by Neil McGarry
Jana nodded and they moved across the grass back to the Walk. Duchess could not say what had her so worried, but if the silence was disturbing the sudden stir was even more so. She glanced up at the Sanctum and saw that upon the once-empty stairs now stood a line of facets, each identically robed and masked. They descended the stairs in perfect unison, in two precise lines, ignoring the onlookers. For their part, the faithful fell back, as if desperate to avoid touching the priestesses.
The facets left the stairs and glided across the Walk—directly towards Duchess.
“Oh gods,” she whispered. She glanced at Jana, who seemed equally dismayed. Duchess felt rooted to the spot as the facets came straight on, almost as if they might pass directly through her. Beggars, scholars, and other passersby cleared out of their path, watching raptly, and Duchess moved to follow suit—but Jana held her fast. Duchess looked at the weaver, but Jana’s face was stoic, and her eyes fixed on the approaching priestesses. Although part of her wanted to tear away, Duchess remained where she was.
The facets did not pass through; instead, they surrounded her, each neat line of six curving to form a perfect circle of twelve, round as the Godswalk itself. Duchess bit her lip, fighting every instinct that screamed for her to push past the eerie women and run. Duchess looked from one facet to another, and each looked back with a single brown eye from behind her mask. They were identical in form and bearing, and they all saw her.
No. Not her. Duchess realized with gathering dismay they were looking at Jana.
If the Godswalk had been quiet before, it now had the silence of the grave. Nothing moved. No one made a sound.
Finally, the facets spoke. “We know you,” they intoned in unison, their voices identical.
Duchess looked at Jana, whose face was as still and unreadable as the masks of the facets. “And I know you,” she replied.
“Vessel of Mnemosyne,” they went on with voices like the murmuring of the sea. “We know you of old, sister.”
Duchess felt ready to crumble, but Jana’s reply was a whip-crack. “You are no sisters of mine.” She regarded them with contempt and fear, evenly balanced.
Jana’s fire kindled her own, and Duchess drew herself up. “And what of me?” she called defiantly.
Twelve masked heads all turned in her direction. “We did not see you,” they replied. “Could not see you. Not there. Not here.” It was the same voice, the same lost voice. Her sister’s voice, but not. Her sister’s fear, but not. Her sister’s face hidden behind twelve masks. “We cannot see, but we know much by our blindness,” they went on, relentless as waves upon the shore. “Two must have passed your hands. The third we cannot see, but must still lie before you.”
“What—” Duchess began, but Jana looked at her and the words died in her throat. There was such fear on the girl’s face, such loathing.
“You must bring us the second,” the facets chanted. “Before it is too late. Or all will surely suffer at the end.”
Jana’s defiance collapsed. “The end?”
The facets smiled, and even under the masks it was terrible to see. “The end of light and life, of self and sin—”
Duchess found herself finishing their sentence. “—all of it eaten up by the mists.” Jana stared at her in horror. Duchess’ throat closed and she could not say more. She could not tell Jana the words were not hers, but Adam Whitehall’s—a prophecy found in the entrails of a dead ganymede.
“We have seen the tattered figure dancing. We have seen our brother lost. Bring us the second, or all will surely suffer...”
Something in her broke then, as the fear that chilled her blood changed to flame. She flung herself against the nearest facet and then Jana was yelling in her ear and they were running. They had somehow shoved through the circle and they were running across the Walk and her knee was scraping the roughness of the street and then they were running and running through the crowd of silent onlookers who shrunk from them in shock or fear and their feet were eating the endless length of Beggar’s Way. Her heart was pounding and her feet were pounding and they were running away, for ever and ever.
And never once did they dare to look back behind them.
* * *
Jana laid her head against the wall and muttered the strange word once again.
They were in the back of the shop, where they’d collapsed, panting, after having run all the way back from the Godswalk. Duchess hadn’t dared even to get up to see if they’d locked the door behind them. All she knew was that she wanted to hide away and to never again let anyone see her.
“That word,” Duchess said. “What does it mean?”
Jana swallowed hard. “Abomination.”
Duchess shuddered. “They knew you.”
“In a way.”
“In what way?”
Jana looked at her nakedly. “They knew me as the other Domae know me.”
Duchess blinked. “A witch.”
Jana nodded wordlessly.
Even in the aftermath of that horror, Duchess’ mind still grasped for an answer. “Mnemosyne. A vessel. That was what they called you.”
Jana made a mirthless smile. “That is closer to the truth, yes.”
Duchess clung to that thought like a man overboard with a piece of flotsam. Better to hold on than to drown. “They knew you. And you said you knew them.”
Jana’s smile vanished. “Reflections in a broken mirror,” she said dully. Before Duchess could ask her what she meant, Jana’s eyes narrowed. “They knew you, as well,” she said, and there was an accusation in it.
“They did. In a way.” Duchess sighed. “I think we both have some talking to do.”
Jana suddenly looked very small and very scared. “I think you are right,” she replied softly, any accusation gone. Duchess reached out for Jana’s hand, and Jana offered it. They sat silently for a long moment, and then Jana released her and settled back against a bolt of cloth. “Mnemosyne is not a word I would have thought to have heard, in Rodaas.” She looked long into Duchess’ eyes. “Such things are the reason I came here.”
“What do you—”
Jana raised a hand. “Please. This is...difficult.” She took a deep breath. “The word means memory or She Who Remembers.” She sighed. “There are many called each generation who try, but only one who succeeds.” She paused and Duchess saw that her eyes shimmered with tears. “Not all of the old magics were lost to us when we left the hill. There were...remnants...that survived.”
Duchess tried not to shudder. “Remnants like these vessels?”
Jana nodded. “Some old rituals are remembered. Some by the men, others by the women. The Vessel of Mnemosyne is one such. Its origins are long lost to us, yet it is passed from one to another. Some succeed, some fail. But one must be found before the old one passes on.”
“But what is it? What does it mean?”
Tears began to run down Jana’s face. “I saw it at the end. I saw Adelpha succeed.” And then she was crying in earnest. Duchess put an arm out and held her close. She held her and said nothing for a long time. Finally Jana pulled away, wiping at her tears with her sleeve.
“You don’t have to talk about this, Jana, if you don’t want to.”
Jana held up a hand again, choking back her tears. “No. I...I want you to know this.”
Duchess sighed. Is this where all our lies lead us, she wondered? She’d been here, once before, with Lysander, her own lies spilling out upon the floor. Adelpha was Jana’s aunt, the one Duchess had harbored suspicions of ever since the girl had first mentioned her.
“I told you my aunt passed away just before I came here.” Duchess nodded. “That was...not the whole of the truth. My aunt...“ Jana trailed off, seeming to gather her courage. “Some part of my aunt still survives.”
Duchess felt her heart in her throat. A reflection in a broken mirror. Her sister’s fear spoken from behind twelve masks. No...
“I told you once,” Jana went on, heedless, “that we call you edunae�
��soulless. I told you of our horror of the city. It is the duty of the vessel to remember. She remembers the danger to our souls. She remembers what we left behind. There are echoes of it throughout my peoples’ traditions. I told you once of the litany I perform each day.”
Duchess nodded numbly. “What I know. And what I should fear.”
Jana nodded. “The vessel is much like that. She remembers for the rest of us. Remembers what the rest of us cannot know. Knows what the rest of us should fear. There are many who fail. They are always different, after. But there is one who succeeds. One who is filled as a vessel is filled. Filled, and remembers.”
Duchess said nothing in reply. She felt numb; a vessel emptied.
Jana coughed and went on. “She remembers as all those who went before her. She knows what they knew, may think as they thought, may feel as they felt. And she is forever changed.” She sniffled again, but did not cry. “Adelpha as I knew her—the aunt who raised me and taught me to weave, the woman I loved as a second mother—she was gone. She became...many.” She looked up and her voice took on a plaintive tone. “When I told you she had died, there was a truth in it. Adelpha was forever lost, and another person, one who lives only for my people, was born. And when her birthing was done, she looked upon me and declared that I was to be the next.”
Duchess nodded, wishing she could cry as well. “And you and the facets recognized each other. A reflection in a broken mirror. Many who are one understanding one who may be many.”
The blood drained from Jana’s face. “How—”
Duchess suddenly grasped both of Jana’s hands. “Jana. This remembering. This being more than one. Is there...” she almost choked on the words, “is there any way to undo it? Can one of the many be made one again?”
Jana shook her head, tears again flowing. “No,” she croaked. “Adelpha shall never be Adelpha again.”
Nor would Marguerite be Marguerite. Many who are one, all running together like spilled paint making a new color and the old ones never to be found. Sweet syrup stirred into her tea that could never be unstirred. A new thread is added. Marguerite not dead and never again quite alive. Was she in pain? Did she remember her sister and her brother? Yes, she’d seen that...some part of her was left. But, as Jana’s aunt Adelpha, only a part.
Like her mother and her father, her sister, her true sister—the girl she’d quarreled and played with, whom she’d loved and resented in equal measure—was gone forever.
Duchess grasped the girl’s face gently with both hands. She was again a lost sailor grasping at flotsam. She must stay here and now or she would be lost, like Adelpha, like Marguerite. “Jana. Look at me. Look at me.” The girl sniffled and nodded. “You chose to leave, yes? You chose not to be the next to be...sacrificed.”
Jana choked back tears once again. “Yes,” she whispered. “But—”
Duchess’ voice gained a harder edge. “Remember that. Hold on to that. Listen to me: we are all of us legacies. All of us. All of us are given a heritage.” She thought of Lysander, watching the Narrows burn. She thought of herself standing before her father’s house, blazing in the night. “All of us come from somewhere.” As she said the words, she realized that this was how you connected. You stood and you told the truth. Of who you were. Of what you’d done. “We are all of us legacies,” she repeated, more certain with each passing moment. “But we choose who we are. In the end. We choose.” Her hands dropped to her sides, but Jana sat motionless where she’d been held. “You are not a vessel of those who came before you. You are not your aunt, lost to your people’s traditions. You are who you choose to be.”
Duchess pulled back and smiled. Jana looked at her, rapt. “Let me tell you another story,” Duchess said, “like the one I told you before, about Iceni.” She settled back against a bolt of fabric of her own. This might take a while.
“Let me tell you,” she said, beginning her tale, “who I am...”
Chapter Thirteen: A blood-red house
For the second time, Duchess was riding in a carriage with Gloria Tremaine, and she was enjoying it no more than the first.
The guildmaster, elegantly coiffed and gowned, had picked her up at the Scholar’s Gate to Garden District, where Duchess had been waiting since sixth bell. Tremaine imperiously examined her as she climbed into the scented interior of the carriage. “The dress I made for the Fall,” she noted. “A good start.” Duchess could not help but agree; it was lovely, burgundy satin with black lace, and, as Lysander had pointed out, no one was likely to remember it. She had been posing as one of the attendants, after all, and no one paid attention to them.
“And you’ve once again engaged the services of your ganymede,” Tremaine continued, gesturing to Duchess’ hair and makeup as the driver shook the reins and the carriage rattled on its way. Unused to moving about in a dress, Duchess fell inelegantly into her seat. “A competent job,” Tremaine went on, ignoring Duchess’ clumsiness. “You at least look presentable. Perhaps I should acquire a ganymede of my own.”
Duchess bit her lip to keep from snapping back in response. She was feeling better than she had in days and she wasn’t about to let Guildmaster Tremaine ruin her mood. The unburdening between her and Jana had brought them closer together, and they’d talked long into the night, Jana telling stories of her time in the lands of the Domae, of how she’d come to think of Rodaas as a new beginning, a place to escape. She had also applied her calm clarity to the strange tales Duchess told, of the War of the Quills, the fall of Marcus Kell, of P and the Grey, the Key of Mayu and the skeleton attack beneath the hill. Duchess had even spoken of the strange voice from the pit, and what had happened with the Brutes along the Coast Road.
Given what Jana had told her of the vessel, Duchess shouldn’t have been surprised that the weaver had so easily accepted such impossible tales. Sadly, she’d had no more insight than Duchess herself, no Domae wisdom or knowledge of hidden magic that might open her eyes to what P was, or what he wanted. Still, in the end, she felt closer to Jana than ever, and for that she was grateful.
Tremaine was still looking at her, and Duchess realized she was waiting for a reply. “Well, you can ask Lysander yourself,” Duchess said lightly, “as he’ll be in attendance this evening. He has his own invitation, you know.” While the guildmaster took that in, Duchess tried to arrange her dress around her so as to minimize wrinkling. “He likes a challenge, so you’d be perfect for him.” Tremaine’s lips tightened but she made no reply, and they passed the rest of the ride in silence, for which Duchess was profoundly grateful.
Little had changed since she had last been in Garden District, but she was still compelled to stare at the multi-colored stones that paved the streets, the now almost-bare trees that graced corners and nooks, the fountains and graceful statuary. When the carriage finally turned towards the Davari estate, she shifted towards her own window to get a better view.
Banncroft was enormous, surrounded by a fifteen-foot wall of neatly mortared stone, impeccably maintained. From what little she’d learned, that boundary enclosed the main house, a massive stable, servants’ quarters, a guest cottage, a dower house, and an enormous parcel of land that the family kept well stocked with rabbits, deer and other game. Banncroft seemed almost a village within the city, and Duchess found it hard to believe that all of this could fit in the highest district of Rodaas.
As the carriage passed through the gates, she caught sight of the manor house itself, and had to will herself not to stare like the Shallows orphan she was. In Rodaas, if a structure was not built from the ubiquitous gray stone the Domae had left behind, it was made of wood, but Banncroft was neither. The home of House Davari was a massive edifice of deep red masonry, darker and richer than blood in the dying light of sunset. The place seemed almost a castle, with towers and parapets and crenellations. Windows like a thousand glass eyes reflected the last of the light,ß which made a mouth out of the shadow of its great doors, and the two mighty towers that jutted into the night seemed
almost like teeth.
Tremaine cleared her throat and Duchess realized they had stopped. She pulled herself away from the wonder of Banncroft and quickly slipped out of the carriage behind the guildmaster. The yard was filled with carriages from which lords, ladies, and attendants disembarked. Groomsmen in clean livery stood by to take charge of stabling horses and clearing away carriages, and the drivers were ushered discreetly towards the servants’ hall, where modest refreshments no doubt awaited. Duchess found herself wishing she could join them, but Tremaine took her arm and steered her towards the main house.
If she had been expecting something like the empress’ palace, she’d been badly mistaken. Instead of gleaming marble, the vestibule was paneled in rich, warm walnut, and the floors were scattered with sweet-smelling rushes. Carved wooden screens set apart the entrance area from the inner hall and created nooks of privacy where servants awaited. One, a young man in formal dress, approached Duchess. “If I may, my lady?”
Duchess blinked. “If you may what?”
Tremaine rolled her eyes. “He’s asking to clean your shoes, so you don’t track half of the Shallows across the hall.” She then moved off to a nook furnished with a cushioned stool and perched there while another servant wiped off her shoes with graceful efficiency. Feeling quite the rube, Duchess followed suit; she could almost see Lysander laughing at her inelegance.
Once her shoes passed muster, she was directed past the screens and into the main hall, also paneled in walnut, though the rushes beneath were now a thick carpet of red and black and brown. Paintings of what Duchess assumed were past Davari adorned the walls, and statues of alabaster and ebony stood in shallow niches. The air smelled of spice and cinnamon, and gentle music wafted down from a gallery overhead. The room was crowded with nobility, all dressed in their finest—the Fall of Ventaris all over again. One man in particular stood out; older, with magnificent white hair and a red jacket intricately embroidered in gold thread. “Lord Tiles,” she blurted, recognizing him from the Vermillion. The last time she’d seen him, he’d been ranting at Daphne.
