by Jill Archer
My parents haven’t always agreed on what future I should have.
It seemed clear that Steve had humored both his wife and son about me. That his preference would have been for Ari not to date me. I think he also suspected – and rightly so – that I was somehow responsible for Ari’s premature passing.
But he hid it well and embraced me in a great, big bear hug, as he had the first time we’d met. I embraced Matt after that, trying, and failing, to keep my cheeks dry. I turned to Joy then and forced myself to meet her gaze and accept whatever judgment I saw reflected in her eyes. But all I saw were glistening tears and… sympathy.
It was too much. I selfishly started sobbing on her shoulder. Luckily, Fara didn’t let it go on too long before she discreetly cast Serenity over me and I calmed. But the calm felt ephemeral and insufficient and I knew I’d need to find a better way to cope.
23
SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI
Later that afternoon, the entire town gathered down on First Street. Custom dictated that Ari’s memorial procession begin there. For the next four hours the cavalcade would wind its way up through the town’s switchback streets, until just before dusk, when it would reach the graveyard at the top of the mountain. The fact that there was no body to be buried was irrelevant. The important part of the ceremony was the procession – and the offerings.
As Ari’s court jester, Tenacity had arranged everything. In all, there were a half-dozen participating pageant carts, most of which represented various people who’d played a significant role in the departed patron’s life. Over the past few days various residents, both Host and Hyrke, had pitched themselves to Tenacity, arguing that they were worthy of a float, but she’d stood her ground and kept the number at an even six.
Yannu, as Captain of the Guard and Ari’s most likely successor, got a float. He’d chosen to decorate his with a bronze bunyip. Despite its relatively minuscule size, the newly forged metal talisman and its accompanying cohort of retainers evoked feelings of protection, strength, and tradition.
Cliodna, the town’s unofficial “lady” and past inamorata of the patron, also got a float. She’d taken her lead from Yannu (no surprise there) and adorned her cart with an exquisitely crafted, undeniably expensive, golden drakon accompanied by a trio of beautifully carved, undeniably handsome, golden-haired men. She herself was in full-on swan mode, all rara avis extraodinaris. She’d taken one look at me and tsked. Oddly, her sympathy seemed as genuine as her disdain. I ignored her, barely registering that the next two wagons were decorated as a guard tower (for the rest of Ari’s camarilla) and a river dock (for his family; a nod to Bradbury, although Rockthorn Gorge’s First Street residents also adored it).
As Ari’s consigliere and most recent inamorata, the fifth wagon was mine, although I didn’t want it. I would gladly have given it to any one of the residents who’d approached Tenacity begging for it. But Tenacity tenaciously refused my refusal until Fara gently reminded me that she too was in mourning. Fine. But there would be no fiery drakon on my float to rival Cliodna’s golden one. I had neither the desire nor the magic to prove to the town that I could best her. Both Tenacity and Zeffre had been disappointed until Fara came up with a better idea. My cart would be adorned with a statue of Justica, just like Metatron’s fabled oxcart. It was the ultimate symbol of Haljan authority and justice.
“Who knows, Noon?” Tenacity said, helping me up onto my float. “You might be elected Rockthorn Gorge’s next patron.” I looked at her blankly, squinting against the dull, gray light. “The first five lords of the gorge were Maegesters,” she continued, as if I’d responded to what was obviously a naïve statement born from endearing, but misplaced, loyalty. “Why not you?”
I barked out a laugh, too harsh and loud for the occasion. “Let’s see how many offerings I receive.”
The sixth and final float was empty. It was Ari’s. If all went according to tradition, it would be piled high with votive offerings by the time it reached the town’s mountaintop grave site. Tradition also held that whichever float was given the second-most number of offerings would be the departed patron’s successor. It wasn’t an official election, of course, but by the end of the day, I imagined Yannu’s float would be covered in coins, small crowns, clay figurines, lanterns, candles, and spattered blood.
I remember only a few things from the procession: Nova, sitting at my feet; Virtus prowling the edges of our float as if it were Cnawlece plowing through the eastern Lethe instead of a pageant wagon weaving its way through Rockthorn Gorge; the uncanny silence of the crowd; the snuffling and snorting of the oxen pulling the floats; and Tenacity’s invocation.
Barefoot, clothed in rags and carrying a scepter, she was dressed as the Infinite Man or Crowned Beggar, one of Halja’s most powerful alpha-omega archetypes. She climbed up on the Carmines’ floating dock and, against the backdrop of First Street’s real one, delivered her last ode to Ari in a clear, high voice that easily carried over the rushing waters of the river behind her and the quiet calm of the people in front of her.
Today, we hallow the dark Bradbury prince,
Who has ruled us justly and honorably since
He became our young patron—Veneration?
No! We resist.
And yet death insists.
Master of the rota fortunae… he was not.
Nor are any of us. We are all caught.
As Luck spins and weaves and cuts
Our fate, faith, time, and ties.
We remember, but for a moment
Life’s brief player, rogare slayer,
Gorge lord, member of the demon horde,
Aristos!
Nullum funus sine fidula.
No funeral without a fiddle. She motioned then to someone in the crowd, and a demon stepped forward. Seven feet tall with viridian skin and a sleek, muscled physique, he was a fossegrimen. He bowed to the floats and the crowd and then pulled a violin out from underneath his cloak. Its color was the same greenish-blue as his skin. The tailpiece and fingerboard were made of bone, its scroll was a carved skull, and on its body was a glowing pyrograph – a flaming waterfall… or the fiery outline of a million falling stars rushing toward a single grave.
He began to play and the procession moved forward with a jerk and a halt, frequent starts and stops, the fossegrimen’s long, plaintive notes underscoring the clinking of trinkets as they were thrown toward us.
By midafternoon, we’d reached Fourth Street. The sun had barely shown itself and was already creeping away. I stood, leaning against the statue of Justica, dazedly gazing at the crowd, unable and unwilling to recognize any who approached. Luckily, there weren’t many. Most threw their initial offerings on Ari’s now loaded cart and then approached one of the others. It wasn’t that people didn’t like me, but… well, Maegesters were lawyers, after all, and not very popular with lay people. The settlers here knew me as Ari’s consigliere rather than as his inamorata, which was how I’d wanted it. At least it had been, until Frigore Luna.
I closed my eyes, thinking only to rid myself of unwanted thoughts by way of ridding myself of unwanted sights… and sounds. I wanted to clap my hands over my ears and run. Would that Luck-forsaken fossegrimen ever cease? My only goal was to make it to the graveyard. Then, people’s attention would be elsewhere, and I’d be able to climb down and… do what exactly? Crawl in a grave? My bed? Drown myself in the river? In a sea of tears? Fara would see to it that I didn’t. Dear friend that she was, I was tired of having her lead me around and put me through my paces, as if I were one of the oxen pulling these floats.
A deep, dark, cancerous ache was growing inside me. Excise it or die, a small voice whispered in my head. It was the voice of survival, and I smothered it.
I opened my eyes, bewildered, furious, and ashamed to be so. Fourth Street. Still on Fourth Street.
Acheron was waiting at the lychgate to give the final benediction. He walked toward Ari’s cart, now piled high with beads, blades, armor, wine, i
ncense, and what seemed like ten thousand paper lanterns. He cupped his clawed hands together, palms up, thumbs out, and suddenly, there was water in them – headwater from the source of the Acheron River, I was told later.
The river demon thrust his hands toward the burning lanterns and a spray of water fell over them, extinguishing each and every flame. The fossegrimen finally, thank the Lost Lord, stopped playing and Acheron emitted a series of high, chirpy, unintelligible sounds. No one needed them translated. By the time Acheron spoke the Ripian word for “ashes,” the sun had set.
It was over.
I was filled with the most profound sense of… nothing. There was nowhere I needed to be. No one I needed to see.
I slipped to the ground, made my way over to Ari’s now-dark float, and pushed Rafe’s silver cuff into the smoldering heap. Just before someone might have come looking for me, I entered the lychgate and lost myself in the graveyard.
Tonight, I only wanted the company of the dead.
I don’t know where I wandered next. It wasn’t to Hell because I was already there. But somehow, much later, I found myself on the steps of Cliodna’s sanctuary. Around morning, I’d started to realize why she called it a sanctuary. It wasn’t just for birds. It was for people like me. Like her. Or, rather, the person she had been.
The Patron Demon of Waves and Waterbirds greeted me at sunrise, her face a perfect porcelain mask. No puffy eyes for her. No snotty sleeves. No cracked lips or splotchy skin. After all, she had not spent the night sleeplessly wandering in search of a dead lover who was never coming back.
She gazed at the morning sun and stretched, her gossamer-thin robe ruffling around her like feathers. Fists planted on her bare waist, she surveyed me while I huddled miserably on her doorstep. Her gaze was predatory, but not completely without pity. It was the look of someone who was about to squash a spider… slit a throat… or exact her revenge.
“So,” she cooed, crouching down next to me, “Nouiomo Onyx, you come to me uninvited. Tell me, my pet, which belladonna do you long for – the poison or the painting?”
This time, when I viewed Eidolon’s Alternate Ending, the painting’s subject wasn’t a person, it was a place.
Last semester, after I’d been shot with the cursed arrow that had almost killed me, my mother had tried to reverse the curse by dunking me in water from a perennial spring. That swim hadn’t healed me, but it had given me eleven visions from my future. Ten of them had come true during my last assignment. The one that hadn’t?
A dam with lightning in the sky above it.
I frowned, not understanding the significance of seeing this vision twice. Did it mean completion of the Memento Mori dam was now twice as likely? Or doubly doubtful?
And what difference did it make anyway?
“What do you see?” Cliodna asked. Apparently, she was obsessed with what people saw when they looked at her portrait.
I scoffed. “How many times have you shared this painting since you reacquired it?”
“You’re the first.”
I nodded and took a deep breath. I felt good. At peace. I could breathe again.
“So?” She prodded.
“The finished dam,” I said, shrugging. Cliodna looked confused. “I know,” I said. “I don’t get it either. But I assume it’s a good sign. You want the dam finished, don’t you?”
Cliodna frowned at the painting, but then quickly brightened. “Better, caritas mea? I don’t know why you fought it the first time.”
We were in one of her subterranean vaults, but this one was much smaller than the one she’d led me to the night of Frigore Luna, and there was only one painting mounted on the back wall – Eidolon’s Alternate Ending. There was no ceiling in the tiny room, just a stone floor and slanted walls that met at a horizontal seam directly above our heads. The floor and walls were covered in wax. But it was just regular petroleum wax. I remembered that Sartabella had wrapped all of the clothes she’d made for me in paraffin paper to preserve their enchantments. Maybe that’s why Cliodna had this cell coated with wax.
In any case, it didn’t matter. What mattered was settling my bill and getting back to work.
“What do you want in exchange for this viewing?” I asked, turning toward her.
She really is beautiful, I thought. Her eyes were only a smidge lighter than lapis lazuli, but just as intense. Her eyebrows swept upward in a permanent, regal arch mirroring her impossibly high cheekbones. Her skin was so smooth and flawless, it looked like blush-colored blown glass, while her hair was as white and soft as a swan’s underbelly. She was covered in gold chains, river pearls, and another shimmering, translucent gown. As with most of Cliodna’s body coverings, there was little to it. Its most notable feature was its collar, a large, lacy, pleated adornment that evoked feathers.
“I want to be the Patron Demon of Rockthorn Gorge. I should have been Potomus’ successor, but then Acheron endorsed Aristos and—”
“What about Yannu?”
“He’ll continue to be Captain of the Guard.”
“No, I mean, what about all the residents who support him? I was at Ari’s memorial procession. Yannu’s float was buried under three feet of offerings while yours… was not.”
Cliodna glared at me. I felt it then for the first time. The change. How different I was. I wouldn’t truly understand just how much until later, but right then, it felt empowering. Liberating. I gathered that love was an emotion that was so significant, it was one of the underpinnings of a person. Take it away and the person changed more than a little bit. Her emotions, her personality, her perspective. All different.
But that didn’t mean everything was different about me.
“I may have lost the ability to love,” I said, “but that doesn’t mean I’ve lost the ability to think.”
“I certainly hope not,” Cliodna said, laughing. “Because I need that brain of yours now more than ever. As a Council representative and the former patron’s consigliere, you are the obvious choice to oversee the election. Isn’t that what you did out in the Shallows last semester? Help elect a new patron?”
I harrumphed. That election had involved one uncontested choice and a few hundred settlers, not two contenders and a town of seven thousand.
“I’m not asking you to do anything ultra vires, Nouiomo,” Cliodna said huffily, “I’m just asking you to… fix things so that the people want to elect me.”
“In other words, you want me to be your campaign manager.”
She smiled. It was cold, but I no longer cared. “Exactly.”
“And then my debt to you is repaid?”
“Yes… but I’m hoping you’ll want to stay on.”
I frowned.
“As my consigliere. There’s no reason your future plans have to change.”
I stared at her for a moment, conflicted. I had a feeling Cliodna’s words would have made me angry or sad or vehemently something before I’d been cursed by viewing her painting. But those feelings, whatever they might have been, never surfaced. Instead, I just felt… well, not numb really, but logical. Why should my plans change? I didn’t necessarily care one way or the other about staying in the gorge after graduation now, but I still wanted to do well in my fourth-semester residency.
My employer was dead. It was in my best interest to align myself with the next patron. And what was the likelihood that Yannu would want my help? I laughed inwardly. He probably couldn’t wait to send me packing. And then what? What would happen if I returned to St. Luck’s now? Residency unfinished and arguably a failure?
Aligning myself with Cliodna made sense. If I spent the rest of my residency helping her, I’d not only repay my debt, I’d finish with a terrific reference and a future job offer. I gave Cliodna the same cold smile she’d given me. “I can’t guarantee your election, only that I’ll do my best.”
She slipped her arm through mine and led me out of the vault.
“I have a feeling your best will be more than enough, Nouiomo Onyx.
”
24
MORRIDUSA
You want me to do what?”
Tenacity stood in the rotunda’s atrium in a shapeless gray dress, holding a mop and pail.
Honestly, was she trying to look like a chambermaid? She was a court jester!
I sighed. I’d explained everything, in excruciating detail, already. We’d been talking for nearly a quarter-hour. I had other things to do. Time to cut to the chase, as they say.
“Clear out Lord Aristos’ chambers. Give everything to the town’s poor. Make certain they know the gifts are from Cliodna, their future patron. A team of artisans will be here this afternoon to begin renovations on both his chambers and mine. We need to be ready to host a fete here by Friday. In the meantime, you need to do one more thing: tell your father I need to speak with him.”
“My vote is my own, Ms. Onyx,” Zeffre said stiffly.
He stood in his kitchen, a small room with only a wood stove, a built-in sink, two chairs—one of which was piled high with books—and an old table covered with an embroidered cloth that was too small and stained to boot. Zeffre himself was covered in dirt and grime.
Did he have to look like a chimney sweep? He was the foreman!
I sighed. I hadn’t wanted it to come to this. I had hoped Zeffre either already supported Cliodna or would change his allegiance once I presented him with the reasons why she was the better candidate – or rather why Yannu wasn’t.
It was muckraking, to be sure, suggesting that Yannu, as Captain of the Guard, had been negligent in not discovering that Kalchoek was really Displodo before it was too late. And then I’d hinted that there might be other legal problems for Yannu with the Council over the fact that Ari and Pestis had been killed, and the Magna Fax destroyed, while Yannu was elsewhere. But then I dispensed with the veiled insults and implied threats and decided to just list Yannu’s possible crimes outright.
