The Gembound: The Price of Keeping Chapter 42: Volume 2: Chapter 40 — Weaver’s Web

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Volume 2: Chapter 40 — Weaver’s Web The first thing she did after standing was fall. It wasn’t dramatic. She swung her legs from the bed, and the room blinked, a sidewise window where the door should be, a floor where the wall had been, and down she went with the astonished grunt of someone who had forgotten gravity was a contract and not a suggestion. Sam surged in and shouldered beneath her arm like a living ramp; Harry braced her opposite hip with a clawed hand and the careful set of a tail as counterweight. Between the two of them, and Eliza’s hands that refused to tremble while they worked, Yara found a chair and sat until the world remembered itself. The scar pulled like a badly tied book. Heat lived under it, contained and sullen. The Gem behind it breathed with her, a coal that never died. “Now we know,” Eliza murmured, crouched at Yara’s knee, braid frayed, eyes ringed in salt-sleep. “Step one: don’t try to prove anything to furniture.” “Consider it policy,” Yara replied. She swallowed, tasted copper. “We start tonight.” Eliza didn’t ask what. She stood, already flipping her ledger to the page she had left blank on purpose and had dreaded filling. “Marcus,” she ordered toward the door. “Bring the fourteen from Registry to the ritual chamber. Quietly.” Marcus’s voice came back like something wrapped in cloth. “Yes.” “And the grandmother.” Yara's voice was firm. “Bathe her hands. No wool on her, not a thread until I say.” Eliza’s quill moved. “Grandmother. West Hall. Prepared.” “Animals,” Yara added. “We’ll need those small ones. Anything the alleys or granaries can give: rats, birds, strays. Calm if possible, alive no matter what. Whatever the kids were able to find. Oh, and find me a large Garden spider ones that make those huge and beautiful webs.” Eliza paused mid-stroke. “We don’t keep cages for that.” “Then start,” Yara said. “Send sweepers to the drains, the grain stores, the river mouth. Tell them to use bread, not poison. Nets, not blades.” “I can manage that,” Eliza said, closing the ledger. She hesitated just long enough for Yara to know she was lying about how easy it would be. Then she left before Yara could ask which part of the order she’d follow first. Sam and Harry refused to let her walk unaided. They matched her pace like oars, one beat to a side, propelling her down the corridor. The Defenders at the door looked without looking—faces set in the rigid kindness of men who had decided they were furniture until ordered otherwise. They fell in, two forward and two aft, in case the floor forgot where it lived again. By the time Yara reached the stairs, the city’s dusk bells were counting: seven, slow, patient clangs that laid a road through the evening and asked the world to set its feet straight. Begin with a hunger. End with a name. “I know,” Yara said under her breath. “I wrote it. Now we pay.” — The ritual chamber had once been a laundry. The heavy sinks and copper taps were gone. The drains remained, neat and floor-level; the stains they were built for had shifted color. Eliza had laid the tables she always laid: three clean, oiled boards at mid-height for people; a long trestle with hooks for tools; a second long table with bowls, cloths, sealed vials, and a single jar that still steamed. The jar smelled medicinal, like boiled pine and green bitterness. Beside it sat a stone cup with a hairline crack. Someone had tucked a linen square under the cup to keep it from wobbling. Marcus had arranged the fourteen in a straight line, leaving enough space between them that no elbow could touch another. The fourteen had worn the green cords since Tax Day. Wrists marked. Names recorded. Waiting in the Registry holding for assignment. Some eyes fixed on Yara when she came in; most skittered away. One man—bare, wary feet spread as if the floor needed testing—looked not at Yara but at the ceiling, as if measuring the room was still a useful habit. The grandmother sat in a single high-backed chair to the side, hand