bed and brought out one of her few matches. It struck on the first try, and Auri smiled white in the red light of its sulfurious flaring.
She lit the spirit lamp and carried it to Port. Guiltily, she removed her blanket from the wine rack where she’d stuffed it. She smoothed it gently out across the table, murmuring an apology. And she was sorry. She knew better. Cruelty never helped the turning of the world.
She folded the blanket carefully then, her hands gentle. She matched the corners and kept it square and true. Then she found the proper place for it upon the bookshelf, and brought the smooth grey stone so that it wouldn’t want for company. It would be cold at night, and she would miss it. But it was happy there. Didn’t it deserve to be happy? Didn’t everything deserve its proper place?
Still, she cried a bit as she tucked the blanket in, settling it on the shelf.
Auri made her way back into Mantle and sat on her bed. Then she went back to Port to make sure her crying hadn’t skewed things all about. But no. She brushed the blanket with her hands, comforting. It was as it should be. It was happy.
Back in Mantle, Auri moved about the bare room, making sure everything was as it should be. Her thinking chair was just so. Her cedar box was flush against the wall. Foxen’s dish and dropper jar were resting on the bedshelf. The brazen gear sat in its niche, indifferent to the world.
The fireplace was empty: clean and trim. Her bedside table held her tiny silver cup. Above the fireplace on the mantelpiece sat her perfect yellow leaf. Her small strong box of stone. Her grey glass jar with kind, dried lavender inside. Her ring of sweet, warm autumn gold.
Auri touched each of these, making sure of them. They were everything they ought to be and nothing else. They were fine as fine.
Despite all of this, she felt unsettled. Here, in her most perfect place.
Auri hurried down to Borough, brought back a broom, and set to sweeping Mantle’s floor.
It took an hour. Not because of any mess. But Auri swept slowly and carefully. And there was quite a lot of floor. She didn’t often think of it, as Mantle hardly needed tending any more. But it was a big place.
It was hers, and the place loved her, and she fit here like a pea in her own perfect pod. But even so, there was a lot of empty floor.
The floor all fresh, Auri returned the broom. On her way back she wandered through Port to check on the blanket. It seemed to be doing well, but she brought the hollybottle over to keep it company too, just in case. It was a terrible thing to be lonely.
She stepped back into Mantle again and set the spirit lamp on her table. She took her three remaining matches out of her pocket and put them on the table too.
As she sat on the edge of her bed, Auri realized what was out of place. She was herself in disarray. She’d seen something in Tumbrel and not tended to it. Auri thought of the three-mirrored vanity and a tickling finger of guilt ran itself along the edge of her heart.
Even so. She was tired down in her bones now. Weary and hurt. Perhaps just this once . . .
Auri frowned and shook her head furiously. She was a wicked thing sometimes. All full of want. As if the shape of the world depended on her mood. As if she were important.
So she stood and made her slow way back to Tumbrel. Down Crumbledon. Through Wains. Through circle-perfect Annulet and up the unnamed stair.
After climbing through the broken wall, Auri looked hard at the vanity in the flickering light. As she did, she could feel her heart rise slightly in her chest. The shifting light against three mirrors, it made countless shadows dance across the bottles there.
Stepping closer, Auri watched carefully. She would never have seen this properly without the shifting nature of the yellow light. She stepped left, then right, looking at things from both sides. She tilted her head. She went to her knees so that her eyes were level with the surface of the vanity. A sudden, sunny smile spilled all across her face.
Back straight, Auri sat on the edge of the chair in front of the vanity. She tried not to look in the mirrors, knowing how she must appear. An unwashed, red-