We have not spoken at all these last two hours, yet our master roars for silence again and again. What is he on about? I want to ask Jonas, but I dare not make a sound this night. It's a strange vigil we keep.
   
Our master has tied his daughter's scarf—Theodora's scarf—about his waist. When she lived she wore it wrapped 'round her head like a turban, the green of it nearly matching her eyes. Jonas and I learned to read her mood by the card she tucked along the side of it, just above her left ear: one day the Empress, the next the Hanged Man. Towards the end the Devil, the Tower, the World. We loved her, in our way.

Now Theodora is two weeks drowned and our master calls out to her in some strange tongue, on his knees, beseeching. I can make no sense of it. Perhaps it is an apology for his paternal aberrance. For crawling between her bedsheets at night, for his spotted, trembling hands. Theodora saw that Jonas and I were sorry for her troubles; she beat us with a hazel wood switch because of it, but not as hard as she should have. It shames me so to think of these things.

I whisper a prayer. Let the urns and alembics and books crash down upon our master's head. Let oil meet flame. Let all of it burn, and us with it.

.

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