Every child in Esterly knew what a Wilkin was. They were the grey things of the salt fens, the breath-thieves, the ones that crouched on the sills of sickrooms and crept into cradles. Nurses hung iron over doorways against them. Priests preached against them at Candlemas. Since before Celine was born there had been a bounty on them—a penny a head, a shilling a nest—and the fen villages paid half their taxes in small grey bodies strung on cords.
"That's not the question," Celine said.
"Then what is?"
She looked down at the creature in her arms. It had found the end of one of her braids and was mouthing at it, not biting, its small hot tongue working at the plaited hair the way—she did not let herself finish the thought. She had been not finishing it for a month.
"Why," she said, very low, "did my sister call it her son?"
The doors shook.
It was not a knock. It was a fist, struck hard enough that the iron studs rattled in their sockets and dust sifted down from the lintel through the candlelight. Then again. Then a voice, muffled by oak and the roar of the rain, but not so muffled that either of them could mistake it.
"Celine! Open the door!"
The Wilkin went rigid against her throat. Mattias's sword had come a hand's breadth out of its scabbard before he stopped it. They looked at each other across the cradle, and she saw in his face what she knew was in her own: not only fear, but recognition.
It was her father.
II
For a moment neither of them moved, and the pounding stopped, and there was only the rain.
Then the king spoke again, nearer the crack between the doors, and his voice had lost its shout and gained something worse—a flat, careful patience. "I saw you cross the garth from my window. I know you have my key. I know someone is in there with you. Open this door, daughter, or I will send for the porter and have it off its hinges, and then everyone in Thornhallow will know whatever it is you are hiding."
Mattias looked at her. He was the king's man; he had sworn on his knees in the chapel with his hands between Osmund's hands. He was waiting to be told which oath to break.