The golem didn’t move; Rose cowered behind the table, her hands pressed to a nonexistent mouth.

Even without expression, his hands unmoving, Thorn seemed to grow almost belligerent at Bane’s command; somehow he managed to project it in the lines of his body, his stance.

Bane stared him down for a moment longer, then relaxed, to my surprise. “Good. A cowardly protector wouldn’t be of much use. It’s a little overprotective, though.”

Like you? I asked, raising my brows. He is made of your blood, as you said. 

Bane gave me a slight smile.

“You can call it off, Cirrien,” Wyn said, still watching with avid interest as the golem made of Bane’s blood refused to submit to his donor’s intimidation.

I sidled to the side, so that I was within Thorn’s line of sight.

He’s my husband, I signed firmly to the golem. When he’s around, I want him with me. I appreciate the thought, but I don’t want to be guarded against him at all. 

For several long seconds, I was afraid my efforts were in vain, but Thorn finally nodded, taking several steps back to stand near Rose.

“Excellent.” The relief in Wyn’s voice was audible. “There’s always a slight chance a construct will take the salient part of the personality of whoever donated materials to its core being, so, er… we shouldn’t be surprised that it’s utterly obstinate.”

Thorn’s head tipped to the side, and he signed with one hand. He.

“What was that?” Wyn asked.

He, I wrote for her benefit. He says he’s a he, not an it.

I glanced at the golem, the spines protruding from his cheeks catching the light, and then at the soft curve of Rose’s face. Was it because they had been designed in bodies with clear male and female lines, or because I had referred to Thorn as a ‘he’ to Bane? Wyn said they were simple, but how much did they really understand?

“If they disturb you, we can put a stop to this,” Bane told me softly, his golden eyes locked on mine. “I thought you might want friends who would understand you more easily. Friends who could watch your back when you need it. So long as you understand that they must never leave Ravenscry, or be seen by the Rift-kin. They… wouldn’t accept them.”

Both Thorn and Rose looked at me, both effortlessly projecting their concern that I would ask Wyn to incinerate them on the spot.

But… Thorn reminded me a little of Bane, with his truculent refusal to move. And Rose seemed so delighted by simple things: the color of my hair, perfectly aligning the edges of the books. They could both easily understand the priests’ tongue, which would make my life easier.

I imagined Miro trying to paint with Thorn breathing down his neck and Rose plucking at his hair, and had to suppress a smile.

Besides, when would I ever leave the keep of my own accord? I had no need to fear them following me into some poor unsuspecting village when I planned to stay holed up in the library for the foreseeable future.

I like them, I told Bane. They stay.

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Chapter 22 Bane

That’s enough for today, Brother Glyn signed. Even he looked tired, shadows under his eyes from our early mornings. We met well before the sun rose, the only time I could slip away without waking Cirri.

The early hours didn’t bother me; if not for Cirri sleeping in my bed, I would have slept little myself. Only my mind was tired from the deluge of information I’d been flooding into it for the last week. The rest of me felt invigorated; Cirri’s blood, bound to me as it was, was like a fire in my veins, the small taste having kept me sated through the past seven days.

But the thirst was beginning to make its return. I felt the slight itchiness in the back of my throat, the prelude to the burning fire that would climb its way up my gullet until all was pain, and when that happened, all I could smell was blood, pulsing tantalizingly under thin skin.

I didn’t dare ask Cirri to allow me to feed again, not when she had fought so hard to overcome her terror of me. But if she didn’t offer… I would turn once more to the convicts.

I shook those thoughts away, examining Glyn. We had progressed past the alphabet in the first two days, moving on to basic conversational skills, and had finally, in the last several days, approached higher-level concepts.

I was far from fluent, and it took me much longer to form even the single letters that Cirri flung out at extreme speeds. Much of what she said would still be beyond me, as Glyn had warned; this was an entire language, learned not in days, but over months and years.

But it would be enough to speak to her, to understand the gist of what she said, without having to resort to making her write every little thing.

You deserve a few days to sleep, I signed to him, focusing on my movements, on the position of each finger. Based on Glyn’s crooked smile, I had a feeling some of that had been wrong, or more simplistic than the signs a fluent speaker of the priests’ tongue would use, but it served my purposes well enough for now. I switched to speaking. “You’ve earned every bit of gold promised and more, Brother. I hope you choose to remain a while longer, and not only for my sake. It would be ideal for my court members to learn as well.”

If there is gold, I am your man, Glyn told me. My old chapter will be able to fund the fortification of the Vale with these lessons.

It was a reasoning that made his mercenary heart so much more relatable; while no Silent Brother would work without pay, at least the gold I poured into his hands went to a good cause. The Silent Brother chapters of the Rift were already well-funded, and it did me no harm to ensure my brother Andrus’s territory was protected.

Go on, Glyn said. Let it sink into your brain. You’ll be no use here if you cram like a boy studying for an exam. Every mind needs a rest. 

“Enjoy your nap,” I told him, and the Silent Brother nodded, tired but contented with what he’d managed, as I left him.

Indeed like a boy studying for an exam, but in this case, the grade was my wife’s respect and admiration, an altogether more important and perilous thing.

Released from my lesson an hour early, I made my way to the library, eager to see her. Raising my toe claws so I walked only on pads, I prowled silently to the door, peering in.

She was bent over her desk, books open before her, her back to me. That red hair was plaited into a thick, messy braid that hung over her shoulder; there was an ink spot on her skirt.

She didn’t look up as I stepped into the library, her tapping pen the only sound as she examined whatever it was she was looking at.

I didn’t want to disturb her, not while she was deep in thought. She had been eating, sleeping, and breathing these books for days now, to the degree that I knew when her thoughts drifted to them; her eyes would go all dreamy and unfocused, gazing off into the middle-distance, and I knew her well enough by now to understand that at these times, she was translating something in her head or pondering a translation that still eluded her.

As I watched, the golem she’d named Rose emerged from the lower stacks, carrying two heavy books. The golem deposited them on the table, and Cirri signed the words ‘thank you’ without looking up.

Thorn remained where he was, stationed to the side of Cirri’s table; his head had swiveled around fully to look at me in the door, but he’d made no movements otherwise.

They were eerie things, but brilliant; I had to give Wyn credit where it was due. Over the last week I’d had time to observe them, how my wife slowly adjusted from refusing to put her back to them, to trusting them implicitly to keep an eye on things while she lost herself in a world of words.